1929–1933 — the failure record

1929 – 1933

The position: Fort Wayne entered the Depression rich in banks and heavy in mortgages. Iwan Morgan's study of the city in the Indiana Magazine of History counts eleven banks, and puts per-capita bank deposits at $664 in December 1929 — the highest of Indiana's principal cities, against $573 in Evansville, $464 in Indianapolis, $458 in South Bend and $207 in Gary — with over $1.1 million held in Christmas savings clubs. The banks had lent heavily on mortgages and on 1920s business paper; as values fell, foreclosures rose from about seventy a year in the late 1920s to 612 in 1932. The Allen County Genealogical Society's timeline, drawn from the News-Sentinel, counts a dozen local banks at the decade's start against Morgan's eleven; the counts are printed as they stand in their sources.

The mergers of weakness: Consolidation came before failure. In 1929 the Tri-State Loan and Trust Company consolidated into the First National, making the First and Tri-State National Bank and Trust Company; in mid-1931, Morgan records, the city's two largest banks, the Old National and the First National, survived only by merging, aided by two other local establishments purchasing some of their mortgage holdings. The combined bank carried the name Old-First National Bank and Trust Company.

The failures, named: The Rand McNally Bankers Directory's final 1937 list of discontinued bank titles gives the local roll. The Citizens' Trust Company was discontinued 16 May 1932 — Morgan, citing the Journal Gazette of 17 May 1932, records that the suicide of a vice-president precipitated its closure. The East Side State Bank was discontinued 23 August 1933. The North Side State Bank was merged into the Lincoln National Bank and Trust Company on 21 August 1933. The Old-First National Bank failed in March 1933, in the crisis that followed the Michigan banking panic and the national bank holiday — the ACGSI timeline says it was shut down after a run by fearful depositors — and the Dime Trust and Savings Bank, Morgan records, barely survived; the directory shows it emerging under a retitled name, Dime Trust & Savings Company, on 2 January 1934.

The survivors and the replacement: Two houses came through without reorganising, on the ACGSI timeline's account: the Lincoln National Bank and the Peoples Trust and Savings Company — Peoples Trust appears on the Federal Reserve's list of banks licensed to resume business in June 1933, after the holiday. In place of the Old-First, a new Fort Wayne National Bank was chartered: the Rand McNally list dates the replacement 28 October 1933, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's record gives the new bank's establishment as 30 October 1933 at 110 West Berry, under charter No. 13818, with federal deposit insurance from 1 January 1934 — the two dates differ by two days and are printed as they stand. Morgan's count closes the account: of the banks that began the decade, failures and forced mergers had reduced eleven to seven by mid-1933.

Sources:

1. Iwan Morgan, "Fort Wayne and the Great Depression: The Early Years, 1929–1933," Indiana Magazine of History 80:2 (June 1984) — deposits, foreclosures, the 1931 merger, the Citizens' Trust closure, the Old-First failure, the count of eleven reduced to seven.
2. Rand McNally Bankers Directory, final 1937 edition, "Discontinued Bank Titles" (FRASER) — the discontinuation and merger dates for Citizens' Trust, East Side State, North Side State, the Dime retitling and the Old-First replacement.
3. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, institution history, Fort Wayne National Bank (certificate 4340) — established 30 October 1933; insured 1 January 1934; and Comptroller of the Currency charter No. 13818.
4. ACGSI, timeline of Allen County, 1930s (from the News-Sentinel) — the dozen-bank count, the two unreorganised survivors, the run on the Old-First.
5. Federal Reserve, list of banks licensed to resume business, June 1933 — Peoples Trust and Savings Company (via the Businesses section).