"Dating" Citizens Bank

Norman Connell

 

Norman Connell (Mooresville High School, Class of 1957) was president and CEO of Citizens Bank from 1975 until his retirement in 2001.   Norman started his career at Citizens Bank in Mooresville, Indiana in 1961 following his discharge from the U.S. Air Force.  He saved some undated, unidentified photos showing Citizens Bank when it was located on the southeast corner of Main and Indiana Streets in downtown Mooresville.  How can we date those pictures?

Knowing when Citizens Bank was at this location is a first step.  According to a Mooresville Public Library (MPL) handout, Citizens Bank occupied 3 East Main Street from 1931 to 1966.  That is a fairly large time range, however.  So our next step is to examine the photos themselves for dating clues.  (Click on the images below to enlarge them.)

This exterior shot of Citizens Bank shows late 1950s automobiles, as well as Copeland Appliances, in the background.  The same MPL handout lists Copeland Appliances at 16 South Indiana Street (which appears in the background) from 1956-1974.  (Copeland Appliances was also located at 18-20 South Indiana Street between 1950-1974, but that's further down, out-of-shot.)  So, given these three bits of information, we can safely assume that Mr. Connell's Citizens Bank photos were taken between 1956-1966, the latter date being the last Citizens Bank was situated at the location shown. 

Can we further narrow the time frame?  Let's look at some interior photos of Citizens Bank.

 

See the calendar in the photo above?  It says, Saturday, July 20.  The twentieth of July fell on a Saturday in 1957.  That cinches the date.  These photos were taken on Saturday, July 20, 1957.

 

How do we know that these photos were all taken at the same time?  They are all printed on the same type of photographic paper and appear to have been taken by the same (or a similar) camera.  More to the point, they were taken and/or developed by the same two photographers/developers, Squires Studio and Awbrey's Photo Service, both of Mooresville during the 1950s.  Their stamps appear on the backs of the photographs (see below).

What did Citizens Bank look like inside on Saturday, July 20, 1957?

Here are some Citizens Bank employees who were working that day.  None of the photos identified the persons shown, but thanks to Ruth Connell, we were able to identify three of them.  You can contact Mooresville Public Library if you recognize any of the others (the library now has these pictures in its Indiana Room's banking vertical file).

Martha Sellars

Identifying Miss Sellars was fairly easy.  Her name plate appeared in the photo.

Thelma (Blaschke) Weddle and Ed Fields

 

  

Always identify the people, places, circumstances and dates of your photographs.  They might be of enormous local historical value, especially for historians and researchers.  If  you're reading this article, wouldn't you like to know those details about these "slices" of living history?