William L. Trenholm
Comptroller of the United States
William L. Trenholm (1836–1901) was a United States Comptroller of the Currency from 1886 to 1889. In 1898, Trenholm (then president of the American Surety Company) was elected president of the North American Trust Company.
Biography
Trenholm attended South Carolina College, where he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, graduating in 1855.
Comptroller of the Currency from 1886 to 1889, Trenholm, a Confederate Army veteran, was the first Democrat and first Southerner to be appointed Comptroller. Appointed to office by President Grover Cleveland, he was known for the large number of changes he recommended in the banking laws. Some, such as the provision that banks could change name and location without an act of Congress, were adopted. Other recommendations influenced later legislation, including the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Trenholm resigned to become president of a large insurance company and later served as president of a trust company.
On January 19, 1898, Trenholm (then president of the American Surety Company) was elected president of the North American Trust Company. In 1899, Trenholm desired to be "free of business cares" and retire, and an election was held for a new president at 100 Broadway.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8014226. VIAF identifies the subject as 26328574. The Library of Congress control number is n96060565. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1836, 1901, 1886 and 1889.
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This entry incorporates text from “William L. Trenholm” 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.