OCTOBER 20
1785•Connecticut Copper
1986•American Eagle Gold Bullion Program
Connecticut Authorizes Its Famous State Copper Coinage
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On October 20, 1785, the Connecticut General Assembly authorized Samuel Bishop, Joseph Hopkins, James Hillhouse, and John Goodrich to establish a mint and manufacture copper coins under state supervision. The act launched one of the largest, most complicated, and most heavily studied state copper series of the Confederation era.
Connecticut coppers would be struck from 1785 through 1788, producing an extraordinary range of dies and varieties. Their familiar obverse legend, AUCTORI CONNEC, proclaimed the “authority of Connecticut,” while the reverse motto INDE ET LIB—“thence liberty”—surrounded a seated figure of Liberty.
The coins belong to a brief period between the American Revolution and the Constitution, when individual states still exercised monetary powers that would soon be transferred to the new federal government.
America Had Won Independence but Not Monetary Order
The Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, but political independence did not create a uniform American currency.
The states remained joined under the Articles of Confederation, and everyday commerce depended on a bewildering assortment of money.
Spanish silver dollars, British and Irish coppers, state paper money, private tokens, older colonial pieces, and counterfeit coins all circulated in varying quantities.
Reliable small change was particularly troublesome.
Silver and gold were too valuable for many ordinary purchases.
People needed lower-value coins for food, drink, transportation, wages, and countless daily transactions.
Copper filled that role.
But if the available coppers were underweight, counterfeit, or unfamiliar, merchants might refuse them or accept them only at a discount.
A state-authorized copper coin promised recognizable value and a measure of public trust.
The Petition to the General Assembly
Samuel Bishop, Joseph Hopkins, James Hillhouse, and John Goodrich petitioned Connecticut for permission to establish a mint.
The General Assembly considered their memorial during its October 1785 session in New Haven.
The resulting legislation did not create a wholly state-operated mint like the one Massachusetts would later establish.
Instead, Connecticut granted private individuals a controlled franchise to manufacture copper coins under public authority.
Historical numismatic records identify October 20, 1785 as the date the Connecticut Assembly approved the exclusive copper-coinage franchise.
The legislation authorized Bishop, Hopkins, Hillhouse, and Goodrich to establish a mint and strike copper.
The state did not simply give away the privilege.
The franchise holders were required to pay Connecticut one-twentieth of the copper they coined.
That five-percent share gave the state a direct financial interest in the operation.
The act also provided for inspection.
Coins were to be examined before being released into circulation.
The arrangement was intended to ensure that the private mint followed the legal standard rather than maximizing profit by issuing underweight pieces.
In practice, the Connecticut copper story became much messier.
Official coins, questionable pieces, imitations, and counterfeits all became intertwined in a complex circulating environment.
The Connecticut act established a weight standard commonly summarized as 140 grains per coin, or 48 coppers to the pound.
The coins were intended to circulate at 18 to the Connecticut shilling.
That relationship gave the copper pieces a defined place in the state’s existing pounds-shillings-pence accounting system.
These were not federal cents in the later decimal sense, even though modern collectors commonly call them Connecticut cents.
“Connecticut Cent” Is Convenient Collector Language
The term “Connecticut cent” is deeply established in American numismatics.
But the coins themselves do not carry the word CENT.
Connecticut’s accounting system was still based on pounds, shillings, and pence.
The federal decimal cent would not become a regular United States coin until 1793.
Calling these pieces “cents” is useful modern shorthand, but historically they were state coppers circulating according to local valuation.
The obverse legend reads AUCTORI CONNEC.
It is generally understood as an abbreviated Latin expression meaning “by the authority of Connecticut” or “authority of Connecticut.”
The central device is a male bust, usually wearing a laurel wreath.
The design resembles the portrait format used on British regal copper coins.
That familiarity was intentional: new American money still drew heavily on visual traditions people already recognized.
The reverse legend reads INDE ET LIB.
The abbreviated Latin phrase is commonly rendered as “thence liberty.”
A seated female figure represents Liberty.
She holds a branch and a liberty staff or related emblem depending on the die interpretation and variety.
The date appears below.
The imagery transformed familiar British-style coin composition into a statement of post-Revolutionary state sovereignty.
The Connecticut copper’s basic layout closely resembles the British halfpenny.
On British coins, a royal portrait occupied the obverse and Britannia sat on the reverse.
Connecticut adapted that visual grammar.
The king disappeared, replaced by a classical male bust under state authority.
Britannia became Liberty.
The result looked familiar enough to function as money while communicating a completely different political identity.
Abel Buell and the Dies
Abel Buell of New Haven is closely associated with the Connecticut copper enterprise and is credited with engraving early dies.
Buell was an extraordinary mechanic, engraver, inventor, and entrepreneur.
His career included mapmaking, type founding, jewelry work, and mechanical innovation.
He is especially famous for producing the first map of the newly independent United States created by an American after the Revolution.
His involvement gave the Connecticut coinage a connection to one of early America’s most versatile craftsmen.
