Read A Counterfeiter's Paradise Online
Authors: Ben Tarnoff
A Counterfeiter's Paradise (36 page)
When I first began researching this book, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I cast a wide net, writing to archives, historical societies, and libraries around the country, and eventually visiting many of them in person. Everywhere I went I found people who were enormously generous with their time and their resources, and I’m deeply grateful to them for making my research possible. Thanks to Linda August and Nicole Joniec at the Library Company of Philadelphia, Christine Bertoni at the Peabody Essex Museum, Elizabeth Bouvier at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Jeff Brueggeman of the Society of Paper Money Collectors, James
W. Campbell at the New Haven Museum & Historical Society, Kathleen A. Carrara at the Rutland Superior Court in Vermont, Don Carter of the Library and Archives Canada, Debbe Causey at the Daniel Library at the Citadel, Edward Dacey at the U.S. Military Academy Library at West Point, Richard Doty at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, Elizabeth Hahn and Elena Stolyarik at the American Numismatic Society, John Hannigan at the Massachusetts Archives, Bonnie L. Hess at the Bedford County Archives, Cara Holtry at the Cumberland County Historical Society, Tab Lewis at the National Archives and Records Administration, Tanya Marshall and Catherine Sherman at the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration, Rhiannon McClintock at the Centre County Historical Society, Aaron McWilliams at the Pennsylvania State Archives, Jonah Parsons at F+W Media, Jaclyn Penny at the American Antiquarian Society, Benoît Pelletier Shoja of the New Hampshire State Archives, Andrew Smith at the Rhode Island Judicial Records Center, Mel E. Smith of the Connecticut State Library, Susan Snyder and Lorna Kirwan at the Bancroft Library, Abigail Thompson and the staff of the Baker Library Historical Collections at Harvard Business School, Malinda Triller at the Waidner-Spahr Library at Dickinson College, Dennis Tucker at Whitman Publishing, Abby Yochelson at the Library of Congress, the staff of the New York County Clerk’s Office, the staff of the New York State Archives, and the staff of the Philadelphia City Archives. I’m especially grateful to Kitty Wunderly and the staff of the Centre County Library and Historical Museum in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. Thanks also to Eric P. Newman, Elizabeth Sinclair, Q. David Bowers, Marc D. Weidenmier, Tom Carson, and Gladys Murray, who each made important contributions to my research.
Of the many authors whose work I relied on, three deserve special mention: Mark Dugan, Ned Frear, and George B. Tremmel. I’m indebted to them for sharing the results of their research and patiently pointing me in the right direction.
The New York Public Library’s Frederick Lewis Allen Room gave me an ideal place to work. Thanks to Jay Barksdale and David Smith for letting me through the door; I can’t imagine writing the book anywhere else. During my time at the library I made extensive use of the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History and Genealogy and the Microforms Reading Room. Both collections were indispensable. Thomas Lannon of the Manuscripts and Archives Division provided expert research help.
My agent Joy Harris believed in this book from the beginning, and without her tireless enthusiasm and guidance, I couldn’t have written it. My editors Laura Stickney and Vanessa Mobley improved the manuscript immeasurably. I’m grateful for their patience, dedication, and incisive editing. Rachel Nolan read a draft of the manuscript and made excellent suggestions that helped strengthen it. Patty O’Toole provided ideas and moral support at a crucial early stage. Mark Danner gave invaluable advice and encouragement throughout, as he always has in the past. Finally, I thank my parents, whose contributions are too significant to summarize in a couple of sentences. Their love, counsel, and eagle-eyed editing are present in every page of this book.
The notes are organized by paragraph. For each note I’ve listed the page number, followed by the first few words of the paragraph.
INTRODUCTION
1, On a November night
The tomb raiders assaulted Lincoln’s grave on November 7, 1876. The raid and arrest:
New York Times
, November 9, 1876; November 10, 1876; November 18, 1876; and November 22, 1876. See also the
Inter Ocean
, November 20, 1876.
