Burke & Herbert Bank

Burke & Herbert was established in 1852 by John W. Burke Person John W. Burke b. 1825 Senior partner who at age 27 joined the twenty-three-year-old on August 14, 1852 to open the Burke & Herbert Banking & Exchange Office at the corner of Prince and Lee Streets … and the twenty-three-year-old Arthur Herbert Person Arthur Herbert b. 1829 · d. 1919 Co-founder of Burke & Herbert Bank (1852), Confederate officer in the 17th Virginia Infantry, and longtime master of "Muckross" on Seminary Hill. Born at Carlyle House; died on the … ^[1] Source 1 DAC, 'Arthur Herbert — Muckross,' 2020 Website . The original partnership operated as a commission house: brokering bank notes, underwriting stock and real-estate transactions, and quietly performing the deposit-and-loan services that would later define a chartered bank.

The firm survived the Federal occupation of Alexandria during the Civil War, persisted through Reconstruction, and consolidated as a chartered bank in the late nineteenth century. It remained a private partnership controlled by the Burke and Herbert families until going public in the twenty-first century. As of 2026 it is Virginia’s oldest bank by continuous operation and one of the longest-running family-controlled banks in the United States. The bank’s longtime King Street headquarters and its genealogy — five generations of Herberts, multiple generations of Burkes — remain a research target for the platform.