There is hardly a home in all the country that is served by the bank that has not known the presence of Doctor C.B. Creech in the crises of life, when a new soul comes to be added to the family circle and affect the family’s destiny for weal or woe; or when Death’s angel draws near to take away one in the family circle and change forever the life of the family as it has been; or in that hour or rejoicing when, after physician and family have battled together to defeat death, they breathe a prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude that the familiar pattern of family living is again to go on for a while unbroken.  We have seen this physician’s countenance radiating joy when he saw his patient coming back from the borderland, and we have seen him leave in dignity when he realized his efforts had been made in vain.
     We think of C.B. Creech as a conscientious doctor who tries to keep the Golden Rule polished and shining.  One who does not send a man off to the operating table unless he thinks he would want to be sent were he in the man’s place.  “You can put a man under the anesthetic, but you can’t always bring him out,” we have heard him say.  And if he thinks a patient has a good or better chance in the familiar environment of home, he does not have him whisked off to a hospital.  Having a special aversion to being whisked off to a hospital, we like this.  We like, too, his inclination to give nature a chance.  And his frankness, how we like that!  If he thinks a person is not really sick he tells him so.  And we love his being willing to tell what his medicines are made up of.  How we dislike for a doctor to have his medicine all wrapped in mystery!  We believe his openness and honesty in talking things over is sometimes one of his most effective medicines.
     Doctor C.B. Creech and Mrs. Creech are two of the three persons – the other, Mrs. Minnie Tapscott – who are left of all the ones who were living in Middleburg in the earliest days of the bank, Mrs. R.B. Young tells us.  Strange that an entire population of a town can change so quickly when a mere forty or fifty-year period goes by.
     Doctor Creech, too, was a part of the bank’s early history.  He has been a stockholder, a director and a vice president of the bank.
     Here is a picture of a citizen whose name is on the list of first stockholders – Sol Ashley, land owner, timberman, Christian, known as a dependable, honest friend to many; a sensible man, a good business man.  Head of a large family, we look about to see if any of his descendants are where the bank may serve them now.  And almost under the shadow of the bank we find a great-grandson, a schoolboy, John Ashley Whipp.
     H.H. McAninch – Here is his picture in our book of time, with a background of widespreading farmlands and livestock, a well-kept farm and a good home, so Mr. Al Land describes it.  As Master Commissioner Mr. Land helped settle the McAninch estate, and he tells us the lands he sold amounted to somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty or seventy thousand dollars.  In looking back to those days he recalls that Howe McAninch had a trotter, a bay filly, he entered more than once in the races at the Liberty fair.  Mattie McAninch, she was called; Mr. Land remembers her well and smiles as if it were a fond memory – those days of the Liberty fair when he too had a trotter he entered in competition with Mattie McAninch.  It seems that Os Bowman was connected with these memories; perhaps he was the trainer or drove Mattie McAninch.

     Fleeting pictures, these are, of early stockholders and depositors.  We look at the names and are reminded of how time scatters families as autumn winds scatter oak leaves until there is little trace of them around the sturdy tree that once held them.  Here are the names, W.P. Keeney and James Gibbony.   Where are the Keeneys and Gibbonys now?  Berry French.  There is a French monument in the Green River Cemetery.  Col. McClure, only son of a former president of the bank, Wm. S. McClure, was one of the largest depositors in his time.  He died in 1952 at a military hospital near El Paso, Texas, and his body was buried in a national cemetery there.  In his lifetime he built up a fortune, for it seemed he had that not too often found ability, in dealing with stock securities, to buy low and sell high.   His widow Hattie Mitchell McClure, with a home in El Paso and one in her native city New Orleans, and three nieces Mrs. Jean (Elliott) Carr, Louisville, and Misses Martha and Janet Elliott, Danville, were his only survivors.  From his biography written by his widow in West Point anniversary publication, we note that after he was graduated – West Point Class of 1899 – he was sent to the Philippine islands, and afterwards took part in a China campaign, fighting through the Boxer Uprising; then was transferred to the Cavalry.  On his father’s farm in Casey county, at Mount Olive (the farm now owned by Wauda Coffey, widow of Jason Coffey, former president of the bank), he had learned early to know and judge horses and mules and had fondness for them that lasted all his life.  After training in a cavalry school in our own country, our government sent him to France to complete a course in a cavalry school at Saumur, France and, during World War I, he selected horses and mules for the United States and our Allies.

     Let us look again at some of the pictures in our book of other days and other lives.  There is one of William S. McClure, looking out over his fields a few years before his departure, and saying, “Just as I have things shaped up to make money, I find myself with one foot in the grave!”  Remindful of Solomon’s sighing, “All is vanity.”
      Here is the last picture we have of Doctor J.T. Wesley, that grand old character, so kind that even sick fretful babies, when he was called in to see them, held out their arms to be enveloped by his kindness.  In this final picture of him in action, a cold rain is falling and, at this end of a wintry stormy day, Dr. Wesley’s horse and buggy drew up at the bank mud-splashed and dripping, and the doctor soaking wet to the skin.  He had been to see a patient over on the river, it may have been the flu epidemic.  As the doctor leaves the bank to go home, Richard B. Young, the banker, follows him to the door and protests, as he puts his arm on the elderly man’s rain-soaked shoulders, “Doctor Wesley, you ought not to be out in this weather, wet and chilled.”
     “The time to save a life is when you can do it,” the kindly old man replied.
     The patient, a Mrs. Atwood, lived, but the doctor went into pneumonia and, in three or four days, was dead.  “Greater love hath no man than this.”
      So the early life of one of the bank’s earliest presidents came to an end.

