Mary (Peck) Butterworth was a colonial era counterfeiter, the first major counterfeiter in America's history. She is my 1st cousin 9x removed — her grandfather, Nicholas Peck (1630-1710), is my 9th great-grandfather through my maternal grandmother's line.
Mary was born on July 27, 1686, in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, some 40 miles south of Boston. Her father, my 9th great-uncle, was Joseph Peck, born October 27, 1650. According to Kenneth Scott's Counterfeiting in Colonial America, Joseph was the innkeeper at the "Inn at the Sign of the Black Horse," a tavern in Rehoboth. In his book Early Rehoboth, local historian Richard LeBaron Bowen affirms that "Mary was the daughter of one of the most important and influential pioneer families in Rehoboth and was related to most of the other first families; all of the important town and colony officers were relatives." All in all, she was well-positioned to live a pretty comfortable life by colonial standards.
In 1710, 24-year-old Mary married John Butterworth, Jr., a pretty successful housewright — someone who built homes. John was well known and made good money as a housewright, resulting in the couple having "a better income than most people of the time," according to Bowen. Both Scott and Bowen note that despite his success and the societal norms of the day, John was generally known as "Mary's husband."
So what led Mary, who was quite financially secure and well-connected to the movers and shakers of the area, to the crime of counterfeiting as early as the summer of 1716? Her exact motivation is unknown, but it would seem that it was a matter of greed and convenience. "Mary was an ambitious and aggressive business woman, ruling her house and apparently everyone she met. She was passionately fond of money," Bowen notes in Early Rehoboth. "The taverns seemed to be easy places for passing counterfeit bills."
According to Scott, Mary "made and sold more than £1,000 of forged bills over a period of seven years." Accounting for inflation, that's in the neighborhood of $250,000 today. Bowen notes that she "was probably the biggest single counterfeiter in New England."
She didn't do this all on her own, however. Mary employed her brothers and a sister-in-law in the production of these phony bills. "Besides being an inventor, a skillfull workwoman and a clever saleswoman, she was also a superior organizer, developing a tight little kitchen printery employing her three brothers Nicholas, Israel, and Stephen, and the wife of Nicholas, Hannah Peck, who was also a cousin, all strictly a family affair ... over which Mary, the master craftswoman, ruled supreme," Bowen affirms. There is further evidence that Daniel Smith, Rehoboth's town clerk and a justice of the Bristol County Court of General Sessions, aided in disseminating the counterfeit bills. Smith's involvement ceased when a sheriff searched his home after tips from suspicious colleagues.
Many colonial era counterfeiters would be done in by their own operations as the copper printing plates commonly used were often the chief piece of evidence to arrest and punish these deviants. Mary's counterfeiting kitchen-based operation was simple and did not rely on the copper plates, thus different and more difficult to trace and prove. According to Scott's Counterfeiting in Colonial America, Mary's process began by "placing a damp starched muslin on top of the bill she intended to imitate and then lightly ran a hot flatiron over the cloth, causing the material to pick up the printing from the money; next she would iron the muslin hard to transfer the pattern to a blank piece of paper which was to be the counterfeit bill. The cloth, having served its purpose, was immediately thrown into the fireplace and consumed to ashes, so that no plate was left to be seized and used in court as damaging evidence ... As her next step, she would with a fine crow quill pen trace over the impression on her new bill and after that go over letters to reproduce the exact thickness of the letters on the true bill."
The counterfeit bills produced, Scott writes, included Rhode Island bills of £5, £3, 20s., and 10s., Connecticut bills of £5, and Massachusetts bills of £5, £3, and 40s. Mary personally never passed the counterfeits, instead she used her familial network to do the dirty work, selling the fake money at half their face value.
The counterfeiting scheme began to unravel in 1722, about six years after it began. Bowen claims authorities became suspicious after Mary and John "purchased a large, expensive new home for the family." The following year, in Newport, Rhode Island, the first of Mary's associates was pinched by authorities. Arthur Noble was at an event in Newport when he came upon three young women from Rehoboth, and he wished to treat them for the evening. He passed along one of the counterfeit £5 bills, but it was quickly identified as suspect and Noble was arrested. Nicholas Peck, one of Mary's brothers and conspirators, would be arrested that summer, also in Newport, for passing a counterfeit £5 bill, and Nicholas Campe confessed what he knew to authorities. Campe's exact role in the operation isn't clear to this author, though he was likely among those used to simply pass along the counterfeit bills.
The counterfeiting scheme began to unravel in 1722, about six years after it began. Bowen claims authorities became suspicious after Mary and John "purchased a large, expensive new home for the family." The following year, in Newport, Rhode Island, the first of Mary's associates was pinched by authorities. Arthur Noble was at an event in Newport when he came upon three young women from Rehoboth, and he wished to treat them for the evening. He passed along one of the counterfeit £5 bills, but it was quickly identified as suspect and Noble was arrested. Nicholas Peck, one of Mary's brothers and conspirators, would be arrested that summer, also in Newport, for passing a counterfeit £5 bill, and Nicholas Campe confessed what he knew to authorities. Campe's exact role in the operation isn't clear to this author, though he was likely among those used to simply pass along the counterfeit bills.
On August 15, 1723, a trio of deputy sheriffs came with warrants to apprehend John Butterworth, Jr., Mary (Peck) Butterworth, Israel Peck, Nicholas Peck, Hannah Peck, and two others. The suspects were placed in jail to await their day in court, but each was soon acquitted and released due to a lack of evidence — though a brother and Hannah did testify against Mary in court. Mary was fortunate to escape conviction, as punishment for counterfeiting could be quite severe. According to Rhode Island Historical Tracts, Rhode Island state law called for a counterfeiter to have their ears cropped (cut off), to be whipped, or fined, while being imprisoned "as the nature of the offense requires," and to also "pay double damage to the persons defrauded." If a counterfeiter could not uphold the fiscal reparations, Rhode Island law demanded "he should be set to work, or sold for any term of years which the discretion of the judges considered satisfactory."
Once acquitted of her crimes, all records and accounts suggest she gave up her counterfeiting ring and became a housewife, living the norms of a married woman in the colonial period. She and John would raise even children together before each died in old age. Mary was 88-years-old when she died in Bristol County on February 7, 1775.
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