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2 Shillings - Colony of New York
| Issuer | Provincial Congress of New York |
|---|---|
| Year | 1776 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | The left portion carries the authorizing letterpress text in period typography, with the denomination and legal tender declaration set within an ornate ruled border; a scrollwork vignette at the upper centre bears the name 'YORK' in cursive script. The central vignette presents the royal coat of arms of Great Britain, flanked by two armoured supporters above a ribbon scroll, with the denomination 'Two Shillings.' inscribed in italic script below. A dense guilloche-patterned vertical panel runs along the right margin, and a decorative floral lace border frames the lower edge. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | ONE QUARTER OF A DOLLAR THIS BILL shall pafs cur- rent in all Payments in this Colony, for TWO SHILLINGS, (being equal to One Quarter of a Spanish Milled Dollar) or the Value thereof in Gold or Silver; according to the REsolution of the Provincial Congress of New-York, on the fifth Day of March, 1776 |
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| Comments |
New York's Provincial Congress authorized this emission in June 1776, weeks before independence was formally declared. The colony — soon to become a state — was already functioning as a revolutionary government, and these notes were issued under military and political pressure as British forces massed for what would become the successful seizure of New York City that August.
The 2 Shilling denomination was among the lowest in the series, intended for everyday transactional use at a moment when hard money had effectively vanished from circulation. Counterfeiting of colonial paper was a serious and deliberate problem — the British ran organized forgery operations to destabilize rebel finances — and New York issues from this period used nature-printed leaf patterns as a security measure, a technique pioneered by Benjamin Franklin decades earlier.
Most surviving examples show heavy handling; notes of this denomination were spent, not saved.