The First Named Woman on American Paper Currency: Lucy Pickens

Bank of Washington, NC 

     Paper currency dates back centuries in America. The Massachusetts Bay Colony issued notes to fund military expeditions in 1690. The Continental Congress issued notes to finance the Revolutionary War. Of course, these notes quickly lost their value, leading to the phrase “not worth a Continental.” 

   Most states, or banks, issued their own paper currency in the Federal and Antebellum periods.  Many of these notes featured women. A $50 note from the Bank of Washington, North Carolina from 1855 featured five women. A $5 1858 note from the Merchants’ Bank of South Carolina features a woman with the state seal. Likewise, a woman is portrayed on the $100 note from The Union Bank of Augusta, South Carolina. These three examples all have something in common. The woman is not an actual person, but the personification of Liberty. She is portrayed holding a spear with a liberty cap on top. This item is closely linked to the French Revolution, when the “pileus,” a hat worn by freed Roman slaves, was adopted as one of the symbols of the revolutionary forces. Similar to the Scythian cap, with which it is often conflated, the pileus represents freedom, so iconographic figures of Liberty frequently wear it or hold it aloft.

   Confederate currency also featured women, often Native American women, and at times Greek or Roman goddesses, such as Victory (Nike), Athena, or Justice, which all appeared on various $100 notes. But the Confederate Treasury Department broke with tradition by placing Lucy Pickens on three different notes.

Lucy Holcombe Pickens 

   Often referred to as the “Queen of the Confederacy,” Lucy Holcome Pickens is an interesting story. She was born in La Grange, Tennessee, in 1832, and when she was 16, moved with her family to Marshall, Texas. In 1858, she married Col. Francis W. Pickens, a very wealthy South Carolina planter. Colonel Pickens and his bride were soon were on their way to Russia, where he served as United States ambassador. Lucky became a favorite at the Russian Court of Czar Alexander II. On returning to the United States, and South Carolina, Colonel Pickens was elected governor of South Carolina in December 1860, three days before the state legislature voted to secede from the Union. Lucy was in Charleston and watched the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861. Colonel Pickens continued to serve as governor of South Carolina through December 1862.

   Lucy Pickens was honored in many different ways. In the spring of 1861, she reviewed and presented a flag to the “Lucky Holcombe Legion.” She had sold her Russian jewels to help finance the Legion. Based on a proposal made by Confederate Treasury Secretary Christopher Memminger, in December 1862, Lucy Pickens’s portrait appeared on the Confederate $100 bill, and the Confederate $1 bill. She would also appear on revamped $100 notes in April 1863 and February 1864.[1]

    Colonel Pickens died in January 1869. Lucy never remained, but managed three different properties, raised her daughter, worked to have a monument erected to the Confederate dead in Edgefield, and worked to have George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, declared a historical monument.

   Lucy was the only named woman on a piece of currency until Pocahontas, who appeared on the US $20 bill from 1865 to 1869, and again in 1875. Martha Washington appeared on the US $1 Silver Certificate in 1886.

 

---

[1] Greenberg, ed., The Women’s War in the South, 293-296.