The North Liberty State Bank: $25,000 capital, Reamer and Steele, closed 17 January 1927

By 1916 – 17 January 1927; insolvency litigated 1928

The bank before 1943 is solved: it was the North Liberty State Bank. R. L. Polk & Co.'s Indiana Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1916–1917 (pp. 899–900) lists it in the town's business directory: "North Liberty State Bank (capital $25,000), Isaac Reamer pres, A C Steele cashr" — the bank's own line in the same volume's personal index reads "Steele A C, cashr North Liberty State Bank," while the business list as transcribed prints the cashier "Stecle"; the two spellings stand inside one carrier as a transcription variance, and the Archive.org page image is the settler. The gazetteer's town headnote counts among North Liberty's institutions "a bank and a newspaper, the News." The name is a state bank's styling — a state-chartered institution by its own name; the charter record itself was not pulled and stands as a named gap, its settlers the Indiana Department of Banking's annual reports of c. 1909–1912 and the Rand McNally Bankers Directory of July 1912.

Its building is the district's bank building: the nomination's inventory reads "State Bank, 125 North Main Street. c. 1911. Contributing. Classical Revival," and its text states the building "was constructed between 1909 and 1912" — absent from the 1909 Sanborn map, advertised in a 1912 North Liberty newspaper — and that "the State Bank and Starr Grocery constructed a two story business block" together at 119 and 125 North Main about 1911. The bank's founding is therefore bracketed by its house: it existed, purpose-housed, by 1912, and stood at $25,000 capital in 1916–17. No carrier reached gives its charter date or a fuller officer roster.

The end is dated by the state's own correspondent. The Federal Reserve Board's Mimeograph Letters X-1530, for the week ended 21 January 1927 (read first-hand on FRASER), lists under "Closed": "North Liberty State Bank, North Liberty, Ind. [District] 7 … 1-17-27" — closed effective 17 January 1927. A Lakeville item in the Greencastle Daily Banner of 21 January 1927, reporting Deputy State Bank Commissioner Thomas D. Barr's investigation of the Lakeville State Bank's closing, describes that closing as the second in St. Joseph County that week, the North Liberty bank having closed earlier in the week, and carries the line that North Liberty's depositors "will not lose their money" (the item's OCR is garbled and a capital figure in it is not safely assignable to either bank; it prints here unassigned, on purpose). The closure did not end the matter: the Walkerton Independent of 20 September 1928 reports a hearing in Judge Bingham's court at South Bend on the State Banking Department's petition, "bitterly contested by officials of the bank," who opposed the bank's reopening and charged that the Department was "placing ridiculous valuations upon the securities the bank holds in order to prove its insolvency." The petition's exact posture and outcome stand as a named gap; its settlers are that issue's page image and the St. Joseph County court record. A secondary dataset (finhist.com's historical bank-runs compilation) lists this bank three ways — a suspension-to-closure of 26 June 1924, and a run-suspension-closure of 17 January 1930, the day and month matching the Federal Reserve's exactly with the year differing — and those entries stand unreconciled beside the federal record, which governs at primary strength: closed 17 January 1927.