Where Did the Pennies Go? Coin Hoarding, Shinplasters, and the 1862 Small-Change Crisis
Alchemist G. G. Wilkins explores the 1862 small-change crisis, from coin hoarding and postage stamps to shinplasters and his own counterstamped coppers. Guest Clara Higgins, a Blue Ridge mountain herbalist and old-time slang historian, shares keepsakes and family lore from the shortage, including a cow-adorned grocer's note, a smoky kettle-copper token, and a loaf of bread that rang like a bell. The episode also covers the cuts of a run, safety warnings, and a listener question about hickory ash in the thump keg.
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Full episode transcript
♦ Audible wax cylinder surface crackle, slow drip of clear distillate into a glass jar
♦ Barnaby the black bear grunting and chain clinking outside log cabin window
Wilkins: Barnaby, settle down, you great shaggy tax-dodger! I am about to speak to the nation and you are rattling that chain like a Methodist deacon counting the collection. Sit, you sack of fleas! Sit, I say, or I will pull every tooth in your fool head and sell them for cash, if any cash could be found in this country!
♪ 1860s parlor banjo and mountain fiddle theme with antique warmth
Wilkins: Good evening, friends, neighbors, and scoundrels of every stripe. Welcome to Radio Moonshine with Alchemist G. G. Wilkins, broadcasting to you from the log fortress of Fort Wilkins, on the Suncook Valley Turnpike, Route 28, in Pittsfield, Merrimack County, New Hampshire. Tonight's subject is the great vanishing act of the age: where did all the pennies go? Pull up a stool, pour something sensible, and mind the bear.
Announcer: A quick word, friends! Fire hot, copper right, and results certain: the Flame-Flow still, United States Patent 10,561,960, built in the Fort Wilkins tradition and proven under every kind of fire. Visit moonshinestill.com, that is moonshinestill.com, and see the finest copper work money can buy!
Wilkins: Thank you, Announcer, now go stand where the bear cannot reach you. Friends, we begin with a mystery, and I am the man to solve it, for I have had my hands in the very works of it.
♪ Short fiddle sting, rising
Wilkins: Segment One. The Great Vanishing of the Pennies. Cast your mind back, if your mind has not been pickled, to the autumn of eighteen hundred and sixty-one. The war is on, the banks are nervous, and the government is spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. In December of that year the banks suspended specie payments, and by early eighteen sixty-two the Treasury had followed. That is a fancy way of saying: you could no longer walk into a bank, slap down a note, and demand gold or silver in return. The promise was broken, and every sensible man in New England understood what that meant.
Wilkins: It meant hard money was about to become scarcer than a sober Irishman at a wake. And what does a Yankee do when he smells trouble? He hoards. Gold went first, into the stocking and under the loose hearthstone. Silver followed close behind, half dollars and quarters and dimes, sewn into mattresses, baked into bread, dropped down wells in jars. And then, friends, the most astonishing thing of all happened: even the copper cent vanished! Nobody had ever hoarded a copper cent in the history of the Republic. A penny was what you gave a beggar to be rid of him. But the large cents and the new small cents disappeared too, because a man who has lost faith in paper will hoard anything with a bit of metal in it, including, I swear, his dead wife's thimbles.
Wilkins: I knew a man in Chichester who buried four hundred dollars in coin in his own cow pasture and then forgot which cow. He dug for six weeks. The cows were delighted. The pasture looked like Cold Harbor. A hoarder's stocking holds more silver than sense, and the moth gets the sense first.
Wilkins: Now consider the poor shopkeeper in Pittsfield, or Concord, or Epsom. A woman comes in for a spool of thread, three cents' worth, and has nothing in her purse but a greenback or a bank note, and the merchant has not a single cent to make change. What does he do? He gives her a stick of candy, a button, or a promise. I have seen a promise of change written on the back of a playing card. I have seen a dentist's receipt, mine, accepted as legal tender for a pound of nails, which I believe is the only honest use ever made of one.
