OCTOBER 17
1786•Massachusetts Cent & Half Cent
2013•Woodrow Wilson Presidential $1 Products
Massachusetts Establishes a State Mint and Creates Its Own Cents
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In October 1786, Massachusetts took one of the most ambitious monetary steps of the Confederation era: its General Court established a state-run mint for the coinage of gold, silver, and copper. Numismatic references traditionally date final passage to October 17, 1786, although some transcriptions and modern scholarship give October 16. The mint that followed would ultimately produce neither gold nor silver, but its 1787 and 1788 copper cents and half cents became landmarks in American coinage history.
These were not merely private tokens carrying a state name. Massachusetts chose direct public control. The Commonwealth created the mint, appointed its officers, acquired machinery and copper, and produced coins on the state’s own account.
The resulting cents and half cents also anticipated the monetary system soon to be adopted by the United States. Their denominations were explicitly decimal: one hundred cents to the dollar, with a half cent worth half as much.
America Before the Federal Mint
In 1786, the Constitution had not yet been written.
The United States operated under the Articles of Confederation, and Congress lacked many of the powers the later federal government would possess.
Money in everyday commerce was a confusing mixture of foreign silver, state coppers, privately produced pieces, paper currencies, and older coins of varying quality.
The Spanish milled dollar remained one of the most important monetary standards.
Small change was especially troublesome.
Several states authorized copper coinages during the 1780s.
Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey all became associated with distinctive state coppers.
Most such operations relied heavily on private contractors or franchises.
Massachusetts considered similar proposals, but eventually chose a different path.
Its mint would be operated as a public project of the Commonwealth.
James Swan Proposes a Private Mint
On March 15, 1786, James Swan petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for authority to coin copper.
He proposed producing £20,000 worth and establishing a mint at his own expense.
In return, foreign copper coins would be prohibited and Swan would pay a percentage of his production to the state treasury.
His proposal reflected the private-contract model used elsewhere.
Massachusetts did not ultimately adopt it.
The Massachusetts debate occurred while the Confederation Congress was trying to create a more uniform American monetary system.
Congress had already adopted the dollar as the national money of account and embraced decimal subdivisions.
In August 1786 it further regulated proposed federal coin denominations, weights, and standards.
Some officials warned Massachusetts that separate state coinages could complicate the movement toward national uniformity.
Nevertheless, the Commonwealth proceeded.
The legislation was titled an act for establishing a mint for the coinage of gold, silver, and copper.
It directed that Massachusetts coins conform to the weight, alloy, value, and names established by the recent congressional resolve.
The act contemplated $60,000 in coinage in convenient proportions of cents and half cents.
The governor and council were empowered to determine appropriate inscriptions and devices.
The coins were to be accepted in payments within the Commonwealth.
The exact passage date deserves explanation.
Several historical transcriptions, including a nineteenth-century account reproduced by the Newman Numismatic Portal, state that the act was passed October 16, 1786.
Other authoritative numismatic references—including catalog descriptions preserved by the Newman portal and Crosby’s early history—identify October 17.
The CoinCrafters master calendar uses October 17.
Because the historical record is cited both ways, this article preserves October 17 as the calendar date while explicitly acknowledging the one-day discrepancy.
A Public Mint, Not a Coinage Franchise
Massachusetts’ decision to operate the mint itself distinguishes the project from many neighboring state coinages.
The Commonwealth assumed responsibility for the enterprise rather than merely selling or granting a private party the right to strike coins.
That meant the state had to deal directly with machinery, staffing, raw copper, dies, production expenses, and distribution.
It was a remarkably ambitious undertaking for a government already facing serious financial strain.
Joshua Wetherle was appointed to supervise the Massachusetts mint.
He had practical experience and became the central operational figure in the project.
The mint was eventually established in Boston.
Creating coins required far more than simply engraving a pair of dies.
Wetherle’s operation needed presses, rolling equipment, cutting tools, furnaces, metal, workmen, and a reliable system for producing planchets of the correct size and weight.
Although the mint was authorized in October 1786, Massachusetts cents and half cents did not immediately pour into circulation.
Equipment had to be obtained and installed.
Dies had to be prepared.
Copper had to be secured and processed.
Administrative questions had to be settled.
The first dated coinage would bear 1787, and the pieces appear to have entered circulation around the beginning of 1788 after significant delays.
The full cent was a substantial copper coin.
Its denomination was not merely implied by size or local convention.
The reverse shield explicitly carried the word CENT.
That made the Massachusetts issue a particularly important step in the history of decimal coinage.
The value corresponded to one hundredth of a dollar under the new American monetary concept.
The mint also produced a HALF CENT.
This was worth one two-hundredth of a dollar.
The denomination would later become part of the federal system under the Coinage Act of 1792.
Federal half cents were first struck in 1793 and continued intermittently until 1857.
Massachusetts had therefore placed the denomination on a state coin before the federal Mint existed.
The First Official Decimal Cent Coinage
Numismatic historian Neil Carothers described the Massachusetts cent as the first official coin on a strictly decimal basis.
The conceptual groundwork came from the national government’s decimal monetary resolutions rather than originating solely in Massachusetts.
Still, the Commonwealth turned the abstract system into actual circulating copper coins.
A CENT meant one-hundredth of the dollar; a HALF CENT meant one two-hundredth.
That relationship would soon become familiar throughout the United States.
The obverse of the Massachusetts copper coinage depicts a standing Native American figure.
