1 Dollar Somerset and Worcester Savings Bank - Maryland

Somerset and Worcester Savings Bank was a small institution serving the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and its decision to issue scrip in 1862 places it squarely within the broader collapse of small-denomination federal coinage from circulation — hoarding after the outbreak of the Civil War created an acute shortage of coin, prompting hundreds of state-chartered banks and private firms to fill the gap with their own paper. The American Bank Note Company, then the dominant security printer in the country, handled an enormous volume of this emergency business.

Maryland's ambiguous political position during the war — a slave state that remained in the Union under considerable federal pressure — gave its banking institutions an unusual operating environment throughout 1862.