100 Dollars Canal Bank

The New Orleans Canal & Banking Company was chartered in 1831 primarily to finance construction of the New Canal — the navigational channel running from the city to Lake Pontchartrain. By the 1840s the canal itself was largely complete, and the bank had shifted almost entirely to commercial operations, issuing notes well into the Reconstruction period despite surviving two suspensions of specie payment and the upheaval of Louisiana's 1842 banking crisis, which forced a number of its competitors into liquidation.

Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson became the American Bank Note Company in 1858, which explains the abrupt transition in plate attribution mid-series. Notes printed before that consolidation carry the RWHE imprint; later issues from the same plates bear the successor firm's name.