Start Filling Your Calendar for January

On Thursday, January 25, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m., the Hudson Area Library, in collaboration with the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History, presents "Making Sense of Early Currencies in North America," a talk by Simon Middleton. The event will be held virtually on Zoom. To register, visit the Hudson Area Library History Room website.

Middleton's talk will offer some thoughts on what we should make of the variety of coins and commodities used by settlers--everything from coins, grain, tobacco, wampum, and beaver pelts. Historians have long puzzled over the development of these diverse currencies, which the the colonists gathered together in conventions referred to as "current money" or money of "this place."

Simon Middleton earned his Ph.D. from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1998. He taught at the University of East Anglia and the University of Sheffield, before coming to William and Mary in 2018, where he is currently Associate Professor of History. He has published From Privileges to Rights: Work and Politics in Colonial New York City (Philadelphia, 2005), as well as articles in William and Mary Quarterly, Journal of Early American Studies, and American Journal of Legal History. He is currently completing a study of the introduction of paper money to the 18th-century middle colonies, New York and Pennsylvania.

The Jacob Leisler Library Lectures are made possible partially through the generous support of the Van Dyke Family Foundation and the Hudson River Bank and Trust Foundation.