3, American counterfeiters had
Early colonial currency: David R. Johnson, “Foreword,” Kenneth Scott,
Coun-terfeiting in Colonial America
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000 [1957]), pp. xi–xv; Scott,
Counterfeiting in Colonial America
, pp. 4–16; Richard Sylla, “Monetary Innovation in America,”
Journal of Economic History
42.1 (March 1982), pp. 21–26; Stephen Mihm,
A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 26–28.
3, Coins would have
British closing the Massachusetts mint: Sylla, “Monetary Innovation in America,” p. 24.
3–4, A growing colonial
Spread of paper currency and tensions with the Crown: ibid., pp. 23–26, and Mihm,
A Nation of Counterfeiters
, pp. 31–33. Bills of credit: Robert E. Wright,
One
Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), pp. 43–45.
4–5, Paper money had other
Crude quality of colonial currency and counterfeits: Scott,
Counterfeiting in Colonial America
, pp. 7–8.
5, When the Continental Congress
More than ten thousand kinds of notes: Mihm,
A Nation of Counterfeiters
, p. 3. Mihm computed his estimate by examining
Hodges’ American Bank Note Safe-Guard
, an annual catalog of all circulating bills.
5–6, Paper helped entrepreneurs
Mary Peck Butterworth: Scott,
Counterfeiting in Colonial America
, pp. 64–67. Scene with Peter McCartney and
“I merely wished…”
: George Pickering Burnham,
Memoirs of the United States Secret Service
(Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1872), pp. 56–57.
“He was not an ordinary…”:
Allan Pinkerton,
Thirty Years a Detective
(New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1900 [1884]), p. 550. For more on McCartney’s life, see Lynn Glaser,
Counterfeiting in America: The History of an American Way to Wealth
(Philadelphia: Clarkson N. Potter, 1968), pp. 132–143.
CHAPTER ONE
11, If you had spent
Colonial newspapers were full of sensational reports about weird or tragic events, and a single incident often inspired a handful of different accounts. Report of the twenty-eight-pound melon, the mulatto boy bitten by a rattlesnake, and the Irishman in yellow buckskin breeches:
Boston Gazette, or Weekly Journal
, August 15, 1749. Newspapers also served as a kind of bulletin board for merchants to advertise their wares. Choice Lisbon Salt and the Best Burlington Pork:
Boston Weekly News-Letter
, August 17, 1749; a Good Brick House:
Boston Gazette, or Weekly Journal
, August 1, 1749; a Healthy Strong Negro Man:
Boston Post Boy
, July 3, 1749; the pamphlet by Jonathan Edwards:
Boston Post Boy
, August 14, 1749.
12, One day in late August
The story of Sullivan’s quarrel with his wife was well known; in particular, the phrase “forty-thousand-pound moneymaker” became closely linked to the counterfeiter, and in later newspaper reports accompanies his name as a kind of epithet. The best
account of the incident:
Connecticut Gazette
, April 13, 1756, reproduced in Kenneth Scott,
Counterfeiting in Colonial Connecticut
(New York: American Numismatic Society, 1957), pp. 137–139. Sullivan also mentions the fight on p. 8 of his posthumously published confession,
A Short Account of the Life, of John——Alias Owen Syllavan…
, first printed in New York in 1756. The only available version is the reprint published by Green & Russell in Boston the same year; a copy is held by the American Antiquarian Society and available online through Readex Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639–1800; in quoting the confession, I use the pagination from the Boston reprint. Sullivan’s occupation as a silversmith: from the record of his 1750 trial, found in the Massachusetts Supreme Court of Judicature Record Book, vol. 1750–1751, pp. 100–101, available on microfilm at the Massachusetts Archives.
12, The silversmith’s name
Even by the standards of his time, Sullivan was a serious drinker. In
A Short Account
, p. 7, he blames his wife for his drinking: “she was given to take a Cup too much, and I for my Part took to the same.” Later testimony from his criminal accomplices suggests the counterfeiter was rarely sober. Sullivan flaunting his fortune:
Connecticut Gazette
, April 13, 1756: “always flush of Money, tho’ he lived in an expensive Manner, above his visable Income [
sic
].” The details of Sullivan’s arrest on August 28, 1749:
Boston Weekly News-Letter
, August 31, 1749, and the Massachusetts SCJ Record Book, vol. 1750–1751, pp. 100–101.
