State National Bank of Corsicana
Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized in 1917 by B. B. Munsey, G. C. Dunn, P. D. Williams, and E. L. Dupuy, the State National Bank originally was located just off the southwest corner of Collin and Beaton streets. Munsey served as the institution's first president. He was succeeded in 1926 by Isaac N. Cerf, a prominent Corsicana businessman and civic leader. The bank moved to this site in 1926, and in 1933 the accounts and loans of First State Bank of Corsicana were merged with those of State National Bank. Over the years, the bank has been instrumental in the growth of the city and surrounding areas.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1917 by a group of local businessmen with B. B. Munsey as its first president, the State National Bank served the growing city of Corsicana from a downtown corner before moving to this site in 1926. Isaac N. Cerf, a well-known Corsicana civic leader, took over its leadership that same year. In 1933, amid the Depression, it absorbed the accounts of the First State Bank of Corsicana.
Why it matters
Local banks were the engines of early-20th-century town growth, and this institution's mergers trace the financial consolidation that carried communities through the Depression.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- ยท B. B. Munsey
- ยท Isaac N. Cerf
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Merchants Opera House
Corsicana, TX
In 1891 a group of Corsicana businessmen erected a grand three-story building to replace the town's cramped earlier opera house. Shops and offices filled the lower floors while a lavishly decorated auditorium on top seated up to a thousand for plays, minstrel shows, and concerts by touring performers. Sold and slated to become a movie theater, it burned in 1914 before the conversion.
Henry G. Damon
Corsicana, TX
Florida-born Henry G. Damon served in the Confederate army and spent part of the Civil War as a prisoner before starting over in Corsicana in 1873. There he practiced law and founded the Texas Loan Agency, an early real estate mortgage firm that helped finance the region's industrial growth from this building through the 1890s. An active civic booster and prohibitionist, Damon helped shape the young oil town's development.
Oil Field Worker
Corsicana, TX
This bronze figure of a roughneck honors the workers who launched Texas's oil industry after crews drilling for water in Corsicana instead struck oil in 1894. That accidental discovery gave Texas its first commercial oil field and its first refinery, years before the more famous Spindletop gusher, turning a modest Navarro County town into a pioneer of the petroleum age. The statue stands for the anonymous laborers who did the dangerous work of pulling that fortune from the ground.
The First National Bank of Corsicana
Corsicana, TX
Founded as a private firm in 1871 by former railroad men Capt. James Garitty and Joseph Huey, this bank served cotton growers, ranchers, and cattle drovers as Corsicana grew into a rail hub. Chartered as the First National Bank in 1886, it soon witnessed a turning point in Texas history: in 1894 a crew drilling for city water instead struck oil and gas, opening the state's first major petroleum field. That discovery brought Texas its first refinery and pioneering uses of natural gas and oil.