What is this symbol in a financial record from Wisconsin, USA, in 1860?

Question

I am trying to read some records about wages in Wisconsin in 1860 (the data is from the Social Statistics schedules of the Decennial Census). I cannot read the record from Milton, Rock County, Wisconsin. Specifically, I do not understand the entries in columns 42 and 43. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could tell me what this symbol that looks like an f means.

Source: The US Census Office, 1860, Wisconsin, Rock County, The Town of Milton, Schedule 6 (Census of Social Statistics). This specific record was made by Assistant Marshal Hiram Taylor.

I successfully read the entries for the other counties in the same state. The normal values for column 42 (Average day wages to a carpenter without a board) were $1.25-2. The average for column 43 (Weekly wages to a female domestic without board) were around $0.75-1.5

Edit (Sept. 11): added source.

The instructions that accompanied the 1860 census stated that "The information called for in the six columns relating to wages is so simple, and so plainly set forth in the headings thereof, that it is deemed unnecessary to add thereto.". Looking at this record, I'd suggest that they might have been mistaken about that! — sempaiscuba, Sep 11 '20 at 10:20
Does this symbol appear elsewhere or is this a onesie? Does it appear in other forms filled by Hiram Taylor? In other forms in Rock County, Wisc. or elsewhere in Wisconsin? If no, then it's probably futile to look for an answer other than "hard to say". If it's used elsewhere, where and how? — Mark Olson, Sep 11 '20 at 14:28
I looked through all other records filled by Hiram Taylor and also overall in Wisconsin in 1860. This is a "onesie". The answer "hard to say" is ok, I just wanted to hear the community's opinion. — roussanoff, Sep 11 '20 at 14:41
I wonder if it is a reference to a bit, 1/8 of a dollar (one-half the price of a shave and a haircut :)), dating from the time when Spanish pieces-of-8 were a common currency. This would be half a shilling, the other unit speculated. — antlersoft, Sep 11 '20 at 15:52
Related: Why is backslash called BACK slash when arguably it points forward? — RedGrittyBrick, Sep 11 '20 at 16:11
@HotLicks But what per what? The column headings already specify day or week, and we have context showing that $12 and $10 would be much too high, so it clearly indicates some other unit. — IMSoP, Sep 11 '20 at 22:44
@IMSoP - Oh my! Send a complaint to the Department of Redundancy Department! — Hot Licks, Sep 11 '20 at 23:16
Perhaps using ſ for a dime, so 12ſ --> 12 dimes? Although 10ſ --> 10 dimes seems that 1.00 could have been used. Recall "dime" is a unit of currency like "dollar" and "cent". That is why the US dime says "ONE DIME". — chux - Reinstate Monica, Sep 12 '20 at 03:32
That's an interesting idea. Can you give a reference to the use of ſ for dime? — roussanoff, Sep 12 '20 at 19:58
Given the numbers reported, it would make sense that the values are intended to represent "per week". — Hot Licks, Sep 13 '20 at 00:49
@HotLicks That would work for column 42, but column 43 (which is already per week) would still be ~10 times higher than expected from the other documents the OP found. That context suggests to me that we're looking for some value to divide both numbers by. — IMSoP, Sep 13 '20 at 09:30

score 23 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 11 '20 at 14:52

23

That looks like the archaic form of the letter "s". Shown here in the word "Congress" from the original US Bill of Rights:

The Latin name for that long-s glyph is "solidus", which also happens to be the word from which we got the word "shilling". Of course this was not a coincidence. This glyph looks a bit like a slash '/', but is different (note that in the ledger it dips below the line, and curls outward a bit at the tips). Solidus was (and in some places still is) used as a currency separator, particularly between shillings and pence.

So looks very much like that indicates the units on the entry are in shillings. Of course the USA had been on the Dollar standard for quite a while by then, but it does appear that people in the USA were in fact still also occasionally using shillings as a unit into the 1860s, valued at 24 US cents each¹.

Supposedly, in old-fashioned £sd Accounting, a notation of "X/Y" meant "X shillings, Y pence". A dash in the pence slot ("X/-") meant 0 pence.

So those columns would be "12 shillings, 0 pence" and "10 shillings, 0 pence" respectively.

