JUNE 15
1785•Vermont Authorizes Reuben Harmon’s Copper Coinage
1915•Panama-Pacific $50 Gold: First Octagonal Strike
1933•Texas Centennial Half Dollar
Vermont Authorizes Reuben Harmon’s Copper Coinage
Before Vermont joined the Union, its legislature granted a private coiner the right to make copper money bearing a distinctive republican landscape.
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American Coin History Calendar · Article 166 · June 15
On June 15, 1785, Vermont’s legislature granted Reuben Harmon, Jr., authority to coin copper money. The exclusive franchise was to run for two years beginning July 1. The calendar event is the authorization, not a demonstrated first striking on the same day.[1][5]
Vermont was then an independent republic outside the United States. Its copper coinage expressed local authority while addressing the practical need for small money. The surviving pieces consequently combine a political message with the wear, roughness, and manufacturing variation of working currency.
The early landscape design makes that combination particularly visible. Mountains, trees, a rising sun, and a plow occupy one side; an eye, rays, and stars occupy the other. A small copper could describe a place, assert a government’s standing, and circulate in trade at the same time.
Vermont’s place in the Confederation era
The U.S. Senate records Vermont’s admission as the fourteenth state on March 4, 1791. The 1785 coinage therefore predates membership in the Union by several years. Calling the pieces federal United States Mint products would erase the political situation in which they were authorized.[6]
They nevertheless belong in American coin history. Money used in early American communities did not come only from a national mint. Local issues, imported coins, and other circulating pieces formed the material background against which later federal coinage developed.
Vermont offers a particularly clear example because its coins name the issuing authority and present a recognizable local landscape. A collector can hold evidence of a republic that later became a state without treating those two stages as the same constitutional arrangement.
A petition became a limited franchise
Notre Dame’s research, reproduced by the Numismatic Bibliomania Society, describes a committee appointed on June 10 to examine Harmon’s petition. Five days later the proposal reached the legislature in the form that authorized the two-year privilege. The sequence shows a request being considered through a public process.[1]
The franchise was exclusive and limited in time. Those terms gave a private individual a defined opportunity rather than creating a permanent government mint department. Public authority and private operation were linked, but they were not identical.
This arrangement helps explain why Harmon’s name matters in the story. The legislature established the permission and requirements; the coiner had to turn them into tools, planchets, dies, and saleable money. The surviving coins are evidence of that practical undertaking rather than a substitute for the legal grant.
The Early American Coppers guide describes the authorizing requirement for a bond and copper coins weighing 160 grains. Research preserved by the Newman Numismatic Portal explains the weight as one-third of a troy ounce. These conditions placed measurable obligations on the franchise.[2][5]
Weight was an important component of the public promise. A copper piece’s acceptability depended partly on expectations about how much metal it contained. Establishing a standard gave the government a way to define what the privilege permitted Harmon to make.
The bond added an element of accountability. It is useful to see these requirements together: permission to coin was accompanied by terms intended to protect the issuing authority and users. A franchise was not simply an invitation to place any chosen design on any convenient copper disc.
Rupert supplied the working setting
The Vermont Historical Society identifies Harmon’s Mint in Rupert and dates its operation to the 1785–1788 period. Its account places a local manufacturing site behind the coins that now appear in national collecting references.[3]
That setting differs markedly from the image of a large later federal mint. Preparing small copper money demanded equipment and skill, but the enterprise belonged to a local economy and a private franchise. The mint’s scale should not be inferred from the importance collectors later attached to its products.
The place also brings the landscape image closer to the manufacturing story. The coins were not merely abstract declarations of a republic. They emerged from work carried out within the region represented by their scenery and agricultural tool.
The early obverse shows a mountain range with trees, a sun emerging above it, and a plow below. PCGS’s variety descriptions identify the placement of these elements and their relationship to the date and surrounding legend.[4]
The image can be read from top to bottom: landscape, light, and cultivation. Mountains and trees identify the environment, while the plow introduces human work. The design presents Vermont through land that can sustain a community rather than through a ruler’s portrait.
The rising sun adds a suggestion of beginning or promise, although a modern interpretation should not be mistaken for a surviving instruction from the engraver. What can be stated directly is that the design deliberately gives scenery and an agricultural implement the space often occupied by a bust.
The Latin identifies a republic
Early landscape varieties carry forms such as VERMONTS RES PUBLICA. Later spelling forms differ, and their differences help numismatists identify particular dies. The words connect the image to Vermont’s republican authority rather than leaving the landscape anonymous.[4]
Latin inscriptions gave the coin a language familiar from older coinage and public emblems. Yet the subject remained local. The combination allowed an unfamiliar small issue to invoke an established vocabulary of authority while naming a new political community.
Spelling variation is therefore more than an amusing irregularity. It is evidence about the dies used to create the coins. A collector who records the precise legend preserves a detail that can distinguish one variety from another even when wear has weakened the landscape.
