Lehman Brothers began as an Alabama dry-goods store that took cotton as payment.
Henry Lehman arrived from Bavaria in 1844 and opened a store in Montgomery, and by 1850 his brothers Emanuel and Mayer had joined him. Customers paid in raw cotton from plantations worked by enslaved people, and trading the bales became the business. In 2008 the firm filed the largest bankruptcy in American history, with more than $600 billion in assets.
Lehman Brothers on Brandseum