According to our Wikipedia reference ,that would be about $2.88 and $2.40 respectively. However, it was pointed out in comments that the 24 figure isn't very well documented¹, and the more typical factor in standard £sd accounting is 12. That would cut those figures in half, to $1.44 and $1.20 respectively, which is a figure more in line with what Semaphore reports as the average for those two columns in that state ($1.73 and $1.30).

^{1 - I tried to find a better reference for this, but it quickly looked to be an effort worthy of its own question.}

edited Sep 11 '20 at 14:52

Community

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answered Sep 11 '20 at 01:54

T.E.D.

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Before looking into this, I had no idea that the US used "shillings" that late. Very interesting! – T.E.D. Sep 11 '20 at 02:11
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This is a credible way of reading the data, but it results in values quite off-range with what the OP found in other counties, especially for column 43. I wonder if other explanations will be proposed (I don't have any) – Evargalo Sep 11 '20 at 06:34
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It's a slash character, "/", and not a pipe character, "|", used to separate shillings and pence. Also I've never seen both the use of abbreviations and a separating character in the same record. Bookkeepers used one or the other, so either "4s. 5d." or "4/5", but never "4s./5d.". – Pieter Geerkens Sep 11 '20 at 07:11
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Further, the ubiquitous presence of shilling coins as specie is not evidence that they were either legal or practiced as a *government* measure of account. Legal tender was always the currency minted or printed by the United States under authority of Congress (Art. I, Sec. 8), I would want to see hard evidence of that before accepting it as fact. – Pieter Geerkens Sep 11 '20 at 07:58
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Shillings was my immediate thought looking at this, but as others have pointed out, this is neither a long S nor a pipe mark, but a slash. This notation was used in the UK right up until the 1970s when decimal currency was introduced, so the "supposedly" is rather misplaced - go into a second-hand book shop in the UK, and you'll find plenty of books with original cover prices like "1/6" or "2/-". – IMSoP Sep 11 '20 at 09:09
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Hmm. The average figures for those 2 columns in Wisconsin in 1860 were $1.73 and $1.30. If it was an abbreviation for "shillings", then Milton, Rock county must have been something of a statistical outlier (especially since the other columns are all significantly below the state average)! – sempaiscuba Sep 11 '20 at 10:26
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To further corroborate that this is a slash and not a long s: the rules for when to use a long s don’t apply here. – gen-ℤ ready to perish Sep 11 '20 at 11:34
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Column 40 uses the cent sign. Therefore the usage of shillings in column 42 and 43 is unlikly. There would be no valid reason to use 2 different currencies in 1 row written by the same writer. The solidus symbol (/) may have come from the long s: librae,ſolidi and denarii (£sd), but unlikly in this context. – Mark Johnson Sep 11 '20 at 12:07
Fixed the two slashes that seemed to bug everyone so much. – T.E.D. Sep 11 '20 at 12:39
@sempaiscuba - Perhaps, but the difference isn't one or more orders of magnitude, which is what I'd expect to see if the units were wrong. – T.E.D. Sep 11 '20 at 12:41
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@gen-ℤreadytoperish - The slash is the long S. That's where the slash character came from. – T.E.D. Sep 11 '20 at 13:07
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@T.E.D. As a historical footnote, it's interesting that that's the origin of the shilling mark, but according to the article you linked, by the time it was being used as such in English it already had the form of an oblique. Looking at this mark and seeing a long-s is, in my opinion, trying too hard. If you write "10/-" in cursive hand-writing, the result will look like this, without any need for on-going influence of the archaic s. To any British reader over the age of about 50, the notation would barely even look archaic, having been standard within their lifetime. – IMSoP Sep 11 '20 at 13:17
Best values I could find. Silver standard for both UK and US at 87.273 grains / shilling and 371 grains / dollar => 87.273/3.71 = ~23.5 cents / shilling. Look up US 1792 Coinage Act and UK 1816 Recoinage to verify. US's bimetallic standard caused flood of foreign silver specie into U.S., banned as legal tender in 1857., – Pieter Geerkens Sep 11 '20 at 13:26
@IMSoP - Not being a Brit myself, is it common to draw your '/' character way down through the line, like a q or g (or cursive capital z)? I've certainly never noticed anyone doing that over here. Our fonts don't do that. That's why my brain immediately went to the long 's'. – T.E.D. Sep 11 '20 at 13:27
