Adam Dowdall Just Found the Oldest Coin in Beckwith County

 

Last time I wrote about metal detector enthusiast Adam Dowdall was the day he searched for things in my yard. Today he found his very first Spanish silver coin with a clear date of 1766– which makes it the oldest coin he has ever found.  His father, Councillor Brian Dowdall agreed. He said it’s probably one of the oldest coins to be found in Beckwith. Why are there Spanish coins in this area?

The shortage of currency that had been experienced in the original North American colonies prior to the War of Independence continued in the remaining British North American colonies into the 19th century. The economy was still dependent on the fur trade and coins from England. Trade with various colonies plus the United States, resulted in an influx of additional additional Spanish-American coinage. In Prince Edward Island, officials punched out the centres of the Spanish American coins and made two coins: the one shilling and the five shilling.

<

Adam’s coin dealer said the British government issued Spanish coins to the settlers because of a shortage of Canadian tokens so that’s how his coin made it to the area. He is right–but there is also another reason. Local fur traders would take their goods to New York state where they would get more bang for their buck.The fur traders would either barter for goods, or get hard cold cash paid in Spanish currency. Spanish coins came into Canada as early as 1662 and were also charted as currency.

 

Adam Dowdall’s Metal Detecting Facebook Group

Rick Roberts just added this:

Another potential reason for the Spanish coin to be in Beckwith is that several early military settlers (both British regulars and Swiss mercenaries of the DeWatteville Regiment) had been posted to Cadiz, Spain c1811-1813. The DeWatteville Regiment then served on garrison duty at Kingston from October 1813 to the winter of 1816, then at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Sorel, and LaPrairie, Prescott and back to Kingston, before being disbanded and awarded land grants in the Perth area in June of 1816.

Watch for Ron Shaw’s upcoming book ‘Influence and Ambition, The First Persons of Perth’ which will be published by Global Heritage Press in spring 2016 for more details

Filed under Uncategorized and tagged adam dowdall, metal detecting, silver coins, spanish coins, treasure hunts | 3 Comments

About lindaseccaspina

Before she laid her fingers to a keyboard, Linda was a fashion designer, and then owned the eclectic store Flash Cadilac and Savannah Devilles in Ottawa on Rideau Street from 1976-1996. She also did clothing for various media and worked on “You Can’t do that on Television”. After writing for years about things that she cared about or pissed her off on American media she finally found her calling. She is a weekly columnist for the Sherbrooke Record and documents history every single day and has over 6500 blogs about Lanark County and Ottawa and an enormous weekly readership. Linda has published six books and is in her 4th year as a town councillor for Carleton Place. She believes in community and promoting business owners because she believes she can, so she does.

View all posts by lindaseccaspina »