History of US Paper Money: Colonial Bills, Continentals, Greenbacks and Federal Reserve Notes
American paper money is older than the United States. It starts with a colony printing bills to pay soldiers in 1690, runs through a revolutionary currency that collapsed, seven decades in which private banks printed their own money, and a Civil War that forced the federal government back into the printing business for good.
First bills, 1690 Federal paper resumes 1861 Notes shrink in 1929 More than a dozen note classes
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Last updated: September 2026
American paper money begins in 1690, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony issued bills of credit to pay for a military expedition. Federal paper followed in 1775 with Continental Currency, restarted in 1861 with Demand Notes, and settled into today's Federal Reserve Note after 1914. More than a dozen distinct classes of note circulated along the way.
What was the first paper money in America?
The first paper money in America was issued by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1690 to fund military expeditions. The US Currency Education Program dates the birth of paper currency in the United States to that issue. Every colony that followed printed bills against its own future taxes.
The problem Massachusetts faced is the one that produced almost every early paper currency: a government with an immediate bill and no coin. Rather than default on soldiers returning from a failed expedition, the colony issued bills of credit, promises against future tax revenue that could be passed from hand to hand in the meantime (US Currency Education Program). Other colonies followed, and by the middle of the eighteenth century paper money was ordinary in British North America in a way it was not in Britain itself.
How did colonial paper money work?
Each colony issued its own bills against its own future taxes, and each printed its own defenses against counterfeiting. Benjamin Franklin's contribution was the most durable: from 1739 he used nature prints, inked impressions taken from real leaves, because no two leaves share a vein structure.
That technique is the reason Franklin-era colonial notes still look different from everything printed around them. The leaf impression could not be cut by hand from a picture, and Franklin's Philadelphia shop layered other defenses on top of it, including colored fibers and mica worked into the paper itself. The US Currency Education Program dates the first nature-printed notes to 1739. The market takes them seriously: a Pennsylvania 20 shillings note dated 10 August 1739, graded PMG VF-35, realized $55,200 at the Stack's Bowers Galleries November 2023 US Currency Auction (CoinWeek).
Colonial bills were not a single currency. A Massachusetts bill was not a Pennsylvania bill, values drifted apart, and a merchant moving between colonies had to know what he was holding. That fragmentation is the background against which the Continental Congress tried to create one currency for all thirteen colonies at once.
What happened to Continental Currency?
Congress issued eleven emissions of Continental Currency between 1775 and 1779 to pay for the Revolutionary War, then stopped. The bills depreciated as the war dragged on, ceased to circulate by 1781, and were funded in 1790 at one hundred old dollars for one dollar in federal bonds.
The scale is easy to underestimate. Continental Currency supplied 82 percent of the federal government's income across that period, according to the Massachusetts Historical Society, and by the end of 1779 nearly $200 million in net new Continental dollars had been emitted (Farley Grubb, University of Delaware). Britain counterfeited the May 1777 and April 1778 emissions so heavily that Congress recalled both in their entirety.
The political consequence outlived the money. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787 the power to emit paper money was struck from the new Constitution, a decision taken by men who had just watched the Continental collapse. That is why the next eighty years of American paper money were printed by banks rather than by the federal government. Our full account of the series, including the emission table and how to tell a genuine bill from a replica, is on the Continental Currency page.
Who issued American paper money between 1780 and 1861?
State-chartered private banks did. For roughly seventy years the paper Americans carried was designed, printed and backed by individual banks, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is blunt about the result: people could never be sure the money they received would be accepted for deposit or as payment.
These are the notes collectors call obsolete or broken bank notes. Each bank printed its own designs, the notes circulated at a discount that varied widely from bank to bank across the country, and businesses were under no obligation to take them at all (BEP History Fact Sheet: National Bank Notes). Thousands of banks issued them and a great many of those banks failed, which is where the word broken comes from.
The era produced some of the most beautiful engraving in American history, because banks competed on how their money looked, and it produced a currency system nobody could actually navigate. Both facts explain what happened next.
How did the Civil War create modern US currency?
