Williamsburg Trust -- Brooklyn History

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 6 of this story.

By the beginning of 1908, things were not looking good for the Jenkins family of Brooklyn. The Jenkins’ ran three banks; the First National Bank of Brooklyn, where John Jenkins Sr. had been president, the Williamsburg Trust, which was run by John Jenkins, Jr., and the Jenkins Trust Company, headed by Frank Jenkins.

A third son, Frederick, was a high ranking officer and board member in the Williamsburg and Jenkins Trusts. All of these banks and trusts had several branches within Brooklyn, and were large, important players in the finances of Brooklyn.

The financial Panic of 1907 had exposed their long running operation of using their institutions as personal piggy banks, and when the Panic undermined the financial ground the banks stood on, the Jenkins banks, as well as another bank with which they had close ties, the Borough Bank of Brooklyn, all had to close down rather than have a run by customers.

As chronicled in the other chapters of our story, investigations and indictments followed. A few months after the first charges were filed against the three Jenkins sons; new charges of conspiracy and perjury were filed against them, as well.

This time, the patriarch of the family, John Jenkins, Senior, was listed on the indictments. He was an honored and respected venerable old man of Brooklyn banking. He had started his banking career at the age of 17, as an office boy, working for $6 a week, and had worked his way up to the presidency of that very same bank.

He had been president of the First National Bank of Brooklyn since 1883. He was the model of the ideal banker, a family man to his wife and nine children, and a devout church goer.

His membership in the Sumner Avenue Baptist Church had enabled that institution to survive and thrive, as he was a generous donor who paid off their mortgage, and donated freely to special projects.

Jenkins had his fingers in a lot of pots, as most successful men of that day did. As a Williamsburg resident, he had begun to buy up land for later speculative sale, long before it became popular. He made a tidy fortune from that venture, and then was an early investor in Williamsburg’s streetcars, and had financed the Bergen line.

When streetcars turned to elevated train lines, he also made money investing in several transit companies, and was a director of at least one of them. Jenkins was lauded in his industry, and held up as an example of a modern day success, an intelligent and industrious man of hard work and principle.

But as NY State bank investigators and the District Attorney’s office were finding out, he was also the mastermind behind one of the largest inside bank looting jobs of the new century.

As the indictments were handed down, the news of what was on them, and the mounting evidence of wrongdoing was leaked to the press. The stories were printed daily in all of Brooklyn’s papers, as well as over in Manhattan, and across the state.

People were aghast. At the Sumner Avenue Baptist Church, the minister and several members of the church’s board issued a statement saying the allegations were all scurrilous lies, and they stood behind their brother, John Jenkins, because he was an honest church-going man.

Because of the allegations, and the almost total failure of the Jenkins institutions, they had all gone into receivership, and the Jenkins’ were out of the banking business. John Senior had to resign from the only job he had ever had.

He and his sons were meeting with their lawyers to figure out how they were going to survive this, and not go to prison. The father seemed to take it all in stride, and took his family to their summer home in Sea Cliff, Long Island.

It was there, after a day trip back to Brooklyn on business, that he found the final way to escape his problems. He died of stroke only days before he was supposed to go back to court.

The funeral was lavish and solemn, officiated by both the pastor of Sumner Avenue Baptist and the pastor of John Senior’s Sea Cliff Methodist Church home. He was buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery. Several days later, a memorial service was held at Sumner Avenue Church.

The church had received death threats from irate bank customers, for their unswerving support of Jenkins, so a large police guard was on duty to protect church and congregation. No doubt, the DA’s office was there as well, spending their time looking at the Jenkins sons, and thinking about their dead father.

John Jenkins, Sr. had been the lynchpin of their case, the glue that held the whole conspiracy together. It would do no good to base their case on the father, he was beyond their prosecution. But they could make a good case against the eldest son, John Junior. The hunt was on.

Brooklyn District Attorney John F. Clarke would not have an easy job of it. Even before the father’s death, on January 18th, 1908, the Jenkins’ lawyer, Stephen C. Baldwin, argued before Judge Townsend Scudder that it was impossible for his clients to receive a fair trial in Brooklyn.

Too many potential jurors had been reading negative press about their clients for months. Banking was too close a subject for a jury of peers, and he wanted a change of venue. He won a stay, while the case was kicked up to the Supreme Court in Mineola. Before the judge could rule, John Jenkins Senior died.

