In this age of easy access to banking services, it's hard to imagine that for roughly the first 160 years of the Town of Kingstree's existence, its citizens, if they did any banking at all, had to use banks in larger towns.
The building on Main Street that once housed the Bank of Kingstree as it looks today.
In 1890, Kingstree citizens began a stock subscription drive to start a local bank. Apparently, interest was not as great as anticipated, though, because by May 1891, it was noted that enough citizens had bought stock in a Florence bank to warrant its opening a branch here. The Bank of the Carolinas opened its Kingstree branch in January 1892. Dr. D.C. Scott was elected to the bank's board, and H.D. Snow was hired as cashier for the Kingstree branch.
A little over a year later, in May 1893, the bank closed the doors of all its branches in Florence, Kingstree, Conway, Williston, Varnville, and several towns in North Carolina. The County Record reported that this caused Kingstree merchants great inconvenience. At the time of its closing, the Kingstree branch of the Bank of the Carolinas had $5,704 on deposit, and $390 in cash in its safe.
Kingstree residents were then once again without easy access to bank services. Some of them moved their banking business to Charleston, as we know that a number of them again lost money when the American Savings Bank there failed in 1898.
John A. Kelley, Esq.
Source: findagrave.com/
In 1901, local attorney John A. Kelley bought a lot from Edwin Epps across Main Street from the Courthouse. Kelley and Dr. D.C. Scott were determined that Kingstree would have a bank of its own. On Saturday, May 25, 1901, at Kelley's law office, $15,000 worth of stock, divided into 100 shares at $150 each was sold. Those incorporating the Bank of Kingstree were Kelley, Scott, M.F. Heller, A.W. Gagg, and Henry P. Williams of Charleston. Edwin C. Epps temporarily moved to Charleston and found employment at a bank in order to learn the cashier's position so that he would be ready to take over as cashier once the Kingstree bank opened.
By June 1901, bricks had been hauled to the Main Street lot and Silas Bounds of Florence was under contract to build the Bank of Kingstree. August 15 was the target date for opening the new bank. The bank's board was chosen to include D.C. Scott, J.A. Kelley, R.D. Rollins, and H.P. Williams. Scott was elected President of the bank; Kelley, vice president, and Edwin Epps was hired as cashier. Early in August, work on the building was briefly suspended while the contractor waited for the iron front for the building. It arrived on August 8, and worked resumed.
Source: The County Record
Edwin Epps was now working at the Farmers & Merchants Bank in Florence, gaining experience before he took on his role of cashier with the new bank in Kingstree.
Realizing that the new building was not going to be completed quickly, the Bank of Kingstree opened for business on September 11, 1901, in temporary quarters in a little wooden building behind Dr. Scott's drugstore on Academy Street. The furnishings were described as borrowed pine tables and broken-backed chairs. A discarded prescription counter was used as a filing cabinet. Years later, Epps remembered that on many afternoons he had to go looking for a merchant who would allow him to leave the bank's deposits in the merchant's safe overnight. Sometimes, when he was unable to find a safe, he would keep the deposits on his person, sleeping with them under his pillow, until the next day.
Dr. D.C. Scott
On September 17, the large, burglar-proof safe was hauled from the depot just north of town to the new bank building. The County Record noted, "The safe weighs about 10,000 pounds, and it was no easy undertaking to place it."
The Kingstree Town Council at its October meeting voted to place all of the town's funds in the Bank of Kingstree.
Meanwhile, construction continued, but the contractor was now waiting for the steel doors to arrive to install them on the brick vault. In early November, the large plate-glass front windows and arches had been put in place, and on January 2, 1902, the bank moved into its new brick and granite building. The County Record reported that the "doubled-walled vault fitted with steel door and solid steel 18,000-pound safe make it as safe as human skill can make it." Note that the safe had gained 8,000 pounds from the September to January reports.
The bank would keep regular hours from 9 to 3:30, Monday through Saturday. Business had far surpassed expectations in the few months the bank had been open. During its first year of operation in the new building, it showed a profit of 18 percent. At its first annual meeting meeting in January 1903, the board of directors increased its membership by adding R.H. Kellahan to the board.
Statement of Conditions for the Bank of Kingstree.
Source: The County Record, November 25, 1915
The bank was in the news in September 1904 when $4,000 of money that had been wired from a Charleston bank was stolen from the Kingstree Post Office safe after it was blown open by burglars. The Bank of Kingstree had insisted that the money be insured so no money was lost.
On Saturday, December 19, 1908, the bank took in $56,000 in deposits, a single-day record for the institution. It continued to prosper over the years, posting earnings of 15 percent in 1920.
As the years went by, the bank began to outgrow the building on Main Street, and in 1921, it began renovating the ground floor of the Nexsen Building on the corner of Main and Academy streets as its new home. Modern fixtures of marble and mahogany were installed in the new space. At the time of the move, Dr. Scott and Edwin Epps retold a story that they had often recited. An early customer of the bank, not familiar with exactly how things worked, noticed other customers in line before him endorsing checks before depositing them. As he did not have a check to deposit, he signed his name with a flourish to the back of a $20 bill before handing it to the cashier. Scott and Epps said that bill circulated in Kingstree for a number of years afterward.
A 1916 advertisement in for the Bank of Kingstree in The State newspaper.
After the bank moved to the corner, The County Record moved its newspaper office to the old Bank of Kingstree building. Over the years, other businesses and offices have occupied the space. The building is presently owned by attorney Doward Harvin.
At the bank's annual meeting in January 1925, stockholders were told the bank was flourishing with bright and encouraging prospects for the coming year. However, residents arriving at the bank expecting to do business on the morning of June 5, 1925, found a notice on the front door, announcing that the bank has ceased operations and had been turned over to the state bank examiner. The community was greatly crippled by the closing, and in the months to follow, the War Finance Corp., an agricultural loan agency, filed suit for $62,521.88 against the bank's board members, stating in its complaint that it had made advances to the bank guaranteed by the board. A court order restrained the agency from bringing suit against the bank, so it was trying to recoup its money from the guarantors.
A 1920 Bank of Kingstree advertisemet in The County Record.
In October, Columbia National Bank, which held a loan for the Bank of Kingstree, auctioned off notes and mortgages of a large number of Kingstree's prominent citizens which the local bank had used as collateral for the loan.
It is also worth noting that attorney and one of the bank's founders John A. Kelley, who was still a member of the Bank of Kingstree's board of directors, died two days before the bank closed its doors.
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