The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 47, November 5, 2005, Article 23

ON THE CIRCULATION OF GOLD

Don Cleveland writes: "I remember my Grandmother in the
mid-1950s telling me about using gold coins when she was a
young housewife in the state of Washington (late 1920s). Not
being wealthy, they rarely saw them, but once in awhile they
would get a quarter eagle, half eagle, or eagle. She did not
recall ever seeing a one-dollar gold coin, although silver
dollars were used quite often. She also mentioned she had never
received a double eagle (which I now suspect would have
represented a good part of a month's wages). Anyway, whenever
she or her husband received a gold coin, the custom was to
wrap it in tissue paper or cotton, so it would not rub on
other coins or wear in the purse. She said banks and merchants
did not like to take gold coins if they were too beat up."

Tom DeLorey writes: "I have a little anecdote on the
circulation of gold coins among ordinary people. My grandmother,
nee Winifred Parks, was born in Lake Linden, MI in 1890. Whenever
she stopped going to school, let's say 1908, she went to work
for the local telephone company as a switchboard operator,
where she worked for several years before marrying grandpa just
to get out of town.

In 1968 she came to live with my father and us, where she
found out that I collected coins. This triggered a memory,
and she told me that when she was working for the telephone
company up in Calumet, one year she got a $2-1/2 gold piece
in her pay envelope at Christmas. I naturally asked her if
she had kept it, and she said no, that two and a half dollars
was her entire pay for the week, but that that one Christmas
the phone company had paid everybody in gold instead of silver.
She took it home and gave it to her mother to help support
the family, as she did every week, and got back the fifty
cents that she was normally allowed to keep for herself.

I am sure that this was the only gold coin that she ever
owned in her life, if only for a few hours, that she could
remember it sixty years later.

[Thanks for the interesting anecdotes. I doubt gold jingled
much in the pockets of my ancestors, either. My stepgrandfather
had a $1 gold piece of 1851, which is now in my collection.
He had been given it by his Sunday school teacher as a reward.
-Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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