1652 Willow Tree Shilling

A colony makes its own money

In the early 1650s Massachusetts merchants struggled with clipped, underweight and counterfeit foreign coins, and a debasement scandal at the Spanish mint at Potosí had shaken confidence in Spanish silver. In May 1652 the Massachusetts General Court authorized a mint in Boston, appointing the silversmith John Hull as mintmaster with his partner Robert Sanderson. The proceedings ran over May 26 and 27, and sources give either date for Hull's appointment.

The first coins were simple: the letters NE, for New England, punched on one side and the value in Roman numerals, III, VI or XII pence, on the other. They were made 22.5 percent lighter than the equivalent English sterling coins, so they would stay in the colony. Plain designs were easy to clip, and on October 19, 1652, the General Court ordered a more elaborate design. That law created the Willow Tree type.

A press and dies still had to be found, so Willow Tree coins may not have been struck until 1654; they are generally believed to date from about 1653 to 1660. They were followed by the Oak Tree type, from about 1660, and the Pine Tree type, from about 1667 until the mint closed in 1682. Almost every tree coin carries the date 1652, the year of the original law, no matter when it was struck.

John Hull's mint

John Hull was born in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, on December 18, 1624, and arrived in Boston on November 7, 1635, at age 11. After a seven-year apprenticeship he began working as a silversmith in 1646, and Robert Sanderson became his principal partner; Sanderson's mark appears with Hull's on almost all the silver their shop produced.

As mintmaster Hull was allowed to keep one shilling seven pence of every 20 shillings he coined, and the mint may have struck 300,000 to 500,000 coins in all. He grew rich, served as treasurer of the colony from 1676 to 1680, and died in Boston on October 1, 1683. The famous story that his daughter Hannah's dowry was her weight in pine tree shillings is exaggerated; the dowry was £500.

No one is sure who cut the Willow Tree dies. Letters from 1654 between Joseph Jenks of the nearby Hammersmith ironworks and Hull's brother Edward show efforts to bring a die sinker from England, and some have speculated that Jenks engraved some dies himself.

The world in 1652

Massachusetts coined its own money at an unusual moment. Coinage traditionally belonged to sovereigns, but after the execution of Charles I in 1649 no English king sat on the throne. In 1652 Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth forcibly incorporated Scotland, and England fought the First Anglo-Dutch War at sea, from Dover in May to Dungeness in November.

Elsewhere that year, Jan van Riebeeck set up a supply station for the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope on April 6, the start of Cape Town; Rhode Island passed what is described as the first law in North America making slavery illegal on May 18; and George Fox's sermon at Firbank Fell in June helped found the Quakers. After Charles II was restored in 1660, a royal commission demanded repeal of the mint law as an intrusion on royal prerogative, yet Hull kept coining for two more decades. The mint closed in 1682, and Charles II revoked the Massachusetts charter two years later.

The coin that went unnoticed

Willow Tree coins themselves went unrecognized for two centuries. Around 1865 the auctioneer William E. Woodward noticed that some supposed Oak Tree shillings had a tree that looked more like a palmetto; the collector Joseph J. Mickley called it a willow, and the name stuck. Sydney P. Noe catalogued the series in 1943.

Noe did not know this coin's die combination. It came to light in 1952, when a Salmon 2-A coin was offered in the American Numismatic Association convention sale, misidentified as a Noe 2-B and said to come from the collection of O.K. Rumbel of Mission, Texas. Oliver Eaton Futter bought it for $180 hammer, recognized the new variety and announced it in The Numismatist in December 1952; the following year he donated or sold it to the American Numismatic Society. The coin offered here is the other known example, and its early history is unknown beyond a note that it was 'purchased in the late 1950s.'

It was sold in October 1987 from Part I of the Norweb Family Collection, and again in January 2002 from the Hain Family Collection, one of only two collections ever to hold all six Willow Tree shilling varieties. It was shown in the American Numismatic Society's 1991 exhibition of Massachusetts silver, and it was the one Willow Tree variety missing from the Henry P. Kendall Foundation Collection.

It later became the plate coin for the Salmon reference on Massachusetts silver, and was sold from the collection of its author, Christopher J. Salmon, in August 2022 for $156,000. Other Willow Tree shillings have brought more: the type's auction record is $381,875, set in March 2015, while a heavily clipped coin of the rare Noe 3-E variety brought $16,800 in September 2019.

