First National Bank

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the First National Bank of Lee County. Now, some institutions just exist. They open, they operate, they fade.

But some have a story worth gathering around, and this one starts with a merger. Lee County's oldest banking institution, the First National Bank, was founded in 1891. But to understand that founding, you've got to back up just a year, to 1890, when thirty merchants and ranchers came together to establish the First National Bank of Elgin.

Thirty of them. Not a handful of wealthy men in a back room, but thirty people who built their livelihoods in this part of Texas and decided to pool their faith in it. That bank merged with P.

M. Cuney and Company, a private bank, and out of that joining came something new, something that would go on to serve this county longer than any other banking institution in Lee County's history. The officers who took the helm of that new institution were Dr.

J. A. Fields, who served as president, and a board of directors that included Cuney himself, along with E.

J. Archinard, I. J.

Fariss, J. L. Rousseau, Ed R.

Sinks, and S. F. Wade.

Six directors, one president, and thirty merchants and ranchers somewhere in the background who started the whole thing. The marker calls this bank an agent for progress in this area, and that's a phrase worth sitting with for a moment. Not a monument.

Not a landmark. An agent. Something working on behalf of the place it served.

That's the First National Bank of Lee County, and now you know how the story begins.

What the marker says

Lee County's oldest banking institution. An agent for progress in this area. Founded 1891 at merger of P. M. Cuney & Co., private bank, with First National Bank of Elgin (founded in 1890 by 30 merchants and ranchers). The officers were Dr. J.A. Fields, president; Cuney, E. J. Archinard, I. J. Fariss, J. L. Rousseau, Ed R. Sinks and S. F. Wade, directors.