Spanish Reale coin found - a question

[Bum Luck]

Some years back in southern Wisconsin, an old post office site was excavated by the Wisconsin Historical Society and a 1781 Spanish reale was found. They excavated two cellars, and the coin was found, a surprise to the archaeologists.

Here is the link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/museum/artifacts/archives/003106.asp

My question to you that dig is, why did the reale exist where it was found? Is it that unusual to find these? Or were they in general circulation and fairly common?

 

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[s.c.shooter]

It's my understanding that the reale was commonplace in Colonial America and was used as legal tender until the colonies coined their own money, which I understand was silver dollar and was basically the same size, weight, etc.

 

[BuckleBoy]

They were legal tender in the U.S. until the 1850s, so I don't think it is too strange to find one. They are fairly common finds in Civil War camps, even.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I had to chuckle at the part where it was a "surprise to the archaeologists"

On the east coast, prior to USA starting to mint their own coins, and well afterwards, the coins of the rest of the world circulated there. And of course, Spain's coins (who had most of South America, Mexico, etc...) would be amongst them, if not the largest part of the coins there in the east. They are commonly found in any place that predates about 1850 (to the "surprise" of archaeologists )

On the west coast, CA was a Spanish, and then a Mexican (after Mexico gained its independance from Spain, in the 1820s) colony. So reales were the primary coins here, all the way into the 1850s or '60s. Even though the SF mint got started in the early 1850s, and even though laws prohibited foreign coins after a certain point, reales kept circulating well into the '60s, or maybe even later. There was a sidewalk tearout in an old-town district near me, where a reale surfaced amongst the seateds that were found. And that town was started in the late 1860s, or early 1870s-ish.

 

[DougF]

Spanish coins were legal tender in the U.S. until the coinage act of 1857. Reference: the Redbook.

 

[Mackaydon]

An answer to one of your Qs is stated in your referenced article:
"Carl Truehl, one of the post masters at Alden's Corners, fought in the Mexican War in 1848, and it is possible that he brought the coin back as a souvenir. "
Don.........