Ninety years ago on March 6, 1933 in order to bring stability to banking in the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, thirty-six hours after his inauguration, ordered a bank holiday, closing banks throughout the nation until Congress could pass banking legislation. This unprecedented action came following a month of disastrous runs on American banks.
Robert T. Persons of the Farmers Bank in Forsyth, located at the corner where Scoops is now, defied the administration’s order. Confident that his bank was solvent, he swung the bank doors open and set up in the lobby a table with stacks of dollar bills on it. Persons–known locally as “Mr. Bob”–invited any depositor to withdraw money from the bank. Those bills remained there untouched throughout the bank holiday, attesting to the confidence the bank’s customers had in Mr. Bob’s bank.
Persons, a grandson later recalled, was “a tough little guy who would fight anyone for any reason” including the president of the United States when he issued a bank holiday proclamation.
Original source can be found here.
