THE 40-YEAR JOURNEY OF TWO HALF DOLLARS

The following article was published in the New York Sun, October 1st, 1897, under the title, “Two Persistent Half Dollars, Stamped and Set Adrift in 1856, They Return to Tickle Their Former Owner.” This article was picked up by corresponding newspapers and published by a number of different newspapers including…

Mariposa Gazette (California), November 13, 1897

ERRANT HALF DOLLARS. Sent Adrift Forty Years
Ago, They Return to Their Former Owners….

One day in the summer of 1856, when Albert George and Humphrey Pinhorn of the village of East Orrington, Maine, were in Bangor marketing, they received two half dollars fresh from the mints. As both were young men with plenty of money for their immediate wants they stamped their initials in stencil upon the new coins and took them to a hotel where they exchanged then for two dinner. In the LincolnDouglas campaign of 1860 the two young men, who had become voters, joined the Wide Awakes, a political organization that paraded the town with torchlights. One evening after a parade in Rockland they went out to supper, and in exchange for a bill paid to the cashier Pinhorn received a half dollar marked “H.P.” It was the coin he had sent adrift four years before.

The war came on, and both of the young men enlisted, following the fortunes of the Twenty-second Maine regiment. For five or six years after the war there was no silver or gold in circulation, and nothing was seen of the marked coins until the GarfieldHancock campaign of 1880. Then Mr. George received the half dollar marked “H.P.” in exchange for beef which he had sold. He turned it over to Mr. Pinhorn, who paid it out for tobacco at the local store. After that the “H.P.” half dollar returned frequently. Mr. Pinhorn got it in 1882, Mr. George in 1884 and again in 1885 and Mr. Pinhorn in 1886. In 1888 Mr. Pinhorn had it three times and in 1891 Mr. George received it and paid it out four times. It was taken in by Mr. George in 1894, after which it made a sojourn in other parts.

Meantime, Mr. George grew anxious about the half dollar which bore his initials and advertised, offering $5 for its return to him. Several spurious imitations of the real article were sent in and promptly returned, as the stencil marks were not made in the right kind of type. Though he kept an advertisement standing in all the local papers and in two of the Boston dailies for nearly a year he received no tidings of what he wanted.

The other day he went to a Bangor bank to get his pension check cashed, and in the money which the cashier passed out were two half dollars. Upon the face of one were the old initials, “H.P.” and on the other were the letters of his own name, “A.A.G.”. It was the long lost half dollar which he had stamped and spent for dinner in 1856 and for which he had been offering a reward. Mr. George has framed his half dollar and hung it up over his desk, with orders to have it placed in his coffin. The coin marked ”H.P.” was turned loose again to go out and make history for itself—New York Sun

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