Currency Issued by Banks and Other Corporate Bodies, Businesses, Etc.

Scope and content:

The Continental Congress issued a great quantity of paper currency in order to finance the Revolution. The depreciation of this money and its economic effects produced a distrust of any national paper currency. For that reason the 1789 Constitution forbade the states to issue paper money. The Constitution was deliberately silent on the federal government's right to do so. However, there was no ban against their issuance by private organizations and local governments. This loophole was utilized to provide paper currency which was both convenient and necessary for economic life. Over 30,000 varieties of notes were issued by 1,600 different banks in 34 different states between 1790 and 1865. These figures do not include the issues of local governments and private businesses that were not banks. The history of this money ended substantially during the Civil War. The Confederate government and the various states of the Confederacy issued paper currency-during the war. The U.S. Congress authorized a national paper currency in 1861, and it is the only paper currency to survive the Civil War as a significant economic factor. Some currency and scrip continued to be issued at various times by businesses and local governments, but it was economically and quantitatively insignificant. It should be remembered, of course, that the federal government issued gold and silver coinage during this period.

The paper currency in this collection issued by banks and other public and private organizations and businesses numbers 1225 items dating between 1815 and 1906. Most of the money dates from 1815 into the 1860's. Every decade during this period is represented, but currency is most abundant during the 1850's and 1860's. After the Civil War there are occasional bills. See also the Raphael P. Thian Papers for a sizeable collection of this type of currency (Vols. 768 & 770).

This currency is divided into two sections, those bills deacidified and those bills not yet deacidified. There are 625 bills, 1815-1906, in the set not deacidified. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia are represented. They are:

1. Alabama (4 bills), 1855-1871;
2. Arkansas (2), 1861-1869;
3. Connecticut (4), 1825-1862;
4. Delaware (1), 1861;
5. District of Columbia (16), 1844-1862;
6. Florida (3), 1835-1859;
7. Georgia (192), 1816-1862;
8. Indiana (1), 1857;
9. Kentucky (7), 1837 & undated;
10. Louisiana (3), 1852-1861;
11. Maine (4), 1854-1862;
12. Maryland (8), 1841-1862;
13. Massachusetts (31), 1863-1873;
14. Michigan (12), 1835-1869;
15. Mississippi (41), 1837-1861;
16. Missouri (2), 1862;
17. New Hampshire (2), 1837-1862;
18. New Jersey (26), 1827-1862;
19. New York (38), 1816-1862;
20. North Carolina (91), 1837-1874;
21. Ohio (4), 1839-1862;
22. Pennsylvania (31), 1816-1865;
23. South Carolina (54), 1826-1873;
24. Tennessee (17), 1837-1862;
25. Texas (7), 1862-1864;
26. Utah (4), 1898-1906;
27. Vermont (6), 1815-1863;
28. Virginia (38), 1854-1862;
29. West Virginia (4), 1852-1860.

Six states are represented in the deacidified set that contains 599 bills, 1861-1867. They are:

1. Alabama (5), 1862-1864;
2. Florida (1), 1861;
3. Georgia (479), 1861-1864;
4. Louisiana (77), 1861-1867;
5. Mississippi (36), 1861-1863;
6. Texas (1), 1862.

This currency is arranged by states. Lists itemize each note. The lists record: name of the state; place of origin within the state; issuing body; denomination; serial letter or number; date; note number; and occasional comments.

Banks were the principal issuers of paper currency. From the samples in this collection it appears that railroads and local governments (cities, towns, counties, etc.) were notable sources of paper money, but not in the same magnitude as the banks. A great variety of private organizations and businesses issued money including the following types and examples represented in this collection: savings and loan; insurance; building; a lyceum; mining; manufacturing; a rice mill; a cotton mill; an apothecary; mercantile stores; a furniture warehouse; a hotel; a bakery; associations of planters and mechanics; bridges; steamship companies; a tow-boat company; canals; turnpikes, etc.

Many bills are fine examples of engraving and printing. Counterfeiting was a problem. "The private banks retaliated against the counterfeiters and made the process of manufacture more and more complex by using fancier paper, more complicated designs, more watermarks, secret printing marks, indentures, marbling, laminated papers, polychrome printing, 'mice' and/or fiber inclusions, composite plates, elaborately engraved ornaments, and portraits engraved by the finest artists of the period. All these countermeasures helped to create some exceptionally beautiful notes, some surpassing in many respects our present-day currency with its more limited designs and subject matter" (Gene Hessler, The Comprehensive Catalog of U.S. Paper Money, pp. 11-12).

