When the Island City National Bank opened on October 16, 1905, the new president (who also founded the Tropical Investment Company) hired Martin as the VP. Opening with a $100,000 capital in a two-floor brick building that still stands today, it made headlines for being the southernmost national bank in the United States.
The Island City National Bank appeared to fare well during the first nine years of operation, until trouble began rearing its head sometime in 1914. Martin started writing letters to Johnson from Miami, New York, and Washington, D.C., where he sought investors and loans, trying to keep the Island City National Bank afloat. By the time the bank shuttered in 1915, it had been carrying substantial loans from at least one trust company and three banks.
Banks at the time were not well regulated and they didn’t back their bills with government currency, explains Angela Zombek, a historian at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. As a result, many of these financial institutions would spring up and shut down quickly, an issue that wasn’t resolved until the Federal Reserve system was created in 1913. But in many ways, the bank’s financial troubles mirrored those afflicting the island itself.
By the end of the Civil War, Key West was “one of the most populated cities in Florida,” says Zombek, prosperous mainly thanks to a monopoly over the sponge trade. But by the time Island City National Bank opened, that industry was drying out as demand was being sourced outside the island.
Steamships also dropped Key West as a port of call in the late 1890s, effectively isolating the island and causing its economy to flatline. It never fully recovered over the rest of the century, especially once the Great Depression rolled around in 1929. This economic pitfall likely explains why Martin was soliciting external investors in other cities, explains Zombek.
By the beginning of 1915, the situation was dire. Martin had been spending less time in Key West, and his letters to Johnson became increasingly negative, occasionally punctuated with vague references to “interested parties” or “indefinite inquiries.” In the months leading up to the bank’s closure, Martin was receiving letters from banks threatening to drop their loans. By July 1915, he had left the island, claiming to seek investors in Miami and Washington D.C.
Martin’s last letter to Johnson was written on July 7 from his brother’s home in D.C. He disappeared the day after, much to the dismay of his brother, John, and sister, Agnes. Agnes wrote him a four-page letter, begging him to “let go now if you truly see that you are truly getting in deeper and deeper.” How the letter came to be in Johnson’s care is unknown.