Serial Number Question

It means that this is the end of the serial number. There were a good many 'characters' used in conjunction with the serials on early large sized notes, but none had any special significance or meaning beyond being the suffix. Sometimes on very early notes of certain series, characters were used as prefixes as well, but the particular character shown on this early black eagle is the only such character used as a prefix as far as I can recall.

No, not exactly. The truth is, I don't really know what the original intent of these characters was. I cannot rationalize a clear reason for them. The first notes (printed for or by the U.S. Government) had only numbers like this 1862 note:

This particular note, (series # 1, serial # 3310) was the 3310th one dollar bill ever printed. Kinda neat I think, considering how many billions or trillions of $1 notes have been printed since then.






Anyway, in 1869, a prefix letter and suffix character were added to the serial number for the reason that you mentioned.

The first series 1899 silver certificates began with characters for both prefix and suffix, (like the one I posted earlier), then drifted into prefix letter and character suffix (like yours) and finally into letters for both prefix and suffix.

Different types of notes used different scenarios at different times for reasons unknown to me.