<img height="1" width="1" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=852282609072225&amp;ev=PageView%20&amp;noscript=1">

Hailing 125 Years of Strength, Stability, and Service

October 3, 2024
John Hairston
John Hairston

 

125th Anniversary
October is always Hancock Whitney Founders Month, a time we honor the visionaries who set forth the foundations for our bank. This year, October marks something even more special for us, Hancock Whitney’s quasquicentennial. It’s an unusual word. It’s an even more unusual milestone for most institutions.

In simpler terms, our bank’s 1899 charter is turning 125.

 

The Journey Begins

In the late 19th century, a national recession was in full swing, but the Gulf Coast was booming. Situated where railways and waterways meet the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans proved an ideal international port of trade. The city was also reaping significant economic rewards in the wake of the 1884 World Cotton Expo. South Louisiana’s prosperity spilled into neighboring South Mississippi, another area already reveling in its own economic rush brought on by agriculture, seafood, timber, and tourism.

As the coastal corridor flourished, several leading citizens with Hancock County, Mississippi, and New Orleans ties recognized the region’s economic promise and a corresponding need for a strong, reliable bank to help people and communities succeed. To achieve their vision, they embarked on a journey to build a bank — a bank forged from community commitment, secured by core values, and designed to serve, lead, and last.

On October 9, 1899, they opened Hancock County Bank on the Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, beachfront, with $10,000 in capital. Opening-day deposits totaled slightly more than $8,000.

Our founders foresaw that the journey they’d just begun would continue well beyond their own time. They knew and expected that their successors would find and take new and different paths to keep the bank strong, relevant, and proactive in keeping a promise sacred from the start: to protect depositors’ money.

Over the next century, the corporate headquarters moved to downtown Gulfport, and the bank’s name changed to Hancock Bank. Many other respected banks joined the journey, adding new people, new communities, and new ideas along the way.

Staying Strong

Hancock County Bank and Whitney Bank both had October birthdays. Linked for many years by geography, economy, and leadership, the banks would engage in an early 1900s business deal that would further cement that longstanding relationship and set coordinates for a historic intersection a century later.

In 1904, Hancock County Bank founder and first president Peter Hellwege had established the Bank of Orleans, an institution with interests primarily in commodities. Hellwege and his Hancock County Bank successor, Eugene Roberts, each served simultaneously as presidents of both banks.

The post-World War I economy caused the commodities market to wane, and the Bank of Orleans soon faced financial challenges. Rather than risk the trademark stability of Hancock County Bank — and undermine its founding pledge to stay strong for clients — Roberts and the Hancock board chose to sell the Bank of Orleans to New Orleans peer Whitney National Bank on May 25, 1918. Roberts resigned as president of both banks and became a Whitney vice president for the remainder of his career.

Just over a decade later, the catastrophic stock market crash of 1929 brought the success and excess of the 1920s to a roaring halt, causing countless other banks to close, Hancock and Whitney, however, stayed open. As America fell into an economic abyss, leaders at both banks initiated a lasting pact to protect each institution from ever facing the disastrous consequences so many other banks suffered during the Great Depression.

In 2011, Hancock and Whitney came together as one strong company, completing a courtship begun more than a century earlier and essentially doubling the size of the bank and service footprint. Seven years later, after a series of regulatory transactions, the company established one state-chartered bank, renaming the original Hancock County Bank charter as Hancock Whitney Bank and debuting an all-inclusive “Hancock Whitney” brand 100 years to the day of that first official transaction between the two banks, the sale of the Bank of Orleans.

The Journey Goes On

In October 1949, during Hancock Bank’s 50th anniversary banquet, then bank president Leo W. Seal, Sr., affirmed the bank’s ongoing commitment to founding core values and challenged the bank’s total 60 associates — and those who would follow them — to carry forth those timeless principles in every facet of client and community service. He also articulated a cardinal objective for the bank: to build a business that would never know completion.

Our five Core ValuesToday, our company has come a long way since the turn of the 20th century, much like our Gulf South home. Nearly 3,600 associates serve clients and communities across the five contiguous Gulf Coast states. The bank consistently rates among America’s strongest, safest financial institutions, now for 140 consecutive quarters, and repeatedly ranks locally and nationally among the most trusted, best-of-the-best banks.

As we commemorate 125 years of strength, stability, and service, we know, as our founders and forebears knew, that we are and will always be on a journey never finished, building a business never complete. Our commitment to our founding mission, purpose, and core values will always keep us on course, though.

We know we’ve been fortunate to grow and succeed with and because of shareholders, clients, and communities trusting and relying on us and because of dedicated associates committed to our core values. We’re turning 125 because of them. We’re turning 125 because of you.

From our heart, we say thank you.

Post comments on this article

Enter your first name, email and comments below