Family Stories
The Banker who Robbed the Bank
The following story was passed on to me by my grandmother, Sarah Helen Bohnert, in the summer of 1988 when she entered into the nursing home. You can hear it in her own words by going to the "Photographs and Memories" page of this website or clicking on this link.
It's a true story, corroborated by several articles that I found in the Perry County Republican that report the details regarding the "popular" cashier of the Bank of Longtown, Dayton A. Thorpe, who was arrested in March of 1927 and given a three-year sentence in the State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, Mo.
Thorpe plead guilty and was indicted on six counts-three for embezzlement, one for forgery and two for receiving money in an insolvent institution. He returned to his wife in Longtown in the week of August 22, 1929, after serving 21 months of the three year sentence, having been let out early for good behavior.
Perry County Republican
January 12, 1928
The Banker who Robbed the Bank
(Transcribed)
Grandma:
Did I tell you that?
Me:
No, you told me that, but I don’t remember the story.
Grandma:
Oh, you don’t remember the story. Well, it’s a little bit long if you want to listen to it. See, we lived on that farm. That was a nice house.
Me:
In Longtown?
Grandma:
About a half a mile from Longtown. And we didn’t have to pay no rent, and I had all the apples and the peaches and stuff, what we wanted. **** And I raised about 150..had chickens, had to do all of them, and gather all them…the eggs and everything.
And then once…see …. the banker robbed the bank. The banker robbed the bank. He had money. He wouldn’t a had to do it. But he…you know bankers are crooked. A lot of bankers was crooked.
Well, so on every morning my man had to go down to the bank and find out what he was supposed to do that day…you know…work that he done for…’cause my man was a slave and the banker was a…hired to it….
So one morning he went down and he came back and he said “You know what?” He said “Did you know who did it…robbed the bank? The bank’s closed. We’re…we’re out of a job. We’re out of a job.”
I had…I had…two little kids and no home so I just couldn’t get over it. So that’s why we moved to Perryville. That’s why he moved and worked at the shoe factory and never did like the shoe factory. But he had to go someplace with two kids to raise.
So that’s the time on we were in Perryville workin’ at the shoe factory. And they put in in the pen…put the guy…
Me:
The Banker?
Grandma:
Put the guy in the Pen. And then…and then he stayed…and then he begged…he begged my man to stay on the farm and to run the farm ‘cause he didn’t know what to do. He wanted to have to keep that farm to go on, so he did ‘cause he was good to us all the time and he did. So then when he was gone so long we used to get…we used to get…uh…letters from the pen and to tell him what field to put in corn…