Vignettes used as decorative and protective illustrations on bills were commonplace. They depicted a great variety of scenes as well as portraits of men and women. Some vignettes contain idealized scenes, mythological figures, etc. Many vignettes, however, are useful historical representations because either they were intended as realistic depictions or because the generalized views of scenes and activities record past objects, places, technology, workers, equipment, agriculture, manufacturing, animals, buildings, ships, trains, bridges, etc. Some examples in this collection are: a turnpike booth and gate and a view of Stoddartsville, Pa., from Wilkes-Barre Turnpike Co., 1816; gathering naval stores, Timber Cutter's Bank, Savannah, 1861; interior of a tobacco factory, screw presses, and blacks at work, Bank of Yanceyville, N.C., 1856; agricultural and dock scenes; Natural Bridge, Virginia Military Institute, and Washington College on Bank of Rockbridge bill, 1859; Mount Hecla Steam Cotton Mills, Greensboro, N.C., 1837; etc.

The portraits of men and women in the vignettes included not only notable and historical persons but also local citizenry, in most cases probably people connected with the bank. Women of all ages appear. An especially illustrative example is a five-dollar bill of the South Western Bank of Virginia at Wytheville in 1857 which contains the portraits of two men, the bank's president and cashier, and of two women, Florence Nightingale and a relation, probably the wife, of the bank's president. This bill is not in the collection, but it may be seen in Charles J. Affleck's The Obsolete Paper Money of Virginia, Vol. II, p. 253. The portraits of women on the currency in this collection represent all ages except infancy.

This paper currency sometimes circulated at par, but most often at a discount in places distant from the point of issue. Counterfeiting was a serious problem. It was also necessary and difficult to keep up with which banks had failed. "The situation was so alarming and prevalent that for the years from 1826 to 1866 numerous periodicals called 'Bank Note Reporters' and 'Counterfeit Detectors' were published, most of them today comparatively scarce. Of the 153 titles of such periodicals noted in W. H. Dillistin's Bank Note Reporters and Counterfeit Detectors, 1949, the American Antiquarian Society has 28, more than any library listed" (Clarence S. Brigham, Fifty Years of Collecting Americana of the Library of The American Antiquarian Society 1908-1958, p. 139). Perkins Library has several examples of these publications. For example, Bicknell's Counterfeit Detector and Bank Note List, Vol. XV, No. 5, Whole No. 186 (Philadelphia, March 2, 1846), listed three closed banks in North Carolina and the bills of other banks circulating in Philadelphia at discounts of 1 1/2% and 2%. The American Antiquarian Society has an extensive collection of paper currency.

There is no single, comprehensive bibliography of this currency as there is for colonial and Revolutionary currency. The closest thing to it is a series of articles published over a period of time in The Numismatist, a journal unavailable in this library. These articles were D. C. Wismer's "Descriptive List of Obsolete Paper Money, Part I - Embracing the Circulating Notes Issued by State Banks, Private Banks, Bankers and Corporations." These articles were illustrated and contained descriptions of each variety of bill issued by an institution. The Information Folder of this collection contains a photocopy of the North Carolina section published in The Numismatist during June-August, 1931. A more extensive list of the currency of twenty-one North Carolina banks is J. Roy Pennell, Jr.'s Obsolete Bank Notes of North Carolina (Anderson, S.C., undated) of which a photocopy is filed in the Information Folder. Bibliographies are available for some states. An excellent example is Charles J. Affleck's The Obsolete Paper Money of Virginia.

See also the tokens in this collection which were also issued by private businesses as currency.

1 item added, 8-18-83. A dollar bill issued on Feb. 2, 1852, at New York City by the Hungarian Fund. It was one of the American issues of Lajos Kossuth, President of the first Hungarian Republic (1848-1849), in his attempt to raise funds for a return from exile. This note is considered to be currency; see Colin Narbeth, et al., Collecting Paper Money and Bonds (New York, 1979), p. 53.

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