12, They carried Sullivan
Relationship with Fairservice: Kenneth Scott,
Counterfeiting in Colonial America
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000 [1957]), p. 187, and “Coun-terfeiting in Colonial New Hampshire,”
Historical New Hampshire
13.1 (December 1957), pp. 17–18. In his confession, Sullivan doesn’t mention Fairservice by name but does boast that he engraved three plates in jail (two for forging New Hampshire money, and a third for Massachusetts bills) and struck off forged notes by hand, which he smuggled out to his accomplices. For more on the lax conditions of colonial jails, see Lawrence Friedman,
Crime and Punishment in American History
(New York: Basic Books, 1993), pp. 48–50.
13–14, Satisfied with the silversmith’s services
Fairservice’s counterfeiting operation: Scott,
Counterfeiting in Colonial America
, p. 187, and “Counterfeiting in Colonial New Hampshire,” pp. 17–18. Bull Wharf, shown in Captain John Bonner’s 1722 map of Boston, stood on the city’s southern
coast, near the Bull Tavern. The tavern’s history: Samuel Adams Drake,
Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs
(Boston: W. A. Butterfield, 1917), pp. 102–103. John Fairservice married Mary Lawrence on January 25, 1755, according to
A Volume of Records Relating to the Early History of Boston,
Containing Boston Marriages From 1752 to 1809
(Boston: Boston Municipal Printing Office, 1903), p. 14. Their messy divorce: Nancy F. Cott, “Divorce and the Changing Status of Women in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts,”
William and Mary Quarterly
33.4 (October 1976), pp. 586–614.
“criminal conversation…”:
from Fairservice’s court testimony, quoted in Thomas A. Foster,
Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America
(Boston: Beacon, 2006), p. 31.
14, In the meantime
Sullivan’s trial: the Massachusetts SCJ Record Book, vol. 1750–1751, pp. 100–101, and Scott,
Counterfeiting in Colonial America
, p. 187. Notice of Sullivan’s pillorying and whipping:
Boston News-Letter
, September 13, 1750, and
Boston Evening-Post
, September 14, 1750. The layout of colonial Boston, including the location of the pillory and the whipping post: Edwin Monroe Bacon,
Boston: A Guide Book to the City and Vicinity
, rev. ed. (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1922), pp. 4–8. The man who received twice as many stripes as Sullivan was one Monsieur Batter, known as the “French doctor,” whose punishment is described in the
New-York Gazette
, September 24, 1750, and the
Boston Gazette
, September 18, 1750.
14–15, Being a counterfeiter
The approximate commodity prices: Ruth Crandall, “Wholesale Commodity Prices in Boston During the Eighteenth Century,”
Review of Economics and Statistics
16.6 (June 15, 1934), pp. 117–128. The actual amount people paid for goods like wheat and molasses varied widely; also, paper money emissions (or “tenors,” as they were called) from different years traded at different values, which makes things even more complicated. Boston’s population: Andrew N. Porter,
Atlas of British Overseas Expansion
(London: Routledge, 1991), p. 44. Thomas Wilson claimed to have seen Fairservice print 680 shillings in a single day; Wilson’s testimony: Scott,
Counterfeiting in Colonial America
, p. 187, and “Counterfeiting in Colonial New Hampshire,” pp. 17–18.
16–17, Sullivan couldn’t have picked
The currency conflict in Massachusetts: Elizabeth E. Dunn, “‘Grasping at the Shadow’: The Massachusetts Currency Debate, 1690–1751,”
New England
Quarterly
17.1 (March 1998), pp. 54–76, and Malcolm Freiberg, “Thomas Hutchinson and the Province Currency,”
New England Quarterly
30.2 (June 1957), pp. 190–208. The origins of Massachusetts paper currency: see Andrew McFarland Davis,
Currency and Banking in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay
, pt. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1901), pp. 8–23.
