Could Indians Have Dropped This Coin?

[coinman123]

After making a small post about this coin recently in another thread, I started thinking about it more. I found a coin in an area settled by Irish in the 1730's to 1740's. The weird thing is, it was a 1656-1658 Louis XIV French Liard coin that I found, predating the settlement by 80 to 90 years, and being from a completely different country. At another different 1730's settlement I found a coin from before the settlement, a 1696 Halfpenny, but I am positive that the first settlers dropped that coin, English Halfpennies were the main currency where they came from in the 1730's and 30 years isn't that long for a coin to be circulating. Anyways, My first guess was that fur traders dropped it in the late 1600's, but then I realized that there weren't many French fur traders in Southern NH in the 1600's. Is there a chance that the coin may have been give by a fur trader to an Indian in the late 1600's and maybe brought down to where I found it, where it was dropped? Which of my theories sound more possible? Maybe I should just call Scot Walter and let him find a Roman settlement there

Bad photo from when I first found it, after a mild cleaning. "I" mintmark on back.

 

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[coinman123]

Also, I found nothing else at that site, except for a late 18th century shoe buckle fragment close to where I found the coin, after hours of searching. The coin and buckle were both found right next to a small stream in the woods.

 

[Duckshot]

Unless you found it in a coffin with headstone above, you never really can be sure when an object might have been dropped. Maybe it could have been one of those Irish Settler's heirloom and dropped well after the settlement was established.

 

[Kurios1]

That's the 64,000 dollar question. Also one of the first things that goes through the mind of the one who recovers such a find. Who lost this and what were the circumstances surrounding this way cool item? Man, if our recoveries could talk. The stories would be so much more entertaining than any Hollywood epic drama. Like my avatar told me the story after I recovered it about how it was the key to Al Capone's jail cell in Joliet Statesville Prison. Honest story, really.

 

[coinman123]

Yesterday I found a 1945 licence plate at a cellar hole, at a place that after doing research I found out was lived in by an extremely famous person in the early 20th century. The family donated the land to be wildlife conservation land around 20 years ago. Too bad it was so overgrown and had holes from other people everywhere in the main easy to access places. I think that I was the first person with a metal detector to locate the house site though, it had a huge undisturbed 1920's trash pile on the surface (I never grabbed anything, most stuff was broken) and no holes and tons of junky signals (licence plate was on the surface). I guess there is no way to be sure if he ever drove that car or not, but still always fun to ask. I am going to try to tell the town historian, who I have had many conversations with about local history, that I found the house site, he probably already knows where it is, but I don't think it would hurt just in case. It is way too trashy to metal detect there, and the historian has been good to me, giving me some sites to metal detect, he also even researched my sundial for me.

 

[coinman123]

Maybe it could have been one of those Irish Settler's heirloom and dropped well after the settlement was established.

I could see someone from Ireland visiting France in the 1700's, maybe visiting relatives, and keeping a coin to remember the place. I do that when ever I travel out of the county. Also, it was much harder to travel in the 1700's, so any opportunity would be very exciting. The person who visited France would have probably passed down the coin to his children, who carried it as a good luck piece everyday until finally loosing it. It is very fun to think of possible scenarios of how this coin was dropped.

 

[pepperj]

It could of been used as a trade item, carried, traded again, who knows for sure. I've recovered an English One Penny Cartwheel that predated the school site by 103 yrs and this school is on a island in a rural area of Eastern Ontario. Was it dropped a hundred yrs before, or was it a child drop during the late 1800's/early 1900's. My area was very sparsely populated in the late 1790's early 1800's, but there is history dating both that I've dug up. Folks from the states settled, traveled, and brought back items that were lost and are out of place.