♪ Banjo transition
Wilkins: And so the country, starved for small change, began to improvise. And the improvisations, friends, are the whole reason I am so busy at my anvil.
Wilkins: First came the stamps. Folks took to using postage stamps as small money, tucking them into their pockets and passing them across the counter. But a stamp in a hot pocket turns to a sticky wad faster than a Merrimack tax collector turns to a bribe. Merchants took to enclosing them in little brass-framed cases with mica windows, which is clever, but a man cannot carry a hundred of those without jingling like a sleigh.
Wilkins: Then in the summer of eighteen sixty-two the Treasury itself took a hand. They printed what they called Postage Currency: little paper notes in denominations of five, ten, twenty-five, and fifty cents, with the picture of a postage stamp printed right on the face. Think of that! The government of the United States, in the middle of a war, printing pictures of stamps and calling them money. Later came the Fractional Currency, which was much the same with fancier faces. And the common folk, who name everything with a rude word, called all of these little paper notes shinplasters.
Wilkins: Why shinplasters? Because they were worth about what you would wrap around a bruised shin, and they served about as well. They were flimsy, they tore, they stained, and they smelled of every pocket they had ever lived in. The Treasury printed paper the size of a postage stamp and called it money, and my bear has eaten better-looking paper and been none the worse. But mark this, friends: the shinplasters worked. They got a woman her thread and a man his nails, and the country kept moving. A bad answer that works is better than a good answer that does not exist.
♪ Fiddle sting
Wilkins: Segment Two. Legends, Outlaws, and Counterstampers. Now we come to my own corner of the great shortage, and here I must brag a little, for modesty is a sin that never paid for a barrel of copper.
Wilkins: When a country is starved for small change, a man with a punch and an anvil becomes a person of consequence. I took in worn large cents, the old Liberty-head coppers so rubbed down by sixty years of pockets that Mr. Washington himself would have asked for a refund of his nose. I took silver pieces, I took coppers, and at my anvil, with one good clang of the steel, I stamped them: G. G. WILKINS, PITTSFIELD N.H. Now there is a thing a farmer in the Suncook Valley will take in change, because he knows the man who stamped it, and knows the man lives where the bear lives, and does not wish to argue about the weight.
♦ Steel punch clangs on a copper coin
Wilkins: That is the sound of commerce, friends! A counterstamper working in copper in eighteen sixty-two had more business than a hangman at a county fair. Merchants brought me coppers by the pocketful. Why? Because a plain worn cent looks like any other worn cent, and a man might doubt it. But a cent with my name punched into it is a promise: this is good, and G. G. Wilkins will stand behind it. I will say honestly the value was in the trust more than in the copper, and what I sold was my reputation, which I assure you is more flammable than my still.
Wilkins: And the revenue men, who arrested me twice for the spirits, never once arrested me for the coins. Perhaps they carried my stamped pennies in their own pockets. I would not put it past the sheriff to have taken my change and then my liberty in the same afternoon.
Wilkins: Which brings me, friends, to the finest guest I have had in this log hall in a month of Sundays. She hails from the Blue Ridge of Virginia, a granddaughter of wild-foragers, a mountain herbalist who knows every name the hill people ever gave to shine, from white lightning to panther's breath, and who keeps the old slang of the trade the way a magpie keeps spoons. Miss Clara Higgins of the Blue Ridge, welcome to Fort Wilkins!
Clara: Thank you kindly, Doc. A real mountain run smells like autumn rain on ripe sweetcorn, but I'll tell you, this place smells like a barn full of burnt sugar, and I mean that as the highest compliment I know.
Wilkins: Take it as one, madam, for I have no other kind to give. Now, you are a collector of the odd and the vanished. Tell my listeners what a woman of your habits keeps in her cabinet, for the topic tonight is the want of small money.
Clara: Well, Doc, my pride and joy is a shinplaster printed by a Concord grocer. Little paper note, good for a few cents in trade at his counter, and where any proper bank would put an eagle, he put a cow. A small drawing of a cow, looking mighty pleased with herself, standing right there where the national bird ought to be.
