History of Banking in the United States

"The term "bank" was used in the American colonies from the very beginning of the settlement, in the sense of a pile or heap. The first bills of credit, as they were called by a seventeenth century expression, which is said to have been applied to the goldsmiths' notes in London, were issued in 1690 by the government of Massachusetts Bay, to pay the expenses of an unsuccessful expedition to Canada. This book presents the History of Banks in America.