     Before we close the book, let us take a final look at the last picture of the bank, the bank that has been building steadily, carefully, surely, through its beginning and youth, a reputation for being a dependable bank.  It is seeing the close of one fifty-year period this year of 1954, and looking forward to beginning another.  Its surroundings have a more modern appearance, moving along with progress, but how often life moves in circles!  Again, there is a blonde young banker, Otis L. Carman, with a blonde young wife – younger, if anything, than that other pair that started out in confidence to take care of the bank, with hope shining in their eyes and in their hearts.  The towns are larger than used to be, these sister-towns of Middleburg and Yosemite.  There are new houses, modern ones.  New people have moved in.  But the faith in the bank, and the pride the citizens have in its good name, remain the same.
     The bank lives on.  We who are passing by salute it.

An early check drawn on the Farmers Deposit Bank
On June 18, 1906 Lincoln Wells, president of the bank from 1936 to 1953, paid Fountain (“Fount”) Hatter $30.98 for 9 sheep.
Jason Coffey, president of the bank from 1923 to 1936, cashed the check, presumably in his store in Yosemite.

An example of another early check style from 1932

Adams, J.S. – 11
Allen, Elmer -- 8
Anderson, Jessie (Hatter) – 2
Ashley, Sol – 11, 13
Atwood, Mrs. ? -- 14
Bastin, C. – 11
Bowman, Os – 13
Carman, L. – 11
Carman, Otis. L. – 11, 14
Carman, W. – 11
Carman, W.D. – 11
Carr, Jean Elliott – 13
Coffey, James K. (J.K.) – 4, 6, 11
Coffey, Jason – 4, 6, 9, 13, 16
Coffey, Wauda (Hatter) – 2, 9, 13
Coulter, J.C. – 11
Coulter, W.T. – 11
Creech, Dr. C.B. – 12, 13
Creech, Mrs. C.B. – 13
Davis, ? (Professor) – 2
Drye, George W. – 11
Earles, W.T. – 11
Elliott, Ann – 9
Elliott, David – 4
Elliott, George – 9
Elliott, James – 9, 11
Elliott, Janet – 13
Elliott, Martha – 13
Elliott, Maurine Coffey – 9
Elliott, Maxine Coffey – 9
Elliott, Oscar – 4, 11
Elliott, Susan Dell – 9
Falconberry, Alf T. – 11
Floyd, Dr. D.S. – 11, 12
Fogle, J.E. – 11
Fogle, Mary – 11
French, Berry – 11, 13
Gadberry, Elzie – 7, 8
Gadberry, J.F. -- 11
Gibbony, James – 11, 13
Godbey, Clay – 2
Godbey, Della – 5, 11
Godbey, Ephraim (E.J.) – 2, 3, 4, 11
Godbey, Ewart – 5
Godbey, Jeff – 2
Haney, Dr. J.N. – 3, 11
Hatter, Fountain F. – 2, 4, 16
Hatter, William Green (W.G.) – 2
Keeney, W.P. – 11, 13
Kelsay, E.E. – 6, 11
Land, Al – 13
Lawhorn, Belle – 6
Lawhorn, J. Sherman – 2, 5
Lay, J.C. – 11, 12
Lucas, F.B. – 11
Lucas, W.E. – 11
McAninch, Clell – 7
McAninch, Howe (H.H.) – 3, 11, 13
McClure, Col. ? – 13
McClure, Hattie Mitchell – 13
McClure, W.S. – 11
McClure, William S. – 3, 4, 11, 13, 14
McIntosh, Stanley – 8
McKinley, H.E. – 11
McWhorter, J.S. – 11
McWhorter, Malvina – 11
McWhorter, Marshall – 8
Miller, Preston – 2
Miller, Tom – 2
Miller, Tommy – 2
Newell, John – 4
Patterson, W.M. – 11
Pike, Effie – 11
Powell, Lillie Wells (Mrs. Smith T.) – 9
Pruitt, C.L. -- 11
Riggins, Jim – 8
Royalty, Betty – 8
Settles, Mildred – 10
Short, Homer – 8, 11
Short, Irvin – 4
Sweet, Glenn – 11
Tapscott, Minnie – 13
Taylor, J.S. – 11
Thomas, C.D. – 11
Thomas, David (D.A.) – 3, 11
Wells, Bobby – 9
Wells, Harold – 9
Wells, J.P. – 11
Wells, Jack – 9, 10
Wells, Lincoln – 4, 9, 11, 15, 16
Wells, Lincoln J. (Josh) – 9, 16
Wesley, Dr. J.T. – 2, 3, 11, 12, 14
Wesley, H. Clay – 11
Wesley, Isariah –- 2
Wesley, Silas – 11
Wheat, Bill – 4
Wheat, Jennie – 4
Whipp, John Ashley – 13
Young, Anna – 8
Young, Eleanor – 8
Young, George W. (Bill) – 8, 10
Young, Lucien – 8
Young, Lynn Hansford (Mrs. R.B.) – 4, 9, 10, 13
Young, Mary Douglas – 8
Young, Ray – 8
Young, Richard B. – 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15
Young, Virginia – 8