The 1917 Bank — One Charter, Three Names, and the Week It Closed With North Liberty's

1917–1935 · Indiana Dept. of Banking Year Books via FRASER; Rand McNally Bankers Directory, Jan 1925; Polk 1916–17; Federal Reserve Mimeograph Letters, Jan–Jun 1927; Eastburn v. Board of Finance of Union Township, 100 Ind.App. 200 (1935)

The charter record is the Story of Lakeville section: Indiana Department of Banking record No. 516, organized 31 December 1917, in a town the schedules of its last years count at 333 people. Under that one record number the department's own tables print the bank under two names, and the difference is this section's first register item, printed whole: one Year Book table prints "Farmers State Bank, Lakeville" — the form LK-1's pointer carried, with its resources figure of $182,598.66 — while another table, and every other carrier reached, prints "Lakeville State Bank": the FRASER-held schedules, Rand McNally's Bankers Directory of January 1925, and the appellate opinion in the bank's own liquidation case. Same record number, 516, under both names — whether a formal name change, a recharter styling, or departmental reporting variance, no carrier reached settles, and the build picks no winner. Polk's 1916–17 town entry adds a third form, "UNION BANK (Capital $10,000), J. U. Walter, Pres.; Rollin Steele, Cashr." — canvassed before or around the charter's organization date. Whether Polk's Union Bank is No. 516 under another name, a predecessor house, or a separate house altogether is unresolved in the carriers; Walter and Steele stand in the owners roster with the conflict on their lines, and no president or cashier of No. 516 at any date was named by any carrier reached. The January 1925 directors volume names the board: C. S. Rensberger; F. Shater (the spelling as the directory's text carries it, an OCR-suspect form held at that strength); J. F. Price; J. R. Steele; A. E. Steele; and Lulu C. Rush — directors, at the strength the carrier gives, not officers.

The town knew it had arrived, bank-wise: Polk's 1916–17 header for Lakeville already boasts "a bank and a newspaper" among the town's institutions. The course runs through the decade's two crises. The bank suspended on 20 January 1927 — the state schedule's date — and reopened on 27 June 1927. The cross-pass lead from North Liberty's file is hereby confirmed and explained: NL-4's record showed a Lakeville bank closing in the very week North Liberty's State Bank closed (17 January 1927) — this is that bank, three days later. The Federal Reserve's weekly Mimeograph Letters of that season name North Liberty's closing and never Lakeville's, and the reason is structural, printed as the record supports it: the letters tracked member banks, and Lakeville's bank was a nonmember state bank. The same failure, the same week, two towns eight miles apart — one in the federal record, one only in the state's.

The reopening bought less than three years. The bank suspended finally on 21 February 1930 (a secondary financial-history compilation carries 24 February; the state schedule's 21st governs the course and the variant stands registered) and failed insolvent, into state-supervised liquidation. The liquidation reached the appellate court on the township's own money: in Eastburn v. Board of Finance of Union Township, 100 Ind.App. 200, the township's deposited public funds — $14,127.21 — were recovered from the depository-bond sureties, and judgment of $16,027.31 was affirmed on 2 April 1935. The case is the bank's fullest surviving narrative and the township's stake in its bank, printed at the opinion's strength: when Lakeville's bank died, Union Township's money was inside it, and the law gave the money back.