The war did in four years what eighty years of argument had not. Between 1861 and 1865 the federal government issued its first circulating paper money, made that paper tender by statute, created a national banking system, invented fractional paper to replace vanished coins, and founded the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
The sequence is tight. In 1861 the Treasury issued Demand Notes, the first paper currency issued by the US government, authorized by the acts of 17 July and 5 August 1861 and payable on demand in gold coin at named Treasury offices (BEP History Fact Sheet: Demand Notes). In 1862 the Legal Tender Act of 25 February created United States Notes, the first widely circulated federal paper, and the Treasury seal appeared on American currency for the first time. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing itself dates its foundation to 1862, when workers were signing, separating and trimming sheets of Demand Notes inside the Treasury building (BEP).
In 1863 three more things happened. The National Bank Act of 25 February created federally chartered banks that could issue standardized National Bank Notes backed by government bonds deposited with the Treasury. The act of 3 March authorized Fractional Currency, paper in denominations from three to fifty cents, because the public had hoarded every coin worth hoarding. And the same 3 March act authorized Gold Certificates, which were first produced in 1865. The full story of the greenback, including the Supreme Court fight over it, is on our greenbacks and Legal Tender Notes page.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing did not print all American money at first. Fractional Currency was produced by two private firms, the American Bank Note Company and the National Bank Note Company, because the Bureau was brand new. Congress formally established the Bureau in 1874, and the BEP began printing all United States currency in 1877 (BEP).
What are the types of United States paper money?
More than a dozen distinct classes of note have circulated in the United States, each with its own issuer, its own backing and usually its own seal color. The table below is the map. Every row names what stood behind the note and where a collector can realistically get into that class.
| Note type | Years issued | Issuer | Backing | Distinguishing seal or color | Collector entry point |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colonial bills of credit | 1690 to the 1770s | Individual colonies, Massachusetts Bay first | The issuing colony's future tax revenue | No Treasury seal; hand signed, with nature-printed leaf backs from 1739 | A circulated Pennsylvania or New Jersey bill from the Franklin printing circle |
| Continental Currency | 1775 to 1779 | Continental Congress | Redemption promised against future state remittances in specie | No seal; hand signed and hand numbered, with Fugio and linked-ring emblems | A single circulated bill from one of the commoner emissions |
| Obsolete and broken bank notes | Roughly the 1790s to the 1860s | State-chartered private banks | The issuing bank alone | No federal seal; every bank designed its own note | Notes from failed banks, often the cheapest antique American paper there is |
| Demand Notes | 1861 to 1862 | US Treasury | Payable on demand in gold coin at named Treasury offices | No Treasury seal at all, the only federal class without one | Effectively closed; fewer than 200 have ever been certified by PMG |
| United States Notes (Legal Tender Notes) | 1862 to 1971 | US Treasury | Tender by statute; redeemable in gold from 1878 to 1933 | Red seal, standardized red from Series 1928 | Small-size red seal $2 and $5, Series 1928 through 1963 |
| Fractional Currency | 1862 to 1876 | US Treasury | Replaced coin during the wartime coin shortage | The first three issues carry no Treasury seal; the fourth adds one | Third and fourth issue 10, 25 and 50 cent notes |
| National Bank Notes | 1863 to 1935 | Federally chartered national banks | US government bonds deposited with the Treasury | Brown seal on small-size notes; every note names its bank, town and charter number | A large-city charter in circulated grade, before chasing a small town |
| Gold Certificates | 1865 to 1933 | US Treasury | Gold coin on deposit at the Treasury | Orange seal and vivid gold-orange backs | Series 1928 $10 and $20, the most available of the class |
| Silver Certificates | 1878 to 1965 | US Treasury | Silver coin, later silver bullion, on deposit | Blue seal on small-size notes | Series 1935 and 1957 $1 notes, the classic first US note |
| Treasury Coin Notes | 1890 to 1893 | US Treasury | Silver bullion bought under the Sherman Silver Purchase Law | Large brown and small red seals across the two series | The 1890 and 1891 $1 and $2, far below the famous $1,000 |
| Federal Reserve Notes | 1914 to the present | The Federal Reserve System, through 12 district banks | Redeemable in gold until 1933, then in lawful money | Green seal, with a district letter and number on the face | Anything in your wallet, then star notes and fancy serials |
| Federal Reserve Bank Notes | 1916 to 1945 | Individual Federal Reserve Banks, not the System | The obligation of the issuing bank alone | Brown seal on the small-size 1929 issues | The 1929 series, the most obscure class in American money |
| WWII emergency issues | 1942 to 1944 | US Treasury and the Federal Reserve | Ordinary notes marked so they could be repudiated if territory fell | HAWAII overprinted front and back; yellow seal dollars for North Africa | A Hawaii $1 Silver Certificate in circulated grade |
| Military Payment Certificates | 1946 to 1973 | US Department of Defense, printed by the BEP | Scrip for use on designated overseas bases | No Treasury seal; 13 series issued and withdrawn | A common series in circulated grade, then the withdrawn ones |
Class dates, issuers, authorizing acts and backing from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing History Fact Sheets: Demand Notes, United States Notes, Fractional Currency, National Bank Notes, Gold Certificates, Silver Certificates, Treasury Coin Notes, Federal Reserve Notes, Federal Reserve Bank Notes, Special and Allied Military Currency and Military Payment Certificates. Seal colors by class from the BEP booklet Currency Notes.
