Founded in 1927: West Point, Virginia
Citizens and Farmers Bank received its Virginia state charter on March 14, 1927, in West Point — a small town at the confluence of the Mattaponi and Pamunkey rivers in King William County. The founding directors were local farmers, timber merchants and watermen who needed a bank that understood seasonal cash flow, crop cycles and the rhythms of Tidewater commerce.
The original capitalisation was $50,000 — modest even by 1920s standards. But that capital was deployed with a philosophy that still guides C&F Bank today: know the borrower, understand the collateral, and stand behind the community in good times and bad. Through the Great Depression, the bank honoured every deposit and never closed its doors. While larger institutions across Virginia failed, Citizens and Farmers Bank endured because its balance sheet was conservative and its relationships were genuine.
By the end of World War II, the bank had expanded to three locations across the Middle Peninsula, financing returning veterans' home purchases and helping local businesses transition from wartime to peacetime economies. The bank's first home mortgage programme launched in 1946, and agricultural operating lines became a cornerstone product for the tobacco, grain and soybean farmers who defined the Northern Neck's economy.


