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MORMON STUDIES PRESENTS: 
Ch. 1 | Ch 2. | Ch 3. | Ch 4. | Ch 5. | Ch 6. | Ch 7. | (this series is still under construction) |
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(This article is still under construction) "The Rodsmen" By Anonymous -- Chapter Four -- "Phony as a Three-Dollar Bill" The expressing "phony as a three-dollar bill" goes back to the post-Civil War period when US Treasury notes and silver certificates were were only printed for the denominations of $1, $2, $5 and higher. In those days anybody holding a three-dollar banknote probably had possession of a bill issued by a state or local bank, and (chances were) it was probably counterfeit. The US Treasury Department and the Secret Service made valiant efforts to stop the counterfeiting of the national currency, but accepting those local banknotes which still remained in circulation was risky business. In January 1837 Oliver Cowdery (former Mormon "First Elder," but by then simply "Assistant President") was in Monroe, Michigan, busily signing his name to stacks of those proverbial "three-dollar bills." Little more than a year later, at Far West, Missouri, the erstwhile scribe, missionary, and second-cousin to Joeph Smith, Jr. would be excommunicated from the LDS Church for crimes against his fellow Saints. Among the reasons given for this important ecclesiastical decision was that Cowdery had recently been asociated with other "blacklegs" in the "bogus" business over at Tinker's Creek in Trumbull Co., Ohio.  Cowdery's signature on "Sept. 1836"Bank of Monroe $3 bill -- probably signed Jan. 1837. Oliver Cowdery's association with the "bogus business" began many years before his 1838 excommunication from the Mormons ... (This article is still under construction)
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