CoreStates Financial Corporation, previously known as Philadelphia National Bank (PNB), was an American bank holding company in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area. The bank was renamed in the mid-1980s after a series of mergers. After being acquired by First Union Corporation, which later also acquired Wachovia National Bank to become Wachovia Corporation, CoreStates Financial Corporation became a part of Wells Fargo in 2008 when Wachovia (formerly known as First Union) was acquired by that company. History Philadelphia National Bank and First Pennsylvania Bank The bank was founded in Philadelphia on September 8, 1803, as The Philadelphia Bank. George Clymer was the bank's first president. Later, the bank became known as Philadelphia National Bank, or PNB. During the early years of the United States, Philadelphia developed as the banking center of the country. The First Bank of the United States chartered in 1791, was based in the city until its charter expired in 1811, at which point it's building was purchased by the preeminent American banker Stephen Girard to house his banking operation, known as The Bank of Stephen Girard. (This is not to be confused with Girard Bank, which was created by several prominent Philadelphia businessmen after Girard's death and named in his honor.) Give years later, Congress chartered the Second Bank of the United States, which was directed for most of the period 1816 to 1836 by Nicholas Biddle, the nation's first chief banker and scion of the city's most iconic family. The Philadelphia National Bank was neither the oldest nor the most aggressive of the big banks headquartered in the nation's birthplace for most of the city's history. That distinction went to the First Pennsylvania Bank, the "Pennsylvania Company for Insurance on Lives and Granting Annuities." While founded as an insurance company in 1809 (chartered 1812), it traces back to an even earlier banking dynasty. The Bank of North America was chartered in 1781 by the Continental Congress as America's first bank. It went through a number of charter changes and minor upheavals until merging with the Commercial Trust Company to form 1923's Bank of North America and Trust Company. That didn't survive long; by the 1870s, Pennsylvania Company for Insurance on Lives and Granting Annuities had transitioned to banking in the 1870s, and it bought the old bank in 1929, and shortly thereafter renamed itself the Pennsylvania Company for Banking and Trust. It was led in the