- Scope and Contents
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Correspondence, accounts, receipts, checks, printed currency, circular letters, printed forms filled out in manuscript, and other printed material related to American finance, currency and lotteries during and after the Revolutionary War. Series I, Currency and Public Debt Documents, includes letters by Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville; Albert Gallatin; John Gibson; Alexander Hamilton; Gouverneur Morris; Robert Morris, and Thomas Willing. There is a small group of letters between Gouverneur Morris and the London bankers Sir Francis Baring, Edmund Boehm, and Thomas Henchman concerning their possible investment in the "new American funds" in 1790 and 1791. Printed material includes Thomas Paine's Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance (Philadelphia, 1796) as well as circular letters and debt payment tables. Other contents include reports on Revolutionary War loans and other contemporary financial matters; receipts issued by several states, particularly Connecticut and Massachusetts, between 1780 and 1789; and samples of state and Continental Congress paper money. Series II, United States Lottery Documents, contains letters by state agents for the Continental Lottery; accounts and account logs for the lottery; memoranda; and a printed lottery ticket from 1779.
- Conditions Governing Access
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The materials are open for research.
- Immediate Source of Acquisition
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Purchased from William Reese Co. on the Edwin J. Beinecke Book Fund and the Library Associates Fund, 2003.
- Arrangement
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Organized into two series, both arranged in the order in which the material was received. Series I., Currency and Public Debt Documents, contains examples of currency and printed forms issued by various states and the Continental Congress, followed by alphabetically arranged correspondence, circular letters, official documents and printed ephemera. Series II, United States Lottery Documents, contains roughly chronologically arranged correspondence and other papers.
- Dates
- 1734-1874
- Majority of material found within 1777 - 1790
- Extent
- 4.76 Linear Feet (6 boxes)
- Language of Materials
- English