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10 Dollars Citizens Bank of Gosport - Indiana
| Issuer | Citizens Bank of Gosport |
|---|---|
| Year | 1857 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette of a drover herding cattle and sheep, with a roman numeral X integrated into a secondary vignette at lower left enclosing a seated lady, a cow, and a distant locomotive; a spread eagle occupies the lower right corner. Bank name and obligation text are set in letterpress across the face, with the printer imprint of Wellstood, Hay & Whiting, New York at the base. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | STATE OF INDIANA |
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| Comments |
Gosport, Indiana was a small Owen County mill town that never incorporated as a city — which makes the existence of a chartered bank there, issuing its own currency, one of the odder artifacts of the Free Banking era. Indiana's 1852 Free Banking Law allowed almost any group of investors to establish a bank of issue provided they deposited state or federal bonds as security, and dozens of institutions in marginal communities took advantage of it. The results were uneven. Many collapsed within a few years; redemption of their notes at par was never guaranteed outside the immediate locality.
Wellstood, Hay & Whiting operated out of New York and supplied engraved note work to numerous small Midwestern free banks during this period, often reusing plate elements across multiple issuers.