[7] William Boyd Barnett was a merchant and a banker in northeast Kansas when he journeyed with his wife to Jacksonville to visit their oldest son in 1875.

In spite of being a newcomer and a Yankee, Barnett and the new institution slowly gained the people's trust, but at the end of their first year, deposits amounted to only $11,000.

Bion immediately offered to waive the fee if Duval County deposited their funds in the Bank of Jacksonville.

[10] In 1926, the Barnett National Bank Building was opened to house the company's operations and was built in the popular Chicago school style of architecture.

[11] The bank survived various economic downturns and crises, including the Great Depression, ultimately emerging stronger.

Though eventually Barnett did make some purchases of out-of-state banks, starting in Georgia, it did so without growing its own brand recognition.

Ultimately, this weakened the company's stock, as the perception lingered that Barnett was not a major player in the area of mergers and acquisitions.

Despite its slower than average growth, the holding company built a new corporate headquarters building in downtown Jacksonville: announced in 1987 and occupied in 1993, the year Hugh Jones retired.

As of 2019, the reinforced concrete Barnett Center (now, the Bank of America Tower) remains the tallest building in Jacksonville.

[17] Rice, who had publicly stated more than a decade earlier that he would never sell Bion Barnett's bank to any of its competitors, became board chairman of NationsBank.

They acquired the company archives containing annual reports, investor presentations, press releases, correspondence, miscellaneous ledgers, videos and account books; then solicited former employees for other material, including photographs, scrapbooks, news clippings, marketing materials and employee publications.