Perry's First Bank

Perry’s First Bank

W. T. Cash wrote about George R. Battle being the first banker in Perry. Mr. Battle moved to Perry from Georgia around 1903 and established a bank in the S.H. Peacock store which was located on the north end of the block east of the courthouse facing Washington St. Cash remembers it being inside a railing or enclosure which among other things contained an iron safe, where the banks money was kept.

The bank was first the Bank of Perry and about 1905 became the First National Bank. The bank continued operating until the depression sometime in the 1920’s. Sometime after 1908, Mr. Battle sold his interest in the bank to Mr. J. T. Blair and moved back to Georgia.

Mr. Battle didn’t keep the bank in Peacock’s store but a few months and by or before Sept. 1903, he had a brick building erected on part of the present old First National Bank site (Taylor County Historical Society.) Back of this he had a two-story frame building erected, the upper part of which he rented for offices and in the lower kept coffins to sell to those needing them.

During this same time (1903) a second bank was being built on the site of The Perry Banking Company on the corner of Jefferson and Green Street’s, this bank was called The Citizens Bank and one of its major stockholder was T. J. Faulkner. There was bad blood between Faulkner and Battle so Battle was not unhappy when The Citizens Bank failed. Faulkner can be called the daddy of Perry’s first ice plant, for although it was operated by his son-in-law, C. A. Owens, it was Faulkner who put up the money. This plant, it was asserted, broke the Citizen’s Bank, organized in 1903, but its failure is not thought to have ruined Faulkner, for I heard a former clerk say that he left Perry with $17,000.