Ongoing Research

Over the last century, a good deal of valuable research has been undertaken by dedicated historians and numismatists into the subject of Confederate paper money, covering Treasury notes, Registered and Coupon bonds, Call certificates and other debt instruments.

Unfortunately, the results of this research - generally in the form of reference books, numismatic papers and articles, listings, private notes etc. - are fragmented, unstructured, and not easy for collectors to find or to digest.

The Author has embarked upon a multi-year project to address this challenge, using modern technology to collate and integrate the disparate information sources into a single robust and flexible platform which can be readily accessed by current and future generations of collectors of Confederate paper money.

Treasury notes issued by the Confederate Government between 1861 and 1865 are by far the most popular form of Confederate paper money collected by numismatists, as can be seen from the volume of activity on auction sites and at money shows. The Author therefore decided to focus his project initially on Treasury notes, with bonds and other areas being addressed at a later stage.

After three years of research and technical work, the Author has now created a database platform which fully models the world of Confederate Government Treasury Notes. The Editor has created a data model that breaks this information down to its core components, in a coherent and logical way. The underlying information has then been codified and uploaded, piece-by-piece, into the database.

Core components of the database

The database contains details of the 200,000+ individual batches of Treasury Notes that Thian recorded in his Register of the Confederate Debt, pages 6 thru 178. This includes Issue dates, denominations, series, plens, serial number runs, and the signers. The spartan data which appeared in Thian's Register has been greatly enriched and restructured with modern constructs such as the Criswell Type classification, details of Printers, and a wealth of other interesting information and recommended reference materials.

A second goal of the project was to address the known errors and the gaps which can be found in Thian's Register. Over the years, incorrect serial number runs and note-signer entries have been discovered for some batches of notes, and the Author has corrected these. A much bigger challenge was to address the significant gaps which exist in Thian's Register. For example, in the Seventh Issue (February 1864) sections of the Register, there are large gaps where the original Confederate Treasury Department records had been lost or destroyed. The Author has undertaken an extensive research effort of surviving notes to begin to piece together the missing data, and with the result that the Seventh Issue gap has now been reduced from more than eleven million notes to less than seven million notes.

This work is ongoing, but the database is now developed enough to provide real value to collectors. This will be achieved through the publication of the Digital Register of Confederate Treasury Notes.