Description
The Farmers & Merchants Bank Scrapbook chronicles the period of creation of the Bank's
new headquarters building (1915-20). Approximately half of the scrapbook is devoted to
photographs of the Bank staff and to various stages of the building process. The other
half of the scrapbook is filled with clippings recounting events depicted in the
photographs. Of special note are four photographs of President Woodrow Wilson standing on
the back of a train car with Frank A. Guernsey. These pictures were taken at the time of
Wilson's whistlestop tour of the United States on behalf of our membership in the League
of Nations (1919).
Background
The Farmers & Merchants Bank of Stockton, Calif. was established in 1888 by Darius A.
Guernsey, P.B. Fraser and D.S. Rosenbaum. These three men held successively the office of
President of the Bank and were succeded (1916) by Darius Guernsey's son, Frank A.
Guernsey (b. 1879). In that year the Bank erected a nine-story headquarters building at a
cost of $500,000. Frank Guernsey also operated the Frank Guernsey Grain Company, as well
as dairy and orchard properties on Rough and Ready Island. Although the Bank's new
building endured, Frank A. Guernsey's banking career was relatively short-lived, for, by
1922 he had become a Vice President with the Union Safe Deposit Bank and, by 1925, both
he and the Farmers & Merchants Bank had disappeared from Stockton directories.