5 Dollars The Bank of Pittsylvania - Virginia

The Bank of Pittsylvania was chartered in Chatham, Virginia, and this note was printed by the American Bank Note Company in New York — almost certainly before Virginia's secession in April 1861, since ABNC's New York operations would have been inaccessible to Confederate-state banks once the war began. Many Virginia obsolete notes from 1861 share this awkward origin: engraved and printed in a city that was, within months, enemy territory.

Kelly's Virginia reference documents this as a reasonably scarce issue. Pittsylvania County was tobacco country, and the bank's notes circulated in a regional economy that shifted rapidly to Confederate currency as Federal forces tightened their grip on trade routes north.