Wilkins: A cow in place of the eagle! Madam, that is the most honest piece of engraving ever done in the state of New Hampshire. The eagle never gave a man a drop of milk in his life, and a Concord grocer is the one creature on earth who would put his own livestock on a promise to pay. Did he redeem it, or did the cow eat the evidence?
Clara: Ha! Folks say he honored every one, and I reckon it was because everybody in town knew the cow. Now I've got another keepsake, and this one's got a smell to it. A tavern keeper once paid his farmers in tokens he struck himself, out of scraps of old copper kettles. Melted down the dented ones nobody could mend. I've got one of those tokens, and I'll swear on my grandmother's Bible it still smells faintly of smoke.
Wilkins: A token that remembers the fire! Madam, that is a thing after my own heart, for I have spent my life in the company of copper and smoke, and I will tell you the metal never forgets where it has been. A tavern keeper paying farmers in his own kettles, though! The man drank his profit and then coined the pot. Hand it here, that I may sniff it like a hound.
Clara: Careful, Doc, it's older than both of us put together. Now, my great-grandmother had a different notion of what to do with pennies. She hid them inside rising bread dough. Kneaded them right into the loaf and let it rise on the back of the stove, and no thief on earth would go pawing through a woman's baking. Family still tells about the Sunday a loaf was sliced at the table and it rang like a bell.
Wilkins: Rang like a bell! Oh, that is magnificent. I picture the preacher at the head of the table with his knife and a face like a man who has been shot at by a biscuit. A wife who bakes her fortune into the Sunday bread is a sounder banker than any in Concord, and she paid better interest than the Treasury. Tell me, did the family eat the loaf or the coins?
Clara: They ate around the coins, Doc, and my great-grandmother never lived it down. Folks in the hollow called her cooking the richest in the county, and they did not mean the butter.
Wilkins: Well, Miss Higgins, you have been a fine guest. Before you go, tell my listeners the best name you ever heard for shine, for I am partial to panther's breath myself and fear I shall be using it on the sheriff. Mind my bear on the way out, and do not offer him a ham bone unless you are prepared to part with the hand that holds it.
Clara: Panther's breath is hard to beat, Doc, though my grandmother called it a good strong argument. I will keep my hands in my pockets and my cow note in my purse. Thank you kindly.
♪ Banjo bridge
Wilkins: Ladies and gentlemen, Segment Three, the Ad Break, is coming up, and I ask you to hold onto your wallets, such as they are. Announcer, you may speak.
♦ Brass bell and a rattle of coins on a counter
Announcer: Friends and neighbors, step right up and lend an ear, for I bring you tidings of a marvel of the copper-smith's art! You have heard Dr. Wilkins tell of the scarcity of small change in this troubled age, and I ask you, what is worth more than coin? A thing that makes something of value. Behold the Fort Wilkins Two-Gallon Tabletop Mini-Still, the compact pure copper alembic from the showroom at Fort Wilkins on Route 28 in Pittsfield, New Hampshire!
Announcer: Built from heavy-gauge pure electrolytic copper, twenty ounces to the square foot, spun and finished by the very coppersmiths who work beside Dr. Wilkins himself. Hand-riveted handles that will outlast your grandchildren! Quick-connect cooling lines that attach in a twinkling! This is the precision of Fort Wilkins on a scale that sits upon your kitchen table!
Announcer: Fine for distilling botanical waters! Splendid for essential floral oils, rosewater, lavender, and mint! And a marvel for countertop demonstrations that will astonish your friends and dumbfound your enemies! No parlor is complete without one! Price, friends? A mere two hundred and eighty-nine dollars, honestly earned and honestly spent! Not a shinplaster in the lot, for this is copper through and through!
