WHERE ARE
THEY NOW?
The First Boston
Corporation
By Susie J. Pak
Massachusetts Bank (f. 1784, Boston)
In 1784, the Massachusetts Bank was
founded by a group of Boston merchants:
William Phillips, Isaac Smith, Jonathan
Mason, Thomas Russell, John Lowell,
Stephen Higginson, Edward Payne, John
Hurd and Moses Michael Hays. The Mas-
sachusetts Bank was “The first independent
joint-stock bank in the United States and
the second Bank to receive a State Char-
ter.” It “was established to aid business and
provide a bank in New England trade that
were then being done by the British bank
[The Bank of England] in London.” The
first president of the bank, James Bowdoin,
was the former governor of the common-
wealth and a fellow of Harvard.
First National Bank of Boston signage bearing
the founding date of its earliest predecessor, the
Massachusetts Bank, 1784.
Massachusetts National Bank
(f. 1865, Boston)
The First National Bank of Boston
(1903, Boston)
In 1865, after the Civil War, the Massa-
chusetts Bank joined the national banking
system and became the Massachusetts
National Bank. In 1903, the Massachusetts
National Bank merged with The First
National Bank of Boston. (A descen-
dant of the Safety Fund Bank founded
in 1859, First National Bank of Boston
acquired its name in 1863 after it also
joined the national banking system.) The
newly merged bank was called The First
National Bank of Boston. Daniel Gould
Wing served as the bank’s president from
1903 until 1926, after which he served as
chairman of the board. Wing was a native
of Davenport, Iowa, and was raised in
Lincoln, Nebraska, where his childhood
friends included Vice President of the
United States Charles G. Dawes, Army
General John G. Pershing and Harvard
Law School Dean Roscoe Pound.
30 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Fall 2019 | www.MoAF.org
First National Corporation of Boston
(subsidiary, f. 1918, Boston)
The First National-Old Colony
Corporation (subsidiary,
f. 1929, Boston)
In 1918, the First National Bank invested
$2.5 million in the newly formed First
National Corporation of Boston, an
investment subsidiary. After the Crash of
1929, the First National Bank of Boston
took over the Old Colony Trust Company,
including Old Colony’s securities affiliate,
Old Colony Corporation. The name of its
investment subsidiary was then changed
to The First National-Old Colony Corpo-
ration. After the passage of the Banking
Act of 1933 required commercial banks
to withdraw from the investment bank-
ing business, The First National-Old Col-
ony Corporation was spun off from First
National, combined with the securities
affiliate of Chase National Bank.
Chase National Bank was founded
in 1877 in New York. Its founder, John
Thompson, had been one of the founders