THE BANK – The Union Bank of Frenchtown was organized in 1856 and established at 22 Second Street in a newly constructed two-and-a-half-story frame house with two columns in front. It doubled as a home for the cashier, who was effectively the CEO. The residence was in the back part of the bank with bedrooms upstairs. It was reorganized as a national bank in 1865 and became the Union National Bank of Frenchtown.
The first president was Henry Lott (1800-1873) and the first cashier was Newberry D. Williams. He was succeeded in 1868 by William S. Stover (1824-1880). Subsequent cashiers were Abel B. Haring, Edward W. Bloom and E. Dale Opdyke.
Home invasion – On Sept. 17, 1873, when the bank was still on Second Street, a gang of four to seven men arrived in Frenchtown on the evening train. Planning to rob the bank, they stole a horse and carriage from the Kugler & Fargo spoke mill and a horse and carriage from Michael Worman for their getaway.
Just after midnight they picked a lock and entered the bank. Needing help to get into the vault, they went upstairs. The banker's sister-in-law Miss K. Richards awoke to find men standing at her bedside. She was told, “We are sheriffs; keep quiet and we won't hurt you.”
Then they tried to unlock the door to the Stovers' bedroom, where William, Mary (1839-1932) and their two children were sleeping. Mary woke her husband as the invaders resorted to brute force. William asked “Who is there?” and got no reply, but “he saw at once that they were trying to burst the door in, and he sprang to it and braced both hands against it with all his might, while Mrs. Stover ran to the window and screamed murder,” the Independent reported.
When Mary screamed, an accomplice waiting outside fired a pistol to signal a retreat, and the crooks were gone in less than a minute. Their stolen horsepower carried them to Somerville where they caught a train. (This account mingles the details given in the Frenchtown Star and the Hunterdon Independent with those in Clarence Fargo's “History of Frenchtown.”)
Writing in 1891, M.D.L. Shrope adds a footnote: He says that in those days he and other boys would gather nightly on sheltered benches in front of the engine house of Kugler & Fargo's mill. On the night of the bank incident, Shrope and Peter K. Cook were on their way to the benches, when they saw a familiar figure on Harrison Street. Although the man had on a Panama hat and his coat collar turned up, they recognized him as someone “whom we both knew and whom we had little thought of seeing in town again for various good reasons.”
He recalled, “While the crowd of boys were congregated under the shed telling stories and singing, the bank robbers, not 50 feet away, got horses out of the stable and hitched them to a wagon. We knew nothing of this action at the time.” The next morning, when bench boys Shrope and Cook learned of the night's criminality, they immediately thought of the man in the Panama hat.
We can't overlook Shrope's mention of the precursors of the Bench Boys of the 1960s. Also, he didn't seem to remember hearing that somewhat illogical gunshot, signaling retreat. For a clandestine op, shouldn't that signal have been a Davy Crockett-style owl hoot or a Huck Finn-ish meow?
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The bank building burned in 1878, but all the money survived. In an amazing feat of commercial agility, Stover reopened for business a few hours later – at 9 a.m. in the house at the northeast corner of Second and Harrison streets.
A new brick bank in a modified Renaissance Revival style was built on Bridge Street before the year was out. Stover continued as cashier until his death.
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
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