MORE ON THE ALBANY FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH'S PENNY

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V15 2012 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 15, Number 40, September 23, 2012, Article 14

Richard Gascoyne, an elder of the First Presbyterian Church, Albany, sent us an image of the church's Church Penny (see below). He writes:

It is quite worn, but that's because Alexander Hamilton rattled it around in his pocket for so long; John Jay, too. The church just kept selling it over again. Thanks greatly to Katie De Silva for her leads to other local paper scrip and especially for the 1898 reference in Ladies' Home Journal on the concept of a tithing penny. A friend in England who is Minister of Finance for the Archdiocese of Newcastle (Church of England) has a memory of tithe pennies in the church.

Worn, yes, but what a provenance! Richard enclosed a draft of the October 2012 issue of the First Presbyterian Newsletter, in which he has an article about the coin. I've excerpted a few portions below. -Editor

As part of the 250th Anniversary Celebration (1763-2013) our congregation, by order of the Session, will present a penny to the Albany Institute of History and Art. Not just any penny, it is the Albany Church Penny, minted in 1790 for the First Presbyterian Church. It is “one of the great coinage curiosities of the American colonies and the early federal period” according to a description on a numismatics auction site.

How much was a penny worth in 1790? What was an acceptable offering for the collection plate at that time? Not easy questions.

Prior to 1792 everyday business was conducted using a hodge-podge of tokens, coins, medals, foreign currency, and counterfeits issued by private individuals and private mints inside and outside of America. Imagine reaching into your pocket and retrieving this mess. Which ones go into the collection plate? You guess! Imagine the expression on the Church Treasurer’s face when he tallies the collection. How do you run a church with this “money?”

In 1792 the US Treasury started minting coins. Alexander Hamilton, a frequent attendee of our church and good friend of Eliphalet Nott (pastor of FPC, 1798-1804) became the first Secretary of the US Treasury and was instrumental in the founding of a national bank. Did he have input into FPC’s decision to mint a coin?

The British Pound Sterling was the most universal exchange. The Albany Church Penny, twelve to a shilling, was in 1790 worth roughly the same as, or a little less than, the British penny.

We are assuming that members of the congregation bought these pennies to put in the collection plate weekly, and that the purpose was to get money from congregants up-front whether or not they came to church and put them in the plate, and to recycle and resell the coins that were returned and put in the collection plate. And also, perhaps more important, to get a reliable and readily accepted currency (British sterling) in the hands of the Church Treasurer, who, in turn, gave the contributor Church Pennies to drop into the collection plate.

On January 27, 2013 at a ceremony at Albany Institute of History and Art, our penny will be presented to the Institute. It is an artifact that speaks of the history of our local congregation, our city, our state, and our nation. Reserve the date!