A few of those rows carry dates worth knowing on their own. Silver Certificates were authorized by the Bland-Allison act of 28 February 1878, gained $1, $2 and $5 denominations in 1886, and were last issued in 1965. Treasury Coin Notes lasted three years, from the Sherman Silver Purchase Law of 14 July 1890 to its repeal in 1893, which is why the Series 1890 designs exist in such a narrow window and why the Series 1890 $1,000 is the note behind the American auction record. National Bank Notes ran from 1863 until 1935, when the bonds securing them were retired.
Why did American banknotes get smaller in 1929?
To cut the cost of printing money and to standardize it. In 1929 all Federal Reserve Notes were made about 30 percent smaller, from 7.375 by 3.125 inches down to 6.14 by 2.61 inches, and uniform designs were instituted for each denomination across every class of currency.
Two things changed at once, and the second matters more to a collector than the first. Before 1929 a $10 Silver Certificate, a $10 National Bank Note and a $10 Federal Reserve Note looked like three different notes. After 1929 they looked like the same note in three seal colors, because the design was fixed per denomination and only the seal, the serial number color and the obligation text distinguished the class (BEP History Fact Sheet: Federal Reserve Notes).
The Treasury seal was standardized at the same moment. From Series 1928 the seal had a toothed outer edge and was the same across all classes except for its color: green for Federal Reserve Notes, blue for Silver Certificates, orange for Gold Certificates, red for United States Notes, and brown for National Bank Notes and Federal Reserve Bank Notes (BEP, Currency Notes). Between 1862 and 1929 the seal had varied so widely that a single issue could appear with four different seal types, and the BEP notes that no documentation has been found explaining why.
How did Federal Reserve Notes take over?
Federal Reserve Notes were authorized by the Federal Reserve Act of 23 December 1913, and the first $10 notes appeared in 1914. They outlasted every competing class: Gold Certificates went in 1933, National Bank Notes in 1935, Federal Reserve Bank Notes in 1945, Silver Certificates in 1965 and United States Notes in 1971.
The takeover was gradual and often driven by crisis. The first issues of 1914 and 1918 ran from $5 to $10,000 and carried red or blue Treasury seals. Federal Reserve Notes were redeemable in gold until the Gold Reserve Act ended that in 1933, after which they became redeemable in lawful money. Production of the $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 notes stopped by 1945, and in 1969 those denominations were formally discontinued for lack of use. The $1 Federal Reserve Note did not appear until 1963, and the $2 not until the 1976 series.
Everything else fell away around them. The 1933 banking crisis pushed the country off the gold standard and took Gold Certificates out of circulation. National Bank Notes ended in 1935 when the Treasury retired the bonds that secured them. Federal Reserve Bank Notes, an emergency currency that was reissued during the 1933 bank holiday and again from December 1942, were ended by Congress in the summer of 1945. Silver Certificates stopped in 1965, and the last United States Notes were delivered in 1971. Since then Federal Reserve Notes have been the only currency notes issued in the United States, and our United States banknotes reference covers the modern series in detail.
Where should a collector start with US paper money?
