2 Dollars = 10 Shillings

Farmer's Joint Stock Banking Co. was one of dozens of Upper Canadian free banking operations chartered under the 1850 Free Banking Act — though this note predates that legislation by a year, placing it in the murky transitional period when colonial banks issued on their own authority before standardized regulation caught up with them. The dual denomination, two dollars expressed as ten shillings, reflects a monetary system still straddling British sterling and the emerging decimal currency that would not be formally adopted until 1858.

Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson were among the most prolific security printers in North America at mid-century, operating out of New York before their eventual absorption into the American Bank Note Company in 1858.