Sartoris Bank|Merchants' and Farmers' Bank in The Town (Location)

Occasionally referred to in other texts as the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, and in The Town as the "new bank" (44), the "Sartoris Bank" is one of the town's two banks. It was established around 1908 by "Colonel" Bayard Sartoris, who is still its President when the novel begins. Originally its largest stockholders are Sartorises, de Spains, and Will Varner, though by the time of Bayard Sartoris' death, Flem Snopes has been buying up stock "for several years" (124). By that time it is called "a national bank" (125), which means that the money stolen from it by another Snopes - Byron, who worked in it as the bookkeeper - is "guaranteed" (Faulkner is presumably thinking of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, but that was not created until 1933). After Sartoris' death, Mayor de Spain is elected president, a change that results in the audit that uncovers Byron's theft, and in Flem becoming the "first actual living vice president of a bank we had ever seen to notice" (143). Snopes spends his time "standing a little back form the window watching clients coming and going to leave their money or draw it out" (146), before moving "inside the cage where the money actually was" (146).