One thing you learn when you study banking is that every town in America has a banking family — a family that at some point owned the dominant locally based bank.
In Montgomery, Louisiana, it’s the Wardlow family. In Red Bay, Alabama, it’s the Bolton family. Further down the state, in the tiny town of Brundidge, it’s the Ramage family.
The Ramage family traces its banking roots to 1904, when James T. Ramage founded the First National Bank of Brundidge.
The bank remained in the family’s hands for the next 116 years, though complications with Ramage’s estate enabled self-interested executers to control, and nearly squander, the bank for decades until Ramage’s great grandson, Jimmy Ramage, stepped into both his inheritance and the bank in 1969, returning control to the Ramage family.
This video is the second in the Troy Trilogy, a series of stories that came from my visit to Troy, Alabama. It tells the story of James T. Ramage and the First National Bank of Brundidge, which sold in 2020 to Troy Bank & Trust, which collaborated with me on this project.
Thank you to Troy Bank & Trust and the Ramage family.
Sincerely,
John
