The banking record: OCC, Pollock, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve

The charter literature the Banks file stands on — primary banking records, not aggregators

The charter list: the Banks file's skeleton is the Comptroller of the Currency's Alphabetical List of National Banks (revised 7 May 1917, Government Printing Office), which fixes the city's four national charters — 126, 1739, 4764 and 6334 — in the federal government's own register. On that skeleton hangs Thomas A. Pollock's Tabular Guide to United States National Banks, 1863–1935, charter monographs transcribed from the Comptroller's records, of which volumes 6, 22 and 49 were read for the South Bend charters. Pollock has a hard edge a checker should know: the series as it stands on the Internet Archive stops at charter 5000, so the Merchants' National Bank, charter 6334, has no Pollock profile, and its entry rests on the OCC list and the contemporary record. That is also why the Banks file's central verdict is phrased as it is — First National's charter 126 shows descent, not survival: the charter literature documents a lineage, and the file prints a lineage.

The later series: the Depression and after rest on the FDIC's institution-history records and failed-bank list (the city's test against the modern failed-bank list is negative, and printed as a negative), the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's licensed list No. 21 (30 June 1935), the survivors' roster the Banks file used, Rand McNally's Discontinued Bank Titles in its final 1942 edition, Federal Reserve H.2 releases and orders, and one appellate monument: an Indiana Supreme Court opinion at 213 Indiana 396, which documents the June 1931 collapse from the bench. For the unnamed modern banks in the Controversies file, PACER and RECAP are the named expansion path — federal filings read where the record is public, and printed only at the strength the filings give.

Sources:

1. Comptroller of the Currency, Alphabetical List of National Banks (rev. 7 May 1917, GPO) — charters 126, 1739, 4764, 6334 (and the Washington namesake, charter 4467, in the closing entry).
2. Pollock, Tabular Guide to United States National Banks, 1863–1935, vols.
3. FDIC institution histories and failed-bank list; FRB Chicago licensed list No. 21 (30 June 1935); Rand McNally, Discontinued Bank Titles (1942); 213 Ind. 396.