{"id":3624,"date":"2025-08-08T19:45:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T23:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/?p=3624"},"modified":"2025-08-08T07:59:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T11:59:29","slug":"from-coal-town-to-high-stakes-finance-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-first-national-bank-of-keystone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/?p=3624","title":{"rendered":"From Coal Town to High-Stakes Finance: The Rise and Fall of the First National Bank of Keystone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CQZcSMI6mBg?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In this YouTube episode, Steve and Rod share the incredible true story of J. Knox McConnell, a Pennsylvania banker who turned the First National Bank of the little coal mining community of Keystone, West Virginia, into a billion-dollar financial empire\u2026before it all came crashing down. From \u201cKnox\u2019s Foxes\u201d to buried documents and fraud convictions, this Appalachian scandal has it all.<\/p>\n<p>Like the story? Give it a thumbs up, leave a comment, and don\u2019t forget to subscribe to hear more Stories of Appalachia.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for watching!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this YouTube episode, Steve and Rod share the incredible true story of J. Knox McConnell, a Pennsylvania banker who turned the First National Bank of the little coal mining community of Keystone, West Virginia, into a billion-dollar financial empire\u2026before it all came crashing down. From \u201cKnox\u2019s Foxes\u201d to buried documents and fraud convictions, this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,44,45,5],"tags":[104,1241,1243,1240,1239,1238,1244,1242,1067,672,778],"class_list":["post-3624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-the-1970s","category-the-1980s","category-the-coalfields","tag-appalachian-history","tag-bank-fraud","tag-financial-scandal","tag-first-national-bank-of-keystone","tag-j-knox-mcconnell","tag-keystone","tag-knoxs-foxes","tag-mcdowell-county","tag-stories-of-appalachia","tag-west-virginia","tag-west-virginia-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6TX4A-Ws","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3626,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions\/3626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}