Flowing Hair Large Cents (1793)

Three Designs in One Year

The Philadelphia Mint struck its first large cent on February 27, 1793. By the end of that same year it had abandoned two designs, introduced a third, and produced six distinct varieties across two types, all under the pressure of public criticism, planchet shortages, and the competing demands of a new institution still working out its basic procedures.

Henry Voigt, the Mint's Chief Coiner, cut the dies for the first type. His credentials for the work were genuinely mixed: a skilled machinist and watchmaker, thorough in his understanding of mechanical systems, but portrait engraving at the standard the public expected was a different discipline. The Libertas Americana medal, struck in Paris at Benjamin Franklin's direction to commemorate American victories in the Revolution, served as the conceptual source for Liberty's portrait on these coins, as it did for the half cent struck later the same year.¹ Voigt's portrait met the Mint's deadline, and the public found fault with it once the coins circulated.

Two Weeks, a Chain, and a Public Objection

The Chain cent obverse shows Liberty facing right, hair in loose strands beneath LIBERTY, date below. The reverse presents fifteen interlocking links encircling ONE CENT and the fraction 1/100. The chain referenced the fifteen states then in the Union, a symbol borrowed from the Fugio cent of 1787 and Continental currency before it. The public did not read it as a symbol of national unity. A report from Newark, printed in Philadelphia's The Mail on March 18, 1793, complained that the chain was "but a bad omen for liberty, and Liberty herself appears to be in a fright."² The Mint took the complaint seriously enough to act immediately.

Production ran from late February through mid-March, when planchet supplies ran out. Total output across all Chain cent varieties was approximately 36,103 coins. Three varieties are recognized, two by the spelling of the reverse legend and one by punctuation on the obverse. The most common spells AMERICA in full with no additional punctuation. A second adds periods after LIBERTY and the date on the obverse: the Periods variety (S-4, rated R.3), scarcer than the plain AMERICA cents, with PCGS estimating 300 to 325 survivors in all grades. A Periods cent graded Mint State 66 Brown by PCGS set the current auction record for any U.S. copper coin when it realized $2,350,000 at Heritage's January 2015 FUN Convention sale.³ The third variety carries AMERI. rather than the full spelling, a consequence of insufficient die space on the first reverse die prepared. PCGS puts the surviving AMERI. cents at no more than about 200, which makes the AMERI. the scarcest of the three varieties. All three varieties were produced and exhausted within that two-week window.

The Wreath Replaces the Chain

Mint Director David Rittenhouse moved without delay. The new reverse dies are traditionally credited to Adam Eckfeldt, though the attribution is disputed and some specialists give them to Henry Voigt. The chain disappeared. In its place came an elongated wreath enclosing ONE CENT, with 1/100 below and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA around the border. The obverse Liberty portrait was carried over from the Chain cent but modified: more volume and definition in the hair, a steadier upward gaze. Production began in early April and ran through mid-July, yielding approximately 63,353 Wreath cents, nearly twice the Chain cent output.

Specialists still disagree about which plant the wreath depicts. The elongated leaves are consistent with laurel, but the three-lobed trefoil leaves visible above the central bow and the small berries on thin stems have prompted suggestions of cotton, maple, or some decorative composite that does not correspond to any single plant. Rittenhouse was a scientist of wide-ranging interests and probably intended a decorative wreath, not a portrait of any one plant. The question has never been definitively settled, and I suspect it never will be; the Mint's records from this period are incomplete, and Rittenhouse left no written description of what he intended.⁴

Two Wreath cent varieties are catalogued by edge treatment. The Lettered Edge variety carries ONE HUNDRED FOR A DOLLAR around the coin's edge, stating the denomination's relationship to the dollar in terms a public still accustomed to Spanish reales could parse. The Vine and Bars edge substitutes an ornamental pattern of vine segments and horizontal bars. At least one die pairing, Sheldon-11, is recorded with both edges, Vine and Bars on S-11a and Lettered Edge on S-11b and S-11c, so the Mint changed the edge device partway through the life of a single pair of dies. The Wreath cent dies broke frequently during this run because the Mint had not yet mastered die hardening.⁵

Four Coins, No Explanation: The Strawberry Leaf

Among the six recognized 1793 Flowing Hair varieties, one stands entirely apart. The Strawberry Leaf cent is a Wreath cent sub-type identified by a distinctive cluster of three-lobed leaves beneath Liberty's bust, replacing the small sprig that appears on every other Wreath cent. The name dates from the nineteenth century, when David Proskey coined it in his articles on large cents for the Coin Collector's Journal, though the plant depicted does not match actual strawberry leaves precisely; cotton, maple, and several others have been proposed without anything approaching consensus.⁶

Only four examples are known, all in low grades. Why the unusual leaf cluster appears on this small group of coins and nowhere else in the entire 1793 cent production has never been satisfactorily explained. Whether it represents an experimental die element, a substitute punch used when the standard was unavailable, or something else entirely is not recorded in any surviving Mint document. The Strawberry Leaf's extreme rarity and unresolved origins have made it one of the most discussed objects in the study of early American copper. Any example, in any condition, is a major acquisition.

Wright and the End of the Flowing Hair Type

The Wreath cent was still in production when Rittenhouse hired Joseph Wright, a New Jersey portraitist whose work included paintings of George and Martha Washington. Wright was assigned the task of preparing new device punches for the cent. His design kept Liberty in right-facing profile but smoothed and shortened the hair, added a Phrygian cap on a pole, and produced a portrait noticeably more controlled than Voigt's: the hair falls in ordered locks instead of the agitated tangle of the Chain cent, and the face has individual features. That coin, the Liberty Cap cent, was struck in July 1793, with delivery to the Mint treasurer in September, ending the Wreath cent's run.⁷ Wright died of yellow fever in September 1793, the same epidemic that killed his wife, having remade the cent in a matter of months.

Building the Set

The six varieties divide into rough tiers of accessibility, and the gaps between tiers are significant. The Wreath cent in Lettered Edge and Vine and Bars configurations appears regularly at auction across a range of circulated grades. A collector willing to accept significant wear can acquire an honest example without extraordinary difficulty, though even low-grade pieces are expensive because buyers are paying for the first year of the cent. The Chain cent in its standard AMERICA spelling is the next step up: scarcer, priced accordingly, but within reach for a serious collector with patience.

The Periods and AMERI. Chain cent varieties require deliberate pursuit. The Strawberry Leaf, with four known examples all in low grades, is outside practical collecting for most people.

Surface quality matters throughout this series more than the grade alone would suggest. Planchet problems, edge damage, and cleaning are common, and the variable nature of the planchets makes strike assessment genuinely difficult on pieces that appear worn but may reflect imperfect original striking rather than post-mint friction. Problem-free examples with original surfaces command clear premiums and are worth waiting for. The Sheldon reference provides the attribution framework; Bowers's Whitman guide provides the market context. Both are worth reading before buying any piece in this series.