17, On May 1, 1749
The scene: Thomas Hutchinson,
The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson
, ed. Peter Orlando Hutchinson (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1883), pp. 53–54. Report of the fire:
Boston Gazette
, May 2, 1749.
17–18, The house belonged
Hutchinson’s early life: John Fiske,
Essays: Historical and Literary
, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1902), pp. 10–13, and Andrew Stephen Walmsley,
Thomas Hutchinson and the Origins of the American Revolution
(New York: NYU Press, 1999), pp. 9–11. After weeks of deliberation, Hutchinson’s bill was finally approved on January 25, 1749; see Freiberg, “Thomas Hutchinson and the Province Currency,” pp. 198–203.
18–19, It’s possible that
History of colonial paper currency: Richard Sylla, “Monetary Innovation in America,”
Journal of Economic History
42.1 (March 1982), pp. 21–26. Depreciation of bills: Alvin Rabushka,
Taxation in Colonial America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 364–366.
19, In 1744, a conflict
Nineteen new paper issues and the inflation that halved the currency’s value: Freiberg, “Thomas Hutchinson and the Province Currency,” p. 196.
19, Although the war
Louisbourg reimbursement and passage of the bill: ibid., pp. 195–199, 203.
“I am convinc’d…”:
ibid., p. 198.
20, The approaching elimination
Mood in Boston: Thomas Hutchinson,
The Diary and Letters
, p. 54, and Freiberg, “Thomas Hutchinson and the Province Currency,” p. 200.
“Few Tokens of Joy…”
and the scene of the unloading:
Boston Evening-Post
, September 25, 1749, and
Pennsylvania Gazette
, October 5, 1749.
20–21, Instead of subsiding
“[W]e shall have…”:
Boston Evening-Post
, August 21, 1749.
“Fraud, Injustice and Oppression…”: Boston Gazette
, December 12, 1749.
21, As the bickering
“Fear not
Honestus
…”:
Boston News-Letter
, February 1, 1750.
22, Paper’s proponents
Contrasting definitions of value: Dunn, “‘Grasping at the Shadow,’” pp. 66–70. The Congregationalist preacher was John Wise. His 1721 pamphlet, “A Word of Comfort to a Melancholy Country,” appears in Andrew McFarland Davis, ed.,
Colonial Currency Reprints, 1682–1751
, vol. 2 (Boston: The Prince Society, 1911), pp. 159–223.
“necessary Evils…”:
Davis,
Colonial Currency Reprints
, p. 192.
22–23, Paper money’s most articulate
“The riches…”:
Benjamin Franklin, “A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency,”
Benjamin Franklin: Writings
, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay (New York: Library of America, 1987), p. 127.
23, Increasing the quantity
Franklin’s argument and the pamphlet’s reception: Walter Isaacson,
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), pp. 63–64. The Pennsylvania legislature initially gave the commission for printing the money to Franklin’s competitor Andrew Bradford; Franklin wasn’t awarded a contract until 1731.
“This was another…”:
Benjamin Franklin,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
(New York: Macmillan, 1921), p. 69. Franklin’s anticounterfeiting innovations: William N. Goetzmann and Laura Williams, “From Tallies and Chirographs to Franklin’s Printing Press at Passy: The Evolution of the Technology of Financial Claims,”
The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations That Created Modern Capital Markets
, ed. William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert Rouwenhorst (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 117–118.
24, The intangible nature
The Protestant minister’s name was Thomas Paine—not the famous pamph-le-teer, although the men shared an aversion to paper money.
“Popish Doctrine of Transubstantiation…”:
Thomas Paine, “A Discourse Shewing That the Real First Cause of the Straits and Difficulties of This Province of the Massachusetts
Bay, Is Its Extravagancey, & Not Paper Money,” quoted in Dunn, “‘Grasping at the Shadow,’” p. 68.
“an abomination…”:
from an anonymous letter published in the
Independent Advertizer
on March 28, 1748, quoted ibid., p. 69.