NEWMAN PORTAL: ROTHSAY COTTON COUNTERMARK

This week a Newman Portal user searched for “Rothsay Cotton.” I thought this might be a 19th century American cotton producer in the south, which turned out to a bad guess, especially since trade tokens were more common in the north. Rothsay Cotton is in fact a UK countermark, and the first related document identified by Newman Portal is an index of the Virgil Brand ledgers prepared by UK researcher Eric Hodge. This index notes a number of related issues in the Brand collection, either from Rothsay Cotton Works or Rothsay Mills, which are listed in secondary ledger #12 (p. 148).

A recent (May 2016) issue of the NI Bulletin, published by Numismatics International, contains an article on the subject by Hodge, which states “…Another Scottish cotton concern that issued countermarked dollars was the Rothsay Cotton Works. Rothsay lies about forty miles southwest of Glasgow at the head of a bay on the Island of Bute. An English engineer, James Kenyon of Sheffield, moved to Scotland to evade Richard Arkwright’s patent on his water frame. In 1779 he not only opened his new mill but employed ex. Arkwright employees that he had lured away with him…..” The variety depicted here, 4/6 (of a crown), is scarce, with 48 examples known.

Image 1 (top): Virgil Brand secondary ledger #12, from the American Numismatic Society, depicting the Rothsay Cotton entries

Image 2: Rothsay Cotton Works countermark on Spanish dollar, from the NI Bulletin, May 2016

Link to Virgil Brand ledgers on Newman Portal:
https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/archivedetail/513927

Link to NI Bulletin, May 2016, on Newman Portal:
https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/540706?page=19

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