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Field Note 006  ·  Blooming Grove
A fifty-dollar national bank note, Series of 1929, of The First National Bank in Blooming Grove, Texas, charter 13555, serial number A000001A, with the portrait of Ulysses S. Grant

The bank on Fordyce Street

Four banks carried the town's name before 1933. The last one failed, and three years later the town went and got another.

Written by Robert Phipps  ·  Note photographed by AntiqueMoney.com, a currency dealer

The Farmers & Merchants Bank, a private bank, became the First National Bank of Blooming Grove in 1892.1 When it wound up in 1900, the Citizens National Bank took its place in 1903 and ran for twenty-eight years;2 Roger S. Loyd, who built The Columns, was its cashier and later its president.3 A Farmers State Bank was doing business in town by 1910 as well.4 A Blooming Grove State Bank did business on Fordyce Street too, on the row where Market Row stands today.5

Fordyce Street on a parade day: a crowd and early motor cars in front of a brick row with signs for the State Bank, City Drug Store, Jewelry and the Old Corner Drug Store
Fordyce Street on a parade day, undated. The Blooming Grove State Bank, City Drug Store and Old Corner Drug Store, on the row where Market Row stands today. Blooming Grove Historical Society.
Detail: the sign reading Blooming Grove State Bank on a two-story brick building, beside City Drug Store and Jewelry
The bank's sign. Blooming Grove Historical Society.
A 1929 newspaper advertisement headed A Bank of Vision and Understanding, signed Citizens National Bank
“A Bank of Vision and Understanding”: Citizens National Bank in the Blooming Grove Times, 28 June 1929, four months before the crash. From Bruce and Alyne McCormick's copy.

Citizens National closed in May 1931,6 and within weeks its business passed to a new charter, the First National Bank in Blooming Grove, with C. L. Tillman as president and T. M. George, Jr. as cashier.7 The Comptroller of the Currency put the bank under a conservator on 31 March 1933, in that spring's banking crisis, and into receivership on 10 November 1933, seven weeks before federal deposit insurance began.8

The town's own paper carried the notice. On 23 March 1934 the Blooming Grove Times printed the Comptroller's call for anyone with a claim against the bank to present it to J. L. Chapman, Receiver.9

A Treasury Department notice dated 15 February 1934 calling for claims against The First National Bank in Blooming Grove to be presented to J. L. Chapman, Receiver
The receiver's notice, dated 15 February 1934, as printed in the Blooming Grove Times of 23 March 1934.
Detail of a Sanborn fire-insurance map of Fordyce Street, Blooming Grove, showing a two-story building marked Bank with the telephone exchange on the second floor
Fordyce Street on the 1934 Sanborn fire-insurance map: “Bank,” with the telephone exchange upstairs. The town had no bank that year.

The note is from that bank. National banks then issued their own currency: printed by the Treasury, carrying the bank's name and charter number, signed by its officers.10 This fifty-dollar note of the Series of 1929 is serial number A000001A, the first fifty printed for the First National Bank in Blooming Grove.11 In its two years the bank issued 186 notes in all, worth $11,100.12

The town did not stay without a bank for long. In 1936 a group of Blooming Grove men brought the Forreston State Bank, chartered in 1906 in Ellis County, to Blooming Grove as the First State Bank.13 Bruce McCormick was its first president, and T. M. “Net” Sewell and Drew Gillen were among its first directors.14 At the end of 1939 its advertisement in the Times carried the seal of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, $5,000 for each depositor: the protection the First National's depositors had missed by seven weeks.15 It held $91,377 that first year and $2 million by 1970, with B. L. Ralston, who had come as a teller in 1953, as its president.16

A 1939 First State Bank advertisement headed Our Mutual Interests, with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation member seal
First State Bank in the Times, 29 December 1939, with the deposit insurance seal.

The charter carried on as First State Bank of North Texas and, in December 2003, into Prosperity Bank.17 The office at 109 South Fordyce Street, in what remains of the same building, is still open,18 on the same telephone number the bank advertised in 2000.19

A parade of early-1940s cars and a rider on horseback passing a large two-story brick building on the corner of Fordyce Street, with a crowd under its awning
Fordyce Street on parade day, about 1941, looking south. The bank's building is the two-story brick on the corner; the bank today is its far end. Blooming Grove Historical Society.
The red brick Prosperity Bank building on Fordyce Street at dusk, seen across the street from Market Row
The bank building today, from across Fordyce Street at Market Row. Photograph by Robert Phipps, 2026.

The note is shown for the bank it names. It is not held in Blooming Grove, and where it is today is not known. The newspapers are from the Blooming Grove Historical Society's collection, and the map is the Sanborn Map Company's, from the Library of Congress. The 1910, 1919 and 1931 bank papers are reproduced in the town's 2005 pictorial history.

