Featured Manuscript Collection: November/December

Union National Bank Records
MSS 02-07
Finding Aid
Union National was one of the city's largest locally-owned banks throughout most of the twentieth century.

In 1885, William J. Turner, a former chief clerk and deputy in the Arkansas State Treasurer's office, established his own private banking business, W. J. Turner and Company. The company's first location was 223 West Markham Street in Little Rock. After Turner's death in 1893, two brothers, Sydney J. Johnson and Allen M. Johnson, bought the business and changed the company name to S. J. Johnson Company.

S. J. Johnson purchased Guaranty Trust Company in 1899. In January of 1902, the two merged companies were incorporated as Union Trust Company with Allen M. Johnson as president. In 1919, another Little Rock bank, Mercantile Trust Company, was merged into Union Trust Company, forming Union and Mercantile Trust Company. In 1923, the word "Mercantile" was dropped from the company's name.


The Directors of the Union Trust Company, 1915.
Employee record for Celsus P. Perrie, undated.
Both items located in Box 1, File 6.
After facing numerous challenges and possible failure during the Depression, the bank reemerged as Union Bank in 1933. The following year, the company received a national bank charter and became Union National Bank. Union National Bank was merged into the Worthen Banking Corporation in 1993.

Union Trust Company Bulletin for Special Arkansas Bankers' Convention, July 7, 1927.
Employees of Union Trust Company. An excerpt from Union Trust Company Bulletin for Special Arkansas Bankers' Convention, July 7, 1927.
Located in Box 1, File 26
The Union National Bank Records contains the financial records and publicity scrapbooks of the Little Rock, Arkansas-based Union National Bank. The collection is arranged topically and chronologically in sixteen boxes.