5 Dollars Bank of Philippi

The Bank of Philippi was chartered in Barbour County, Virginia — territory that voted overwhelmingly against secession in 1861 and became part of the new state of West Virginia in 1863. Notes issued under the Virginia bank charter were therefore circulating in what would shortly become enemy territory from the Confederate perspective, and the bank itself continued operating under Union-sympathetic governance through the war years.

Wellstood, Hay & Whiting was a New York security printing firm, which means this note was engraved and produced in the North before the political fracture made such arrangements impossible. By mid-1861, Southern banks could no longer place orders with Northern printers.