The first banks to open in Georgia were the privately owned Planters Bank of the State of Georgia (1810), the state owned Bank of the State of Georgia (1815), and the privately owned Bank of Darien (1818).
    Bank of Darien customers had to swear before a local justice of the peace that the banknotes were theirs; had to agree to pay a fee of $1.36 on each banknote; and had to accept $60 in pennies a day until the note was fully redeemed.
    The Second National Bank demanded Georgia banks pay their debts in hard currency, because Georgia paper banknotes were of little real value. In response, both the Planters Bank and the Bank of the State of Georgia simply decided to refuse to redeem any Second Bank of U.S. notes.
    Opponents of this national bank decided to "Break the Bank" by causing a run on its Savannah branch. They quietly began buying up all the outstanding notes of the Savannah branch.
    Savannah Branch President Nicholas Biddle noticed that very few Savannah SBUS banknotes were being returned for redemption. Suspecting that something might be afoot, Biddle arranged for $200,000 in metal coins to be shipped to the Savannah branch.
    Lo and behold, one day a gentleman walked into the bank, introduced himself as Mr. Clark from New York, and presented $173,000 in Savannah banknotes for immediate redemption.
    Biddle promptly ordered five large kegs of silver coins, each weighing over five hundred pounds, to be brought to his office from the bank’s vault. Clark, expecting to be given empty promises and no currency, discovered that he now had a major problem.
    He discovered that he had to: first, arrange transportation for the twenty-five hundred pounds of silver coin now in his possession; and secondly, he had to hire a large number of armed guards to protect this small fortune in silver coins he now had to carry back to his bosses in New York.
    When the Central Bank of Milledgeville was formed in 1828, the State of Georgia moved its funds from three privately owned banks (Bank of Augusta, Planters Bank, and the Bank of Darien) over to the new partially state-owned Central Bank.
    The first of the two new "Savings Banks" to open in Georgia were the Savings Institution (or Institution for Savings) in 1844, and the Mechanics Savings Bank in 1854.
    The first black owned bank to open in Georgia was the Freedman’s Savings & Trust Company, chartered by President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. The Freedman Bank opened a Savannah branch in 1865. In 1874 the U.S. Congress closed the Freedman Bank down.
    President Lucius E. Williams opened the privately owned Wage Earners Bank in 1901. The Wage Earners Bank was the largest and most profitable black-owned bank in the entire country until it closed in 1928.
   
    Roger Allen is a local lover of history. Allen provides a brief look at Bulloch County's historical past. E-mail Roger at rogerdodg er53@hotmail.com