City Bank of Montreal was a relatively short-lived chartered institution, and its note-issuing activity in the 1850s places this squarely in the competitive era of Canadian free banking, when dozens of chartered banks circulated their own paper alongside each other with no central authority to backstop them. Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson — the New York firm that later merged into the American Bank Note Company in 1858 — supplied engraved plates to a significant portion of North American chartered banks during this period, making their Montreal imprint here somewhat unusual.
City Bank failed in 1875, at which point outstanding notes became liabilities of the liquidating estate rather than redeemable instruments.
City Bank of Montreal was a relatively short-lived chartered institution, and its note-issuing activity in the 1850s places this squarely in the competitive era of Canadian free banking, when dozens of chartered banks circulated their own paper alongside each other with no central authority to backstop them. Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson — the New York firm that later merged into the American Bank Note Company in 1858 — supplied engraved plates to a significant portion of North American chartered banks during this period, making their Montreal imprint here somewhat unusual.
City Bank failed in 1875, at which point outstanding notes became liabilities of the liquidating estate rather than redeemable instruments.