20 Dollars New Orleans Canal and Banking Co.

The Canal and Banking Company was chartered by Louisiana in 1831 primarily to finance construction of the New Orleans Navigation Canal — banking was almost incidental to its original mandate. By the 1840s it had evolved into a full commercial bank, but the infrastructure origins explain the institution's unusual hybrid character among antebellum New Orleans issuers.

Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson was among the most technically sophisticated security printers operating in North America at the time, later absorbed into the American Bank Note Company in 1858 — which brackets the upper end of this note's issue window precisely.