1896 Educational Series

In 1896 the Bureau of Engraving and Printing issued three silver certificates that set aside the centered portrait and geometric lathe guilloche for mural allegories. The series takes its name from the title of the $1, History Instructing Youth. Only the $1, $2, and $5 were released. Within a few years the Treasury replaced them with the Series of 1899. The $1, Fr. 224, serial B3207078, Tillman–Morgan signatures, already has a note page. The $2, Fr. 247, serial 1712091, plate C, Tillman–Morgan signatures, also has a note page. The $5 does not yet add an example to the catalog.

Silver, bimetallism, and the certificate

A silver certificate stood for silver held in Treasury vaults. After the Civil War the United States tied the dollar to gold. The Coinage Act of 1873 left the standard silver dollar off the list of authorized coins; agrarians and Western miners called it the “Crime of ’73.” Deflation made farm debts harder to pay while the Comstock Lode and other strikes flooded the silver market. The political demand was free and unlimited coinage at the legal ratio of 16 to 1.

The Bland-Allison Act of February 1878 passed over Rutherford B. Hayes’s veto and required the Treasury to buy between two and four million dollars of silver bullion each month and coin it. The silver dollar was too heavy for daily trade. The paper that represented it began at $10 and above. On 4 August 1886 the act was amended to allow $1, $2, and $5 certificates.

The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 required the purchase of 4.5 million ounces a month. That inflow of silver weakened the gold reserve and fed the Panic of 1893. Grover Cleveland won repeal late that year. In 1896, the year of William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech, the Treasury commissioned these designs to give a contested paper the look of a work of art.

Claude M. Johnson and the pocket mural

The visual language came from the American Renaissance and from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the “White City”: Beaux-Arts symmetry, neoclassical façades, and allegorical murals. The fair drew more than 27 million visits in six months.

Claude M. Johnson, Chief of the BEP, commissioned the faces in 1893 from three Paris-trained muralists — Will H. Low, Edwin H. Blashfield, and Walter Shirlaw — rather than from the bureau’s usual bank-note designers. The sources put the fee at $800 per approved design and give an inflation-adjusted equivalent above $20,000 today. Johnson ordered that the face carry no geometric lathework. No federal note issued since 1861 had lacked that device on the obverse. Chief Engraver Thomas F. Morris opposed the order on counterfeiting grounds and was overruled.

The original plan ran through $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500, and $1,000. Only the three low denominations circulated. The sources say five of the original canvases still hang at the BEP.

$1: History Instructing Youth

The face is by Will H. Low, engraved by Charles Schlecht. Schlecht began in August 1892 and finished on 1 January 1895; the design was accepted on 10 July 1894 and printing started on 18 April 1896. History, in a laurel wreath, reclines on a marble block and points with her right hand toward the Potomac, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol dome. A boy stands beside her. At right the Constitution is displayed; a flag lies across History’s lap. The border carries the surnames of 23 Americans — among them Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Lincoln, Fulton, Morse, and Grant — each in a wreath. An open book sits in each lower corner.

The back, by Thomas F. Morris, restores the lathework missing from the face. Martha Washington, at left, is Charles Burt’s 1878 engraving; George Washington, at right, is Alfred Sealey’s of 1867. L. F. Ellis, James Kennedy, D. S. Ronaldson, G. U. Rose, Jr., and E. M. Hall also worked on the back. A large “1” fills the center. Part of the public objected: no one should come between George and Martha.

On 2 August 1896 The New York Times said the preamble printed on the note spelled “tranquility” with one L. Notes were hoarded at a premium of 10 to 25 cents, on the assumption of a recalled error. The BEP answered that the single-L spelling was the accepted orthography in 1787 and that the note was not an error. The premium disappeared.

$2: Science, steam, and electricity

Johnson had first asked Low for a $2 titled War and Defence. He demanded changes — a softer chin on the male figure, the flag removed — and in January 1895 rejected the design as “not satisfactory.” The commission went to Edwin H. Blashfield, later the painter of the Library of Congress dome and of the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building at the Chicago fair.

The title is Science presenting steam and electricity to Commerce and Manufacture. Five figures form a pyramid: Science stands and presents two youths — one holding a galvanic coil, Electricity; one holding a throttle, Steam — to Commerce, seated with a money bag, and Manufacture, seated among machinery and goods. Blashfield wrote Johnson that the composition was meant for a $50 and that compressing it onto a single-digit note ruined it. Johnson kept the $2. G. F. C. Smillie engraved the central vignette, Charles Schlecht the border, and Thomas F. Morris the ground and inner frame.

The back, designed by Morris and engraved by Lorenzo J. Hatch, places Robert Fulton and Samuel F. B. Morse in roundels.

$5: Electricity as the Dominant Force in the World

Walter Shirlaw — muralist, painter, former American Bank Note Company engraver, and a founder of the Society of American Artists — designed the vignette. Winged Electricity holds a glowing bulb. At her left, Jupiter rides a chariot with a thunderbolt; beside him Fame blows a trumpet over a map of the United States. At right a bald eagle stands, and behind it Peace holds a dove. The Capitol dome is in the distance. G. F. C. Smillie engraved the face. Morris persuaded Johnson to fill with plants a set of shields that had been blank.

An 1893 ivoryette of Annie Wintermuth carries a reverse inscription signed by Fred Smillie: “Miss Annie Wintermuth of New York City; Original for central figure and face in engraving of Shirlaw’s $5.00 ‘picture note’ silver certificate of 1894-5.” The E-Sylum and Intelligent Collector publish that find.

