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10 Cents - Corporation of Charlestown Charlestown, Virginia
| Issuer | Corporation of Charlestown |
|---|---|
| Year | 1861 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Dollar |
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| Obverse description | At left, a vignette of Lady Liberty as an allegorical figure gazing into the distance; at right, a second vignette of a standing woman looking down toward a seated companion. Text in letterpress throughout, with the issuing authority and denomination centered. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | STATE OF VIRGINIA Issued by an Act of the Corporation of April 30th, 1861 Charlestown,_______________1861 No. A. DUE BY THE CORPORATION OF CHARLESTOWN, TEN CENTS Payable in Virginia Bank Notes by ________________ Treasurer, to the Bearer, on Presentation of these bills in sums of FIVE DOLLARS. Murphy, print. Balt___________Clerk of the Board________Pres. Murphy, print, Balt |
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| Comments |
Charlestown, Virginia — now Charles Town, West Virginia — was the county seat of Jefferson County, a place already infamous as the site of John Brown's trial and hanging in 1859. When this note was issued in 1861, Virginia had just seceded and the town sat directly in the path of what would become one of the most contested corridors of the entire war. Municipal scrip of this kind filled the vacuum left by hoarded coin; the federal government's suspension of specie payments in December 1861 only accelerated the collapse of small-change circulation.
Murphy of Baltimore was a competent regional printer, active across Maryland and Virginia for civic and commercial work during this period. Jefferson County itself changed hands between Union and Confederate forces more than seventy times during the war.