published on August 28, 2024 in Celeb Gist

100 Years Ago, Fauquier County's First Bank Opened Its Doors

This month, The Fauquier Bank, notable for more than longevity, celebrates its 100th anniversary. It is the oldest of two remaining locally owned and operated banks in the Virginia Piedmont. The other is The Middleburg Bank, founded in 1924.

From its inception, The Fauquier Bank became the leading banking institution in one of Virginia's wealthiest rural regions, Fauquier County and western Prince William County. I'm reminded that it was John Lainhart III, a past president of the bank, who taught me how to pronounce the county's name -- "Faw-kee-ah," with an accent on the second syllable.

The bank was founded when a group of prominent Fauquier farmers and businessmen decided the county needed its own bank. After all, its two sister counties to the south and north each had two banks.

In Culpeper, a lesser light than Fauquier among Virginia counties, Second National and Culpeper National banks had organized in 1900, and both had prospered.

In Loudoun County, Leesburg's Loudoun National Bank had been a fixture since 1871. Peoples National Bank followed in 1888, after Joseph D. Baker, a Frederick cattleman and big depositor arrived at Loudoun National a few minutes past closing time. Despite his pleas, the bank refused to open its doors. Baker then resolved to establish a bank to serve the people and became the first president of Peoples Bank.

A few years later, the bank's second president, Confederate war hero Col. Elijah V. White, hired young Currell Elgin Tiffany from the Hunger Run country of far northeastern Fauquier. Tiffany, a teller, became friends with White's son, Elijah B. White, who had returned to Loudoun from St. Louis in the late 1890s.

Last week, I spoke with White's grandson, the Rev. Elijah B. White III, a Loudouner like his forebears. He told me that his grandfather spent most of the 1890s in St. Louis trading in grain shares and making a great deal of money. Upon his return to Leesburg, his financial position merited a directorship at Peoples Bank.

His friend Tiffany was aware of the talk about a new bank in Fauquier and knew that a respected figure in the banking world would help in granting a charter. Besides, White had just received the honorary title of "colonel," lending him some of his father's extra cachet.

"I think he was a colonel in the governor's honorary guard or some similar group," his grandson told me.

And so, the organizers of the new Fauquier bank asked Col. Elijah B. White to become its first president, a position he held for two years, though he remained a bank director until 1926. The decision to take on the presidency must have given White pause. He was not in sound health and in 1902 was overseeing the building of Selma, his grand mansion north of Leesburg.

The Fauquier Bank was called Fauquier National Bank of Warrenton when it received its charter from the U.S. comptroller of the currency Feb. 14, 1902. Investors, nearly all from Fauquier, had subscribed $25,000 in $100 shares, and soon after the bank opened, at 7 Culpeper St. on March 20, subscribers increased its assets to $50,000.

At 25, Currell Tiffany was the bank's first cashier, a most important position because the cashier was responsible for safeguarding the bank's assets. He remained cashier until 1911, when he acceded to the bank's presidency, which he held until his death in August 1934.

Writing about the bank's first three decades, Barbara Lechner, author of the bank's 100th anniversary booklet, names Currell Tiffany, Fauquier National's third president, as "the prime mover in this new endeavor."

Tiffany's 1934 obituary in The Fauquier Democrat, written by editor Thomas E. Frank, who also was mayor of Warrenton, stated: "We say that Currell Elgin Tiffany was and has been the most valuable citizen that the town of Warrenton ever possessed. . . . An unmatched personality . . . made him the most outstanding and beloved man in Fauquier."

When I spoke last week with his grandson, C. Hunton Tiffany, president of The Fauquier Bank since 1982, he told me that all the Warrenton stores and shops closed on the day of Currell Tiffany's funeral.

Until the advent of Peoples National Bank of Warrenton in 1910, Fauquier National's main competitor in town was Gaines & Brothers. The firm's members called themselves "bankers," even though they had no state or U.S. charter. The Gaines brothers cashed checks and drafts, issued small loans and attempted to collect debts.

The leading out-of-town competitor was First National Bank of Alexandria. Its ever-present ads in the Warrenton newspaper, The True Index, touted First National's more than 40 years of banking experience and assets of more than $1.2 million. Alexandria then was about two hours from Warrenton via the Southern Railway.

