The First National Bank of Mishawaka — charter No. 5167

Chartered at the turn of 1900–01 – merged away 25 March 1983

The charter: Mishawaka's banking spine is one institution. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's Alphabetical List of National Banks, revised to 7 May 1917 and read first-hand for this section, carries exactly one Mishawaka entry: "Mishawaka, St. Joseph Co., The First National Bank of Mishawaka. 5167." Charter No. 5167 stands in the OCC's 1900–01 granting sequence; the exact organization date is not carried in the record reached, and the settling sources are named rather than the date guessed — Pollock's Tabular Guide to United States National Banks monograph for charter 5167 and the Comptroller's 1901 annual-report table of organizations. The bank issued national-bank currency under its charter across the note era, as its number in the list attests, and it was the city's only national bank for the whole of that era — the OCC list's silence on any second Mishawaka charter is itself the roster.

The bank in its city, 1921: By 1921 the bank stands in the period press doing a city bank's ordinary work in public: the South Bend News-Times of 7 October 1921 records the First National Bank of Mishawaka buying the $20,000 of bonds for the new Logan Street school building. In the same issue the bank's companion institution advertised itself to the same readers: the First Trust & Savings Bank of Mishawaka, "in the same building and under the same management as the First National Bank" — the standard national-bank and trust-company pairing of the period, carried in the savings entry below with the city's other trust names. A Mishawaka banker of the bank's middle years is documented at the state level: the Indiana Bankers Association's own roster of past presidents names Fred J. Hums, of Mishawaka, its president for 1951. And the bank's officer corps fed the state's banking: Donald B. Smith Sr. served as the First National's executive vice president before leaving in 1946 to become the founding president of Kokomo's First National Bank, on the Howard County Historical Society's record.

The Depression course: The bank came through the Depression whole, and the record of how is a federal record. When the city's loan and trust company was wound up in 1932, the Federal Reserve Board's mimeographed letters for the week ended 7 October 1932 record the disposition, dated 19 September 1932: the Mishawaka-St. Joseph Loan & Trust Company's savings deposit liability of $100,000 was assumed by the St. Joseph Loan & Trust Company of South Bend, "the commercial deposits being assumed by the First National Bank of Mishawaka." The First National was on the receiving end of the city's one Depression resolution — an acquirer of deposits, not a casualty. In January 1936 the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's monthly report lists a $200,000 subscription for the bank's 3-per-cent preferred stock, the RFC's standard recapitalization instrument of the banking recovery. And when the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago issued its licensed-banks list No. 21, of 30 June 1935 with supplements to February 1937, Mishawaka's licensed member banks were exactly two: the First National Bank of Mishawaka and the West End State Bank. The failure test for the city is run in its own entry below; the First National's part in it is simple — it never failed, never entered receivership, and never closed.

The end, by merger: The bank's end, when it came, was a consolidation of the strong. By order of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System effective 25 March 1983, 1st Source Bank of South Bend merged with The First National Bank of Mishawaka, the Mishawaka bank then holding $126.9 million in deposits and standing as the forty-first largest commercial bank in Indiana; the merged institution carried on under 1st Source's charter and title. The acquirer was itself the valley's oldest banking line — 1st Source descends from South Bend's First National of 1863, on the FDIC record carried in the South Bend banks file — so the merger joined the two cities' national-bank lines in the older one. The First National's eighty-two years close on that order. Its successor is the city's banking present in one line: 1st Source Bank, headquartered across the river in South Bend, remains the house that absorbed Mishawaka's own national bank, and banks the city through its Mishawaka offices today.

Sources:

1. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Alphabetical List of National Banks by States, revised to 7 May 1917 (Government Printing Office), Indiana section, read first-hand — "Mishawaka, St. Joseph Co., The First National Bank of Mishawaka. 5167," the city's only entry.
2. South Bend News-Times, 7 October 1921 — the First National Bank of Mishawaka's purchase of the $20,000 Logan Street school bonds.
3. Federal Reserve Board, mimeographed letters, week ended 7 October 1932 (FRASER) — the 19 September 1932 assumption: the Mishawaka-St. Joseph Loan & Trust Co.'s $100,000 savings liability to the St. Joseph Loan & Trust Co. of South Bend, its commercial deposits to the First National Bank of Mishawaka.
4. Reconstruction Finance Corporation, report for January 1936 — the $200,000 subscription for preferred stock (3%) of The First National Bank of Mishawaka.
5. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, licensed banks list No. 21 (30 June 1935, supplements to February 1937) — Mishawaka's two licensed member banks: The First National Bank of Mishawaka and West End State Bank.
6. Indiana Bankers Association, roster of past presidents (updated 24 September 2018) — Fred J. Hums, Mishawaka, president 1951; and the Howard County Historical Society — Donald B. Smith Sr., executive vice president of the First National Bank of Mishawaka before 1946, then founding president of the First National Bank of Kokomo.
7. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, order effective 25 March 1983 (FRASER) — 1st Source Bank, South Bend, merging The First National Bank of Mishawaka, with $126.9 million in deposits, the forty-first largest commercial bank in Indiana, under 1st Source's charter and title.