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An 1896 letter from the Mint correspondence in the National Archives, recently transcribed by Newman Portal, asks about Peter, the Mint eagle. The letter writer asks for more specifics regarding the oral tradition of this national bird, who was said to have inhabited the Mint, broke a wing on the machinery, died, and was thereafter stuffed for posterity. The missive is addressed to the Philadelphia Mint Superintendent and the response is recorded as follows.

“We have no record of the history of the eagle, Peter; except by tradition. He was the property of Mr. Adam Eckfeldt, the Chief Coiner of the Mint; The Mint was his home. He would fly all around the city, and always return to the Mint. His life in the Mint was between 1830 and 1836. He was the model for several pattern coins, and the nickel cent of 1857, and 1858 of the regular issue. The first was the pattern dollar of 1836.”

Left unexplained is how the bird navigated to the new Mint building that was put into operation c. 1833. The earliest mention of Peter appears to be in Elizabeth Johnston’s A Visit to the Cabinet of the United States Mint (1876), where “an old citizen of Philadelphia” is cited as the authority for the story. Peter is today comfortably ensconced in the visitor’s area at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.

Link to “Peter the Mint Bird” letter: https://archive.org/details/peterthemintbirdstory18960507/page/n3/mode/2up
Link to U.S. Mint general correspondence on Newman Portal: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/archivedetail/515202
Link to Elizabeth Johnston’s A Visit to the Cabinet of the United States Mint on Newman Portal: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/booksbyauthor/1079

Numismatists tend to score higher in age demographics, and many readers will no doubt recall the 1970s metric system discussion in the United States. The Commerce Department created a number of studies at the time, few of which led to any substantial changes in the day to day lives of ordinary Americans, who continued to accumulate pounds (not the monetary kind), drive more miles, and drink gallons of sugary soda. Newman Portal recently added one of these studies, A history of the metric system controversy in the United States : U.S. metric study interim report, published by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1971. Thomas Jefferson considered the question of decimal coinage and measures together, noting “…the citizens of the United States may be induced to undertake a thorough reformation of their whole systems of Measures, Weights and Coins, reducing every branch to the same decimal ratio….” Jefferson got his way with the coinage in the Mint Act of 1792, but was unsuccessful in driving this further into other areas, and this report serves as a useful summary of the abortive attempt to unite all of the U.S. measures around a decimal standard.

Link to History of the Metric System Controversy on Newman Portal: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/593538