Notes and sources (19)
  1. "The First National Bank of Blooming Grove, TX (Charter 4768)," SPMC Bank Note History, banklookup.spmc.org/bank/4768 (organized 27 May 1892, chartered 29 June 1892, succeeding the Farmers & Merchants Bank; liquidated 30 June 1900), as read 17 September 2026. ↩
  2. "The Citizens National Bank of Blooming Grove, TX (Charter 7055)," SPMC Bank Note History, banklookup.spmc.org/bank/7055 (organized 17 November 1903, chartered 8 December 1903, liquidated 10 August 1931), as read 17 September 2026. ↩
  3. SPMC Bank Note History, charter 7055 (R. S. Loyd cashier 1904–15, president 1916–19); on The Columns, Navarro County History, vol. 4, 204, as photographed on the Blooming Grove, TX Facebook Page (R. S. and Daisye Loyd bought the Central Texas College site in 1914 and reused its columns). ↩
  4. Farmers State Bank of Blooming Grove, transaction with J. L. Dorsey & Co., 8 January 1910, reproduced in the Blooming Grove pictorial history (2005), 7. ↩
  5. Undated newspaper advertisement for the Blooming Grove State Bank, reproduced in the Blooming Grove pictorial history (2005); photograph of the east-side Fordyce Street row with a "State Bank" sign, pencilled date apparently 1925, Blooming Grove Historical Society collection, photographed by the author 26–27 September 2026. Location of the row relative to Market Row: the author's recollection. ↩
  6. Blooming Grove pictorial history (2005), 7 ("the bank closed May 21, 1931"). ↩
  7. "The First National Bank in Blooming Grove, TX (Charter 13555)," SPMC Bank Note History, banklookup.spmc.org/bank/13555 (organized 4 June 1931, chartered 17 June 1931, assumed the circulation of charter 7055), as read 17 September 2026; J. L. Dorsey share certificate, 29 June 1931, reproduced in the Blooming Grove pictorial history (2005), 37. The engraved signature on the bank's notes reads "Jno. M. George, Jr." ↩
  8. SPMC Bank Note History, charter 13555 (conservatorship 31 March 1933; receivership 10 November 1933). Federal deposit insurance took effect 1 January 1934. ↩
  9. "Notice to Creditors," Comptroller of the Currency, dated 15 February 1934, J. L. Chapman, Receiver, The Blooming Grove Times, 23 March 1934 (vol. 47, no. 16), Blooming Grove Historical Society collection, image BGHS-BGT-19340323-06. ↩
  10. Fifty-dollar National Currency note, Series of 1929, Type 1, The First National Bank in Blooming Grove, Texas, charter 13555 (engraved signatures E. E. Jones, Register, and W. O. Woods, Treasurer; bank signatures C. L. Tillman, President, and George, Jr., Cashier), photographed by AntiqueMoney.com. ↩
  11. Fifty-dollar note, charter 13555, serial A000001A, photographed by AntiqueMoney.com; posted to the Blooming Grove, TX Facebook Page, 1 September 2015. ↩
  12. SPMC Bank Note History, charter 13555 (total issue 186 notes, $11,100: 25 sheets of $50s and 6 sheets of $100s). ↩
  13. Texas Department of Banking, entity record, First State Bank of North Texas (state charter 65-04; opened 17 February 1906 as Forreston State Bank); Blooming Grove pictorial history (2005), 85 (moved from Forreston by Blooming Grove citizens in 1936). ↩
  14. Blooming Grove pictorial history (2005), 85 (first directors Bruce McCormick, president, T. M. "Net" Sewell, Drew Gillen, James W. Fields, John P. Mayfield, W. T. Varnell). ↩
  15. First State Bank advertisement, The Blooming Grove Times, 29 December 1939 (vol. 48, no. 26), Blooming Grove Historical Society collection, image BGHS-BGT-19391229-01. ↩
  16. Blooming Grove pictorial history (2005), 85 (assets $91,377 in 1936; $2 million by 10 September 1970; B. L. Ralston teller 1953, president January 1963), and 109–115. ↩
  17. Texas Department of Banking, entity record, First State Bank of North Texas (Blooming Grove office at 109 Fordyce a branch from 17 May 1991 to 9 December 2003); Prosperity Bancshares, Inc., Form 8-K and Form 425 filings, October and December 2003, SEC EDGAR (merger signed 6 October and completed 9 December 2003). ↩
  18. Photograph of a parade on Fordyce Street, c. 1941, Blooming Grove Historical Society; drone photograph by the author, 2026; identification of the building as the author's recollection, 27 September 2026. ↩
  19. "Blooming Grove," Prosperity Bank locations, locations.prosperitybankusa.com, read 17 September 2026 ((903) 695-2311); First State Bank drive-through, 17 August 2000, Blooming Grove pictorial history (2005), 103. ↩

Last revised 2 October 2026.

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