161. Huntsville Bank & Trust Company (Huntsville, AL)

Bank Information

Episode Type
Run Only
Bank Type
trust company
Start Date
November 4, 1907
Location
Huntsville, Alabama (34.730, -86.586)

Metadata

Model
gpt-5-mini
Short Digest
d6f0bd7a

Response Measures

Accommodated withdrawals, Partial suspension

Other: Limits posted on withdrawals ($25/day) and enforcement of 60-day notice for savings accounts after cashier's suicide.

Description

Cashier James R. Boyd shot himself on 1907-11-04; his suicide caused depositor nervousness and a threatened run. Bank did not suspend full payments but posted limits ($25/day) and invoked 60-day notice for savings withdrawals as a protective measure. No closure or receivership mentioned.

Events (1)
1. November 4, 1907 Run
Cause
Bank Specific Adverse Info
Cause Details
Suicide of the cashier James R. Boyd provoked depositor nervousness and fears there would not be enough money.
Measures
Posted notice limiting payments to $25 per day per depositor and enforced 60-day notice for savings withdrawals.
Newspaper Excerpt
There was some excitement on the streets about the time the bank was open for business and a run was threatened.
Source
newspapers

Newspaper Articles (2)
1. November 8, 1907 The Columbia Herald Columbia, TN
Article from The Columbia Herald, November 8, 1907

Click image to open full size in new tab

Article Text

BANKER ENDS HIS OWN LIFE JAMES R. BOYD, OF HUNTSVILLE, e ALABAMA SHOOTS HIMSELF THROUGH BRAIN. IS A GREAT SHOCK TO THE CITY Affairs of Bank Are Said to be in Good Condition and There is No Alarm. HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Nov. 4.James R, Boyd, Cashier of the Huntsville Bank & Trust Company, President of the Huntsville City Council, Treasurer of two or three local cotton mills and a prominent figure in commercial affairs in this city, fired a bullet through his brain this morning in the dining-room of his home. Death was instantaneous. The business affairs of the Cashier appear to be all right, and any excitement among the depositors of the bank caused by his action was allayed o by the calm statement of the Board of Directors that the accounts of the institution tally to the cent. There was some excitement on the 1 streets about the time the bank was 1 open for business and a run was threatened. As a measure of proteco tion the following notice was posted on the front door: t "Owing to the death of James R. Boyd, our Cashier, and in view of the o action of banks throughout the county and our depositories, the payment of checks will be limited to $25 per day to each depositor. The rule requiring c notice of sixty days for the withdrawal h of savings accounts is now in force. "S. J. MAYHEW, President."

2. November 15, 1907 The Sisseton Weekly Standard Sisseton, SD
Article from The Sisseton Weekly Standard, November 15, 1907

Click image to open full size in new tab

Article Text

Crimes and Criminals. Guy Condit, cashier of the First National bank at Kingfisher, Okla., attempted to kill himself by slashing his throat. He will recover. His accounts are correct. Rev. D. W. Thompson, until recently pastor of the Le Grand Christian church at Marshalltown, Iowa, was arrested at Truro,, charged with using the mails to defraud. Six men were arraigned in the police court at New York charged with robberies from the Adams Express company, which it is alleged will aggregate between $30,000 and $50,000. J. B. Cartwright. a liveryman of Culbertson, Mont., committed suicide by swallowing carbolic acid. He was despondent. His uncle and father had set the example several years ago. Following an indictment on a charge of attempted criminal assault, Alex Johnson, a negro, was taken from the jail at Cameron, Tex., by a mob of 500 men and hanged to a tree in the court house yard. Marie Carmella Mongolluzzo, an aged Italian woman, was murdered and robbed of $700, the savings of her husband, while she was at work in a shed in the rear of her home in Southwest Philadelphia. Emmett Dalton, the noted former bandit, has been pardoned by Gov. Hoch of Kansas. Dalton was sentenced to the penitentiary for life for takIng part in the Coffeyville bank robbery in 1892. Arthur Rogers, a wealthy farmer living two miles from Bancroft, Mich., cut his wife's throat with a razor and then committed suicide with the same weapon. Rogers is supposed to have been demented. Yielding to the strain under which he had labored for several days, James R. Boyd, cashier of the Huntsville Bank and Trust company, killed himself at his home at Huntsville, Ala., firing a bullet through his brain. Intimate friends of the dead man say that he labored under high nervous strain for several days and feared that a run would be made on his bank and that there would not be enough money to weather the storm. Abe Sumroll and Hank Lucas, negroes, were lynched at Vinegar Bend. Ala. Sumroll murdered Jules Boaz, a young Cuban, on Monday night last while he was trying to arrest him for burglary. Lucas' crime was the protecting of Sumroll from a police posse. Joe Dean, an eighteen-year-old boy, called Julia Johnson, a girl in her teens, to the door of her boarding house at Norfolk, Va., and shot. her through the abdomen. He then shot himself in the temple. Both will die. Jealousy is said to have been the sause.