Announcer: Do not delay, for the supply of fine copper is not without end! Visit the showroom at Fort Wilkins on Route 28 in Pittsfield, or send to moonshinestill.com slash products slash tabletop alembic, and have your own Fort Wilkins Two-Gallon Tabletop Alembic delivered to your very door! Once more, friends: moonshinestill.com, the Tabletop Alembic, two hundred eighty-nine dollars! Do not let this copper pass you by!
♪ Brassy fanfare with banjo
Wilkins: Thank you, Announcer, a most vigorous performance. You nearly sold me one, and I own the forge. Now, to the craft, friends, for a man who talks of money and never of copper is a poor sort of alchemist.
♪ Low, bubbling fiddle theme
Wilkins: Segment Three. Copper and the Craft. I will speak tonight of the cuts, for it is the single most important lesson in the whole business, and many a man has lost his eyesight for ignoring it. And I tell you plainly: everything I say here is for the history of the thing and the education of the listener. To make spirits for drinking without a permit from the federal government is against the law of the United States, and I would not see you in the sheriff's wagon on my account. Though I note the sheriff and I are on first-name terms.
Wilkins: When you run a still, the spirit does not come off all at once, same as a tooth does not come out all at once. It comes in stages, and each stage has its own character. First come the foreshots. These are the first dribble off the still, sharp as a Concord lawyer's tongue, and they carry the nastiest volatile compounds in the whole charge, including methanol. Methanol is wood alcohol, friends, and it will blind a man and kill him dead. You throw the foreshots away. You do not drink them, you do not rinse your mouth with them, you do not sell them to your neighbor. You discard them, and you wash your hands of them.
Wilkins: After the foreshots come the heads. Still harsh, still carrying those light volatile compounds, smelling of paint thinner and regret. Heads are set aside too, and treated as unfit for the cup. A careless man mixes his heads with his good spirit and the next morning feels as though a mule has kicked him through the skull, and that is the mild result.
Wilkins: Then, at last, come the hearts. This is the clean middle of the run, sweet and smooth, and the part that a careful distiller keeps. You know the hearts by smell and taste and by the temperature of the vapor, and a good distiller learns the signs through patient years and many ruined batches.
Wilkins: Last come the tails. Heavy, oily, smelling of wet cardboard and old cabbage, full of the sluggish compounds that muddy a spirit. Tails are set aside and may be re-run in a later batch, but they are not part of the clean heart. A man who runs his still too long gets tails in his hearts, and the whole batch turns sour.
Wilkins: So that is the lesson: foreshots, heads, hearts, tails. Discard the first, set aside the second, keep the third, set aside the last. And know that fire is the great enemy. Keep your fire low and steady, friends. A still that runs too hot can boil over and scald you, or spit hot vapor into an open flame, and I have seen a man's eyebrows go up like a pair of startled swallows. The fire is a servant and a very bad master.
Wilkins: And one more warning, friends, one I give with the weight of a man who has seen the results. Do not use lead solder anywhere in a still, and do not build one from salvaged radiators or contaminated metal. Lead is a poison, and it leaches into the spirit and into the man, and it sickens or kills. Use pure copper and clean joints. That is why Fort Wilkins copper is the finest in the valley. I will not have a customer poisoned by cheap work, for dead customers do not pay their bills.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: There, a fresh cent, stamped with my name, and as honest as the copper it is made of. And now, friends, we come to the postcard bag.
♪ Fiddle and banjo, sprightly
Wilkins: Segment Four. Myths, Slang, and the Listener Call-In. I have here upon the table a most unusual item, a taking-down of a voice recorded by a gentleman in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and delivered to me through channels I will not describe for fear of the postmaster. Let us play it.
♦ Wax cylinder crackle, a click, a distant voice
Cletus: Alchemist, my uncle swears old-timers used to throw hickory ashes or red oak shavings into the thump keg to clean out bad heads. Is there any truth to that, or was he just making swamp medicine? This is Cletus Miller, folks call me Rabbit, out of Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
♦ Wax cylinder click, silence
Wilkins: Well now, Rabbit Miller of Wilkesboro, you have asked a question as old as the copper pot itself, and I shall answer it honestly, though it may bruise your uncle's pride. Your uncle, sir, is not entirely a liar, but he is not entirely a doctor either. Swamp medicine is the right name, though there is a kernel of sense inside the husk.
