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The Granville Historical Society Oral History Project 2001 - 2002
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19) A Small Town Bank
Banking in a Small Town(Carl Frazier) In 1971 People's State Bank decided other banks were beginning to get nervous about moving into Granville, so we decided that we had better merge with another bank so we merged with Park National Bank. After that four more banks moved into Granville. At one time there were five banks. There was Mutual Federal, First Federal, First National, Newark Trust, and then another bank, then County Savings. So at one time there was one bank and 5 grocery stores and now there is one grocery store and 5 banks in Granville. It’s one of the most over banked towns in the state of Ohio. It was very interesting being the banker in a small town like Granville and dealing with the local merchants and professors and the other people who live here. Denison University would send the payroll down to the bank on the 24th of each month and we would make deposit tickets out to the professors' checking accounts. And it was very, very seldom that a professor wanted to bank with anybody else because it was so convenient at Park. The payroll in the early 1950’s was very small. Denison paid very poor salaries ($2000 to $2500). We thought that by being a small bank and the only bank in the town that we should try to service as many people as we could. We made loans maybe that big banks would not make because we knew the people and we knew their character and we serviced as many people as we could. Lot of times, somebody would want to move into town and they would come here on a weekend and by Saturday afternoon or Sunday they’d made up their mind they wanted to buy that house. So Charlie Sellers [ Granville realtor ] would get hold of me and we would go into the bank on a Sunday or a Saturday afternoon and draw up papers and close the deal right there. I’ve had a number of people come to me now and say, “I just can’t thank you for what you did because we wouldn’t have got the house if you wouldn’t have done it on a Sunday afternoon or a Saturday afternoon.” At one time the bank was open Saturday nights when I was young because it was sort of a farm town and the farmers would come in and do their buying Lot of times on holidays like Columbus Day, the merchants would forget to get change and so I would go up in the morning, open the vault up and go around to the merchants and ask them if they needed any one’s or five’s or quarters. I would go back to the bank, have a list and then take different sacks of money around to the merchants on holidays. We felt that we really had to service the community by being the only bank and then even after the other banks moved in, we had to do it even better to maintain the customers. We had to maintain them. We had to take care of them. We’re still the largest bank in the town and still have most of the deposits that were there 20 years ago.
[Park National Bank encourages its employees to volunteer in their home communities. Carl Frazier served for many years as the Executive Secretary of the Granville Foundation, which gave money to purchase computers for the elementary school in 1991.] |
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