Banks family manuscript collection

The Banks family was influential in Maryland business and politics and married into prominent families from Virginia and Massachusetts. Daniel Bower, whose daughter Catherine (1772-1853) married Andrew Banks in 1795, was one of the founders of Reisterstown in Baltimore County, Maryland. Andrew Banks ran a general store on Main Street. Catherine and Andrew’s son, Daniel Bower Banks (1795-1875), became the president of the Union Manufacturing Company in Oella, Maryland, and in 1830, he built “Chatsworth” on the family’s Reisterstown property. That same year, he married Margaret Sheward Whitelock (1805-1871). They had three children. Their son, Andrew (1838-1909), married Rebecca Elizabeth Godwin (1839-1916) in 1860, and they had four children. Andrew served three terms in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1872 to 1878 and was the first president of the Maryland Tubing Transportation Company.

Their son Andrew (1866-1931) married Anne Mason Wilson (1866-1939), daughter of Celestine Huger Heileman (1836-1925) and John Bullock Wilson (1830-1855). Anne came from accomplished Massachusetts and Virginia families. Her mother was the daughter of Colonel Julius Heileman (d. 1836) from Granville, Massachusetts and Ann Stuart Mason (1803-1851), the great-granddaughter of Revolutionary War patriot George Mason. Her grandfather Julius won honors for his service during the Second Seminole War. Andrew and Anne had two children: Anne Mason Wilson Banks (1891-1978), who married Henry Briscoe Thomas, Jr., and Andrew Banks, Jr. (1900-1955) who became managing editor of the Baltimore News-American and married Lucy Hyde Diggs (1901-1977).