The new year will bring a new name in banking in Marshall County.
Huntington Bank signs will go up at the branches of what’s now known as Cadence Bank.
Huntington is based in Ohio. Its name graces the stadiums of the Cleveland Browns and the University of Minnesota. That’s a little more big-time than Cadence Bank Arena in Tupelo, former home of the Mississippi MudCats indoor football team. (That arena is down the street from Johnnie’s Drive-In and near where Elvis Presley was born, and I’d like to see Cleveland or Minneapolis duplicate the Johnnie’s doughburgers.)
In writing about this bank acquisition, I was intrigued while researching about the history of Cadence in Marshall County.
The bank dated to Feb. 1, 1977, when The Home Bank was established in Guntersville.
On June 18, 1987, The Bank of Albertville was established up on Sand Mountain at 104 S. Hooper Drive. Two years later, it moved to the corner of U.S. 431 and Highway 75, where the bank remains today. You might remember their ads from around this time with celebrity spokesman Jay Rains.
The Home Bank and Bank of Albertville merged in 1995, and the combined bank became part of BancorpSouth — forerunner of Cadence — four years later.
The Cadence name came when BancorpSouth bought an Atlanta bank and took on its name in 2021.
This is far from the only twisted path in local banking history.
Marshall County ranks ninth in the state in terms of number of banks with 16, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
That includes 32 branches.
One of the former branches that holds a special place in my heart was on Sand Mountain Drive. It was known as First Alabama when, at age 6, I walked in to get a savings account. The story goes that I told my mom I could go take care of it myself but she seemed to think I might need an adult.
One of the first big acquisitions of what started as the Exchange Bank in 1928 in Birmingham and became First Alabama in 1975 was purchasing the Citizens Bank started in Guntersville on New Year’s Day 1909. It became First Alabama Bank of Guntersville in 1975.
The Albertville National Bank, which began in 1904, joined First Alabama in 1987.
First Alabama became Regions in 1996.
Truist came to town as part of a merger between SunTrust and BB&T. BB&T was a relative newcomer to Marshall County as it acquired the failing Colonial Bank in a government-assisted deal in 2009.
Colonial arrived from Montgomery in 1986 with the purchase of First State Bank of Albertville, which dated to 1974.
Of course, not all the banks have such a convoluted history. Guntersville-based Citizens Bank & Trust was founded in 2003. Only 22 years old, Citizens is the county’s leader with $768.2 million in deposits and 27.1% of the market.
It’s certainly not the only local bank that has thrived while staying close to its roots.
Liberty Bank started as Bank of Geraldine in 1971 and took its current name in 1990. It has seven branches.
First Bank of Boaz started in 1906 as the National Bank of Boaz and took its current name in 1981.
Oh, and that Hooper Drive address: It was a name given to U.S. 431 in the 1970s in honor of the Hooper family. That included John F. Hooper, who opened the first bank in town in 1914. It later became Marshall County State Bank, which was liquidated during the Great Depression.
A.B. Hooper Jr., grandson of John F. Hooper, established a long-running insurance agency while he was in banking and later served as mayor of Albertville.
David Clemons is an Albertville native who published newspapers in Alabama and Georgia and now works in health care marketing in Atlanta. His email address is [email protected].
The Albertville Museum collection includes panels from the clock that stood on the street corner outside Albertville National Bank, which became First Alabama then Regions. Photo courtesy of the ALBERTVILLE MUSEUM
