NEW ENGLAND'S GODFATHER OF COUNTERFEITING

The year was 1789 when an old man shoveled dirt onto two hefty barrels of silver, hidden away in a cave on the roaring banks of the Swift River in Massachusetts. He needed to bury his treasure, because he had procured it by means that were considered illegal and, at one point, mystical. This old man was Glazier Wheeler, once a blacksmith and engraver, but the town of Dana knew him as the alchemist. Wheeler spent his life practicing the art of converting base metals into silver through chemical reactions. By the late 1780s, his barrels were the culmination of a lifetime spent manipulating the silver content of coins. Wheeler's buried treasure engraved his name in the criminal history of New England as a godfather of counterfeiting.

Wheeler had a monomaniacal obsession with silver. He began his career as a respected metalworker in Newbury, New Hampshire, and developed a preoccupation with the belief that cheap metals, such as pewter and brass, could be transmuted into silver—in other words, alchemy. Alchemy had been around since the medieval era, and in the 1600s, the Puritan elite of Boston had been proudly obsessed with the process of alchemy as a spiritual exercise. But by the 1700s, it was becoming more scientific—alchemists were becoming chemists.

At the time, there was high demand for metallic coins and little law to enforce penalties for manipulating currency. Paper currency, a minor novelty in the 1760s, was distrusted in rural areas, as it fluctuated widely in value and was subject to expiration dates. Wheeler had become adept at illegally minting silver dollars (known as half joes) at the rate of three or four fakes to the cost of one standard dollar during his time in Haverhill, New Hampshire. He even offered his services in 1768 to sell $60 worth of stamps and tools that could produce false silver dollars.

He was only discovered when he pressed his coins so thin as to retain only half the silver content of a legitimate coin. A New Hampshire court order was issued in 1783 ordering that Glazier Wheeler be arrested and have his ears cut off (cropt). Wheeler eluded the local sheriff then headed south to continue debasing coins.

Thereafter, he became a regional legend in New England. He remained active in remote areas, such as New Salem in Massachusetts, where he could freely distribute both chemicals and metal dies (hollow molds used to cut shapes for coins) to other counterfeiters. By 1784, Wheeler was associated with con artist Stephen Burroughs who would describe Glazier Wheeler in his Memoirs as Credulous to the extreme… He had spent all his days in pursuit of the knowledge of counterfeiting silver, so as to bear the test of essays. These tests proved the legitimacy of currency by sensory or chemical reaction, but Wheeler was talented at defrauding them.

Wheeler and Burroughs were finally arrested for attempting to pass off counterfeit coins at an apothecary in Springfield. They faced a dramatic trial in 1785, then the two were imprisoned in the Castle Island prison in Boston Harbor. After release, likely around 1788, Wheeler drifted to the area of Dana where he spent the rest of his life fiddling with pewter dollars and forged bills in his cave, living out his legacy.

Alchemists had long attempted to turn different elements into gold, silver, or money in general. It seems fitting that, as science improved and alchemy began transitioning into chemistry, the practice turned to forging coins. Likewise, people on the other side of the law were using the evolving chemical science to thwart counterfeiters.

To read the complete article, see:
How the Alchemist of New England Became a Legendary Counterfeiter (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/alchemist-of-new-england-history-of-counterfeiting)

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