These days it is rare to see someone pay with cash. Usually debit or credit cards are swiped or phones are tapped at checkouts and funds move invisibly between accounts. Apps like Venmo mean a group can easily move digital money around in real time to split a restaurant bill. Parking meters use apps, laundromats take pre-paid digital cards instead of quarters, and even jukeboxes have switched to apps like TouchTunes to allow customers to pay digitally. It is a very different world from just a generation ago when credit cards were new and cash was king.
Around the time of the American Revolution there were similar shifts in payment methods. Each of the thirteen original colonies, and Vermont, created brand-new currency as they sought independence. Prior to 1776, each colony issued local paper currency backed by banks in England, but very few colonists used it. The most trusted currency was coinage, with the Spanish dollar coin (also called a pistole or doblón) being the most accepted across the colonies. AAS has a 1765 chart explaining conversion values that shows the variety of coinage circulating in the colonies and the complexities of assessing the value of each coin.
The American Antiquarian Society holds more than 2,200 pieces of paper colonial-era currency from 1690 to 1799, including rare paper coins printed in Massachusetts in 1722. American Currency During the Revolution, a new online gallery on the Society’s website, features more than a dozen examples of paper money created between 1776-1781. As the thirteen original colonies moved towards declaring independence, they faced the urgent challenge of funding a war effort — paying soldiers, securing weapons and ammunition, and sustaining local economies. While united against the British king, each colony guarded its right to create and issue its own currency. Some hired silversmiths to engrave intricate copper plates while others relied on patriot printers to produce bills using letter press type and ornament.
These fragmented efforts at creating currency confused colonists, eroded public trust, and fueled widespread counterfeiting. In an attempt to stop counterfeiting (by both British agents and local criminals), colonial authorities had their printers employ different colored inks, arranged for bills to be signed by local authorities, and ordered special papers embedded with mica flakes and blue threads. Some colonial bills featured “nature prints”—designs created from a leaf pressed into plaster and cast in lead type metal. First developed in 1739 by Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and botanist Joseph Breintnall (d. 1746), the “nature print” process was especially useful for currency. Each leaf was unique, with intricate vein structures that thwarted counterfeiters. Several colonies, including Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey, adopted this technique to safeguard their currency.
The new website gallery offers an example of a paper bill from each of the original colonies and Vermont, as well as continental bills intended to help unite those colonies into one economy. If you are interested in learning more about the history of early currency in America, the web resource also includes some helpful resources for further research. These bills are important survivors of a time two hundred and fifty years ago that helped take thirteen separate economies and move them forward to becoming one nation.
View the online gallery on the AAS website here: https://www.americanantiquarian.org/library/american-currency-during-revolution