@T.E.D. I just saw that as stylistic flourish in the hand-writing, but I take your point that it could be seen as a distinctive form halfway between a long s and a modern / – IMSoP Sep 11 '20 at 13:30
@T.E.D.: Yes, to distinguish it from a "/" used as part of a fractional pence. So a long slash was a pound-shilling or shilling-pence dicider, and a short one was a fractional pence mark as in 1/2 or 1/4. A farthing was a 1/4p coin and a ha'pence was 1/2p coin. – Pieter Geerkens Sep 11 '20 at 13:30
@PieterGeerkens - Well...since we do know that it came from the long s, which did that because that's what it does, that answer reads a lot to me like a post-hoc justification, or at best a good reason for keeping it that way rather than the reason it started being that way in the first place. – T.E.D. Sep 11 '20 at 13:33
@T.E.D.: That justification is suspect, as the same long slash is used to separate pounds-sterling from shillings, as "4/10/5" for 4 pounds, 10 shillings and 5 pence. – Pieter Geerkens Sep 11 '20 at 13:35
@PieterGeerkens - Is it indeed? I just tried "long slash" on a search, and came up dry. Is there a more proper name for this glyph? – T.E.D. Sep 11 '20 at 13:37
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@T.E.D. I've only ever seen the distinction made in cursive - as typewritten and typeset accounts are always much clearer, and have glyphs for both of 1/2 and 1/4. So I doubt a name was ever needed. We're really talking a bookkeepers' shorthand as formal accounts would always be written as £4 10 s. 5 p. – Pieter Geerkens Sep 11 '20 at 13:38
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This is an amazing discussion, thank you everyone. Like others, I am puzzled by why the marshal would switch to shillings instead of cents. I worked with hundreds of similar schedules from Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, and this is the first time I saw this notation. I will leave it as a weird idiosyncrasy of the census marshal and will report if this notation appears again. – roussanoff Sep 11 '20 at 13:41
Pound-shilling-pence writing conventions. – Pieter Geerkens Sep 11 '20 at 13:44
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@PieterGeerkens - Funny thing is, according to our sister site EL&U, the name of that glyph is "solidus" (which was the Latin name for the long s, as well as the word that gave us "shilling") – T.E.D. Sep 11 '20 at 13:48
@T.E.D. Interesting. I never claimed understanding British coinage was simple. ;-) – Pieter Geerkens Sep 11 '20 at 13:54
@PieterGeerkens I just saw your info on the silver standard and Coinage Act, which is definitely valuable, particularly the mention specifically of foreign specie being in circulation around this time, which for me is the "missing link" in the 24 cents per dollar interpretation - without that, we have to assume not only that "10/-" means "10 shillings", but that it means "10 British shillings, at the exchange rate of the day", despite the existence of plenty of other shillings before and since. If the trail doesn't run cold, that might make a better answer than we have now. – IMSoP Sep 11 '20 at 14:48
Point in order, 1857 was when non-US coins stopped being legal tender. (Best link on short notice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_Act_of_1857) – Zenzizenzizenzic Sep 11 '20 at 15:22
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@PieterGeerkens Note: The abbreviation of the pre-decimal (old) pence was d, based in the roman coin denarius. For decimal (new) pence p is used. 1s = 12d = 5p. – Mark Johnson Sep 11 '20 at 19:07
@MarkJohnson: Shoot! I knew that, just forgot. – Pieter Geerkens Sep 11 '20 at 19:33
I think the long S fell out of use in the United States some half-century before 1860. Most records indicate 1803 is when it died out due to major newspapers moving more modern typefaces. Someone doing work like this in 1860 is likely to have not been born (just as likely their parents hadn't been born yet) when long S stopped being used. – TylerH Sep 14 '20 at 13:32
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The ʃ symbol is common in the 1860 records in Wisconsin I work with. For example, "Assessor" is very often written as "Aʃeʃor". It might be the German influence, but I am speculating. The ʃ always looks like the ʃ in this answer by @T.E.D, not like the / in my question, which is one of the reasons I am abit skeptical about the shilling explanation. – roussanoff Sep 14 '20 at 17:10
@roussanoff - Interesting coincidence there... – T.E.D. Sep 14 '20 at 18:57

IMSoP · Answer 2 · 2020-09-13T15:01:35.100

Not following instructions

As found by Pieter Geerkens, the instructions for the 1860 census repeatedly state that values should be written in dollars only. However, from context, we can quickly rule out $12 and $10 as plausible values for these columns, so the logical conclusion is that the clerk failed to obey that instruction for these values, and wrote the prices in terms that he was familiar with in every day life.

