Everyone knew that the bank was solid. It offered no toasters, electric blankets, or water tumblers to lure prospective savers. It had a reputation: trustworthy, solid, and steady, which brought people to its mahogany counters, where the tellers’ windows resembled the gun ports of the old frigates that had brought the city wealth, to deposit their nickels, dimes, and dollars. No deposit was too small or too large.

Something different brought the wealthy customers: privacy. The bank was the Kitteredge family, and the Kitteredge family was the bank. The Kitteredges had been counting, saving, investing, and hiding the money of the rich from the days when British tax collectors sought the Crown’s share of the lucrative molasses trade to the present era of the slick and merciless IRS computers. The Kitteredges were private people, private in the way that can be found only in New England and the Deep South. For the Kitteredges, a new customer was merely a third-generation saver at the bank. Their steady clientele were those who had hoarded their money during the Revolution until they were sure just how things would turn out. Money from the bank fought the Revolution in the form of uniforms, muskets, and powder, although one Kitteredge, Samuel Joshua, displeased his grandfather by donning one of those uniforms and dying at the head of his platoon on the ramparts of Yorktown. Far more sensible in the old man’s eyes were the Kitteredge-financed privateers who raided British shipping on the high Atlantic, thereby serving their country by crippling British sea power, while at the same time bringing home nice profits to the bank.

The Kitteredges were fortunate-some say provident-in producing the right numbers of male and female offspring. Kitteredge followed Kitteredge in direct line as presidents of the bank, with few enough descendants to avoid destructive squabbling and just enough to keep the business in the family.