Lists....banking edition

In 1918 the Audit Company of New York, United States Mortgage and Trust Company published the book titled "Trust Companies of the United States". While this might sound dull and boring it does list a single company in Smyrna that year. In 1920 the US census had our population listed as just 463, so having a trust company seems a pretty good thing.

This trust company was the Smyrna Bank & Trust co.. On page 508 of the book it lists all the public information and the list is interesting in my view, but lists like this normally are to me.

In the book I noticed that our neighbor, LaVergne, had no trust companies listed, but their size back then was minuscule, so it was not surprising.

The numbers might seem horribly small, but with inflation and such the website Measuring Worth finds that $39,209 the amount of assets the bank carried translated using different means a more meaningful number.

Current data is only available till 2011. In 2011, the relative worth of $39,209.00 from 1918 is: 

$586,000.00 using the Consumer Price Index
$404,000.00 using the GDP deflator
$1,170,000.00 using the value of consumer bundle
$1,900,000.00 using the unskilled wage
$2,940,000.00 using the Production Worker Compensation
$2,610,000.00 using the nominal GDP per capita
$7,800,000.00 using the relative share of GDP

I figure a good midway point for these figures will give you an idea of the value held by this bank in Smyrna in 1918.

This bank was not the only one is Smyrna, but the only one listed in the book. In 1908 the Bank of Smyrna (later People's Bank of Smyrna) was founded. It was destroyed in the great Smyrna fire of 1913. Not sure if reopened for business or closed, because back then the idea of FDIC insurance was way in the future.

The last bit of interesting information hearkens back to the phone book of 1930, just 12 years later. Not a single person in Smyrna with the same last names of these bank officials have a phone listed. I find that very odd as people of worth normally would want to stay in contact, yet not one is listed as having a phone.

So this is this weeks edition of lists. A list of all of the assets and values of one bank in Smyrna in 1912...Not horribly exciting, but interesting. The next edition of 'lists' involve hometown pride during the Civil War.