1 Pound

The Bahamas Government was among the earliest British colonial administrations to issue its own paper currency rather than relying entirely on imported British notes or local private bank issues. This 1869 pound predates the more familiar Bahamas Government series of the twentieth century by decades and belongs to a period when colonial treasury notes were genuinely uncommon instruments — printed in small quantities, circulated among a small population, and rarely surviving intact.

Major & Knapp were a New York lithographic firm better known for commercial work than currency printing, which places this issue outside the usual lineage of security printers like Perkins Bacon or De La Rue. Whether that choice reflected cost, logistics, or colonial indifference to security features is not recorded.