This private paper was of two kinds — fractional currency, to assist in making change, and bills or checks of larger denominations, similar to bank notes. These larger bills were a form of deferred payment as well as a medium of exchange. The use of paper for parts of a dollar seems to have been rather common with business men. Some of these “shinplasters” resembled bank notes in form, although the paper was inferior.

An example of this scrip shows three pictures similar to those on bank notes — a hunting scene, a drove of cattle, and an anvil — with the words “M. Frank & Bro. Will pay fifty cents on demand, in current bank bills, When a dollar's worth of these Checks are presented at their Wholesale and Retail Clothing House, WASHINGTON STREET, IOWA CITY.”

A small green card in a collection of paper currency bears the picture of an angular bob-tailed horse on which are printed the words “stumptail currency”. Above the horse are the words “10 Cts.” and across one end the “Redeemable at Tousley’s Saloon, In Currency, in amounts of even dollars" — also, no doubt, in a more liquid commodity.

Personal checks and notes also developed into paper money. How this money came about is explained in J. M. D. Burrows’s Fifty Years in Iowa In the winter of 1853-1854, Burrows and Prettyman were buying hogs and shipping them east. The drafts received from the eastern merchants were sold to or deposited with banks in Illinois or with Iowa firms doing an exchange business.