1 Franc - Caisse Héritiers Georges Perrin Cornimont [88]

Cornimont is a small textile manufacturing town in the Vosges, and notes like this one proliferated across northeastern France in the weeks following the August 1914 mobilization, when the removal of working-age men and the hoarding of metal coinage caused immediate small-change paralysis at the local level. The Héritiers Georges Perrin — the heirs of a commercial or industrial concern — issued this emergency franc through what was essentially a private commercial guarantee, redeemable at their establishment rather than through any banking authority.

The JP reference places it within the vast Jérôme Picard documentation of French necessity notes, which catalogued hundreds of such emissions from individual firms, chambers of commerce, and municipal bodies. A watermark on paper this thin and informally produced is worth noting — it suggests the issuers sourced pre-watermarked stock rather than commissioning a purpose-printed security paper.