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1854 – 1983
The test: South Bend's wealth record has a banking fortune at its center; Mishawaka's does not, and the absence is documented rather than assumed. The town's first bank never opened — the Bank of Mishawaka free bank of 1854 survives only as proof notes. Its one chartered institution, the First National Bank of Mishawaka (OCC charter No. 5167, granted at the turn of 1900–01), ran a city bank's ordinary course for eighty years: it bought the $20,000 of bonds for the Logan Street school in 1921, took the failed Mishawaka–St. Joseph Loan & Trust's deposits by assumption in the Depression resolution of 1932, carried a $200,000 Reconstruction Finance Corporation preferred-stock subscription in January 1936, was never placed in receivership, and merged into 1st Source effective 25 March 1983 as an institution with $126.9 million of deposits. Every one of those figures is the institution's. For no president, director, or founding stockholder of the bank does a published personal estate or fortune figure appear in the sources consulted, and the West End State Bank's line (est. 1920, to PNC by 2009) returns the same result. Mishawaka's banking money was salaries and stock in a sound small bank, and print does not size it further.
Where the money met the banks: The priced instances of Mishawaka wealth standing behind credit belong to the industrial fortunes, and they stand in their own entries: F. G. Eberhart's $10,154.41 guaranty payment of 1916, made in his own name behind a South Bend manufacturer's notes, is the documented form of it. The banks' own whole course — the 1854 paper bank, the charter, the Depression record tested against the FDIC failed-bank list, negative — stands in the Businesses file and is not retold here.
Sources:
- Businesses file of this build, from the OCC's Alphabetical List of National Banks (revised to 7 May 1917, read first-hand there) — "The First National Bank of Mishawaka. 5167"; the charter's 1900–01 sequence.
- Businesses file of this build — the 1854 proof-note bank; the 1921 school-bond purchase of $20,000 (South Bend News-Times, 7 October 1921); the 1932 assumption of the Loan & Trust's deposits; the RFC's $200,000 preferred subscription of January 1936; the 1983 merger at $126.9 million of deposits; the West End State Bank line.