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THE HANCOCK BANK
... And Its 75 Years of Participation In The Progress of the Mississippi Gulf Coast
On October 9, 1974, Hancock Bank will celebrate its 75th Anniversary.
It was the first bank established on the western end of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The following review of its activities, during those intervening years since it began business in 1899 in Bay St. Louis, is actually a resume of the Coast's steady inarch from almost national anonymity to its present recognized position as one of the brightest spots on the business map of the United States, and one of the fastest growing industrial areas in the Deep South.
1899 was a dramatic year. The Spanish American War was won and over. The country had settled down again to the pursuits of peace, as highlighted by the introduction that year of the nation's first canned ten cent soup by Joseph Campbell Company. In the wings the Twentieth Century was waiting impatiently to introduce the Machine Age. Down here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast the new city of Gulfport had just incorporated, the completion of the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad had just been financially assumed by Captain Joseph T. Jones, an oil millionaire from Pennsylvania, and at Bay St. Louis a group of business men sat down to organize the first bank in Hancock County.
At that time Bay St. Louis, the county seat of Hancock, was from a business standpoint almost completely isolated from the rest of the Coast. There was of course, the L & N Railroad bridge across the Bay of St. Louis — but there was no bridge for wagons or carriages, not even a ferry. All personal contacts with the other Coast communities east of the Bay had to be done by rail or by boat, or over the frequently impassable