1799 CENT STORIES

Since no one has apparently responded to the Rich Hartzog’s February 22nd query regarding the mention of 1799 cents in Jason Goodwin’s   Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America , I thought I’d reply. To begin, Goodwin’s book (which has been mentioned several times in The E-Sylum since its publication in 2003) is one of my favorites. He has a particularly entertaining, breezy writing style and, although the book doesn’t have any footnotes, he packs a lot of information into 321 pages. He has a decent bibliography and I’ve been able to track down the original sources of all of the stories in which I was interested. I highly recommend the book and encourage any numismatist who hasn’t read it to borrow a copy from their local public library and enjoy!

Now that my obligatory advertisement – for both the book and public libraries – is out of the way, let me say that it’s not immediately clear from Mr. Goodwin’s bibliography what his source for the shipment story was. However, a rudimentary Google search ("slaver took 1799 cents") located two articles by Tom LaMarre. Both are on the Numismaster.com website; one is undated, while the other is dated November 19, 2010 and originally appeared in Coins magazine. Both address the story of the shipment of the 1799 cents from slightly different perspectives (and attributions).

The articles attribute one of the first mentions of the shipment story to Montroville W. Dickeson, in his American Numismatic Manual of 1860 and another mention to an article in the January 1918 issue of The Numismatist. Unfortunately for the fans of a colorful story, Mr. LaMarre also says that there’s no solid evidence to support the shipment story.

Here are the links to Mr. LaMarre’s two articles:

The Legendary 1799 Cent (www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ArticleId=15688)

The Legendary 1799 Cent

... and, of course, one should refer to the past couple of issues of The E-Sylum for the discussions of the pictures of Mr. Dickeson and whether or not he’s seated next to an Indian chief or wearing a white-and-gold dress (or something like that).

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
SLAVES, UNDERGROUND RAILROAD TOKENS AND 1799 CENTS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n08a20.html)

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