Start with a class rather than a date. Pick one type from the table above, learn its seal color, its obligation text and its series range, and buy three notes inside it before you buy anything outside it. That approach beats a scattered pile of one-of-everything every time.
Three routes work well for a first year. A seal-color set is the cheapest and clearest: a blue seal Silver Certificate, a red seal United States Note, a brown seal National Bank Note or Federal Reserve Bank Note and a green seal Federal Reserve Note give you the whole modern system on one page. A Civil War route runs Demand Note to Legal Tender Note to Fractional Currency to National Bank Note, and only the first of those is out of reach. A geography route means National Bank Notes, where the town on the note does more to set the price than the denomination.
Whatever you pick, two habits pay for themselves. Learn the grading scale before you spend, because condition multiplies scarcity into price, and our banknote grading guide walks the ladder from Good to Gem Uncirculated. And decide early whether you want certified notes; the comparison of graded versus raw banknotes explains what a PMG or PCGS holder is actually guaranteeing.
Browse the current United States banknotes selection to see what is available, then follow the thread you find most interesting. Continental Currency is the beginning of federal paper, greenbacks are where the modern dollar starts, Silver Certificates and Gold Certificates are the two great backed classes, Fractional Currency is the strangest, and Military Payment Certificates are the most recent American paper to be retired entirely. Collectors who want the top of the market should read our ranking of the most valuable US banknotes, and anyone drawn to the Civil War will end up at Confederate currency sooner or later. If you want to know how any of this was physically made, start with how banknotes are printed, and if a term here is unfamiliar the banknote glossary defines it.
Planet Banknote is a family-owned dealership in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 2021. Every note is sourced direct from mints, central banks, and authorized distributors, inspected through our Planet Banknote Verified process, and ships with a free Certificate of Authenticity. US orders ship free via USPS Priority, and every order includes a free bonus gift.
Frequently asked questions
What was the first paper money in the United States?
The Massachusetts Bay Colony issued bills of credit in 1690 to fund military expeditions, and the US Currency Education Program dates the birth of paper currency in the United States to that issue. Other colonies followed, each printing bills against its own future tax revenue, so colonial paper money was thirteen separate currencies rather than one.
What was the first federal paper money?
Continental Currency, issued by the Continental Congress in eleven emissions between 1775 and 1779 to pay for the Revolutionary War. After it collapsed, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 struck the power to emit paper money from the new Constitution, and the federal government did not issue circulating paper again until the Demand Notes of 1861.
Who printed American money before the Civil War?
State-chartered private banks did, for roughly seventy years. Each bank designed and printed its own notes, and those notes circulated at a discount that varied widely from bank to bank, with businesses under no obligation to accept them. Collectors call this material obsolete or broken bank notes, and it is often the cheapest antique American paper available.
What do the different seal colors on US banknotes mean?
They identify the class of note. From Series 1928 the Treasury seal was standardized across all classes except for color: green for Federal Reserve Notes, blue for Silver Certificates, orange for Gold Certificates, red for United States Notes, and brown for National Bank Notes and Federal Reserve Bank Notes. Before 1929 seal colors and styles varied widely from issue to issue.
Why are US banknotes smaller than they used to be?
In 1929 all notes were made about 30 percent smaller, going from 7.375 by 3.125 inches to 6.14 by 2.61 inches, to cut printing costs and standardize the currency. At the same time uniform designs were instituted for each denomination across every class, so only the seal color and the obligation text distinguish one class from another.
How many types of US paper money have there been?
More than a dozen distinct classes have circulated, including colonial bills, Continental Currency, obsolete bank notes, Demand Notes, United States Notes, Fractional Currency, National Bank Notes, Gold Certificates, Silver Certificates, Treasury Coin Notes, Federal Reserve Bank Notes, Federal Reserve Notes, wartime emergency issues and Military Payment Certificates. Only Federal Reserve Notes are still issued.
When did the Bureau of Engraving and Printing start printing all US currency?
In 1877. The Bureau traces its foundation to 1862, when workers were signing, separating and trimming sheets of Demand Notes inside the Treasury building, but Congress did not formally establish it until 1874. Before 1877 private firms such as the American Bank Note Company and the National Bank Note Company printed much of the nation's currency.