San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Who’s who on first board of S.A. Fed branch
Last Sunday’s column answered the first part of Reagan Houston’s question about the history of the San Antonio branch of the Federal Reserve Bank — actually a branch of the Dallas Fed. San Antonio had to wait in line as Dallas was chosen in 1914 as a regional branch of the central bank, then as El Paso in 1918 and Houston in 1919 were established as branches of that first Texas branch.
The San Antonio branch opened July 5, 1927, with resources of more than $100 million to serve 97 state and national banks in 54 South Texas counties. Its territory stretched from Yoakum on the east, to Marfa and Del Rio on the west, north to Austin and south to Brownsville, according to the San Antonio Express, Oct. 29, 1929.
The other part of Houston’s question was about the San Antonio branch’s original board of directors — who they were and how they were chosen. That list leaked to the San Antonio Light, April 19, 1927, which broke the news “unofficially … through local bankers interested in the opening of the bank.”
The San Antonio board was appointed “by the board of directors of the (Federal Reserve) bank at Dallas and by the (Federal Reserve) board at Washington, jointly.” Those selected were bankers or leaders of large businesses with regional reach; all but one was based in San
Antonio, and all were active in community affairs. None of their contemporaries would have asked “Why him?” about any of them.
Here’s the lineup, with names and occupations at the time provided by
James Hoard, spokesman for the Dallas Fed:
Reagan Houston (18881958): Chair, vice president and general manager of A.B. Frank Co. — An undated, unidentified newspaper clipping announcing his chairmanship, provided by his descendant, reports that Franz Carl Groos, Robert Travis Hunnicutt and Ernest Steves were chosen by the Dallas board, and Houston, Harry Hazael Rogers and Frank Edgar “Ed” Scobey by D.C.
As a young lawyer in private practice, Houston, a University of Texas graduate, had been attorney to the San Antonio School Board. In 1918, he joined A.B. Frank, a dry-goods wholesaler founded in 1854 that bought supplies from as far as Germany, Japan and South Africa and sold them to retailers all over South Texas. According to anniversary newspaper advertorials, the company received hundreds of orders each day for wares from 14 departments offering clothes, shoes, linens, piece goods and other accessories and household items.
Houston also was the longtime chairman of the board of Alamo National Bank. Founded in 1890, Alamo National was a Federal Reserve member bank. In 1947, Houston became its president, a position he held until shortly before his death, when he again became board chair.
On the civic side, Houston chaired the city health
board, headed the United Fund and was active in the Chamber of Commerce, which he served over the years as chair, vice president and a member of many committees focused on bringing business to San Antonio.
Franz Carl Groos (1877-1947): President of the Groos National Bank — Described as coming from the “German aristocracy” by Men of Affairs of San Antonio, a business reference published in 1913, Groos graduated from Princeton University and joined the family mercantile and banking firm of F. Groos and Co. before founding Groos National Bank in 1912.
He became president in 1917 of the Chamber of Commerce and also was “active in helping to establish Kelly Field, Brooks Field, Randolph, Normoyle and the (Army’s) Quartermaster General Depot” in San Antonio, says his Express obituary, Aug. 5, 1947.
As a banker, he served as president of the San Antonio Clearing House Association; he also was on the City Public Service Board and was vice president of the Community Chest of San Antonio and Bexar County. Socially, he was an organizer of the Order of the Alamo and its early Fiesta San Antonio activities and belonged to the San Antonio Country Club.
Groos remained president of the bank that bore his name until a year before his death, says his obit, “when he was elected chairman by the board of
directors.”
Robert Travis Hunnicutt
(1882-1945): Vice president of the First National Bank of Del Rio — An Alabama native who grew up in Belton, he began his banking career at Belton National Bank and moved in 1906 to Del Rio, where he was assistant cashier at First National (a Fed member) until his election in 1922 as county judge of Val Verde County. After serving briefly in that office, he returned in 1924 to the bank, where he rose from cashier to vice president.
