Part 3 Social Cultural Context

The coin, as I have now learned, was not used as currency as one would consider currency today. It was in fact a form of payment, yes, but valued based on the weight of gold and size of the coin being given. These coins were never intended to be used in public circulation, as mostly gentry and “nobility” were the recipients, and traded them not only amongst themselves, but were used as barter abroad. From what I have been told and found through some archival digging, most of these coins began their lives in the southern United States, where upper class consisted of cotton and sugar estates owners. As mentioned, the coins were used as barter and payment abroad; well this is where my coin apparently came to be in Jamaica. A lot of sugar estates in Jamaica were owned by American and English businessmen and were operated by whites that were either from abroad, or born to the wealthy (and minority) white population in Jamaica. My great grandmother was among this minority, born in Jamaica but of English decent, as both her parents (my great, great grandparents) were English, and took up plantation and land ownership before Jamaican independence from Britain. With that said, the coins were procured by my great grandmother as payment for her services and as a token of appreciation from a distant relative who had commissioned my family to tend to the several cane fields in the parish of St. Thomas (two hours north of Kingston). As I have also found to be interesting about these coins, was their use as gifts to nobility visiting the United States from England, as they were made of pure 24 karat gold, and as such, were highly significant among anyone who would received them. In the case of the exact coin I have chosen to expand my research on, it was not common to have these pieces converted to jewellery, so my great grandmother must have had some particular want to show her wealth, as putting such things on display was very noticeable among the vast amounts of poor non-white labourers and country dwellers in the area surrounding her house.