Hard Cash & Hard Times:

A History of North Carolina Currency

Bob Schreiner

A major new exhibit of North Carolina money opened in Chapel Hill on November 4, 1998 with a presentation by Dr. Richard Doty, curator of numismatics at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The exhibit runs through May, 1999.

The exhibit was mounted by Neil Fulghum, keeper of the Gallery of North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The exhibit reviews the impact of money on the daily lives of our ancestors and features coins and paper currencies produced by or for North Carolina from the early 1700s until the beginning of the Federal Reserve system in 1913. Not until after the Civil War did our nation’s monetary supply began to centralize and stabilize under the authority of the federal government. Prior to that time North Carolina and other states had to rely largely on the uncertain paper moneys issued by their own public officials and by local banks, insurance companies, and other businesses. Even some private individuals produced currency for the general public. In the 1830s and 1840s—during the United States’ first gold rush (in North Carolina, not California) the Bechtler family of Rutherford County operated a private mint and made coins for the miners who were unearthing gold dust, ore, and nuggets worth millions of dollars.

Over 150 pieces of historic currency are displayed, including an extraordinary set of 24 Bechtler coins donated to the University in 1979 by Herman Bernard of High Point. In addition to these gold coins and other "antique" money drawn from the North Carolina Collection’s holdings, 17 specimens are borrowed from the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. Displays of all of this currency are complemented by selections of related books, newspaper accounts, and other imprints from the North Carolina Collection.

Artifacts in the exhibit include:

• Polished shell-bead money or "roanoke" and "peak" (wampum) used by Native Americans and by some European colonists in this region during the 1600s and early 1700s.
• Examples of paper currency from North Carolina’s colonial period and the Revolution, including notes by New Bern printer James Davis.
• Selections of antebellum "broken" bank notes and an original printing plate used to produce $10 notes for the State Bank of North Carolina.
• A wide variety of Civil War currencies issued by the national government of the Confederacy, as well as by the state of North Carolina.
• Large and small varieties of national bank notes (1863-1928) including a "Lazy Two" from The Fayetteville National Bank with an engraved scene depicting "Sir Walter Raleigh Exhibiting Corn and Tobacco to the English."
• Scrip issued by the City of Gastonia during the Great Depression.

The exhibit documents many aspects of North Carolina’s monetary history, for example:

• The United States’ first gold rush began in 1799, when a 12-year-old boy in Cabarrus County stumbled across a 17-pound gold nugget. Not realizing that the rock was gold, the boy’s family used it for several years as a doorstop in their cabin.
• When former North Carolina Governor Benjamin Smith died in debtor’s prison in 1826, his friends hurriedly buried his corpse to prevent Smith’s creditors from seizing it. At that time it was neither uncommon nor illegal for creditors to claim and hold a body until friends and relatives paid the debts of the deceased.
• The first money produced for the Confederate States of America in 1861 was printed by New York engravers and smuggled into the South.
• In 1863 a "mob" of women in Salisbury, N.C., was so angered by the high price of flour being charged by a local merchant that they chopped down the front door to his store. Needless to say, the hatchet-wielding ladies convinced the merchant to lower his price.
• In 1874 a United States Congressional committee documented that the average annual income for a family of seven—two adults and five children—living in Tarboro, N.C., was $728. Of that total income, a family paid $4 a year in taxes (about one half of 1% of their income).

Opened to the public in 1990, the North Carolina Collection Gallery features historic rooms and exhibits selections from the North Carolina Collection’s extensive holdings of books, maps, photographs, and museum objects. Historic rooms include the original library from Hayes Plantation in Edenton, N.C., and the Sir Walter Raleigh Rooms, which are decorated with late 16th- and 17th-century English furnishings. There are also exhibits on UNC history; on Eng and Chang (the "original" Siamese twins), rare Audubon bird prints, and much more. The Gallery is in the Louis Round Wilson Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

NCC Gallery’s visitation hours: Mondays-Fridays, 9-5; Saturdays, 9-1; Sundays, 1-5; closed on official holidays.

Admission is free.

For more information, contact Neil Fulghum at 919-962-1172, e-mail

rfulghum@email.unc.edu or Laura Baxley, Assistant to the Keeper , 919-962-1172, e-mail lbaxley@email.unc.edu.

This article was reprinted with permission from the Fall 1998 North Carolina Numismatic Association Journal