Coins; Medals; Money; Numismatics; Prisoners of war
The “Old Sugar House Rose Street, N. Y.,” which stood on the corner of
Rose and Deane Streets in New York City, was erected by Henry Cuyler,
Jr., for his heir, Barnet Rynders Cuyler, probably in 1763. This date,
which appears on the medal twice, is based on an authority “who had
opportunity to observe.” John Austin Stevens stated from personal
recollection “that he saw the date 1769 high upon the brick wall in iron
figures.” The good engraving which is reproduced in James G. Wilson’s
_Memorial History of the City of New York_ and may well have been the
model for the engraver of the medal, shows the year 1767 on the wall of
the building. As disputed as the date of its erection is also its use as
prison during the Revolution. Wilson writes: “The date and the
architect’s initials are still to be seen on the side of the building,
worked in wrought-iron characters, quaint and old. The Rhinelander
family has owned the property since 1790, and much of the land around it
has been in their possession much longer than that. When first erected
the house was used as a sugar-house, but the great interest in the old
building is in the memory of the use to which it was put in
revolutionary times. The grated windows, the dungeon-like underground
cellars, the general air of solidity and impregnability which impress
the observer at first sight, bear out the assertion, which has become a
creed among the neighbors, that during the Revolution the sugar-house
was diverted from its legitimate use and turned into a British prison,
where many an American patriot suffered not only imprisonment, but
cruelties and starvation.” This was written by Wilson in 1892 in
commemoration of the then recent demolition of the structure. It seems
that it was the very same occasion that caused the issuance of the
medal, bearing the year of the building’s demolition. Nevertheless, the
use of the Rhinelander sugar-house as a prison during the Revolution was
“denied by Stevens and others, who have presented testimony to disprove
it,” as Stokes tells us. It seems almost impossible to decide the issue
which, in turn, renders the historical justification of the issuance of
the medal also doubtful.
[Illustration: No. 7
Libby Prison Medal
(Obverse)]
No. 7 is the only medal known to the author referring to a military
prison in the Civil War. No specimen of it is found in the museum of the
American Numismatic Society. Nor do the catalogues, guide-books, and
other pamphlets published by the Libby Prison War Museum Association in
Chicago mention this medal that was probably issued by this very
association. There is nothing about it in the files of the Chicago
Historical Society. The Chicago newspapers of 1893 might have some
article or note. But as they are not indexed it would take a great deal
of time and labor to search through them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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