NEWMAN PORTAL ADDS CONNECTICUT MINT ACCOUNT BOOKS

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V19 2016 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 51, December 18, 2016, Article 4

The latest additions to the Newman Numismatic Portal are Connecticut Copper Mint Account books from the New Haven Museum. Randy Clark provided the following report. Thanks! -Editor

It is rare in American colonial numismatics for original mint documents to survive the centuries, and when they are found it provides tremendous excitement and insight to the hobby and research community. It is even more rare for two independent researchers, nearly a decade apart, to independently discover the same rare mint documents and bring them to light.

Jay Knipe and Randy Clark, both one-time natives of the New Haven, Connecticut area, separately discovered two Connecticut Copper Mint Account books located in the New Haven Museum. One is dated 1787-1790, from the consortium of Leavenworth-Baldwin-Leavenworth, and the other dated 1788 from the Platt-Broome-Jarvis consortium.

Grayscale images of the mint account books have been posted on the Newman Numismatic Portal, scanned from photocopies acquired by Randy Clark in 2008 from the New Haven Museum. Color images of the mint account books, taken recently by Knipe directly from the original documents, may soon be available on the Newman Numismatic Portal, pending permission from the New Haven Museum.

A transcription of the grayscale copies was made by Clark in 2008 and an independent team is now working with Knipe on a similar transcription from the new color images. The two teams hope to compare the results, and arrive at a single common transcription for publication.

The Newman Portal acknowledges the New Haven Museum for granting permission to post the grayscale images, and Randy Clark for contributing them to the Portal.

Human-powered transcription is required for such unique hand-written documents. It's a marvel that they've survived, and efforts like those of Jay and Randy ensure that these useful original resource materials will be discoverable and usable by all numismatic collectors and researchers in the years to come. Thanks, everyone. -Editor

A full and complete typed transcript of the 1788 Connecticut/Federal Mint accounting book will be published in the next issue of The Colonial Newsletter. A full and complete typed transcript of the 1787 Leavenworth Day Journal, which includes the records of the Connecticut Mint from February 1787 to early 1788 will be published in The Colonial Newsletter later this year.