The 1792 Birch Cent

On the evening of 9th July 1792, two of America’s founding fathers, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson arrived at the home of a man called John Harper on Sixth and Cherry Street in Philadelphia. With them was David Rittenhouse, appointed by President Washington just nine days earlier as the first Director of the United States Mint. Land for the new mint had already been identified on Seventh Street, and Rittenhouse would lay the cornerstone for the new building later that month. However, the coin presses that had been ordered from England wouldn’t arrive until September, and so the first coins wouldn’t be struck at the new premises until December. No one wanted to wait that long to see what the first official coins produced at the US Mint would look like.

David Rittenhouse

John Harper, a saw maker from New Jersey, kept a screw press in his cellar designed by Mint employee Adam Eckfeldt, who would go on to build other machinery for the Mint and help to oversee the production of the early coins.  Harper agreed to allow his cellar to become the temporary home of the US Mint so that the first official coins could be struck there in a range of metals, sizes and designs to test what worked and what didn’t. Earlier that day the President had sent Rittenhouse an instruction authorising him to strike dimes (originally spelt ‘dismes’), half dimes and cents. Now, the men eagerly crowded into the cellar to watch as history was made.

Adam Eckfeldt

The U.S. Congress had passed its first Coinage Act three months earlier on 2nd April 1792, authorising the creation of the official Mint in Philadelphia to strike the coins of the United States. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton defined the United States dollar as a unit of pure of silver weighing precisely the same as the Spanish dollar, which was already in common use.  The new Act made the silver dollar the legal tender of the country and created a decimal system for US currency. 

Alexander Hamilton

The first draft of the Act stipulated that all coins would depict a portrait of the president on the obverse. However, by the final version, the requirement had changed to a depiction of liberty, as well as the word ‘LIBERTY’.   Engravers were contracted to begin designing and preparing dies for the new coins, even before there was a mint to strike them. Some of these tools may have been produced in England, and sadly little is known about the artists who designed the early test pieces.

We know that the portrait of Liberty that appeared on the copper cent was engraved by an artist called Birch because he helpfully put his name on her shoulder above the date 1792. Surviving mint records list his name as “Bob Birch”, and it appears that he was privately commissioned in 1792 because his name doesn’t appear in the official list of mint employees. It has long been believed that he was from England, but the absence of any tangible information about a Bob (or Robert) Birch allows for the speculation that the artist may have been William Birch (1755-1834), a noted British engraver and painter of miniature enamels. Born in Warwick, Birch exhibited his tiny portraits at the Royal Academy and emigrated to Philadelphia in 1794 after attracting wealthy patrons on both sides of the Atlantic, including President Washington himself. In Britain, a ‘bob’ was a popular slang expression for a shilling, so the name listed in the mint records may have been the artist’s nickname.  

An engraving of Philadelphia in 1800 by William Birch

The design of the first official cent produced in the United States depicts a flowing haired Liberty with the inscription ‘LIBERTY PARENT OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY’ and the year of issue, ‘1792’. On the reverse, there is a decorated laurel wreath around the denomination ‘ONE CENT’ with the words’ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’. There is also the fraction ‘1/100’ which shows the origin of the word ‘cent’ as the coin is literally one per cent of a dollar. An earlier version of the design bore the inscription ‘G.W.PT’ (George Washington, President) instead of the fraction but this was probably changed because Washington objected to having his image or a reference to him on a coin. 

Washington, Jefferson, Rittenhouse and Eckfeldt inspect the first US coins struck

It would appear that only a small handful of cents bearing the Birch design were minted in John Harper’s cellar that day, which accounts for their extreme rarity. The fact that they may have been struck in the presence of Washington and Jefferson makes them even more valuable and among the most popular of all the prototype (or pattern) coins ever produced by the US Mint.

Of the ten specimens that are thought to exist, one sold at auction in 2015 for nearly $2.6 million.  When asked why he had paid so much for a cent, the delighted new owner explained that “the history is important. This is our earliest depiction of what we thought of ourselves as a nation.”

The 1792 Birch Cent

The Brasher Doubloon

New York was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. During the late eighteenth century, one of the most fashionable locations in the city was Cherry Hill, which lies just north of the Brooklyn Bridge today. Cherry Street was the home of Ephraim Brasher (1744-1828), a distinguished goldsmith and silversmith. Brasher regulated precious metal coins for the bank, carefully checking their fineness and weight, and stamping them with his oval-shaped hallmark containing his initials’ EB’ if they met the correct standards. His hallmark became a guarantee of quality, enabling bank clerks to accept coins without checking their weight. Several examples of foreign gold have been discovered counter stamped with his quality mark.

George Washington enters New York City in 1783

On 12th February 1787, Brasher and a silversmith and sword maker called John Bailey requested franchises to produce copper coins for the state of New York. We don’t know whether this was a joint application, or if both men just happened to submit the requests on the same day. But their applications were denied because New York decided not to mint copper coins. Shortly afterwards, Basher designed and struck some sample coins to demonstrate his ability. A few were struck as gold doubloons using a letter punch that Bailey had used to strike copper coins in New Jersey. It would be the first gold coin made for the United States of America.

A silver coffeepot produced by Brasher
Brasher’s hallmark on the bottom of the coffeepot

The doubloon (Spanish for double) was the name given to the Two Escudo gold coin that was minted throughout the Americas as well as in Spain with the gold they received from the New World. The Spanish galleons transporting gold through the Caribbean and across the ocean were always vulnerable to attack from pirates seeking to relieve them of their precious cargo. As a result, no other coin in the world evokes more potent images of pirate ships and treasure maps than the doubloon.

Brasher’s doubloon depicted the Great Seal of the United States, an eagle clutching an olive branch and arrows. He also added an unusually worded version of the national motto ‘UNUM E PLURIBUS’ (One from many) together with the date 1787. After the coin was struck, Brasher counter stamped his EB hallmark onto the reverse as his personal guarantee of quality. To date, six surviving examples of the coin have been found with the stamp on the eagle’s wing and one with the stamp on the shield.

On the reverse, he depicted the coat of arms of New York, an image of the sun casting rays of light over a mountain range with the sea in the foreground. Surrounding the image is the inscription, ‘NOVA EBORACA COLUMBIA EXCELSIOR’ (New York, America, Ever Higher). Excelsior remains the state motto to this day. Brasher also added his surname underneath the image.

The Brasher Doubloon

Brasher’s neighbour in Cherry Street was none other than George Washington, who would become the first president of the United States two years later in 1789. We know that America’s founding father approved of Brasher’s talents as a gold and silversmith, because he bought several items from him, including a set of four silver skewers in April 1790. Perhaps this explains why Brasher produced his doubloon. He was asked to do so by his neighbour. In November 1792, Brasher assayed several types of gold coins for the new federal government, and after that continued to assay gold for the US Mint.

George Washington’s mansion on Cherry Street.

The value of a doubloon would fluctuate depending on the value of the gold. When Brasher struck his unique version of the coin, New York had officially established the standard that a gold doubloon was worth $15. Today, of course, it is worth considerably more. In 2011, one of Brasher’s doubloons was sold for nearly $7.4 million, which was the most money ever paid for a coin at the time.

Author Raymond Chandler immortalised the coin in popular culture when he had his fictional private-eye Philip Marlowe investigate the theft of one in his novel The High Window. In 1947 the book was adapted into a movie by 20th Century Fox called appropriately The Brasher Doubloon.

Movie poster for ‘The Brasher Doubloon’