The landscape reverse features an eye surrounded by rays and thirteen stars, with the legend STELLA QUARTA DECIMA, meaning the fourteenth star. PCGS compares its imagery with the Nova Constellatio design known in the period.[4]
The message fits Vermont’s position: it asserted a separate republican identity while looking toward association with the thirteen states. The later admission date gives the phrase historical resonance, but the coin was made before that outcome had occurred.[6]
Read beside the landscape, the reverse creates a useful contrast within the design itself. One side describes Vermont’s own land and government; the other places that identity in relation to a wider constellation. The coin could express local independence and a desired national relationship together.
The original 160-grain requirement proved heavier than the circulating copper standards it was intended to meet. Numismatic research records a reduction to 111 grains in October 1785. The revised standard belongs to the coinage’s continuing administration, not to the June 15 authorization itself.[5][8]
The change reveals a practical problem behind the attractive imagery. A piece might satisfy a legal weight rule yet be difficult to distribute if other coppers offered a more convenient or cheaper unit. Coinage had to operate in a market as well as comply with an act.
That tension makes actual surviving weights important evidence. The law establishes what was required at a particular time; the pieces reveal what was produced and retained. Comparing the two can uncover variation, but it does not automatically tell us the exact day a particular copper left the press.
A coin’s weight cannot date it by itself
PCGS’s research on the RR-3 landscape variety notes wide variation in surviving weights and cautions that weight alone cannot reliably establish the order of die use. Pieces broadly compatible with the reduced standard do not prove a simple sequence for every early variety.[8]
Wear, corrosion, imperfect blanks, and production variation complicate the evidence. Even an accurately measured specimen represents its present physical state. The amount of metal originally prepared may have been altered by two centuries of handling and environmental exposure.
A careful attribution therefore combines several features. Weight can support an interpretation, but legend, design placement, die cracks, and relationships to other specimens may be more decisive. The strongest conclusion is the one that accounts for all observable evidence rather than the one based on a single convenient measurement.
PCGS describes ways to distinguish RR-2 from RR-3 by the sun’s rays, the plow, and punctuation. Such relationships remain useful when two coins initially appear to carry the same scene. A variety is an identified die pairing, not merely a different color or level of wear.[4]
The approach rewards close observation. The position of a ray relative to a letter or period can be more informative than the overall sharpness of the mountains. A worn copper may preserve the diagnostic element needed for attribution even when more prominent features are incomplete.
Conversely, a handsome landscape without enough identifying detail should not receive a confident variety label simply because the owner hopes for a scarce one. A catalog description can state the type accurately while leaving the precise die attribution open for further examination.
Manufacturing faults are part of the evidence
Original auction research describes RR-3 examples on irregular or oblong planchets and records striking anomalies. These observations show why a Vermont copper should not be judged solely by the expectations applied to a uniform modern coin.[8]
A blank that did not fill the die area could leave part of a legend missing before any circulation occurred. A weakly transferred design can likewise differ from wear. Distinguishing manufacture from later damage allows the object’s condition to be described more precisely.
That precision is valuable even outside grading. A coin’s irregular shape or incomplete rim can reveal the practical limits of a small coining enterprise. The object records not only the intended design but also how successfully a particular blank and strike carried it into metal.
The Vermont Historical Society describes two broad designs across the minting period. Later Vermont coppers adopted a bust-based appearance, and specialist references organize the series into a wider range of die varieties. Broad design types and individual die pairings are different levels of description.[2][3][7]
The distinction prevents a misleading count. Saying that two general designs were used does not mean only two dies existed or only two varieties survive. A landscape type can include several legends and die relationships; a bust type can do the same.
For a beginning collector, one example of each broad type offers a useful introduction. A specialist may instead follow particular dies, overstrikes, or production relationships. Both approaches can be historically sound when the scope of the collection is stated explicitly.
How to study a surviving copper
Begin by identifying which side carries the landscape or bust, then transcribe as much of the legend as the coin permits. Record the date independently of an assumed variety. Next compare the diagnostic details with a specialist reference rather than relying on a general photograph.
Surface description should remain separate from attribution. Brown color, corrosion, porosity, scratches, and smoothing concern preservation or alteration. They do not by themselves identify the minting authority. A dark old surface is not a certificate of authenticity, and a cleaned surface does not erase the original die pairing.
Documenting weight and dimensions can add useful evidence, especially when the coin is irregular. Keep those measurements with the photographs and source used for attribution. A well-recorded ordinary variety can teach more about early production than a poorly documented specimen accompanied by an ambitious label.
June 15 belongs to the legislative grant that made Harmon’s copper project possible. The franchise’s July 1 starting term and the later changes in standard should remain separate milestones. The sources do not require inventing a June 15 press ceremony to make the calendar entry meaningful.[1][5]
The authorization is substantial in its own right. Vermont defined an acceptable monetary product, selected a private operator, and placed its republican identity on money intended for use. The resulting coins joined an everyday economic need to a statement about political standing.
The landscape copper preserves that conjunction with unusual directness. Land, cultivation, republican language, and the fourteenth star share a small surface. What began as a limited local franchise now allows collectors to examine how a community represented itself before it entered the Union.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1915 — Panama-Pacific $50 Gold: First Octagonal Strike — The first octagonal Panama-Pacific $50 gold pieces were struck ceremonially at the San Francisco Mint.
1933 — Texas Centennial Half Dollar — Congress authorized the Texas Centennial commemorative half dollar