First National of Nebraska
American bank
First National of Nebraska, Inc. is an American interstate bank holding company based in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, and is the parent company of First National Bank of Omaha. It is an affiliate of the Lauritzen Corporation and is primarily owned by the Lauritzen family. It is on the list of largest banks in the United States and is the oldest national bank headquartered west of the Missouri River.
History
Two immigrant brothers from Ohio, Herman Kountze and Augustus Kountze, founded the bank as Kountze Brothers Bank in 1857. It traded primarily in gold dust and bison hides. The bank received national charter #209 in 1863 and began doing business as First National Bank of Omaha. It brought in additional investors, including Edward Creighton, who served as president.
In 1953, under the leadership of John Lauritzen, First National Bank became the first bank in the region and the fifth in the nation to issue credit cards.
In 1968, the bank was reorganized under the bank holding company, First National of Nebraska, Inc.
“First National of Nebraska” enters the record as american bank. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what First, National and Nebraska can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5453428. VIAF identifies the subject as 147938640. The Library of Congress control number is n2001085376. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1857, 1863, 1953 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “First National of Nebraska” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.