Recognized as Alabama’s oldest bank, the Bank of Brewton opened for business on Monday, January 7, 1899. Brewton, Alabama, was a prosperous town in the late 1800s, and local resident Charles Sowell shared in that prosperity. A native of Monroe County, Alabama, and a wounded veteran of the Civil War, Sowell settled in Brewton, worked briefly as a railroad station agent, and then built a timber industry that produced a sizeable fortune. In 1880, he said, “If I take all my gold and silver and put it on a wagon, two mules could not pull it. We need a bank.” He began organizing what became the first bank in Escambia County, Alabama, and the first bank between Mobile and Montgomery. The Bank of Brewton began as a private bank in 1889 and received a state charter in 1891. Its original location was a few doors away, but in 1912 it moved into a building at this site, acquired the adjacent Lovelace Hotel building in 1957, and constructed a new building in its place in 1964. The Bank of Brewton had only 11 presidents in the first 119 years of its existence, and the work of its early leaders and the support of local citizens established the institution’s historic value.