The Comptroller of Currency granted permission to establish The First National Bank of Coleraine on the 20th of June, 1906. Chartered by a Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider named John C. Greenway (1872 – 1926), The First National Bank of Coleraine served residents and businesses, most of whom worked in or supplied open-pit ore mines. The first Board of Directors included: Thomas F. Cole, Daniel M. Gunn, Chauncey A. McCarthy, Michael Curley, and John C. Greenway.
John C. Greenway was an innovative miner, engineer, patent holder, and the first president of FNBC. Greenway’s longtime friend, Theodore Roosevelt, said Greenway was one of two or three men to whom he turned when there was a need to find a man for a duty of particular hazard or peculiar responsibility. Greenway had served as a lieutenant in Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and the bond between the two rugged individualists increased over time.
A eulogy in the New York Herald Tribune reported, “When Greenway came upon the field of athletics or war, confidence ran through team or regiment. To know why, to analyze the reasons, would be to analyze life itself, but some of the component elements all men know — courage, leadership, common sense, unselfishness, loyalty, & mercy. All these Greenway had.” And all of which, we carry forward today at The First National Bank of Coleraine.