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Historical Context

The company's history may be traced to Edwin T. Holland, who, in 1944, became the director and shareholder of Old Dominion Bank, a small Arlington, Virginia, institution with three branches in the greater Washington, DC area. Holland was instrumental in transforming Old Dominion from a strictly commercial, industrial bank into a retail, consumer-oriented institution. He accomplished the shift by extending bank hours for the convenience of working customers, offering premiums with new accounts, and utilizing aggressive advertising campaigns including direct mail. Advertising would continue to occupy an important niche in the First Virginia strategy into the 1990s.

After World War II, as automobile sales increased dramatically, Holland created the Mt. Vernon Insurance Agency to insure bank customers' car loans in 1949. Banking regulations prohibited Old Dominion from providing the capital for founding the insurance venture, so Holland incorporated Mt. Vernon himself and "donated" all its stock to the bank. The insurance company was then used as a vehicle for growth in the restrictive, but stable and prosperous, U.S. banking environment of the post-war era. Mt. Vernon acquired controlling interests in the Bank of Annandale and National Bank of Manassas in the early 1950s. When Congress passed the Bank Holding Act mid-decade, Mt. Vernon was reorganized as First Virginia Corporation, a bank holding company that was authorized to purchase and operate other banks within the state. Although banking was clearly the primary function of the firm, it continued to offer a variety of life, group, credit life, and property/casualty insurance products through its insurance subsidiaries into the 1990s.

By the time the company was acquired by the BB&T Corporation in 2003, First Virginia had 364 bank branches - 298 of which were in Virginia and 55 which were in Maryland - making it the largest banking operation within Virginia.

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