The Author's Database

Since the end of the Civil War in 1865, a good deal of valuable research has been undertaken by historians and numismatists into the subject of Confederate Paper Money, covering Treasury notes, Registered and Coupon bonds, Loans, Call Certificates, and other debt instruments.

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

In 2020 the Editor embarked upon a long-term project to address this challenge, using modern technology to collate and integrate the disparate information sources into a single robust and flexible database platform of Confederate Treasury notes which will provide benefit to current and future generations of collectors.

Following months of research and technical work, the Editor successfully created a database platform which fully defines the universe of Confederate Government Treasury notes. With this in place, the Editor began manually loading data from Thian's Register and other disparate sources into the database. The initial upload has taken several years to complete.

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", on 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 other useful information.

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, numerous incorrect serial number runs and note-signer entries have been discovered, and the Editor 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, 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 sufficiently to provide real value to collectors. This will be achieved through the publication of the "Digital Register of Confederate Treasury notes".