Joseph P. Arnold, president of the State Bank of Kunkle, living at Bryan, is one of the prominent and influential representatives of banking enterprise in Williams County, and takes due satisfaction in claiming the judicial center of the county as the place of his nativity. He was born at Bryan, December 20, 1863, and is a son of Charles and Violet A. (Fulton) Arnold. The father was born in the Province of Alsace-Lorraine, France, and was nine years of age when he accompanied his parents on their immigration to America, he having been reared and educated in Ohio, and having been a resident of Williams County for many years prior to his death, which occurred at Bryan. He was a carpenter by trade and became a successful contractor and builder at Bryan, his political allegiance having been given to the republican party and both he and his wife having been earnest members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. They became the parents of five sons, of whom four are living: Edward J. is a resident of Anderson, Indiana; Hiram W. maintains his home at Bryan; and Charles A. is a resident of Greenfield, Indiana; the subject of this review being the youngest of the number. The mother was born in Pennsylvania and was a child when her parents came to Ohio and established their home in Williams County, where she was reared and educated and where she passed the remainder of her life.
Joseph P. Arnold is indebted to the public schools of Bryan for his early educational discipline, and after attaining to adult age he was for sixteen years here engaged in the meat market business. He devoted the next decade to farm enterprise, but his financial advancement was primarily the result of his successful operations in the buying and selling of real estate— principally farm properties in this section of the Buckeye State. In 1913 Mr. Arnold returned to Bryan, and he was one of the organizers and incorporators of the Kunkle State Bank, with the active administration of which he has since continued to be prominently identified. The other officers of this substantial institution are as here noted: Philip Wagner, president, now deceased; John Kunkle, second vice president, and George W. Wagner, cashier. The bank bases its operation on a capital stock of $25,000 and its business is of most substantial order, based on wise and conservative policies and careful management, and upon the unqualified confidence of its supporters. Mr. Arnold gives the major part of his time and attention to the affairs of this institution, but is also superintendent of Garver Park, at Bryan, and maintains a general supervision of his farm, which is well improved and comprises 120 acres. As a young man Mr. Arnold wedded Miss Catherine Lantz, daughter of the late John Lantz, who was president of the Montpelier National Bank, at Montpelier, this county, at the time of his death. Mr. and Mrs. Arnold have no children.
Source: Bowersox, Charles A. ed. A standard history of Williams County, Ohio: an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, educational, civic and social development , 2 vols. Publisher Chicago: Lewis Pub. Co. 1920.