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5 Dollars Bank of Georgetown, South Carolina
| Issuer | Bank of Georgetown |
|---|---|
| Year | 1854 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Cotton paper |
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| Obverse description | At the left, a heraldic eagle perched upon a shield charged with stars and stripes, surmounted by the word FIVE above and below the vignette. The centre panel carries the bank title, promise-to-pay legend, place of issue, and date in letterpress. At the right, a large numeral 5 set within a sunburst underprint accompanies a standing female allegorical figure holding a shield and spear. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is uniface and plain, presenting only the aged cotton-paper substrate with no printed design, vignettes, or lettering, consistent with mid-nineteenth-century American obsolete bank note production practice. |
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| Comments |
The Bank of Georgetown was chartered in South Carolina in 1812 and operated through the antebellum period as a regional institution serving one of the state's older port towns. By the 1850s, Georgetown's economic base had long centered on rice cultivation rather than cotton, making it something of an outlier among South Carolina's antebellum banking networks — the bulk of upcountry commercial activity ran through Charleston.
Obsolete notes from smaller South Carolina state-chartered banks of this period were frequently printed by bank note companies in New York or Philadelphia, with the issuing bank's name and locale added to stock plate designs shared across multiple institutions. Whether this note followed that pattern or used a bespoke plate is worth verifying against known printer imprints in the margin.
South Carolina's state banking system collapsed almost entirely during the Civil War.