Blustery temperatures Friday, Jan. 19, couldn’t stop Mount Vernon Bank and Trust Company’s 140th anniversary celebrations.
The bank distributed free ice cream scoops and soft serve ice cream in the lobby during the morning hours, while a history presentation was delivered by bank senior vice president Jake Krob on some of the founders of the bank and the Mount Vernon and Lisbon communities they were a part of.
“We’re a different kind of bank,” said Dave Ryan, president of Mount Vernon Bank and Trust company.
Mount Vernon Bank and Trust company was founded by William Smith and Dr. James Carson in 1884, just two years after King Chapel had been constructed.
Smith was a traveling druggist who arrived in Mount Vernon in 1883. He was born in Penn Township, Ohio, in 1848. He formed a drug store in Ohio in 1872 after fighting in the Civil War.
Claire Brackett was the first depositor in the new bank.
The first bank building was built in 1891 in uptown Mount Vernon. Many of us today know it as the Mount Vernon Insurance building. While the lower floor held the bank, the upper floor was a spot for doctor’s offices, dentists offices or barber shops.
“It seemed to be you’d deposit or get your money from the bank and then go upstairs for those needed services,” Krob said.
In 1893, Colonel Henry Rood purchased a one-third stake in the Mount Vernon Bank and Trust. Rood House at Cornell College was named after him, which served as a dormitory for a number of years before being converted into administrative offices for the college in 2010.
W.C. Struckslager purchased the bank interest of Dr. Carson in 1897, and was the president of the Lisbon Bank at the time.
Douglas Van Metre joined the staff of the bank in 1920. He was bank president when the bank went from a private bank to a state owned bank in 1931.
During the Great Depression, the Mount Vernon Bank and Trust saw limited impact and was allowed to reopen in 1933.
Ben C. Neal was president of the bank from 1955 until his death in 1966.
Jay Fordyce took a controlling interest in the bank in 1955. Fordyce joined the bank staff in 1935, and retired from the bank in 1985, after 50 years of banking service. He took over as president in 1968.
A new building in uptown Mount Vernon for the bank was built in 1963.
Jay’s son, Ed, joined the staff of the bank in 1966, after serving in the United States Navy.
“The last thing I wanted to do was to go into banking,” Ed said.
He was president of the bank from 1986 until he retired in 2005.
Michael Ryan joined the bank staff in 1972, having previously served as an FDIC Examiner.
His wife, Shirley, was a teacher at Mount Vernon Schools.
Dave Ryan joined the Mount Vernon staff in 1996.
“I’d done a stint at banks in Cedar Falls and Waterloo, and was looking to make a move to a bank in Cedar Falls,” Dave said. “And then, I got a call from Ed Fordyce on a Friday afternoon about possibly joining the Mount Vernon Bank and Trust team.”
Dave said he and his wife moved to Mount Vernon in 1996 and raised their children in the school district. Dave said keeping that local focus on customers has always been important to him since being named president, and those connections that Ed, his father Michael, and other bankers have showed at the bank are a continued guiding ethos.
Craig Smith joined the bank in 2005.
Smith originally went to college in engineering, but struggled in that field and went to possibly looking at the agriculture or family farm business.
“When I spoke with my family, they discouraged that move, and encouraged me to look at a different career field,” Smith said. “I’d had enough business classes that working in banks was a good choice.”
() and Ashley Dunford help dish up soft serve ice cream and hand out ice cream scoops Friday, Jan. 19, in the Mount Venon Bank Lobby.