True tales of false papers in staid Litchfield County

FALLS VILLAGE — Peter Vermilyea, author of “Wicked Litchfield County” and social studies teacher at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, said that Litchfield County was a counterfeiting hub during the Colonial and post-Revolutionary periods. 

Vermilyea was speaking about “Crime and Punishment in Litchfield County” at the South Canaan Meeting House on Tuesday, Sept. 5. The talk was the last in this year’s First Tuesday at Seven lecture series sponsored by the Falls Village-Canaan Historical Society.

Vermilyea noted that Litchfield County consisted of very small, very remote towns, with little or no law enforcement presence. By necessity, towns came to rely on what would be called today “vigilante justice.”

When he started working on “Wicked Litchfield County,” Vermilyea was hoping for “a couple of witches, maybe a pirate.”

He was surprised to learn that the county was a hotbed of counterfeiting.

There were good reasons for this. 

The cost-benefit analysis

Counterfeiting was relatively easy to accomplish. For starters, there was no federal paper currency, and wouldn’t be until 1862. All federal money was in the form of gold and silver — not the handiest medium of exchange.

People deposited gold and silver in banks, and gained access to their funds via bank notes, which functioned in a manner similar to traveler’s checks.

Banks weren’t the only institutions that issued notes. Insurance companies, railroads — any organization with a state or federal charter could issue notes.

By 1859, Vermilyea said, there were more than 10,000 institutions offering some form of note in the U.S.

So there were a lot of opportunities for counterfeiters.

Secondly, people in remote communities were reluctant to turn in their neighbors. Especially since counterfeiters performed a valuable service.

Prior to “1820-ish,” Litchfield County towns and their people worked with an “account book economy.”

The blacksmith kept his accounts and the farmer kept his, and on the first day of the month everyone reconciled the books to see who owed whom what.

But by the1820s, the country as a whole was transitioning into an international market economy, and in that system, in order to get goods, a person needed cash.

Banks and all the other institutions had cash, in the form of notes.

And so did counterfeiters.

The chances of getting caught were slim. Litchfield County had one sworn law enforcement officer: the sheriff. Towns had constables and justices of the peace.

Tracking down a suspected counterfeiter was difficult enough. The ongoing dispute over the “The Oblong,” the border area between first the colonies and later the states of New York and Connecticut, didn’t help. Authorities were reluctant to expend scarce resources in areas they weren’t sure were even in their jurisdiction.

Who’s who, what’s what

At the top of the counterfeiting pyramid, Vermilyea said, was the engraver. This was a highly skilled job.

Next was the printer, who had to find the right kind of paper and ink. Sometimes the printer was too good, and the notes looked too good to be true.

Which they were.

And at the bottom of the pyramid were the distributors, who were tasked with getting the bogus bills into circulation.

Vermilyea described one example: The distributor spies a man riding a horse and using a fine saddle. The distributor, taken with the quality of the saddle, asks how much the man paid. Receiving the reply $35, the distributor offers $350, in phony notes. The man with the saddle takes the deal, thinking he’s got a live one, and the distributor turns around and sells the saddle to someone else for $35 in real money.

Sullivan’s travels

The top engraver was one Owen Sullivan, an Irishman who arrived in Boston in the 1740s as an indentured servant.

Pressed into service in the militia during the French and Indian Wars, he performed with such distinction that he won his freedom.

Sullivan then became an apprentice to a silversmith. Being an apprentice was a lengthy and arduous process, so he escaped from his silversmithing job, having acquired the skills necessary for counterfeiting.

Sullivan was not able to take advantage of the long odds against getting caught.

“He was good at counterfeiting,” said Vermilyea. “And bad at avoiding arrest.”

Nabbed in Massachusetts, Sullivan was branded with an “R” (for rogue) on his forehead. He solved that difficulty be growing his hair long and allowing it flop over his forehead.

Pinched in Rhode Island, where counterfeiting was a capital offense, he convinced his would-be executioners that his punishment would be even more horrible if they killed his partner first and made him watch.

His captors, who seem to have been a remarkably credulous bunch, agreed to this cockamamie plan.

And Sullivan escaped.

He fetched up on Preston Mountain in Kent, which might also have been Dover, N.Y., as far as anybody knew.

There he established a counterfeiting operation known as the Dover Money Club, where he and his confederates cranked out the equivalent of billions of dollars in today’s money.

A bounty hunter named Beecher hunted Sullivan down in 1756 and hauled him back to what was then the capital city, New Haven.

But the Connecticut authorities didn’t want him. Beecher, expecting a reward, merely got expenses.

But he still had Sullivan, so he brought the counterfeiter to New York, where the punishment wasn’t whipping (as in Connecticut), but death.

And so Owen Sullivan, master counterfeiter, was hanged on St. Patrick’s Day in 1756.

Due to the invention of the computer, Vermilyea did not have his usual slide show handy for the talk, despite the best efforts of Dick Heinz and state Rep.Brian Ohler (R-64). He charged on regardless, gently reminding his audience that if they really wanted to see the pictures, they could buy a copy of “Wicked Litchfield County.” He just happened to have a box of them.