Origin of the 1795 Jefferson Head Large Cent

[EZ_E]

 

vi. HARPER'S "JEFFERSON" CENTS (1795)

 

 

 

[font:Comic Sans MS]Attacks on the Mint as an extravagance, costing more to run than the face value of the coins it produced, continued and redoubled. During 1795, a congressional committee began hear­ings investigating the possible advantages of abolishing it and signing coinage contracts with private firms either locally or in Birmingham: the same profitable expedient Jefferson had been opposing for years. John Harper. who had been briefly a.ssoci­ated with Albion Cox at Rahway Mills (above. Chap. 6, Sect. v), and who had provided room and equipment for striking some of the 1792 federal provisional coinages (above, Chap. 16), as well as continuing to furnish equipment for the infant Philadelphia Mint, testified and struck sample coins at these hearings. Feb. 1795. These coins illustrated his proposals to make cents, should the mint actually be abolished.

 

For many years this episode was known only from Stewart {1924}: the coins were not identified. In 1952 I drew the con­nection in timing between Harper's proposal and the mysterious "Jefferson" cents dated 1795, which are obviously not produc­tions of the federal Mint, but which are too heavy to have been a practical exercise in counterfeiting. Paraphrasing Mint Direc­tor Boudinot's report of Feb. 8, 1796, Stewart recorded that Harper made the dies and struck the coins at his own expense,and that the congressional committee members paid him from their own pockets for the cost of the copper (which gave them a semi-official status). Stewart added also that Harper later de­clined an appointment as Assistant Coiner (presumably under Adam Eckfeldt), and that after Mint Director Boudinot learned that Harper still had his dies, he confiscated them. promising reimbursement. Boudinot allegedly managed to induce Con­gress to appropriate $100 for the purpose. Whatever the truth of this last (and it is possible that the $100 was covered by some such noncommittal label as "contingent expenses"), clearly Harper got special treatment. extraordinary for a possible com­petitor: Julian {1964}.

 

We owe the name "Jefferson cents" or "Jefferson heads" to Ebenezer Locke Mason, Jr., who popularized the issue by mak­ing large quantities of electrotype copies of the Fewsmith speci­men (sec ill. of 1679) for sale at 50 each. The name doubtless comes from a (possibly unintentional) resemblance of the profile to that of Jefferson: Mason's Coin Collecior's Magazine. 1869, p. 73. These electrotypes arc lead with copper coating; they fail the Ring Test (see Glossary) and show edge seams. Later deal­ers have attempted to sell them as authentic. They are not to be confused with the early casts, which circulated and which are thought to have been made by Harper after Boudinot confis­cated his dies. There was no legal penalty for doing so: federal cents were not legal tender, anticounterfeiting laws affected only gold and silver.[/font]

[Bugmann1974]

Thats pretty cool. I always wondered what the story was on these.

[EZ_E]

Thats pretty cool. I always wondered what the story was on these.

 

Yeah, me too. That's why I posted it. I'm making good use of Walter Breen Encyclopedia! Copyright infringement or not, I'm happy to have access to it!