Industry State Bank
Industry, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
ON FEBRUARY 11, 1911, A GROUP OF LOCAL CITIZENS TOOK THE FIRST STEPS IN FORMING A BANK TO BE CALLED FIRST GUARANTY STATE BANK OF INDUSTRY. DR. B.E. KNOLLE SERVED AS THE BANK’S FIRST PRESIDENT AND E. LINDEMANN SERVED AS FIRST VICE PRESIDENT. BY JUNE OF THAT YEAR, THE BANK OPENED FOR BUSINESS AT 1559 MAIN STREET. SHAREHOLDER AND CASHIER H.L. SCHULZE SERVED AS THE BANK’S ONLY SALARIED EMPLOYEE, WHILE HIS ASSISTANT H.H. BOELSCHE RECEIVED HOURLY PAY. IN SEPTEMBER 1919, SCHULZE’S DAUGHTER, THUSNELDE, WAS HIRED BY THE BANK AND SHE CONTINUED AS AN EMPLOYEE FOR 49 YEARS, UNTIL HER RETIREMENT IN 1968. WHEN H.L. SCHULZE DIED IN 1926, BOELSCHE WAS NAMED AS HIS REPLACEMENT. BOELSCHE MANAGED THE BANK UNTIL HIS DEATH IN 1956, WHEN ARNO KREBS BECAME THE BANK’S PRESIDENT. BECAUSE OF A CHANGE IN THE TEXAS BANKING STRUCTURE, THE BANK’S NAME WAS CHANGED TO INDUSTRY STATE BANK IN 1927. THE DEPRESSION CAUSED A DOWNTURN IN THE DEPOSITS AND INCOME OF INDUSTRY STATE BANK. WHILE DEPOSITS HAD PEAKED AT $206,000 IN 1924, THE LOW POINT FOR DEPOSITS OCCURRED AT THE END OF 1932 WHEN THEY FELL TO $95,000. DEPOSITS WOULD NOT AGAIN REACH THEIR 1924 LEVELS UNTIL 1937. A NEW BANK BUILDING WAS CONSTRUCTED AT THE MAIN STREET LOCATION IN 1957, AND BY 1962, THE BANK’S ASSETS HAD GROWN TO $1,500,000. THE BANK RELOCATED TO A NEW STRUCTURE IN 1973 AT THE CORNER OF HIGHWAY 159 AND HIGHWAY 109. INDUSTRY STATE BANK ACQUIRED ITS FIRST ADDITIONAL BANKING FACILITY, NEW ULM STATE BANK, IN 1989. THE INTEGRATION OF IMPROVED BANKING TECHNOLOGY THROUGHOUT ITS EXISTENCE HAS ENABLED INDUSTRY STATE BANK TO CONTINUE TO SERVE THE CITIZENS OF THE REGION WITH BANKING FACILITIES IN FIFTEEN COMMUNITIES.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In February 1911 a group of citizens in the tiny German-Texan community of Industry organized a local bank, opening for business that June on Main Street with a single salaried employee. The institution weathered the Great Depression — deposits fell by more than half before recovering — and grew steadily across the 20th century, one longtime employee staying on the job for 49 years. Renamed Industry State Bank in 1927, it expanded into a multi-community network.
Why it matters
Small-town banks like this one were the financial backbone of rural America, quietly enduring the Depression and knitting scattered farming communities into the wider economy.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Industry State Bank story begins in 1911, in a small German-Texan community in Austin County with a name that says everything about the settlers' hopes. This was the Progressive Era, a time when small towns across America were maturing — laying gas lines, incorporating, and, crucially, organizing local banks. A town without a bank had to send its money and its trust elsewhere; a town with one could keep both close to home.
Rural banking in this period was a deeply personal business. A bank might open with a single salaried employee and a handful of local citizens as shareholders, and its fortunes rose and fell with the crops and commerce of the surrounding countryside. There was no federal deposit insurance in these early years, so a bank's survival depended on careful management and the confidence of neighbors who knew the people behind the counter by name.
The institution's early decades ran straight into the defining economic trauma of the 20th century: the Great Depression. For a small rural bank, the 1930s were a test of survival, as deposits shrank and the wider financial system convulsed. That Industry's bank came through those years is the quiet heart of its story.
People & events
It started with a meeting. On February 11, 1911, a group of local citizens took the first steps toward founding what they called the First Guaranty State Bank of Industry. Dr. B.E. Knolle became its first president and E. Lindemann its first vice president, and by June the doors opened on Main Street. The whole operation ran lean: cashier and shareholder H.L. Schulze was the only salaried employee, with his assistant H.H. Boelsche paid by the hour.
The human thread running through this bank is remarkable for its continuity. In 1919 Schulze's daughter, Thusnelde, was hired — and she stayed for forty-nine years, retiring only in 1968. When Schulze died in 1926, Boelsche stepped into his place and ran the bank until his own death in 1956, when Arno Krebs took over. These were not executives passing through; they were a small circle of people who gave their working lives to one institution.
The numbers tell the drama. A change in Texas banking structure brought the name Industry State Bank in 1927. Then the Depression struck: deposits that had peaked at $206,000 in 1924 fell to just $95,000 by the end of 1932, and would not climb back to their 1924 level until 1937. The bank held on, built a new building in 1957, grew its assets past a million and a half dollars by 1962, relocated in 1973, and in 1989 made its first acquisition — eventually serving communities across the region.
Its place in the American story
The small-town bank is one of the unsung institutions of American life. Before national branch networks and online banking, it was the local bank that turned a farmer's harvest into credit, held a family's savings, and financed the store on the corner. Institutions like the one in Industry were the financial capillaries that carried money into scattered rural communities and connected them to the broader national economy.
The bank's survival through the Great Depression is its most nationally resonant chapter. Thousands of American banks failed in those years, wiping out savings and deepening the misery of the 1930s. Every rural bank that kept its doors open and its depositors whole was a small victory against that tide — a reminder that the Depression was survived not only through grand federal programs but through the steadiness of countless local institutions and the people who ran them.
There is also an all-American immigrant dimension here. A community named Industry, settled by German Texans, built its own financial institution and made it last for generations. The names on the ledgers — Knolle, Lindemann, Schulze, Boelsche, Krebs — trace how immigrant communities put down roots and built enduring, self-reliant local economies that became part of the national fabric.
If you visit
Industry is a small community, and the pleasure of visiting is precisely its scale — this is a place to appreciate how much history a tiny town can hold. As you pass through, notice the Main Street setting where the bank first opened in 1911; the very ordinariness of the streetscape is the point, because it was in places exactly like this that America's rural economy was quietly built.
Let the story's human details color what you see. Picture a bank that opened with a single salaried man at the counter, and a young woman who arrived in 1919 and was still there nearly half a century later. That kind of continuity is almost unimaginable now, and it gives the place a sense of deep local loyalty worth pausing over.
Set in the gently rolling farm country of Austin County between Houston and Austin, Industry makes a fine stop on a back-roads drive through Texas's German settlement belt. Take the marker as an invitation to think about the institutions that hold small towns together — the ones that don't make headlines but outlast almost everything else.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Dr. B.E. Knolle
- · H.L. Schulze
- · H.H. Boelsche
Related events
- · Great Depression
Themes & tags
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