Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/411

 12 S. III. SKPT., 1917.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

405

LOXDOX, SEPTEMBER, 1917.

CONTENTS. No. 72.

NOTES : The American Dollar and Eagle, 405 Ports- mouth Dockyard in 1756. 408 An English Army List of 1740, 408 The Correspondence of Richard Edwards, 1669-79, 409 An English "Commandant" at Brussels in 1815-16 The Anti-Vauxhall, 412 -Diary of Thomas Earl- Long Leases " Traunser" : "Transom": "Traversin," 413 "Drifter" Women and Umbrellas: Curious Form of Impropriaty Elizabeth (Kundle) Charles. 414" Un- couth forms in disarray " Wogan Family of Pembroke- shire " Buss "^Aeroplane Yorkshire Clergy Lists, 415.

QUERIES : European Artists in India, 415 Gratian's ' Decretum ' : Berthold Rembolt Kennedy's Proposed Medical Bibliography (British) to 1800 ' Morris, Arnold, and Battersby." 1732 ' Lancashire Glossary 'Records of the Ecclesiastical Commission for the North of England, 416 Clitheroe proverbial for Bribery Dyde Hibaut's Dictionary of Names Charles Lamb on "All round the Wrekin " 'Ireland in Fiction' Brooch Motto: "We fear nae foe" ' Unberufen," 417 Mrs. Ord Charles Browne Pell and Mildmay Families Mark Anthony Saurin " Black Maria "=Prison Van Pedigrees Re- quiredThe Melologue in England Vaughn and Welch as Surnames, 418 The Bolton Light Horse : the Duke of Lancaster's Own Yeomanry Arms of England with France Ancient Mary Bolles, " Baronetess " Jane Brown, Centenarian Authors of Quotations Wanted, 419.

REPLIES : John Prudde :" King's Glazier," 419 Sir William Ogle : Sarah Stewkley : Mews or Mewys Family, 421 Arbor Tristis Rushbrooke Hall Jane Austen : 'Pride and Prejudice,' 423 Jane Austen: a Con- tinuation Greystoke Pedigree (Magic Squares in India Carr : Douglas of Carr " Buller's Thumb," 424 John Hamilton Reynolds' Society in London ' Early Nonconformity in Devon and Cornwall, 425 Jonas Han- way : Umbrellas Maw, a Game of Cards Hampton Court Inscription 'A Ring, a Ring of Roses': English Traditional Rimes, 426 74th Regiment of Foot Germans as "Huns" Francis Timbrell, 427 " Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre" The Capital City of the U.S.A., 428 Route of Charles I. from Newcastle to Holmby, 429 "Death's Part" " Church Drops "Wood - Sorrel Arms Wanted : Lancaster : FitzReinfred Portraits in Stained Glass, 430 Reference Wanted Edward John Cobbett The Removal of Memorials in Westminster Abbey- Fletcher Family New Milk as a Cure for Swollen Legs Indian Mounds, U.S.A., 431 Arms of St. Wilfrid Old Inns Author of Quotation Wanted, 432.

NOTES ON BOOKS :' Cheshire Proverbs '' Indication of Houses of Historical Interest in London ' ' An Out- line of the History of Printing.'

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

THE AMERICAN DOLLAR AND EAGLE.

THERE have been several explanations of the origin of the American dollar-mark, $, and this is one of them. Before the estab- lishment of the National Government, and under the Confederation, each State issued its own paper currency, but the Spanish dollar was the specie standard by which all paper values were regulated. It was on this Spanish-dollar standard that the Con-

tinental currency professed to be based- This was the famous Pillar Dollar, showing the two columns of Hercules, and the fillet bearing the legend " Plus ultra." This Spanish dollar was divided into eight parts or reals, and wherever Spanish commerce had penetrated or Spain's influence was felt, the coin freely circulated. To the English-speaking people it was known as Ihe piece of eight, and thus Defoe calls it in ' Robinson Crusoe.' Also see Pepys's Diary under date of May 11, 1663/ A similar coin of equal value, known as the Maria Theresa dollar, and bearing date 1780, was issued by the Austrian Government until recently, and circulated in Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, and Egypt.

Prior to the American Revolution Florida was a Spanish province, and Louisiana, although nominally French, had been Spanish for two centuries, and still held intimate commercial relations with the Spanish dependencies of Mexico and Cuba. Naturally, the Spanish dollar had free and wide circulation. Accounts were kept in dollars and reals, that is in pieces of eight and eighths ; and as a distinguishing mark a cancelled 8 was used, or sometimes an 8 between two slanting lines, thus, /8/. A period separated the digits representing the reals or eighths from those which repre- sented the dollars. When the dollar was adopted by the United States as its money unit, merchants found it convenient to continue the use of the sign, while the period separated the cents, now hundredths, from the dollar figures.

The Spanish dollar and its fractional parts halves, quarters, eighths, and six- teenths still circulated, although the word " real " was displaced by the more easily pronounced term " bit," which word is still in common use in the States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, as well as on the Pacific coast, which up to 1848 was Mexican, and had been Spanish. In the far South and in California, not many years ago, dollars and bits were better known than dollars and cents. Ask a shopkeeper in New Orleans, or Mobile, or Montgomery, the price of an article, and he will say two bits where the Northern man would say twenty-five cents. The bit is now an imaginary coin, just as is the English guinea, although it once had a function in making small purchases, and was known in New York as a shilling, in Philadelphia and Baltimore as a levy. The Spanish and Mexican fractions of the dollar circulated by sufferance, were not