Christopher Ezra Dinehart (Slayton, MN)
Christopher Ezra Dinehart (September 1845 – February 12, 1927)
Biography
- Name: Chistopher Ezra Dinehart
- Birth: September 1845 Great Barrington, MA
- Death: Feb 12, 1927 Slayton, MN
Christopher Ezra Dinehart born in 1846 on a farm in Berkshire County in western Massachusetts, the youngest of seven children and the only boy. In 1866 he moved to DeWitt, IA, where he began his banking career as a clerk. In 1875, immediately following his marriage, he moved to Chicago where he worked as a regional manager for the Champion Harvestor Company and acquired his interest in agriculture and real estate.
In 1884 he joined a group of Iowa friends, including Frank Weck, to meet bankers James Thompson and Oscar Miller of Rock Rapids, IA, and Thomas Black of Pipestone, MN. They then traveled to the raw new town of Slayton, MN, where they founded the State Bank of Slayton, with Thompson and Black as president and vice president, respectively, and Dinehart and Weck as cashier and assistant cashier. Dinehart and Weck immediately set to work constructing the first brick commercial building in Slayton to house their new bank, which still stands today and is easily recognizable by the large date “1884” atop its corner. Over time, three generations of Dineharts and two generations of Wecks served on its board of directors.
Dinehart quickly became involved in the affairs of his new home town. In the latter half of the 1880s, he played a role in a multi-year struggle between Slayton and the nearby village of Currie to host the county seat and the county fair. For a while, before the court house was built in 1891, the county offices occupied space in the upper floor of the State Bank. Also in 1891, the same team of architects and builders constructed a large house for the Dineharts nearby. That house is currently operated as a museum by the Murray County Historical Society.
By 1892, it was said that Dinehart and the State Bank each owned about one-third of Slayton. About 1910, he acquired an ownership stake in the First National Bank of Slayton and became its president, a position he held until his death some 17 years later. He also began to amass farmland, and eventually owned over three thousand acres. He took an active interest in livestock farming. In 1917, his agricultural operations yielded over $110,000 in sales, an enormous sum for the day. In his later years, he increasingly shifted the day-to-day management of his affairs to his son-in-law, Harvey Holt, although he remained engaged in banking until his health failed in 1926. He died early the following year.
In 1875, Christopher Dinehart married Flora Ellen Dennison, the daughter of a physician in DeWitt, IA. The couple had three childen, a son and two daughters, one of whom died as an infant.
Their son, Clarence (1877-1910), worked briefly at the State Bank as an Assistant Cashier, attended Harvard Law School, and then was elected Minnesota State Treasurer in 1906. He was re-elected two years later, but speculation that he might run for govenor or Congress was cut short in 1910 when he died from complications of appendicitis.
Their daughter, Florence (1888-1971), married Harvey S. Holt (1880-1956), a banker from Missoula, MT. The couple moved to Slayton in 1913, where Harvey became cashier at the State Bank. They moved briefly to San Siego, CA, in 1919-1923, and then returned to Slayton where Harvey resumed his position at the bank. After his father-in-law’s death in 1927, he succeeded him as president. He and Florence moved into her parent’s house with her mother, who died in 1938. After the bank merged into the new Murray County State Bank in 1930, Holt entered law practice in Slayton for the remainder of his career.
Bank Officer Summary
During his banking career, C. E. Dinehart was involved with the following bank(s):
- State Bank of Slayton, Slayton, MN: President 1905-1927; Cashier 1888-1900
- First National Bank, Iona, MN (Charter 7128): President 1904-1927
- First National Bank, Slayton, MN (Charter 5256): President 1910-1927
- State Bank of Hadley, Hadley, MN: President 1915-1927
References
- Ancestry.com & Findagrave.com
- Banks & Bankers Historical Database (1782-1935), https://bbdata.banknotehistory.com
- Dinehart Holt House Historic Structure Report, https://murraycountyhistoricalsociety.org/dinehart-holt-report/
- Murray County Herald newspaper archives, Murray County Historical Society (https://murraycountyhistoricalsociety.org) and Gale Family Library, Minnesota History Center (http://sites.mnhs.org/library/)