100 years of history — How Wake Forest grew since 1909
By 1929 and 1930, it is a wonder the Town of Wake Forest was still afloat financially, given its indebtedness for past bond issues, the lagging tax returns and the amounts the town attorney was paying to purchase tax-delinquent property in town. Of course, in February of 1929, the town had to take out the first of what would be a series of short-term loans to cover the bond payments.
Meanwhile, town officials were keeping a wary, watchful eye on the town’s two banks. In 1929, the town’s sinking funds (debt payments) were in Citizens Bank owned by the Brewer family on the west side of South White Street, but by March of the following year the funds had been transferred across the street to T.E. Holding’s Bank of Wake.
The officials had cause to be worried. Banks across the country were in trouble and failing; this was before federally insured deposits. Almost every month during 1930 and 1931, the commissioners appointed a committee to make sure the bank had given the town enough collateral to cover the deposits.
At the December meeting in 1931, Commissioner Percy Wilson said he and Commissioner F.W. Dickson “had repeatedly seen the officers of the Bank of Wake …that the directors of the bank had not furnished the promised collateral but promised the furnishing of an adequate bond … that Mr. Harvey Holding was preparing the bond and would be delivering it to the town as issued.”
Within days, in January of 1932, the Bank of Wake closed its doors never to open again, as did Citizens Bank. Many depositors like the then-young Roy Powell Jr. recalled in the 1970s that he received 15 cents on the dollar after the bank failed.
The town, fortunately, did have enough collateral to cover its lost $9,371.43, but it took until 1943 before the town collected all the money. The collateral was in the form of notes and loans. Pearl Ray paid $75, J.L. Taylor $100, Thomas Young $189.63, R.B. White $150, W.W. Holding Jr. $1,000 and R.W. Wilkinson Sr. $506.88.
A personal recollection about those years came from the Davis family. Andrew Davis served many terms as mayor, and his brother, Priestley, returned to Wake Forest in 1915 to open a furniture store. After he died, his widow, Zua, remained in town with her three daughters.
“The Depression has hit – with a vengeance,” Zua wrote to a friend in the fall of 1933. “Dorothy and Margaret were on their way to Meredith (College) when they heard that the local bank had closed. I had sold government bonds the day before so they came home to see what to do. I said to go ahead because everyone is in the same predicament.
“Peddy’s bank (Zua’s pet name for her uncle, S. Berry Perry, in Youngsville) has closed because the farmers couldn’t pay their loans,” Zua wrote.
Zua’s daughter Margaret wrote much later that Peddy, who had been president of the Bank of Youngsville, “felt that the people of Youngsville had put their money in the bank because of him, and he paid it off completely. On the other hand, when the bank in Wake Forest closed, we received 10 cents on the dollar.”
The Wake Forest Savings & Loan, begun in 1922 by a group of local men, weathered the Depression and is the oldest financial institution in town.
As the Depression went on, Zua, with three daughters in college, turned over the second floor of her house to two college professors. “The rent is most helpful in these difficult times,” she wrote.
Her girls were lucky in that they were in college. For many others, it was a dream denied.
In May of 1932, the town commissioners sent a petition to Wake Forest College. “The board most respectfully and earnestly requests the Board of Trustees of Wake Forest College, as an emergency measure, to allow the young ladies of this community who have finished their high school courses to enroll in Wake Forest College for the year of 1932-33.”
There were at least 20 young women who could not attend college “owing to the second local bank failure (Citizens Bank) and the long discontinuance of work in industry here.”
The college trustees denied the petition.
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