The United States Mint in Philadelphia

INTRODUCTION

The United States was a young nation when Congress approved An Act Establishing a Mint and Regulating the Coins of the United States (widely shorthanded as the Mint Act or Coinage Act) on April 2, 1792. Throughout the nation’s first years, Americans purchased goods and services mainly by exchanging copper and silver coins struck by individual states, or private trade tokens placed into circulation by merchants. Many who have a general awareness of early American money may have also heard of wampum, consisting of whelk-shell and clamshell beads. Wampum was primarily traded among Northeastern Native Americans and early American colonists, but it had mostly withered away from usage by the early 18th century, long before the United States became an independent nation. Foreign coins from nations such as England, Germany, France, and Spain were also legal tender during the Colonial and early Federalist eras. Among the most widely circulated foreign coins was the Spanish milled dollar, or pieces of eight, upon which the value of the US dollar was based.

By the early 1780s, many great thinkers proposed concepts for a US monetary system, leading to the production of several privately minted proposal coins. The earliest known among these, the Plain Nova Constellatio quint, was struck in Philadelphia under the authority of the US government in 1783. This experimental, or pattern, coin is made from silver and would have been worth 500 units in a decimal system of coins ranging in value from 5 to 1,000 units. A second pattern, additional to the plain piece mentioned here, features the words NOVA CONSTELLATIO, a Latin phrase meaning a new constellation.

Other privately minted pattern coins were struck in the following years, and many remain popular today with numismatists (those who study money). Among these pieces is a particular type of gold coin struck by Ephraim Brasher, a New York jeweler who was a friend of George Washington. In 1787, Brasher produced a coin now known as the Brasher doubloon, which was valued at $15 in New York currency and roughly equal to the value of a Spanish doubloon, or 16 Spanish dollars. Another widely known coin that was struck in 1787 is the fugio (a Latin word intended here to mean time flies) cent, a copper piece featuring an image of a sundial. The legends on the coins, which bear the phrase MIND YOUR BUSINESS, are generally credited to founding father Benjamin Franklin.

Hopes for an official US coinage system became a reality after the ratification of a revised US Constitution in 1789. Two men who helped lead the charge for creating a US monetary system were Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton, a man who never served as US president, was chosen by Pres. George Washington to become the nation’s first secretary of the treasury. Hamilton proposed ideas on monetary policy to Congress on January 28, 1791. In his report, which is partly based on findings made by Jefferson, were proposals for an official government mint.

Hamilton’s vision for a national mint included the groundwork for the types of coins that would be produced at such a facility, including his concept for the US dollar, which was based largely on the Spanish silver dollar.

A few weeks later, on March 3, Congress passed a resolution to establish a national mint but failed to appropriate necessary funding. These matters were resolved the following year with the passage of the Mint (or Coinage) Act of 1792, which established the US Mint in Philadelphia, a city that from 1790 through 1800 served as the nation’s capital and was among the largest cities in the English-speaking world. Also authorized with the Mint Act was the nation’s official coinage system. These included $10 gold coins or eagles, $5 gold coins or half eagles, $2.50 gold coins or quarter eagles, a dollar coin minted from silver and worth 100 cents, half-dollars with a face value of 50 cents, quarters worth 25 cents; dismes (now called dimes) valued at 10 cents, half dismes (or half dimes) of 5 cents, copper one-cent coins, and copper half-cent coins, which were discontinued from production in 1857. The US Mint took several years unrolling the first official circulating examples of each denomination, and others not mentioned here came along in later years with additional legislation.

July 1792 was a pivotal moment in the history of the US Mint. Renowned Philadelphia scientist and public official David Rittenhouse became the first director of the US Mint following his appointment by President Washington on April 14, 1792. His position was one of five originally listed in the Coinage Act of 1792. By the end of July 1792, construction was also underway on the first US Mint, which was located adjacent to the present-day intersection of Seventh and Arch Streets in Center City.

The original US Mint facility consisted of several buildings tightly positioned near one another on property purchased by Rittenhouse on July 18, 1792, for $4,266.67. The original US Mint facility in Philadelphia, anchored by a three-story structure, also included what was by some accounts the first federal building ever constructed under the authority of Congress. By the end of 1792, the first official US pattern coins struck under the Coinage Act were made in Philadelphia and included a variety of copper and silver coins. Among these early US coins were a silver one-cent coin, copper cent (widely known as the Birch cent, an ode to its engraver, Robert Birch), half disme, disme, and quarter.

The first circulation coins to be released by the US Mint came in March 1793 with the introduction of a large one-cent coin bearing the likeness of Liberty on the coin’s obverse (or heads side) and a chain encircling the words ONE CENT 1/100 on the reverse (tails side). Before the end of 1793, the one-cent coin, measuring approximately 27 millimeters wide—wider than a modern-day quarter—underwent various design changes. The only other US denomination officially issued in 1793 was the half-cent coin.

The last years of the 1790s proved eventful for the US Mint, which hired its first women in 1795 as adjusters. A yellow fever epidemic was particularly burdensome in 1797, forcing the mint to close during the summer and autumn, as the health of its employees came first in the wake of the deadly, flu-like mosquito-borne illness.

By the early 1800s, a variety of denominations had entered circulation, though the new US coins were hardly plentiful. While the US Census of 1800 counted 5,308,483 Americans, the US Mint had produced barely more than 10 million coins by that time. Of these, nearly 8.2 million were either copper half-cent or one-cent coins, mostly the latter, leaving relatively few silver or gold coins available for use in larger transactions. As