ON CONTINENTAL CURRENCY

Here is a discovery that I thought would interest readers. By way of background, Peter Schreiner, 1853-1937, was born into one of College Point's oldest and reputable families. He became an architect and builder and built many of the buildings in the community, some that still stand today.

While many readers may know about the history of paper money in America, I admit to being totally unaware that such a thing as a four dollar bill had ever existed, I did some research and learned much. The four-dollar bill was issued by the Continental congress between 1775 and 1779 along with bills in denominations of one, two three, five, six, seven, eight and twenty dollars. The basis of this money was in Spanish milled dollars and two million dollars were issued in 1775.

A wild boar was depicted on the four dollar bill rushing on the spear of a hunter with a motto reading Aut Mors Aut Vita Decora, "either death or an honorable life". Names were signed on each bill and other devices were used to prevent counterfeiting, but it happened to a large extent anyway. It was initially thought that the war would not last long, so the two million in various denominations were followed swiftly by an additional three million. By 1780, the amount of continental money issued totaled more than 242 million dollars.

In order to prevent any depreciation as well as to give it the widest circulation, laws were enacted by congress with several states declaring it legal tender for all debts. With this much paper money in circulation, quite naturally it began to depreciate making it literally true that it was "not worth a continental." While I've used that expression many time over the course of my life, it's nice to know where it came from.

P.S. Much of the information was gleaned from an article I found about a trunk filled with Continental money many found in a barn on the east side of the Hudson River published in 1931.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web