Catalog
10 Dollars Franklin Bank
| Issuer | Franklin Bank, Boston, Massachusetts |
|---|---|
| Year | 1836-1837 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Intaglio-printed note on white cotton paper with an intricate layout typical of the antebellum American bank note style. At center, an oval portrait vignette of Benjamin Franklin is framed by a wreath, flanked on the left by a harbor scene with sailing vessels and an allegorical female figure with an eagle, and on the right by a pastoral agricultural scene with a second allegorical female figure. Denomination numeral "10" appears in large ornate counters at each corner, with guilloche lathe-work borders throughout; the bank title "THE FRANKLIN BANK" and place name "BOSTON" are set in bold letterpress, with the promise-to-pay text and date completed in manuscript, and two manuscript signatures of the cashier and president appear at lower center. |
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| Signature(s) | Benj. F. Hathorne (Cashier) and W. Richardson (President) |
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| Comments |
The Franklin Bank of Boston was chartered in 1831 and operated during one of the most turbulent periods in American banking history. By 1836–1837, wildcat banking and reckless credit expansion had pushed the country toward the Panic of 1837, and Boston's institutions were not immune. The Franklin Bank suspended specie payments along with most of the nation's banks in May 1837, making notes issued in this window genuinely uncertain in redemption value at the time they circulated.
New England Bank Note Co. was among the more technically capable regional security printers of the period, but the real vulnerability of these notes was institutional, not mechanical. The Franklin Bank ultimately did not survive the decade.