SARAH SOPHIA BANKS AND THE ‘CONTINENTAL DOLLAR’

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V24 2021 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 24, Number 3, January 17, 2021, Article 33

Catherine Eagleton's 2014 Numismatic Chronicle article Sarah Sophia Banks and the ‘Continental Dollar’ is available on Academia.edu. Here's an excerpt. -Editor

Abstract. Sarah Sophia Banks (1744–1818) was not only an avid coin collector, assembling a numismatic collection of some 9,000 objects, but she also recorded information about where she obtained them, as well as details of their manufacture and uses. This article briefly considers the American coins she collected, now in the British Museum and Royal Mint Museum, which include some of the finest known examples of early US coins. It discusses her as a collector, how her collection was organised, and the information she recorded about one of the most well known of early American coins: the ‘Continental Dollar’ dated 1776. On the basis of information recorded by Sarah Sophia Banks, it is argued that the piece may never have been intended as a coin at all, not struck in America, or even made in 1776. As well as prompting discussion about this important and highly collectible coin, this article therefore underlines the importance of historic collections as sources of information about the objects they contain.

Around 1815, Sarah Sophia compiled a catalogue of her collection in seven volumes, based on an earlier catalogue that had been compiled in or before 1790 with the help of her brother’s librarian, Jonas Dryander. Within these manuscript volumes, the sections are given drawer numbers, referring to the wooden cabinets in which the collection was stored, and these map out the world, with the coins arranged by country, starting with Europe, before moving to Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and finally to the Americas.

The catalogues and provenance lists, and her archive of newspaper cuttings and memoranda, were given to the British Museum along with Sarah Sophia’s numismatic collection after her death in September 1818. The curators selected objects for the British Museum collection, before passing on the remainder, some 2,000 coins, tokens and medals, to the Royal Mint, who had also been given Sarah Sophia’s numismatic library. This huge quantity of material today provides a uniquely rich resource, not just for the study of numismatics at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also for understanding more about some of the objects in the collection, thanks to the notes, provenance details, and other information preserved by Sarah Sophia. This short article will look at one particular area of her collection – her American coinage – to show not just what it can tell us about Sarah Sophia and her collection, but also what she can tell us about one of the most well-known of American numismatic rarities, the ‘Continental Dollar’ dated 1776.

North America in the early eighteenth century was a turbulent place. The British colonies on the east coast were growing in population and wealth, but coin shortages plagued the thirteen colonies, and official currencies circulated alongside private and token issues. Sarah Sophia Banks had a number of examples of these currencies in her collection, including silver shillings from Massachusetts and Maryland – given to her by George Chalmers, Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1812 – as well as several examples of the ‘Rosa Americana’ coins, made by the enterprising mineowner, William Wood, in 1722–4. Other examples are the ‘Nova Constellatio’ coins dated 1785 which she described as ‘struck at Greenwich for the American Account’ and various patterns, or trial pieces, of coins featuring a portrait of George Washington, which were prepared by a Birmingham firm hopeful of securing a contract to mint coins for the United States.