On 10 December 1690 the Massachusetts Bay General Court authorized £7,000 in bills of credit to pay for an expedition against Canada. The Newman Numismatic Portal and the U.S. Currency Education Program agree that this was the first public paper money authorized by a legislature in the British American colonies. The distinction matters: five years earlier, in 1685, intendant Jacques de Meulles had already paid the troops of New France with signed, cut playing cards, each for a stated value. That monnaie de carte is the hemispheric antecedent. What Massachusetts inaugurated was something else: the value did not sit in the metal of the substrate, but in the colony’s promise.
Those Colony or Old Charter Bills were indented — the wavy cut along the edge had to fit the stub the treasurer retained — and carried the Massachusetts Bay seal, with the Indian and the legend “Come over and help us.” The Newman Numismatic Portal records the denominations of 5, 10, and 20 shillings and of £5, and the signatures of three members of the committee. The other colonies copied the expedient.
Eighty-five years of provincial paper
Between Massachusetts and the Continental Congress there is almost a century of colonial issues, and the pieces in this case come from that span. Pennsylvania entered in 1723 with £45,000 in bills of credit: £7,500 for the government and the rest lent to private borrowers at 5 percent against mortgage security. That mechanism — a public office that issues paper against mortgages — is the Loan Office that returns in the 1773 emission. A young Benjamin Franklin defended it in 1729 in A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency, one of the earliest imprints from his Philadelphia shop.
The paper was not worth the same everywhere. Each colony rated the Spanish milled dollar in its own shillings: 6 in New England, Maryland, and Virginia (“lawful money”); 7 shillings and 6 pence in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware; 8 in New York. That is why a Pennsylvania 5-shilling note “promises a crown” and not a dollar, and why New Jersey issued six shillings: they are fractions of a peso fuerte that almost no one held in the hand.
London distrusted the expedient. The Currency Act of 1751 limited issues in New England and withdrew legal tender for private debts; that of 1764 extended the legal-tender ban to all the colonies. In 1773 Parliament relented and allowed paper money as legal tender for public debts. The Pennsylvania issue of 1 October of that year is born in that opening, printed by Hall and Sellers on paper with mica flakes and blue fibers.
Continental Currency, 1775–1779
Between June 1775 and January 1779 the Continental Congress ordered eleven issues that totaled about $241.5 million and were the war’s principal source of revenue. The notes promised Spanish milled dollars or their equivalent in gold or silver; they paid no interest. The early series read “The United Colonies”; that of 14 January 1779 already carries on the border “The United States of North America.”
That last issue — $95,051,695 in sixteen values, from $1 to $80 — left the Hall and Sellers press in Philadelphia with the face in red and black and, on the back, the impression of a real leaf: Franklin’s nature print, distinct for each denomination. Great Britain counterfeited the series of 20 May 1777 and 11 April 1778 on such a scale that Congress withdrew them entirely.
None of that stopped the fall. In January 1777 it took 1.25 Continental dollars for one in specie; in January 1781, one hundred. The paper ceased to circulate in May of that year and left the phrase: “not worth a Continental.” The Constitution, ratified in 1788, closed the door on the states — Article I, Section 10: no state shall emit bills of credit — and Congress retired the remainder in 1790, exchanging it for bonds at one hundred to one. The discredit was such that there was no federal paper money until the greenbacks of 1861–1862.
How to read a colonial note
Five marks that recur on the three records and on almost all paper of the period:
- Indented. The hand-cut edge had to match the stub the treasurer kept. It is the first anti-counterfeit system for United States paper.
- Manuscript signatures. Two or three commissioners signed each note in ink; on the 1779 series the numbering and some signatures are in red.
- Manuscript serial. Neither Pick nor Friedberg identifies a specimen; the handwritten number does, when it can be read.
- Franklin paper. Mica flakes and blue fibers in the paper mass, visible against the light on the Pennsylvania pieces.
- Printed threat. “To Counterfeit is Death” on Pennsylvania; on the Continentals, the nature-print leaf served the same function.
Notes in the collection
Each record describes a physical object. A Pick number or a year does not identify the specimen: the serial does, when it can be read.
- $5 · Continental Currency · 14 January 1779 · Friedberg CC-91 · Serial — · Emblem SUSTINE VEL ABSTINE · Reverse: feverfew leaf
- 5 shillings · Pennsylvania · 1 October 1773 · Friedberg PA-166 · P# S-2540 · N#406969 · Serial 9733
- 2 shillings and 6 pence · Pennsylvania · 1 October 1773 · Friedberg PA-165 · Serial 21251
-
$5 · Continental Currency · 14 January 1779
Cat. Fr. CC-91 · Serial —
Open the note page → -
5 shillings · Pennsylvania · 1 October 1773
Cat. Fr. PA-166 · P# S-2540 · N#406969 · Serial 9733
Open the note page → -
2 shillings and 6 pence · Pennsylvania · 1 October 1773
Cat. Fr. PA-165 · Serial 21251
Open the note page →
Three note pages, 1773–1779. The New Jersey six-shillings of 1776 wait for a readable serial or a certificate before a note page is opened. Last updated: 13 September 2026.
References and condition
Fr. refers to Paper Money of the United States (Friedberg), which numbers colonial issues by colony (PA, NJ) and Continentals as CC. On the 5-shilling record, P# is the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money (Pick) specialized number: S-2540. N# is the Numista type number: N#406969. Those two abbreviations are written out once, here.
This case uses Friedberg numbers on the three records. Newman, The Early Paper Money of America, is cited as a source on the 5-shilling page; Newman catalog numbers are not adopted here.
The three pieces are described as circulated and unencapsulated; condition is noted descriptively, not numerically.
In the collection
Links
- Newman Numismatic Portal — Massachusetts, 10 December 1690 (opens in a new tab)
£7,000 in Colony or Old Charter Bills; first public paper authorized by a legislature in the British American colonies; 5s, 10s, 20s, and £5.
- U.S. Currency Education Program — History of U.S. Currency (opens in a new tab)
Massachusetts 1690 and Continentals of 1775; the phrase “not worth a Continental.”
- American Numismatic Society — A History of American Currency (opens in a new tab)
Massachusetts 1690 in the colonial public-paper account; the 1685 monnaie de carte is the needed nuance.
- University of Notre Dame — Colonial Currency (opens in a new tab)
Colonial issues and Continentals through the 1790s; indenting and the Spanish dollar.
- U.S. National Archives — Constitution of the United States (opens in a new tab)
Article I, Section 10: no state shall emit bills of credit. The Constitution was ratified in 1788.