Prior to the Civil War, Alpheus Branch's father Samuel owned 58 slaves. Kelly King, chairman and chief executive of Truist, issued an employee memo addressing BB&T's slavery ties, but did not mention BB&T's founders Alpheus Branch and Thomas Hadley by name. In 2020, Truist Financial acknowledged and apologized for the company's historic connections to slavery. Even though banks across the United States failed as a result of the 1929 Stock Market Crash, BB&T survived it was the only one to do so in the town of Wilson. BB&T Insurance Services was added in 1922 and a mortgage division was added in 1923.

īB&T sold Liberty Bonds during World War I and grew to have more than $4 million in assets by 1923. The 1903 Branch Banking and Trust Company Building at Wilson was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Branch remained an active member of the company until his death in 1893. After many more name changes, the company finally settled on the name Branch Banking and Trust Company. Joshua Barnes, Hadley, and three other men secured a charter from the North Carolina General Assembly to operate the Wilson Banking and Trust Company. Two years later, Branch, his father-in-law Gen. During that same year, the bank also moved to its new headquarters on Nash Street in downtown Wilson, North Carolina. After many transactions, mostly with local farmers, Branch bought out Hadley's shares in 1887 and renamed the company Branch and Company, Bankers. In 1872, Alpheus Branch and Thomas Jefferson Hadley founded the Branch and Hadley merchant bank in their hometown of Wilson, North Carolina. In 2019, BB&T announced its intentions to merge with Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks to form Truist Financial, which retains BB&T's stock price history and operates under BB&T's charter. Archived official website at the Wayback Machine (archive index)īB&T Corporation (previously known as the Branch Banking and Trust Company) was one of the largest banking and financial services firms in the United States, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

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