The back, by Morris and Hatch and engraved chiefly by Smillie, shows Ulysses S. Grant at left and Philip H. Sheridan at right. Collectors have rumored that the female head at top center was modeled on the wife of Thomas F. Morris. This page does not treat that as fact.

Denominations that were not issued

Designs were planned for $10, $20, $50, $100, $500, and $1,000. The $10, using artwork by Charles S. Reinhart, turned on Agriculture; Blashfield’s first layout was intended for the $50. Face die proofs and essays survive in BEP archives and sometimes appear at auction. Heritage has offered, for example, an Fr. 268 face proof. The reaction to the three issued values ended the series before the higher denominations were produced.

Objection, ink, and the teller’s window

Art critics praised the series. Banks and part of the public did not. On the $5, Electricity is shown with a bare breast, ordinary in a Beaux-Arts mural and unfamiliar on a note in daily use. Conservative groups — high-society women in Boston are the group usually named — asked that the “indelicate” figures be recalled and clothed. Several Massachusetts banks are reported to have refused the $5. That is the origin of the legend that the phrase “banned in Boston” began with this note. The BEP prepared a draped version for an 1897 printing; the series was canceled before it was made.

Use mattered more. The face intaglio called for a heavy charge of black ink. Notes left the press dark, and in circulation the ink smeared until the paper looked suspicious. Tellers missed the numeral in the upper corners: the mural filled the face and counting a stack was slow. The missing lathework on the face, as Morris had warned, left open grounds easier to copy by photography or lithography.

Lyman J. Gage and the Series of 1899

After William McKinley took office, Lyman J. Gage — a Chicago banker, of the First National Bank, and a gold-standard advocate — became Secretary of the Treasury in 1897. Gage did not want mural painters on the currency. He asked for a return to the “old style”: clear counters, visible blank paper, and lathework. The BEP stopped the Educational Series, dropped the higher denominations, and released the Series of 1899 silver certificates.

Smillie, who had just engraved Electricity, engraved Running Antelope, the only Native American used as the central motif on United States federal paper. Accounts say the three-feather headdress in the source photograph was too tall for the format and that Smillie replaced it with a Pawnee war bonnet. The mural note did not return.

Friedberg and the signatures

Large-size federal paper is arranged by Friedberg number: denomination, series year, seal, and the signature pair of the Register of the Treasury and the Treasurer of the United States.

Blanche K. Bruce, Register from 1897 to 1898 (Fr. 225, 248, and 269), had been enslaved, was the first African American to serve a full term in the Senate, and was the first whose signature appeared on United States paper money. Q. David Bowers and David M. Sundman, in 100 Greatest American Currency Notes, place the $1 at number 7 and the $5 at number 5.

$1 serials: one continuous count

On the $1 the numbering does not restart when the signers change. Fr. 224 (Tillman–Morgan) and Fr. 225 (Bruce–Roberts) share one counter. The first issued sheet carries serials 1–4 and the second sheet 5–8, so the series begins at 1. This page does not set the serial at which Tillman–Morgan gives way to Bruce–Roberts, or the last number printed. No BEP production ledger consulted here closes that figure, and a round break at 30,000,000 does not fit: Fr. 224 notes survive above 30 million.

The $1 in this collection is Fr. 224, Tillman–Morgan, serial B3207078: counter 3,207,078. It falls very early in Fr. 224 production, within the first several million. It already has a note page. The serial is neither low nor fancy: it is ordinary, only early against a count that runs into the tens of millions.

The PMG population report has been cited at about 4,400 certified Fr. 224 notes and about 1,670 Fr. 225 notes. That counts what is slabbed today, not what was printed.

Grades, cited figures, and sheets held elsewhere

PMG and PCGS Banknote grade on the 1–70 scale. EPQ and PPQ mark original, unwashed paper. Smeared ink and daily use leave few high-grade notes. The figures below are those published by the dealer and auction links cited at the end. They are not hammers checked by Notofilia.

For the $1, a Very Good 8 has been listed in the $300 to $450 band; a Very Fine 25 to 30, between $900 and $2,000; a Gem Uncirculated 66 EPQ, above $15,000 to $20,000 at a cited auction. For the $2, a circulated note has been placed from about $3,000; a video cites $40,800 for a PMG 67 EPQ. For the $5, even low grades are described in those sources as several thousand dollars; The E-Sylum records $72,000 in 2024 for an Fr. 268 in PCGS 68 PPQ, tied for finest known in that account.

Claude M. Johnson bought the first uncut sheets, serials 1, 2, 3, and 4 of all three denominations, and kept them in a folio titled UNITED STATES PROOF BANK NOTES ISSUED 1896, with a three-page typewritten letter. Those sheets later entered the cabinet of Harry W. Bass, Jr., graded AU-55 by PMG. Bowers, presenting them at auction, called them the most important lot ever offered in the history of collecting American paper money. The Monarch Collection holds another sheet of four $1 notes, also PMG 55; CoinWeek describes it as the only known sheet with the Bruce–Roberts signatures, against other $1 sheets that carry Tillman–Morgan. Those objects are not in this case. The cut $1, Fr. 224, serial B3207078, already has a note page. The cut $2, Fr. 247, serial 1712091, also has a note page. The $5 does not yet.