The symbol

I believe the symbol shown is the "solidus", a symbol for the shilling which evolved over time from a "long s" to an oblique or slash.

In the pre-decimal currency of pounds, shillings, and pence, used in the UK until 1972, it was common to write prices with shillings and pence divided with this mark, so that "2/6" meant "2 shillings and 6 pence". In this notation, two shillings exactly would be written "2/-". Written in cursive script, this would look exactly as shown in your image, with a tall oblique, and the "/-" joined up to the preceding number.

This would make the values "12 shillings" and "10 shillings", respectively. But whose "shilling", and what was it worth in US dollars?

The circulation of multiple currencies

In 1857 an Act was passed in the US Congress officially revoking the legal tender status of foreign coins, which up until then had been encouraged because not enough locally minted coins were available.

These weren't going to disappear overnight, so we can assume that in 1860 many people were still accustomed to them in every day life. This would also make sense of the reminders in the census instructions to write values in dollars - today, it would mostly go without saying, since the US Dollar is firmly established as the local currency.

The British shilling - a red herring

The most obvious shilling to look at is the British one - worth twelve pence, and one-twentieth of a pound sterling. According to this Encyclopedia Britannica article, the values of the two currencies on the gold standard valued 1 British pound at 4.8665 U.S. dollars (113.00 grains of gold vs 23.22 grains).

A shilling would thus be $4.8665 / 20, which is just over 24 cents. This leads to values of $2.92 and $2.43, which seem suspiciously high given the context provided.

American shillings

The Merriam-Webster entry for "shilling" includes this broad definition:

any of several early American coins

This confirms that the term was in colloquial use, and even in some cases the official name of coins with varying values.

The Spanish "shilling"

The currencies specifically mentioned in the 1857 Act are not British currency, but the Spanish and Mexican dollar. These were the basis of the US dollar, and were widely used at the time. Two noteworthy things can be seen in the Act:

The Spanish dollar was generally being treated as equivalent in value to the US dollar. The Act makes provision to redeem coins for less than that value after two years have passed, because they wanted to take them out of circulation.
The conventional fractions of this coin were not based on hundredths like the US Dollar, but halves, quarters, eighths, and sixteenths. (This is the origin of the term "pieces of eight" - a Spanish dollar divided into eight pieces.)

One eighth of a Spanish dollar was called a "real", plural "reales". These appear to have been in common usage at the time, and had various nicknames in different parts of the country (see for instance this article and this quote and discussion). These apparently included "bit", "levy" ... and "shilling".

The possible value

If taken as one-eighth of a US Dollar, a real would be worth 12.5 cents. (Since a British shilling was worth 12 pence, this multiple may explain the colloquial usage.)

If this is indeed the "shilling" meant by the clerk filling in this form, we would have values of $1.50 for "12/-" and $1.25 for "10/-", which are right in the middle of your ranges from other counties.

A caveat

This is definitely not a conclusive answer, and there are other possible interpretations along similar lines: "shilling", or just the shilling symbol, might have colloquially been used for 12 cents (in the same way "penny" colloquially means 1 cent), or a dime (a division between cents and dollars in the same way a shilling was between pence and pounds), or some other obsolete coin in local use.

This is probably where phrases like "two-bit X" come from. In many cases, at least later in the US's history, bits/reales were used in even numbers to make integer cent amounts. — Panzercrisis, Sep 14 '20 at 03:10

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 11 '20 at 11:39

9

Having tracked down the Instructions to U.S. Marshals, Instructions to Assistants for the 1860 census I draw attention to these excerpts describing the means of calculating and recording then census:

Schedule No. 1 - Free Inhabitants

Item 12. Value of real Estate
..., and are to insert this amount in dollars, be the estate located where it may. ....
Item 13. Value of Personal Estate
Under heading 9, insert (in dollars) the value of all property or estate, ....

Schedule No. 4 - Agriculture;

Item 4: Value of Farms

In this, as in all cases where an amount of money is stated, make your figures represent dollars; thus if the cash value of the farm be five thousand dollars, insert simply the figures 5,000. This rule must be particularly and carefully observed in all cases where amounts of money ate to be entered in the columns.