Wilkins: Hickory and oak are hardwoods, and their charcoal does something real: it adsorbs some harsh compounds out of a spirit, the way a sponge will drink up spilled ink. That is why a good many distillers filter through charcoal, and why aging in a charred oak barrel mellows the whole product. So when your uncle says wood and ash take the bite out of a spirit, he has hold of a true thread.
Wilkins: But mark what he has gone and tangled it into. He says to throw ashes or shavings into the thump keg, which is the vessel that sits between the still and the condenser, to clean out bad heads. Now this is where the thread snaps. Ash thrown into a boiling charge does not remove methanol. It does not strip the foreshots. It does not make a poisoned run safe. The only protection against the bad stuff coming off the still is the cuts, friends, the honest, careful cuts I described a moment ago. Foreshots away, heads set aside, hearts kept, tails parted. No ash, no shaving, no incantation will do that work in your place. A man who thumps his keg with hickory ashes and calls it medicine is the same man who calls his wife's cooking rustic.
Wilkins: I knew a fellow in Barnstead, name of Ephraim, who swore by oak shavings in his keg. Never made a cut in his life. Drank the whole run, foreshots and all. He was a handsome man, Ephraim, until the spring of eighteen fifty-eight, when he took ill, and I will say no more than that the doctors in Concord could not help him and the shavings could not either.
Wilkins: So, Rabbit, tell your uncle that Dr. Wilkins sends his respects and his corrections. The wood has a use, but the use is filtering and aging, not rescuing a bad run. Make your cuts, sir, and keep your fire low. And my thanks to you for the shout from Wilkesboro. I hold that country in warm regard, for the Blue Ridge gave me Clara Higgins, and I will forgive it a great deal for that.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: One more myth before I close, a quick one. Some folks believe that a coin counterstamped with a man's name is worth more than a plain coin, because the name adds value. Not a bit of it, friends. The value is in the trust and the copper, and the punch is merely the promise. A fine name on a bad coin is only a fine name on a bad coin. I have seen men try to cheat the world with a punch and a lie, and the world is rarely so gullible as the cheat supposes.
♪ Banjo and fiddle swell, closing theme beginning
Wilkins: Now, friends, as the hour grows short and Barnaby begins to eye the supper dish, I must tell you of a marvelous opportunity.
Announcer: A quick word, friends! Before you retire for the evening, remember the Flame-Flow still, United States Patent 10,561,960, the pride of the Fort Wilkins coppersmiths! Visit moonshinestill.com, that is moonshinestill.com, and ask after the Tabletop Alembic too! Copper that outlasts the Republic!
Wilkins: Thank you, Announcer. Friends, I have lately set down all I know of the distilling art in a course, the Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Distilling Course, wherein I teach the history, the metallurgy, the cuts, and the safe handling of fire and copper, all for the education of the curious mind. It is taught with a dentist's patience and a blacksmith's bluntness, and I promise you will learn more than your uncle ever knew about ashes. Inquire at the showroom at Fort Wilkins on Route 28 in Pittsfield, or write to the Alchemist care of the Suncook Valley Turnpike.
Wilkins: And so, we come to the end of another evening's reckoning. The pennies went into the stockings, the shinplasters came out of the Treasury, the tokens and worn coppers carried the common trade, and a Pittsfield blacksmith with a punch and an anvil did honest business in the gap. Remember, friends, that a country starved of small change is a country that learns to trust its neighbors, or learns to hoard. I am glad to say that the Suncook Valley chose trust, mostly.
Wilkins: Keep your copper clean, your cuts honest, and your fire low. Goodnight from Fort Wilkins.
♦ Bear grunt and final drip into jar
♪ Banjo and fiddle theme fades out