Barnett Bank

Banking in the sparsely settled, frontier Florida of the nineteenth century was not for the timid or the easily discouraged. Being neither of these, the indomitable William Boyd Barnett opened a private bank in Jacksonville in 1877 that would later bear his name. Barnett and his two sons built a successful family business, and by the early 1880s, their bank had become the largest in Florida. During the next several decades, the bank played a part in a number of historically significant even...