Fauquier National took a different approach in its ads, varying the texts, with plenty of space around the message. When, in 1907, the bank offered 3 percent interest with a savings account, one ad read: "Your earnings go into the bank whether you put them there or not. If you spend all, somebody else deposits your money."

By 1910, with the Alexandria bank still boasting of its $1.2 million in assets, the eight-year-old Fauquier National Bank's funds had grown from $50,000 to more than $750,000.

Noting the bank's rapid success, entrepreneurs in upper Fauquier began organizing: Marshall National Bank opened in 1907 and the Farmers Bank of The Plains in 1910. Lower Fauquier followed suit with the state Bank of Remington in 1913. The Marshall and Remington banks are no longer locally operated, and Fauquier National Bank bought Farmers Bank, its first branch, in 1926.

Among the many employees who prompted residents to bank at Fauquier National was Ernest Lee Childs, of Casanova. Childs, an original director of the bank in 1902, served in that capacity and as vice president until 1953. He was in charge of farm loans, an important segment of the bank's business, as the average number of farms in the county during his tenure was 2,400.

Every banking day at 9 a.m., he opened the doors, greeting every customer by name with: "Good morning. How are you? How is your family?" If the face was new, he would introduce the person to employees and officers. At noon, he drove his Model T Ford home to his family farm, Ajax -- named long before the foaming cleanser -- ate lunch, took a nap and motored back to the bank.

"He always drove slowly, observing every farm along the way," recalled his daughter-in-law Alice Jane Childs, now retired from her longtime position as Fauquier's commissioner of revenue. "People would often come to Ajax for a small personal loan, and he would always oblige. He was very compassionate.

"He had [mail] box number 2 at Casanova; the Episcopal minister at Grace Church always was given box 1. An awful lot of children in this neighborhood, black and white, were named Ernest Lee."

Childs's son, Ernest Lee Jr., worked at Fauquier National during the early and mid-1930s and recalled that during those Depression times, his father foreclosed mortgages on eight farms, which "he then had to manage until they were sold." As the bank then held more than 200 farm mortgages, the elder Childs's selectivity had been nothing short of remarkable.

The Fauquier Bank also gave considerate treatment to people who were not bank customers. Once, a gentleman came into the bank and wanted to cash his Social Security check. But he had forgotten to bring an identification card, and the teller told him she needed one so she could match the Social Security numbers.

While leaving the bank, the gent remembered that his Social Security number was on his dentures, which he had gotten in the Army. So he went back to the teller, put his teeth on the counter and showed her the number. She cashed the check.

Another legendary story concerned a man who came to the bank when he should have gone to the patent office. For 20 minutes, he regaled bank director Thomas D. Jones with a scheme for packaging turkey meat. Jones listened intently without saying a word. Then, when the spiel ended, Jones said, "My wife told me not to eat any of that crap."

Jones was a good friend of mine, but when I think of The Fauquier Bank, C. Hunton Tiffany always comes to my mind. He epitomizes all that is old Fauquier: breeding, manners and devotion to his county.

I met him in 1973, eight years after he joined Fauquier National and nine years before he became its president. I assured him when we talked recently that this would not be an article about him. But his longevity with the bank and his family's longevity in the county -- since 1863 -- parallels the careers of many bank employees.

His office is right at The Fauquier Bank's main entrance, and as we talked there last week, we reminisced about banking in the decades before 1980. If you wanted a loan, you spoke to an officer who sized you up and paid a great deal of attention to your character, why you had come to the bank and whom you knew in the county.

Rarely did the officer ask for a financial statement or what your salary or income was. His sixth sense told him whether you were a risk.

They were years -- some 70 of them -- of 3 percent interest and 6 percent loans. And Hunton reminded me, "When you took out a loan, there was only one piece of paper that you signed.

"But at The Fauquier Bank," he added, "we still adhere to tradition."

Eugene Scheel is a Waterford historian and mapmaker.

Currell Elgin Tiffany, top left, was the guiding force behind the bank's opening in 1902 in Warrenton. In his obituary, he was called "the most valuable citizen that the town of Warrenton ever possessed." Above, a view looking west down Main Street the same year the bank opened.Bank employees Annie O'Bannon, left, and Margaret Martyn work at their ledger-posting machines at The Fauquier Bank in 1930.

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