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 Main. Its incorporators joined the city's first mayor-to-be generation to its banking future: Louis Humphreys, the physician who would be South Bend's first health officer and later its mayor, was its first president; John C. Knoblock and the clover-huller maker John C. Birdsell were among the incorporators. Humphreys was succeeded as president by George W. Matthews and, from 1895, Jacob Woolverton; Seixas ran the bank as secretary and cashier until 1878, when Lucius G. Tong succeeded him. The deposit record is the measure of the institution: $7,267.98 in its first year, 1870 — and more than $3.25 million by 1907, with some ten thousand depositors. It survived a run on 9 September 1890, which the Federal Reserve–derived suspension record notes and which did not close it.

The trust company: In 1900 the savings bank's circle organized a companion, the St. Joseph Loan and Trust Company, which by 1921 stood at $800,000 capital — the largest capitalization of any bank in the city. John M. Studebaker, the wagon company's president, was its first president; Rome C. Stephenson was president by 1921 and still held the office in 1931. On 16 February 1939 the two institutions merged under the name St. Joseph Bank and Trust Company, which banked on in South Bend for another half-century — the Federal Reserve's notices show it branching (a Lincoln Way West branch in 1963) and running a mortgage company through its holding company, St. Joseph Agency Inc., into the 1980s.

The chain out: The holding company, by then St. Joseph Bancorporation, was acquired by Trustcorp Inc. of Toledo, Ohio — the Federal Reserve's approval is dated 1 December 1986. Trustcorp itself was acquired by Cleveland's Society Corporation in 1990; Society's Indiana banks were consolidated on 19 October 1992 into Society National Bank, Indiana, headquartered in South Bend; and on 1 March 1994 Society Corporation merged with the old KeyCorp of Albany and took the KeyCorp name. The Indiana charter was consolidated into KeyBank National Association in 1996. The mutual savings bank chartered in 1869 thus survives, by a documented chain of mergers, inside KeyBank — which still banks in South Bend today.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 1, §16, "Banks" — the incorporation of 25 November 1869, the opening of January 1870, Seixas, Humphreys, Knoblock and Birdsell, the presidents, the deposits of 1870 and 1907, and the organization of the St. Joseph Loan and Trust Company in 1900 with John M. Studebaker as first president.
2. Polk's South Bend city directory, 1921, "Banks and Bankers" — the Loan and Trust Company at $800,000 capital with Rome C. Stephenson president; Stephenson still president in June 1931, per The Nation's Business.
3. The bank-suspension database derived from Federal Reserve historical data — the run of 9 September 1890 on the St. Joseph County Savings Bank, survived.
4. Rand McNally, Discontinued Bank Titles, final edition (1942) — the merger of 16 February 1939 forming the St. Joseph Bank and Trust Company.
5. Federal Reserve, H.2 actions and order, 1986 (FRASER) — Trustcorp Inc.'s acquisition of St. Joseph Bancorporation and the St. Joseph Bank and Trust Company, approved 1 December 1986; Western Reserve Historical Society catalog record of the Society Corporation archives — Society's acquisition of Trustcorp in 1990; FDIC institution-history record — the consolidation of 19 October 1992 into Society National Bank, Indiana, of South Bend, and of 1996 into KeyBank National Association; KeyCorp's SEC registration statement of 1995 — the Society–KeyCorp merger of 1 March 1994.