Release: November 15, 2024
Based on grade school recollections, we’re entering the most memorable and contemplative time of the year. Autumn is, for many, the premier transitional season – particularly in New England. School kids everywhere are drawing turkeys, making Pilgrim hats and relishing the prospect of Christmas....
Lessons abound with stories of early settlers feasting whilst the early colonists sit near a cozy fire in rustic cabins. Children have dreams of a humble yet loving colonial Christmas with family. Simple toys under a rustic tree and, perhaps, gifts of copper or silver coins in stockings. Or not.
As I’ve alluded before, the actuality of any Pilgrim feasts is vague. As for Christmas celebrations, as early as 1621, they were prohibited. In 1659 Massachusetts Bay Colony actually made celebrating Christmas illegal. That was just 30 years before the witch hysteria that fractured Salem.
I mention all this because this “most wonderful time of the year” (at least according to Andy Williams) took a while to come about.
The witch panic in Salem and the surrounding area was, for them, a real thing. It began when settlers believed they could be attacked by evil forces. But, how to thwart it? As with many solutions, it involved money.
For instance, a coin put over the door entrance or under the sill was believed to keep a witch from entering the house. Allegedly, one or more coins at an entrance – which included the fireplace chimney – represented financial security which, they convinced themselves, a witch would hate. Silver especially could repel demonic forces. (Later it became silver bullets versus Werewolves.)
It goes further. Some Puritans would nail a coin to their front and back door jamb for the same deterrent against malevolent witches and demons. By the way, don’t be too smug regarding the practice. To this day, people put pennies on window sills for good luck. That had its origins in demonic protection.
Those coins that were nailed near doors are particularly curious today. Prior to 1652, the early American colonies had no coinage of their own. As such, the medium of trade for the Puritans was the Spanish Milled Dollar, German Thaler or British Pound. Because those denominations were both thick and quite valuable, smaller British coins were more popular.
In 1652, a rudimentary mint in Boston created the first American coins. The silver pieces were three-pence, six-pence and one shilling in denomination and varied in size. Each had the letters “NE” on one side to signify “New England.” On the opposite side were the Roman numerals “III,” “VI” or “XII” denoting the value.
To say genuine articles of those coins are scarce is a screaming understatement. Today, collectors pay upwards of $400,000 for the shilling coins. The sixpence coins are even rarer bringing prices of over $500,000. Most rare is the three-pence piece. Only one of those is known. A genuine specimen of that denomination could fetch over a million dollars.
Due to counterfeiting, in following years, coins with more intricate designs of a willow tree, oak tree and a pine tree were created. Those included the name “MASATHUSETS” (sic) on the front and “NEW ENGLAND” on the reverse. They too are valued in the thousands of dollars today.
Normally, collectors desire only coins in peak condition. They still do. If uncirculated, even better. Naturally, finding any such pristine coins virtually untouched after 375-years is improbable. Ironically, these early American coins are the only ones that get “a pass” if they have a hole in them – more specifically, a square hole.
That hole could well have been made by a square nail used in the 1600s when used to nail it to a Puritan door jamb. While unspoiled coins will always bring top collector dollar, an early silver coin with a hole in it could be a piece of “witch” history from New England. It surely adds a potential flair to the collectible. Of course, that’s an element that’s impossible to actually prove.
For the record, Christmas as we sort of know it now didn’t begin in the US until the early 1800s. It began slowly with elements from Germany and England. It was finally officially sanctioned and/or encouraged by the government in 1870 when Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill authorizing D.C. employees to get a day off (although unpaid) on Christmas.
As for the chance of stumbling across one of those colonial coins, there are many still waiting to be found in New England. Remember, early Puritans rarely had pockets in their clothing to carry such coinage.
For more collecting information and advice, log on to: http://prexford.com/.