Robert Alexander Duncan (20 December 1900–4 November 1980), banker, was born in Norfolk and was the son of George Alexander Duncan, a telegraph operator and railroad agent, and Josie Magee Jones Duncan. His family moved to Dinwiddie County about 1906 and to Wakefield, in Sussex County, during the 1910s. Duncan attended the College of William and Mary during the 1920–1921 and 1921–1922 academic years and then worked as an assistant cashier at the Farmers Bank of Wakefield from 1922 to 1929, when he became a district manager for Investors Syndicate, a general insurance agency in Wakefield. He married Kathryn Meredith van Fredenburgh, a New Jersey native, on 5 April 1924. They had three daughters.

When the Farmers Bank of Wakefield went into receivership in the spring of 1931 during the Great Depression, Duncan became the receiver with responsibility for helping the bank regain solvency. He worked as a bank examiner in Richmond in 1935 and 1936 and in the latter year became vice president of the Planter's Bank and Trust Company, in Chatham. Duncan was the cashier for the Bank of Giles County, in Pearisburg, in 1940. The following year he moved to Strasburg, in Shenandoah County, to serve as cashier of the Massanutten Bank. Duncan moved to Williamsburg in 1944 to become treasurer and a member of the board of the Peninsula Bank and Trust Company. He won promotion to executive vice president the following year and to president in 1947. The bank's assets were then valued at about $5.8 million. The bank grew steadily during the next twenty years, opened its first branch bank in 1955, and by 1968, when Duncan retired, held assets worth more than $33 million.

From its incorporation in March 1956, Duncan also served as president of the James-York Bank, in Williamsburg. Its assets had grown from less than $400,000 to about $2.8 million by the end of 1965, when it merged with the Peninsula Bank and Trust Company. The resulting Williamsburg State Bank conducted business under the name of the Peninsula Bank and Trust Company. At the time of the merger, Peninsula Bank and Trust Company became one of seven Virginia banks of which United Virginia Bankshares Incorporated, a new holding company, then owned a majority of the stock. From the merger until he retired at the end of 1968, Duncan served as chair of the bank's board and its chief executive officer, and also as a director of United Virginia Bankshares.

In 1959 Duncan became the vice chair of the advisory council of the National Association of Supervisors of State Banks and the state representative for Virginia. He later chaired the advisory council, and by April 1965 he had joined the board of directors of the Independent Bankers Association. Duncan had become a member of the executive council of the American Bankers Association by May 1965. Active on the state level as well, Duncan in 1958 represented the southeastern Virginia banks in the Virginia Bankers Association. He served on several of the state association's standing committees and as a member of the board of directors for two years, second vice president in 1961, and first vice president in 1962. Duncan began a one-year term as president of the Virginia Bankers Association in June 1963. In his inaugural address, he endorsed proposals for reforming the state's banking laws to allow an increase of branch banking in order to meet the needs of commercial and industrial growth. At the end of his term the following summer he urged the association to advocate for modernization of state banking laws and more professional oversight of state-chartered banks.

Duncan was a mentor to many of his associates in the Williamsburg banks, including three men who later became bank presidents and Lillian L. Wilkins, who in 1968 was the first woman elected to the executive council of the American Bankers Association. He served from 1964 to 1972 on the board of trustees of the Virginia Supplemental Retirement System. Duncan was chair of the Williamsburg school board from 1948 to 1953, president and a member of the executive committee of the Williamsburg Community Hospital from its founding in 1959, and president of the Williamsburg Memorial Park from its beginning in 1962. He also served at various times as president of the Williamsburg Chamber of Commerce and as a director of the Virginia Hospital Service Association, Blue Cross.

Beginning in 1948 Duncan held one of several offices in and served on the executive committee of the Jamestown Corporation, which produced the outdoor dramas The Common Glory and The Founders. From 1951 to 1970 he was a director of the Williamsburg Restoration Incorporated, the business corporation of Colonial Williamsburg, and chaired its executive committee from 1959 until 1970. Duncan also served as assistant treasurer of the Jamestown Foundation, forerunner of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, and as an original trustee of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation from its creation in June 1970 until he reached the mandatory retirement age the following year. From 1965 to 1971 Duncan served on the William and Mary Alumni Board of Directors and received its Alumni Medallion in 1973 for his services to the Williamsburg community. Robert Alexander Duncan died at his Williamsburg home on 4 November 1980 and after a funeral in Bruton Parish Episcopal Church was buried in Williamsburg Memorial Park.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Richard Lee Morton, comp., Virginia Lives: The Old Dominion Who's Who (1964), 289, and Who's Who in the South and Southwest, 9th ed. (1965/1966), 267; Marriage Register, Sussex Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); State Corporate Commission Charter Book, Record Group 112, 283:397–399, 419:483–491, LVA; Southern Banker 120 (July 1963): 63 (portrait), 73 (summary of Virginia Bankers Association presidential address), and 121 (June 1964): 131, 132, 135–136; birth and death dates in BVS Death Certificate, Williamsburg; obituaries in Newport News Daily Press (portrait), Richmond News Leader, Richmond Times Dispatch, and Williamsburg Virginia Gazette, all 5 Nov. 1980; editorial tribute in Williamsburg Virginia Gazette, 12 Nov. 1980; memorial in Alumni Gazette of the College of William and Mary 48 (Dec. 1980): 19.

Photograph in Pearisburg Virginian, 2 Jan. 1941.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Emily J. Salmon.

How to cite this page:
Emily J. Salmon, "Robert Alexander Duncan (1900–1980)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Duncan_Robert_Alexander, accessed [today's date]).

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