Reading a triple-struck coin

Willow Tree shillings were struck on a rocker press: a strip of silver was fed between two curved dies and cranked through by hand, and the coin was then cut from the strip. The result was weak detail, oval or irregular planchets and, on every known Willow Tree shilling, signs of multiple strikes. On one famous example the reverse reads DODOM and the date 16522.

This coin was struck three times, as its broken inner circle shows. Its date reads 11622, with the 5 largely hidden. The obverse shows a triangular tree canopy of short curved strokes, with curved rings around the trunk that identify the die, inside the legend MASATHVSETS IN; the reverse shows the denomination XII and NEW ENGLAND AN DOM. Both sides show compass scribe lines on the inner circles but no center point.

It weighs 69.6 grains, with a die orientation of 350 degrees. NGC grades it Very Fine 35, and its cataloguer argued it could deserve more, since it shows only a few circulation marks and some light scratches on the reverse. As a type, Willow Tree shillings are rarer than the NE, Oak Tree and Pine Tree shillings, and six die varieties are known.

The numbers

Mintage

Not recorded; the Boston mint may have struck 300,000-500,000 coins of all types

Known examples of this variety

Two (one at the American Numismatic Society)

Varieties

Six Willow Tree shilling varieties known

Weight

69.6 grains (this coin)

Composition

Silver; NE-series coins were set 22.5% lighter than English sterling equivalents

Mint

Boston; mintmaster John Hull with Robert Sanderson

Production

Rocker press, multiple strikes; this coin struck three times

References

Salmon 2-A, Noe 2-A (combination unlisted), W-160, R.8

This coin's grade

NGC VF35

Timeline

1. Nov 7, 1635

   John Hull, age 11, arrives in Boston.

2. May 1652

   The General Court authorizes a Boston mint under John Hull and Robert Sanderson; NE coins follow.

3. Oct 19, 1652

   A new law orders a more elaborate design, creating the Willow Tree type.

4. 1654

   Possible start of Willow Tree production; letters show efforts to bring a die sinker from England.

5. 1660

   The Willow Tree type gives way to the Oak Tree type, about this year.

6. 1667

   The Pine Tree type begins, about this year.

7. 1682

   The Massachusetts mint closes.

8. Oct 1, 1683

   John Hull dies in Boston.

9. 1865

   Collectors first recognize Willow Tree shillings as a separate type, about this year.

10. 1943

    Sydney P. Noe publishes his study of the New England and Willow Tree coinages.

11. 1952

    The Salmon 2-A variety is discovered when Oliver Eaton Futter buys the other known example for $180 hammer; it goes to the American Numismatic Society the next year.

12. Oct 1987

    The coin is sold from Part I of the Norweb Family Collection.

13. 1991

    It is shown in the American Numismatic Society's Massachusetts silver exhibition.

14. Jan 2002

    It is sold from the Hain Family Collection.

15. Aug 2022

    Sold from the Christopher J. Salmon Collection, NGC VF35, for $156,000.

The world in 1652

• Apr 6, 1652

  Jan van Riebeeck founds a Dutch supply station at the Cape of Good Hope.

• May 18, 1652

  Rhode Island passes a law against slavery, described as the first in North America.

• May 19, 1652

  The Battle of Dover opens the First Anglo-Dutch War's naval fighting.

• Jun 13, 1652

  George Fox preaches at Firbank Fell, a founding moment for the Quakers.

• Jul 5, 1652

  Maryland and the Conestoga sign Articles of Peace and Friendship.

• Nov 30, 1652

  The Battle of Dungeness is fought.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1652 Willow Tree Shilling is number 63 of 100 in the coins entries of the FLOAT 100. 96 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (71 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Massachusetts kept the date 1652 on its tree coins for three decades, whatever year they were struck.
• The Willow Tree type was not recognized until about 1865; before that the coins were taken for Oak Tree shillings.
• The first Salmon 2-A coin discovered sold for $180 in 1952; this one, the only other, brought $156,000 in 2022.
• Because it was struck three times, the date on this coin reads 11622.
• The legend that John Hull's daughter's dowry was her weight in shillings is exaggerated; it was £500.
• Even the Henry P. Kendall Foundation Collection never obtained this variety.