You see the Farmers Bank & Trust logo everywhere, or at least we hope you do! But do you know the significance of the name Farmers Bank & Trust? The name and the recognizable “Rising F,” as we call it, holds value to who we are as a company and how the Bank began more than 110 years ago.
Farmers Bank & Trust was chartered on September 26, 1906, in Magnolia, Arkansas, by R.S. Warnock Sr., Sam Grayson, and a group of local investors.
Mary Warnock Harsh is the granddaughter of the Bank’s original founders, Warnock Sr. and Grayson. In the video below, she explains how Farmers Bank & Trust got its name:
Grandpapa Warnock was in a bank on the square and that president died. The bank wasn’t very progressive, he just took your money and that’s all. Grandpapa saw the cotton farmers that brought in the cotton on the square and sold the cotton there. He saw all that. My other Granddaddy was a sawmiller and he saw that people had to have mules to make a living, but you had to borrow the money sometimes. That’s why it’s called Farmers Bank & Trust.
She said both her grandfathers saw farmers wanted money for their cotton and timber, and ultimately that is what brought them together to organize what is Farmers Bank & Trust today.
In January 2017, Chris Gosnell, the fifth generation of a founding family assumed the role of President & Chief Executive Officer.
“When we updated our logo, we wanted to capture our history while also making it more modern to fit with the changing of times,” Gosnell said. “That can be difficult to do, but we embraced our history and came up with the Rising F. This symbolizes our beginning along with our desire to grow with our customers. It’s similar to planting crops and a crop growing into a prosperous and sustainable venture. At the time, before we updated our look, we identified as FB&T. We chose to embrace how we began all those years ago and returned fully to Farmers Bank & Trust.”
Mary Warnock Harsh passed away on May 13, 2021, but her lifelong commitment to serving others still lives on at Farmers Bank & Trust.
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