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Banks · From the State Bank Branch of 1838 to 1st Source
South Bend has banked under every system American law has offered. Its first bank was a branch of a state-owned bank, opened in 1838 in a two-story brick building at Michigan and Colfax; its second generation was a state bank and a free bank whose paper money circulated at a discount and died in the panic of 1857. The national-bank era gave the city four charters of its own — No. 126 in 1863, among the first hundred and thirty national banks in the United States — and the savings-bank and trust-company era layered a second system beside them, until by 1921 seventeen banks, trust companies and Morris Plan offices, and nine building-and-loan associations, were doing business here, several of them Polish and Hungarian neighborhood banks run out of storefronts on the west side. The Depression then sorted the whole structure in three years: one bank liquidated itself while solvent, the two largest downtown institutions closed in a single week of June 1931, the oldest national charter was surrendered in a rescue merger, and the last national bank failed in a Comptroller's receivership in 1934 — the city's only failure of the deposit-insurance era. What came out the other side consolidated for fifty years, and the chains run unbroken to the present: the 1863 bank's business descends — though its charter does not — into 1st Source Bank, still headquartered on North Michigan Street; the savings bank of 1869 runs through Toledo and Cleveland holding companies into KeyBank; the American Trust Company of 1903 runs into PNC. Beside them stand the two credit unions, one founded by schoolteachers in the worst year of the Depression with ten dollars in a tin cash box, now the largest credit union in Indiana, and one founded in a room in Notre Dame's Main Building in 1941. Every charter number, date and merger in this section is taken from the banking record itself, and where the record has a hole, the hole is printed.
The State Bank of Indiana's South Bend branch — the first bank
1838 – 1858
The branch system: Indiana's first mature bank was the State Bank of Indiana, chartered by the legislature on 28 January 1834 — a state-owned institution that did business not from one office but through branches in the state's…
The Bank of the State of Indiana — the successor branch
1858 – 1864
A new state bank: As the old state bank's charter ran out, Indiana chartered a successor, the Bank of the State of Indiana — a privately owned institution built on the same branch plan. The South Bend branch's charter was…
The Bank of South Bend — the free bank
1850s – 1857
Free banking: Between the state banks and the national banks, Indiana tried free banking: under the general banking law of 1852, any association that deposited bonds with the state auditor could open a bank and issue notes. South…
The First National Bank of South Bend — Charter No. 126
1863 – 1932
The charter: The First National Bank of South Bend was organized on 5 September 1863, in the first year of the national banking system, by Charles N. Culver, Thomas S. Stanfield, John A. Henricks, Ethan S. Reynolds, John Reynolds…
A note on the other South Bend — the failure of 1895 that was not this city's
1895
The trap: Any search of the banking record for a failed "First National Bank of South Bend" returns a spectacular result: a receivership, a Supreme Court case, McClaine v. Rankin , 197 U.S. 154 (1905), over a bank that failed on…
The St. Joseph County Savings Bank and the St. Joseph trust line — the 1869 bank that ends in KeyBank
1869 – present, by merger
The savings bank: The St. Joseph County Savings Bank was incorporated on 25 November 1869 — chiefly the work, the county history says, of Theodore J. Seixas — and opened in January 1870 at the northeast corner of Washington and…
The South Bend National Bank — Charter No. 1739
1870 – 1919
The second charter: The South Bend National Bank was organized on 9 November 1870 and chartered on 29 November 1870, OCC Charter No. 1739. Its organizers, as the county history lists them, were John Brownfield, William Miller…
The People's Savings Bank — ten years, paid in full
1875 – c. 1885
A short, clean record: Joseph B. Arnold Jr. organized the People's Savings Bank in 1875. The county history's whole account of it fits the institution: it did business for ten years, then closed voluntarily, and its depositors were paid in full. No failure, no receiver, no scandal attaches to it in the record reached; it is entered here because a South Bend banking history that lists only the failures and the survivors would miss that most small nineteenth-century banks ended exactly this way — wound up by their owners with the depositors whole.
Sources:
- Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 1, §16, "Banks" — the organization of 1875 by Joseph B. Arnold Jr., the ten years of business, and the voluntary closing with depositors paid in full.
The Citizens' National Bank — Charter No. 4764, and the city's one insured-era failure
1892 – 1934
The third charter: The Citizens' National Bank of South Bend was organized on 12 May 1892 and chartered on 25 June 1892, OCC Charter No. 4764. It banked first at 120 South Michigan, in the Lincoln Block, and later at 112 West…
The Citizens' Trust and Savings Bank — the Citizens' National's companion
1900 – 1938
The paired affiliate: In 1900 the men of the Citizens' National organized a state-chartered companion under Indiana law — carried in the county history as the Citizens' Loan, Trust and Savings Company and in the 1921 Polk…
The Merchants' National Bank — Charter No. 6334
1902 – 1944
The fourth charter: The Merchants' National Bank of South Bend was organized on 21 June 1902, OCC Charter No. 6334 — the last national charter granted in the city. It was a DeRhodes family enterprise: the brothers DeRhodes…
The American Trust Company — the line that runs to PNC
1903 – present, by merger
The founding, two dates: The American Trust Company banked at the northwest corner of Washington and Michigan, in the heart of the downtown banking district. Two founding dates stand in the record and both are printed: the FDIC's…
The Union Trust Company — the failure of June 1931
1908 – 1931
The company: The Union Trust Company was organized in 1908 and banked at 202–204 South Michigan Street with capital of $200,000. Its president was Joseph E. Neff. The company was woven into the downtown system: the First National…
The Farmers banks — the Farmers Security Bank and the Farmers' Trust Company
1915 – 1920s
Two companies, one address apart: The farm trade of St. Joseph County supported its own banking group on South Main Street. The Farmers Security Bank built its banking house at 133 South Main in 1915, to the designs of the…
The South Bend State Bank — the bank that liquidated itself while solvent
1919 – 1931
The bank: The South Bend State Bank was organized in 1919 and banked at 911 South Michigan Street with capital of $50,000 — a neighborhood state bank on the city's south side. Its distinction is its end, which is documented in…
The system at its peak — the banks of 1921 and the building-and-loans
1921
Seventeen institutions: Polk's 1921 directory lists seventeen South Bend banks, trust companies and loan offices, and the list is the fullest single picture of the city's banking at its pre-Depression height. Downtown stood the…
The Depression test — South Bend's banks, 1931 to 1934
1931 – 1934
The method: The Fort Wayne history ran its banks through the Depression one by one — survived, merged under pressure, or failed — from the banking record. Run the same way, South Bend's test reads as follows. Of the seventeen…
The First Bank and Trust Company — 1st Source Bank, and the 1863 question
1931 – present
The question, and the verdict: 1st Source Bank, the largest locally controlled bank in northern Indiana, states that its history "dates back to 1863 when we were chartered as the First National Bank of South Bend." The claim was…
The City National Bank — Charter No. 13987 — and the National Bank and Trust Company
1934 – after 1979
The successor charter: When the Citizens' National Bank failed in March 1934, the Comptroller chartered its successor the same season: the City National Bank of South Bend, OCC Charter No. 13987 — the last national charter in…
Teachers Credit Union — Everwise: ten dollars in a tin cash box
1931 – present
The founding: South Bend's first credit union was founded in the same year its banks were falling. Harold H. Blanchard, a mathematics teacher at South Bend Central High School, formed a committee in February 1931 to organize a…