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| HistoryBuff.com August 2010 Newsletter | |
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In Colonial America, currency notes were produced in denominations of one-sixth, one-third, two-thirds, and one-half dollar. In addition 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 dollars notes were printed. Each note was hand-signed and many were signed by famous patriots. As one can imagine, the values of these notes today is very high and even higher when hand-singed by a famous patriot. The production of fractional currency notes was revived during the Civil War. | ||
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Colonial America also saw coins with the denominations of a half-cent, two-cent, half-dime, and twenty-cent pieces. My favorite is the three-cent nickel. No, this was not a devaluation of the nickel to make it worth three cents. Actually, it was called a nickel because of it being made of nickel. In 1862, day-to-day commerce became strained by a shortage of coins. At the time, American currency was not backed by the government with gold or silver. During the middle of 1862, $25 million in coinage disappeared from circulation. By July of 1862, coins, due to their metallic content, were worth 20% more than paper money. On July 17, 1862, Congress stepped into the fray and passed a law which stated that postage stamps could pay debts of less than $5 to the government. The public took this to mean that postage stamps could be officially used as currency. The stamps were ill-suited for this task. They were thin (destroyed easily with handling) and the glue on their backs encouraged them to stick to hands, wallets, and anything else with which they came in contact. The mess created by loose stamps quickly deflated the elation generated by the misconception of the new law. People began looking for a way to package the stamps to keep from creating a lump in their pocket. Initially, people kept the stamps in envelops or stuck them on cards. Nevertheless, generally these methods failed to provide a workable solution. In August 1862, a man named Gault patented a process to encapsulate stamps. A thin token was made of brass with advertising on one side. He then used a button maker to compress a thin sheet of clear mica on top, the stamp in the middle and the token on the bottom. The idea caught on quickly.
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In the meantime, I have expanded that list to 38 different versions. To make my work accessible to more people, and save the cost of printing hard copies, I have created an online version. It shows all pages of versions that I have had access to. I have documented many others but have been unable to obtain scans of them. It is hard when someone contacts me wanting to sell their "original" April 15, 1865 New York Herald and I inform them it is actually a reprint but still want to borrow it for scanning. If you have a version that is not currently shown in my index, please contact me. It can be viewed at: http://www.historybuff.com/newspapers/assassination/ |
 As a child in the 1950s, I was living in a small town in Utah that was only about 20 miles from the state lines of Idaho and Wyoming. Our home was a classic Victorian with a wrap-around porch. The backyard was very large. It had a chicken coop, tool shed, and a 2-car garage. (Yes, we had chickens that were used both for eggs and Sunday chicken dinners.) When I was ten-years old, I put together a museum in our tool shed that was about 15 by 30 feet. Hiking in the mountains I discovered handfuls of small sea shells just beneath the cover dirt. (This mountain range was completely under water a million years ago.) I also found a few fossils of plants and small animals. At the backend of our backyard was a farmer's field. I was able to find some bones buried in the dirt. One was even a Femur of a cow. I also found a nice Geode that a rock hound cut in half for me. Several professors at Utah State University attended our church and I made good use of them. They helped me identify what I had and provided some background information as well. I laid out each artifact on benches and wrote information about them on index cards. I also made a crude sign "Museum Tour 5 Cents." Although I enjoyed doing this, I didn’t made any money on it.In 1965 I started collecting Lincoln assassination newspapers. Today, forty-five years later, my Lincoln archive consists of over one-hundred original newspapers, several stereo cards, CDVs and cabinet photos, over 100 books published pre-1950, and dozens of magazines from pre-1900, sheet music, a few broadsides and even a mourning ribbon. I also have hundreds of photocopies of documents relating to the assassination or aftermath.
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