The original franchise holders organized their enterprise after receiving legislative authority.
Additional investors and associates became involved, including prominent Connecticut figures.
The business structure evolved as production expanded.
Like many early American industrial ventures, the mint combined political connections, private capital, skilled labor, and government privilege.
The result was not a modern government factory but a public-private monetary experiment.
The first Connecticut coppers bear the date 1785.
Contemporary evidence indicates that official coins were entering circulation by early 1786.
Yale president Ezra Stiles recorded receiving newly coined Connecticut coppers in February 1786, providing valuable contemporary evidence for their actual appearance in commerce.
The series then expanded rapidly.
Connecticut coppers exist with dates 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788.
Those four dates encompass an enormous number of die varieties.
Portraits face both right and left.
Legends vary.
Lettering changes.
Devices differ in style and execution.
Some pieces are well made; others are crude.
Few early American series offer such a broad field for die-study specialists.
Why So Many Varieties?
Dies wore out, broke, were replaced, altered, copied, and sometimes used in unexpected combinations.
Production did not occur with the centralized precision of a later federal mint.
Multiple workshops and individuals became involved in the broader Connecticut-copper ecosystem.
Counterfeiters also copied the designs.
Every new die introduced tiny differences, creating the intricate family of varieties collectors study today.
In 1919, Henry C. Miller published his landmark study The State Coinage of Connecticut.
Miller created the attribution system that remains fundamental to collecting the series.
Individual obverse and reverse dies are identified and paired into varieties using Miller numbers.
Later researchers have expanded and refined his work, but Miller provided the framework that turned a seemingly chaotic mass of coppers into an organized numismatic field.
The sheer number of Connecticut copper varieties means rarity varies enormously.
Some types survive in enough quantity that a collector can acquire a representative example without extraordinary difficulty.
Other die marriages are exceptionally rare.
For advanced specialists, the challenge is not simply owning a Connecticut copper but identifying its precise dies, rarity, provenance, and place within the production sequence.
Legal authorization did not prevent unofficial production.
Contemporary America was flooded with counterfeit British halfpence and imitation state coppers.
Connecticut designs were copied as well.
Some pieces were underweight and crudely made.
Others were deceptive enough to circulate beside genuine issues.
The line between official, unauthorized, and counterfeit production can be difficult to reconstruct more than two centuries later.
Machin’s Mills Enters the Wider Story
One of the most famous private coin-making operations of the era was Machin’s Mills in New York.
It produced or was associated with imitation British halfpence and other coppers.
Connecticut dies and coinage relationships intersect with this broader network of late-1780s copper production.
These connections are one reason specialists study die links so carefully: a single shared die can reveal relationships between mints, engravers, or production sites.
By the late 1780s, the market was saturated with coppers.
Genuine state issues competed with counterfeits and lightweight pieces.
Public confidence deteriorated.
Coppers that had once circulated at established rates could be discounted sharply or refused.
The economic problem demonstrates a basic truth of money: official-looking pieces are useful only as long as people trust their value.
While Connecticut coppers were circulating, American political structure was changing.
The Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787.
The Constitution gave Congress power to coin money and expressly prohibited states from coining money.
Once the new federal system took effect, independent state coinage no longer had a constitutional future.
Connecticut’s experiment belonged to a rapidly closing chapter.
Congress established the United States Mint in 1792.
Regular federal cents followed in 1793.
Unlike Connecticut coppers, the new cents belonged to a national decimal system and were produced under direct federal authority.
The transition from state coppers to federal cents mirrored the larger political transition from a loose confederation of states to a stronger national government.
Why Connecticut Coppers Matter
These coins are sometimes casually labeled “colonials,” but they were struck after independence.
They are more precisely products of the Confederation era.
That distinction matters because their very existence reflects the weakness and decentralization of the government under the Articles of Confederation.
States still acted with monetary independence that would soon be constitutionally forbidden.
A Connecticut copper is a tangible political document.
Its legend announces Connecticut’s authority.
Its Liberty reverse celebrates the result of independence.
Its British-inspired format reveals continuity with the monetary world Americans already knew.
Its many varieties reveal decentralized production.
Its eventual disappearance reflects the rise of federal monetary power.
Few objects summarize the 1780s so efficiently.
October 20, 1785 marks the legislative beginning of Connecticut’s state copper coinage.
The General Assembly authorized Samuel Bishop, Joseph Hopkins, James Hillhouse, and John Goodrich to establish a mint and manufacture copper under state supervision, with one-twentieth of the production owed to Connecticut.
The enterprise produced coins dated from 1785 through 1788 and generated one of the richest fields of die varieties in early American numismatics.
Within only a few years, the Constitution would take the power to coin money away from the states.
That makes Connecticut coppers relics of an extraordinarily narrow historical window—after independence, before the federal Mint, and while Americans were still deciding how a national monetary system should work.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1986 — American Eagle Gold Bullion Program — American Eagle Gold bullion coins went on sale, launching the modern U.S. government-backed gold bullion coin program.