Dr. Melissa Fulgham gave a well-received and well-attended presentation on “Annie McLean Moores Towler: The First Female President of a National Bank in Texas” on Friday, September 27, at the 62nd Annual Conference of the East Texas Historical Association in Nacogdoches, Texas.
Dr. Andrew Yox, who attended the conference with his award-winning panel of honors students, noted that “Dr. Fulgham had been scheduled in a panel that included Dr. Kim Richardson’s work on Texas factories. Richardson is a professor at the Lancaster campus of the University of South Carolina. Unfortunately, Hurricane Helene made Richardson’s appearance impossible, and thus, the whole session was devoted to Fulgham’s work on Towler. But rather than an abbreviated session, Fulgham’s lone presentation filled the seventy-five-minute session with a very lively Q and A based on the anomalies of Towler’s life that Fulgham had uncovered. Fulgham’s presentation glistened with interesting observations about the influence of this early Mount Pleasant banker, and the response of the attendees, mainly authors and professors, was overwhelmingly positive and appreciative.”
Annie McLean Moores was elected president of the First National Bank of Mount Pleasant on January 1, 1893, making her the first recorded president of a national bank in Texas. The First National Bank of Mount Pleasant was a member of the Texas Banker’s Association, the oldest state banking association in the nation. Annie was appointed to the statewide “Committee on Finance and Auditing” for 1900-1901, indicating her respect among bankers statewide. She would be a founding member of the Texas Women Bankers Association. Banking is only one part of this intriguing woman’s life, a virtually unknown story, that Dr. Fulgham is working to tell in an ongoing book project. Dr. Fulgham has shared portions of Annie’s story at multiple conferences and recently wrote an entry on her in the Handbook of Texas.
Laurie E. Jasinski, Research Editor for the Handbookof Texas noted, “This is a really nice addition to the Handbook as well as its special projects, the Handbook of Texas Women and the Handbook of Dallas/Fort Worth.” Click the link below to read the entry on Annie McLean Moores Towler, a unique woman of which Mount Pleasant can be proud.
