The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Claimed by 1st Source Bank · Tested in full in the Banks file
The claim. 1st Source Bank carries a founding date of 1863, which would make it a Civil War-era bank still standing — the oldest bank in the city by a wide margin. The claim is tested whole in the Banks file, and this entry gathers its verdict.
The record. The descent is real and documented link by link: the First National Bank of South Bend was organized 5 September 1863 under OCC Charter No. 126 and opened 30 November 1863, and today's bank descends from it. But Charter No. 126 itself ended in voluntary liquidation on 12 January 1932, absorbed by the state-chartered Indiana Trust Company; the bank that stands today is a different charter — FDIC certificate 9087, with an FDIC-recorded establishment date of 1 January 1922. The famous 1895 First National failure sometimes attached to this lineage — McClaine v. Rankin, 197 U.S. 154 — belongs to the First National Bank of South Bend, Washington (Pacific County, Charter 4467); Indiana's No. 126 never entered receivership, and a Federal Reserve-derived compilation that misfiles the Washington failure under Indiana is flagged in the Banks file, the OCC list governing.
What the record leaves. The claim is partly supported, at an exact distinction the Banks file prints on its face: 1863 is verified as institutional descent, not as a surviving charter. The bank is the heir of an 1863 bank; it is not an 1863 charter still in force. Both halves are documented, and the claim is honest or misleading in direct proportion to which half it is heard to make.
Sources
- The Banks file in this record — Charter No. 126 organized 5 September 1863, opened 30 November 1863; voluntary liquidation 12 January 1932 into Indiana Trust Company; today's FDIC certificate 9087, establishment recorded 1 January 1922; the Washington bank's 1895 failure and the misfiling flagged.
- Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, charter records — Charter No. 126 and its 1932 liquidation.