Hunnicutt, an elder of Del Rio’s First Presbyterian Church, went on to found an insurance company and to become county auditor, a position he still held at the time of his death at 82.
Harry Hazael Rogers
(1877-1957): President of the Travis Investment Co. — Originally from Missouri, Rogers moved to San Antonio in 1920 and soon became a prominent member of its business community. As of the 1929 city directory, he was CEO of the Maverick-Clarke Litho Co., a printing firm that sold bank checks, forms, record books and other materials locally and throughout Texas. He also was chairman of the board of the Texas State Bank and Trust (a Federal Reserve member bank) and vice chair of the CityCentral Bank and Trust; Rogers also chaired the Milam Building Co., developers of the nation’s first air-conditioned high-rise office building, completed in 1928.
As a member of Central
Christian Church, he taught a popular men’s Bible class (covered here Sept. 23, 2023). An active Rotarian, Rogers was president of the San Antonio club and elected president of Rotary International from 1926-27. He was president of the San Antonio Independent School District’s board of trustees and of the San Antonio Welfare Council.
According to his obituary in the New York
Times, Dec. 5, 1957, Rogers was trained as a lawyer, but his business interests eventually included “oil companies, cotton mills, banks, lumber companies and railroads.”
Frank Edgar “Ed” Scobey
(1866-1931): President of the Fireproof Storage Co. — After relocating to Texas for his health, Scobey (covered here Dec. 2, 2023) came to San Antonio in 1913, set up an office in the Gibbs Building and bought the property on North Medina Street where he built his Scobey Fireproof Storage Co. (covered here Dec. 2, 2023; now Scobey Moving and Storage).
A member of the San Antonio Country Club and Rotary Club, Scobey was active in state Republican politics. A longtime friend of President Warren G. Harding, he was appointed director of the U.S. Mint and took office March 20, 1922, which put him in charge of the nation’s reserves of “bullion and gold valued at approximately $3,676,000,000 — onethird of the world’s gold supply,” according to the San Antonio Evening
News, March 20, 1922.
Though he wasn’t implicated in any of the Harding administration’s corruption scandals, Scobey resigned after Harding’s death the next year to allow the new president, Calvin Coolidge, to make his own Mint appointment. Back in San Antonio, he reduced his activity in politics and after a serious illness in 1929, sold his interest in the storage company.
Ernest Steves
(18621930): President of the Alamo National Bank — Steves, who attended St. Mary’s College (now University) and Washington and Lee, joined his family’s lumber business, Steves Sash and Door, in 1878. As an original member of the board of Alamo National, he was tapped in 1924 to take over the bank’s presidency after the death of
J.N. Brown.
He was also a director of City Public Service, the
San Antonio Building and Loan Association and the Morris Plan Bank and was active in efforts to bring an airport and railroads to San Antonio. Steves died of complications from appendicitis surgery. “Although he was an outstanding figure in the field of finance,” says his Express obit, May 15, 1930, “he preferred to be known as a lumberman, the business he first took up and followed with enthusiastic interest.”
Miers Crump (18891942): Managing director of the San Antonio Federal Reserve Bank — Crump was the professional central banker on the board, brought in to run the new, 50-employee branch and to report on its activities. Originally from Tennessee, he began his career as assistant cashier at a bank in Mount Pleasant, moving in 1918 to the Dallas Fed. The following year, he transferred to the thennew El Paso branch, first as cashier, then managing director.
In San Antonio, Crump became president of the local Rotary Club and head of the finance committee of the Bexar County chapter of the American Red Cross. A member of the San Antonio Country Club, he played tournament golf there and elsewhere.
He died at 52 on Aug. 31, 1942, from tuberculosis, having held his position with the San Antonio Fed from its beginnings until the end of his life.
Thanks to Debbie Countess of the San Antonio Public Library’s Texana/Genealogy Department for help with research into some of the individual directors. Even while displaced for remodeling, Texana delivers!