Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
2 Dollars Greensboro Mutual - North Carolina
| Issuer | Greensboro Mutual Life Insurance and Trust Co. |
|---|---|
| Year | 1858 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 2 Dollars (2 USD) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | The face is dominated by a central vignette of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, seated within an ornate large numeral '2', accompanied by a sheaf of wheat and two flanking pastoral scenes — a farmer with a horse-drawn plow on one side and wheat harvesters on the other. An oval portrait of a man is positioned in the lower-right corner, with a handwritten serial number at the middle-left margin. A manuscript signature of Dr. David Weir, company treasurer and former principal of the Edgeworth Female Seminary, appears near the lower edge. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is entirely plain, bearing no printed design, lettering, or ornamentation, consistent with the period practice for private scrip and insurance company currency issues of the antebellum American South. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Greensboro Mutual Life Insurance and Trust Company was one of a small number of Southern insurance and trust firms that briefly entered the currency business in the late antebellum period, issuing scrip against their own reserves rather than a formal banking charter. North Carolina's banking laws were restrictive enough that quasi-banking through insurance structures became a practical workaround for local capital needs.
Notes printed locally in Greensboro at this date are uncommon survivals — most circulated heavily in the regional retail economy and were redeemed or simply worn out before the Civil War disrupted everything. The Confederacy's monetary reorganization after 1861 rendered all such private instruments worthless almost overnight.