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1863
The charter: The National Banking Act of 1863 created a federal charter for banks, and Fort Wayne took one of the first. The Comptroller of the Currency's charter record gives the First National Bank of Fort Wayne charter No. 11 — among the earliest national charters issued anywhere — and the History Center's account, carried on the ACGSI timelines, calls it the first bank in Indiana to receive a charter under the new national banking system. Its presidents, its $100,000 paid-up capital shortly raised to $400,000, and its long course are profiled in the business record.
The bank in the directories: The 1903 city directory fixes the young system's paperwork in one line: the First National, at 811–815 Calhoun, was "Organized May, 1863; reorganized May, 1882; charter extended May 1902," with capital of $300,000 and surplus of $200,000 — the twenty-year charter renewed on schedule, a generation after the Civil War issue.
Why it matters here: Charter No. 11 made Fort Wayne a federal banking town from the system's first year. The consolidations that later gathered the White National (1905) and the Hamilton National (1917) into it, and its own end in the Old-First merger and the 1933 failure, are told in the entries below and in the business record.
Sources:
- Comptroller of the Currency charter records (the Comptroller's annual-report extracts and charter tables) — First National Bank of Fort Wayne, charter No. 11, 1863.
- ACGSI timelines, quoting the History Center — "the first bank in Indiana to receive a charter under the new national banking system."
- R. L. Polk & Co., Fort Wayne City Directory, 1903, "Banks and Bankers."