How It All Began
A story of sweat, steadfast vision, and a family that built a Cornerstone in Frostproof. Latimer Maxcy, born in 1887 in Columbia, South Carolina, carried a spark that would blaze into a lasting enterprise. A camping trip in 1904, following a crippling frost, revealed to him an odd, almost quiet resilience: citrus and vegetable crops around Lake Reedy near Frostproof thrived where others faltered. He persuaded his family to acquire 70 acres on the lake’s south shore and planted citrus trees there, laying down the seed of a lifelong venture.
From a boyhood wage as a water boy in phosphate mines, Latimer learned grit. He grew skilled in heavy equipment, practiced what he learned in the Northeast, saved and invested in land, and, returning to Frostproof in 1914, carried the labor himself. He hauled fruit to packinghouses, bought fruit from others, and eventually took an equity stake in a local packinghouse, fueling a shift from labor to leadership. By 1917, he had sold out to the Citrus Exchange and formed his own entity, The Lake Reedy Packing Company, on East 6th Street, just west of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. The name would change again in 1925, when L. Maxcy, Inc. came to life as the family’s business footprint widened.
The 1920s brought Latimer’s interests into finance as well. World War I had ended, and prosperity spread through the region. Latimer and twenty local men founded the Citizens Bank of Frostproof, a modest institution with an original capital of $25,000. Latimer served as Chairman, his brother John as President, and the Maxcy family steered the bank for more than fifty years, until they died in the early 1970s. Today, the bank remains family-owned, its careful stewardship passed to Latimer’s grandchildren.
For nearly eight decades, Citizens Bank nurtured Frostproof’s economy. The 1925 bank building still stands, its historic vault a quiet reminder of the era. The late 1990s brought expansion: a Lake Wales office, followed by Haines City, and in 2004, the acquisition of American Bank & Trust, expanding trust services and signaling evolution into Citizens Bank & Trust. The footprint grew through Polk County to fourteen locations, later extending to Hillsborough and Pasco with offices in Valrico and Dade City.
As the oldest Polk County bank still standing, Citizens Bank & Trust remains dedicated to stability, community, and conservative values. Three generations have led the board, guiding a century-long partnership with Polk County’s people and enterprises. The story, begun with a frost and a lake, continues in a bank that endures.♥