Item 48. Animals Slaughtered

..., insert in dollars the value of all animals slaughtered during the year

Given the above, I find speculation that the values of inquiry describes an amount in shillings highly suspect. Notwithstanding that a shilling coin was in ubiquitous circulation and usage at the time, it seems clear that all records of the Census were to be recorded in the legal measures of account of the nation: Dollars and Percents thereof.

answered Sep 11 '20 at 11:39

Pieter Geerkens

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Unless you're saying that the values in question are $12 and $10 - ten times higher than expected from context - it's pretty clear that those instructions were ignored by whoever filled in these particular values. If they don't represent shillings, they represent some other measure, and not dollars. – IMSoP Sep 11 '20 at 11:44
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While that's useful background information, and I agree that the interpretation of the symbol as meaning shillings is suspect (particularly since the amounts in the other columns appear to be in dollars), this doesn't appear to actually answer the question that was asked. – sempaiscuba Sep 11 '20 at 11:44
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@sempaiscuba: There has to be a means to record hard facts relevant to the question and its answers, that are far too lengthy to place in a comment. Further, the official site definition for justifying an upvote is: "found to be useful". – Pieter Geerkens Sep 11 '20 at 11:53
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"There has to be a means to record hard facts relevant to the question and its answers, that are far too lengthy to place in a comment" How I wish that were true! Unfortunately, that is not how SE is structured. – sempaiscuba Sep 11 '20 at 12:12
@sempaiscuba: Indeed, but mods have discretion about how strictly to apply the standards of what answers and comments should contain. On other stackexchange sites I know better, mods/communities deliberately often balance that strictness (if they’re stricter about answers, they’re more lenient about comments, or vice versa) so that useful information doesn’t end up with nowhere to go. – Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine Sep 12 '20 at 21:12
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@PeterLeFanuLumsdaine Yep. And that's true on History:SE too. As you may have noticed in this case. – sempaiscuba Sep 12 '20 at 21:50

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 13 '20 at 09:34

-1

Doubt it's anything special, other than the really common '/-' indication which even I use for cheques and other written entries. The '/-' indication is used to indicate the end of a number i.e. no further digits are to be added. Very common, and often recommended to do so in the not so digitized world, so as to prevent fraud (fraudsters can easily add more zeroes at the end to tamper with).

As to why the original author used them, force of habit perhaps? It's hard to glean whether the numbers are accurate, without much context. For one, we don't know what units they are referring to. Also, the data isn't normalized to a given time duration - one column has weeks, the other has a month, another has a number I assume is 75 cents, so must be on a per-hour basis....

answered Sep 13 '20 at 09:34

Farhan Nawaz

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I disagree that /- is used to mean "no further digits". Do you have a source for this? – fabspro Sep 13 '20 at 10:25
"The United Kingdom and British Commonwealth countries, before decimalisation, used several recognised formats for amounts in pounds, shillings and pence, all for the same amount. A dash was often used to indicate a zero amount of pence or shillings, e.g. 3/- or £4/-/6d" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_symbol https://www.jagoinvestor.com/2013/10/writing-bank-cheque-in-safe-and-correct-manner.html – Farhan Nawaz Sep 13 '20 at 11:54
In other words, /- does not mean "no further digits". It means zero pence. It does not "indicate the end of a number". Your answer suggests that people would use it for ending any number - giving such absurd results as someone today writing 55/-p. – fabspro Sep 13 '20 at 12:05
Check the second link. Banks in developing countries with very little digitization traditionally often use the /- notation, and recommend customers to do so too so that the numbers cannot be altered. The end of the number is specified so that it cannot be manipulated, which is the same as fixing the amount written by specifying a zero amount of non-decimalized currency units (such as pence and shillings back then). – Farhan Nawaz Sep 13 '20 at 12:44
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You say we need more context, but ignore the context we already have. The time duration is labelled for each column ("day wages" and "weekly wages" respectively) and we have sample values from other documents in the same census, which are about 10 times lower. – IMSoP Sep 13 '20 at 12:55
These Census records are not financial instruments. They are just forms submitted to superiors for compilation and aggregation. – Pieter Geerkens Sep 13 '20 at 14:38