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Keeping a Crooked Sixpence: Coin Magic and Religion in the Colonial Chesapeake

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Abstract

This article explores the probability that a silver sixpence, recovered at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River’s Webster Field Annex in St. Inigoes, Maryland, represents an everyday item that had supernatural significance for the individual(s) who once owned it. Between 1637 and 1942, the land that now comprises Webster Field had been home to a Jesuit settlement. Throughout this period, coin magic was practiced in the British Isles, and silver sixpences incorporated many of the symbolic properties that made them useful as protective amulets, emblems of vow-making, and other less defined representations of luck. The presence of such a coin at St. Inigoes is indicative of the interplay between folk traditions and church-sanctioned religious objects employed at the settlement, and coin-bending practices are examined through archaeological finds in the Chesapeake.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum, 10515 Mackall Road, St. Leonard, MD, 20685, USA

    Sara Rivers Cofield

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  1. Sara Rivers Cofield
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Cofield, S.R. Keeping a Crooked Sixpence: Coin Magic and Religion in the Colonial Chesapeake. Hist Arch 48, 84–105 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376938

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