1 Dollar Central Bank of Virginia

The Central Bank of Virginia was a Richmond-chartered institution that issued notes under the authority of the Commonwealth during the Civil War, when Virginia's banking system fractured badly between state-chartered banks, the Confederate treasury, and competing local scrip. This note was printed by the American Bank Note Company in New York — a Union city — from plates almost certainly engraved before secession, when ABNCo held contracts with dozens of Southern banks and had no reason to anticipate the political rupture that would make delivering those finished notes an act of extraordinary logistical difficulty.

By 1862, ABNCo was technically enemy territory for Virginia's issuers. How finished stock moved south, and when, remains a matter of incomplete documentation for most Virginia bank series.