After his death, the judge ruled that John Jenkins, Jr. could receive a fair trial in Brooklyn for the most serious charge of grand larceny. He didn’t rule on future trials. John Jr. went to court at last, in the winter of 1908.

The defense argued that John Jenkins had done nothing wrong, even though he was accused of borrowing over half a million dollars from his own bank, in loans that had no interest, no collateral, and were made behind dummy entries and accounts that were drawn on his own cashier’s accounts, under his direct orders.

Banking in those days didn’t have a lot of regulations, but one firm regulation was that no bank officer could borrow more than ten percent of the bank’s assets for personal loans. Ten percent would have been around $70K. Half a million was considerably more. Jenkins said the money was invested to save the bank, but was lost in the Panic of 1907.

The prosecution also said that Jenkins knew what he was doing was illegal, and with felonious intent tried to cover it up from bank investigators by creating dummy loans to non-existent clients, and by having his cashiers parcel the loans out in smaller increments in their own ledgers, so the funds could not easily be traced.

The D.A. also explained that Jenkins had made his own employees co-conspirators in his crime, although none of them were charged. The defense objected to this line of thought, saying that it made their client look bad.

After much testimony, the case went to closing arguments. Jenkins was guilty, the prosecution had stated at closing. He stole over half a million dollars of depositor’s money. He covered up the loans, and forced his employees to help him.

The fact that he lost some of it on Wall Street makes it even worse. He was as guilty as you can get. The jury was given the case, with the judge’s instructions.

It was legal, the judge said, for a bank president to loan depositor’s money out for investments. If that money is lost, it is not necessarily a crime, if there was no intent to defraud. The jury had to decide if that money was loaned in a proper way.

The jury deliberated for several days, and came back with a verdict of “Not Guilty.” The prosecution was gobsmacked. There was celebration in the Jenkins house that night.

With one trial down, that left several more, not only for John, Junior, but also for Frank and Frederick. The counts against the brothers included conspiracy, forgery and perjury.

The defense still had a Supreme Court judge in Mineola deciding on a change of venue. In January of 1909, the judge finally ruled on the case, agreeing with the defense; a fair trial in Brooklyn was not possible. As disappointing as it was to the DA, the judge was probably right.

The year in between the closing of the Jenkins banks and the present day, had seen them all go into receivership, and then their assets, including their bank buildings themselves, were sold, and the banks closed for good.

According to the State, depositors were fully compensated for their accounts, but shareholders lost out big time. There were some unhappy stockholders in Brooklyn, people who had trusted the integrity of the Jenkins name.

On December 9, 1909, the judge announced his decision. The trial would not take place in Brooklyn, but in a place to be determined on Long Island. That day did not come for another year.

At that time, in 1910, the District Attorney decided it was no longer possible to convict any of the brothers for anything. Too much time had gone by; John Jenkins, Senior, whom he considered to be the mastermind and lynchpin of his case, was dead, and the “not guilty” verdict of John Junior the year before had stunned him.

He did not believe it would be possible for him to get a conviction, especially against Frederick and Frank, who were charged with lesser counts. District Attorney Clarke, after pursuing this investigation for three years, threw up his hands and gave up.

On November 22, 1910, all charges against the Jenkins brothers were officially dropped. It was over. But the brothers were no longer in the banking business; they had lost the Jenkins Trust, the Williamsburg Trust, and the Savings Bank of Brooklyn.

They had lost the trust of their depositors, and probably lost a lot of friends and professional colleagues. Their father was dead. No doubt, the family fortunes had suffered tremendously. And they probably made their attorney, Stephen C. Baldwin, a very wealthy man. But it was done. They were not guilty. Yet, that isn’t the same as being innocent.

Next: You think the story is over? We wrap up all the loose ends next time. The Jenkins family was not through with the law, or the public. There’s still more.

(Postcard of the Williamsburg Trust, John C. Jenkins, Jr., president)

The Fall of the Jenkins Financial Empire, Part 1
The Fall of the Jenkins Financial Empire, Part 2
The Fall of the Jenkins Financial Empire, Part 3
The Fall of the Jenkins Financial Empire, Part 4


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. ‘Montrose’ thanks for drawing the various pieces of research into a easy to follow chronology of events. I was born in the 1950’s but remeber talk of the Lincoln and Williamsburg bank. If my memory serves, Williamsburg bank used to be have an office building off Flatbush Ave downtown with a clock tower that was visible from most of Brooklyn. My dentist, Dr. Quick, one of the few Black dentists in Brooklyn, had an office there.