Thanksgiving and US Banknotes

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US, and it is usually connected to the Pilgrims of early colonial America. The Pilgrims were religious dissenters who left England in the ship, Mayflower, and landed in Massachusetts in 1620.

In US banknotes, the Pilgrims only appeared on the original series of National Bank Notes first issued in 1863/1864. The center vignette on the reverse shows the "Embarkation of the Pilgrims."

National Bank Notes had unique and complicated designs that had a dual purpose: to unify and to educate. Issued early in the Civil War, the notes were designed to highlight historic events in US history, showing the common heritage of both the North and South or at least reinforcing the view that the US was one, united country. The use of these historic scenes was also meant to educate the illiterate or barely literate in the country, especially all the new European immigrants in the US. It was hoped that they could learn US history from the notes with some explanation from a friend or merchant.

Banknote design around the world still has such lofty goals and are just not aiming to make them difficult to counterfeit.