The figure holds a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.
A star appears near the head.
The surrounding legend reads COMMONWEALTH.
The image drew upon a long-established European iconographic tradition in which Native American figures personified America.
On these coins, the figure specifically represented the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The reverse features an eagle with wings spread.
The eagle carries an olive branch and arrows—symbols of peace and military readiness that would become deeply embedded in American national imagery.
A shield on the eagle’s breast states the denomination, either CENT or HALF CENT.
MASSACHUSETTS appears around the design, with the date below.
The combination of Native American figure and eagle gives the coins a distinctly American visual identity.
The Massachusetts eagle appeared before the federal Mint began regular coin production.
When the United States Mint later developed its own coinage, eagles would become one of the most persistent national symbols on American money.
The Massachusetts coppers therefore belong to a transitional visual period.
States were experimenting with symbols of sovereignty at the same time the emerging nation was deciding what American money should look like.
Joseph Callender and the Dies
Boston engraver Joseph Callender is credited with dies for the 1787 Massachusetts copper coinage.
The designs exist in multiple die varieties, a fertile field for specialists.
Hand engraving meant that individual dies differed in the placement and form of letters, arrows, stars, feathers, shield details, and other features.
Collectors later cataloged these combinations systematically.
Some 1788 dies are associated with a young Jacob Perkins of Newburyport.
Perkins would become an important American inventor and engraver with a long career in printing and security technology.
His connection to Massachusetts copper coinage places him in the numismatic record early in his life.
The state mint thus intersects not only with monetary history but also with the development of American engraving and anti-counterfeiting technology.
Massachusetts cents and half cents were struck with two dates: 1787 and 1788.
Within those years, numerous die varieties exist.
The basic design remained recognizable, but small differences allow specialists to identify particular die pairings.
The standard reference system is commonly associated with Hillyer Ryder, whose work helped organize the complex field of Massachusetts copper varieties.
The Massachusetts coinage was intended to conform to the emerging federal decimal standard.
Historical numismatic references describe the cent at roughly 157.5 grains of copper, with the half cent proportionally smaller.
The relationship between metallic value and face value mattered greatly in an era when the public judged coins partly by the amount of metal they contained.
If a copper coin was too light, people could discount or reject it.
Adopting cents did not instantly erase older ways of reckoning money.
New England commerce still used pounds, shillings, and pence in accounting.
Spanish dollars and other foreign coins remained familiar.
The Massachusetts decimal coppers therefore entered an economy where multiple monetary languages coexisted.
That made the transition to a national decimal system a gradual process rather than a single legislative event.
Shays’ Rebellion Was Happening at the Same Time
The mint was authorized during one of the most turbulent periods in Massachusetts history.
Heavy taxes, debt, foreclosures, and economic distress contributed to Shays’ Rebellion in 1786 and 1787.
Armed protestors challenged courts and state authority.
The crisis exposed weaknesses in the Confederation system and helped intensify demands for a stronger national government.
Massachusetts was creating its own mint while simultaneously confronting a political and financial emergency.
The Philadelphia Convention met in 1787 and drafted the United States Constitution.
The new document dramatically altered American monetary authority.
Article I gave Congress power to coin money and regulate its value.
It also prohibited states from coining money.
Once the Constitution took effect, the era of independent state coinage was ending.
The Massachusetts mint had been born into a monetary world that was already disappearing.
The Massachusetts mint operated for only about two years.
Its copper coinage was produced at considerable expense, and the operation was not financially successful.
By 1789, the new constitutional order made continued state coinage impossible in any event.
The Commonwealth’s ambitious experiment therefore ended almost as quickly as it had begun.
Its coins survived as evidence of the brief period between independence and federal monetary consolidation.
Congress established the federal United States Mint in Philadelphia in 1792.
Regular federal copper coinage began with cents and half cents in 1793.
The denominations Massachusetts had already placed into circulation became permanent components of the national system.
The federal Mint did not copy the Massachusetts designs, but the underlying decimal language—cent and half cent—was the same monetary framework toward which Congress had been moving during the Confederation period.
Why Massachusetts Coppers Matter
Collectors often group Massachusetts cents and half cents with “colonial” coins, but that convenient category can obscure their chronology.
They were struck after American independence and under the authority of a sovereign state during the Confederation era.
They belong to the narrow historical gap between colonial currency and the centralized federal coinage established under the Constitution.
That makes them unusually valuable documents of America’s monetary transition.
The Massachusetts mint was not the institution that ultimately unified American money.
In fact, the Constitution soon removed the states from the coinage business.
Yet the Commonwealth’s experiment showed the practical importance of standardized small change and decimal denominations.
Its CENT and HALF CENT anticipated the terminology Americans would use for generations.
The coins are therefore both products of a failed state-mint system and precursors of the successful federal one.
October 17, 1786 marks the traditional numismatic date associated with Massachusetts’ authorization of a state mint.
The act envisioned gold, silver, and copper coinage, but the project that emerged produced copper cents and half cents dated 1787 and 1788.
Those coins carried a Native American figure representing the Commonwealth, an eagle with arrows and olive branch, and explicit decimal denominations.
The mint itself was publicly operated rather than simply franchised to private contractors.
Within only a few years, the Constitution would prohibit states from coining money and Congress would create the United States Mint.
That short lifespan is precisely what makes the Massachusetts experiment so important.
Its cents and half cents capture a moment when Americans knew they needed a reliable national monetary system but had not yet decided exactly who would control it.
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