The American National Bank of Terrell

Money from the railroad family shaped Terrell, according to Texas Escapes. It says E. H. R. Green came to Texas at twenty-five to run his mother's Texas Midland and deposited $500,000 in a Terrell bank, more than doubling its resources. He bought uniforms for the baseball team, started a brass band and gave lavish parties that drew scornful local notice. He also backed demonstration farms and boll-weevil research. The plaque names him a Harris National director, and Texas Escapes says he finally moved to Dallas, partly to escape local gossip.

What the plaque says

The American National Bank of Terrell The city of Terrell was founded in 1873. C. M. Bivens, John H. Corley, and F. A. Waters opened a private bank here in 1875. In 1878, Asa Holt replaced Waters as one of the owners. Later the enterprise became the Bivens and Corley Bank and moved to this site. A second financial institution, the Childress Brothers' Bank, was founded in 1876. Col. Jim Harris, who bought an interest in 1882, acquired the Childress bank in 1885 and the Bivens and Corley Bank in 1887, merging them as the Harris Bank. Also in that year, the town acquired a federally chartered bank, the First National. Oscar B. Colquitt (1861-1940), later to be governor of Texas, was one of its founders. At the death of Col. Harris in 1895, A. J. Childress, John H. Corley, and seven other citizens bought the Harris estate and formed Harris National Bank. One of the directors was the railroad magnate Edward H. R. Green, son of the noted financier Hetty Green. In 1903 the Harris National was renamed American National Bank. When the depression of the 1930s strained the town's resources, the two national banks were merged. As of 1976, the American National Bank is the oldest and largest financial institution in Kaufman County. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 1.4 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 17 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.

More markers nearby

• Homesite of Gov. Oscar Branch Colquitt — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Terrell — 0.2 mi
• Rockwall and Brin Church of Christ — 0.3 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Terrell — 0.3 mi