Credit unions in the United States trace their roots to Manchester, N.H., in 1908, when the La Caisse Populaire Ste-Marie was founded to provide basic financial services to French-Canadian millworkers employed by Amoskeag Mills.

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By the early 1930s, 38 states had joined Massachusetts in establishing credit union charters.

Despite the organizers’ efforts, credit unions remained a comparative backwater in the financial services industry, even with their tax exemption. By the mid-1930s, they counted just 119,000 members and barely $2.2 million of deposits.

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But beginning in the mid-1970s, credit unions steadily expanded the menu of products and services they provided, as well as their fields of membership, all with the blessing of their federal regulator, the NCUA. Today, credit unions count more than 110 million people as members and hold deposits totaling $1.1 trillion. They are major players in auto and mortgage lending and are making deepening inroads into commercial and small-business lending.

Credit unions in the United States trace their roots to Manchester, N.H., in 1908, when the La Caisse Populaire Ste-Marie was founded to provide basic financial services to French-Canadian millworkers employed by Amoskeag Mills.