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| 1899 $1 Silver Certificate Black Eagle |
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| 1899 $1 Silver Certificate |
Paper Money of the United States: One Dollar Silver Certificate Black Eagle, Series of 1899
Collectors call these 1899 $1 dollar bills "Black Eagles" because of the central eagle with spread wings. This is the only piece of U.S. currency ever issued which displays the portraits of 2 different presidents Lincoln and Grant two giants of 19th century American history.
This note was ranked 16st most beautiful note in the book 100 Greatest American Currency Notes compiled by Bowers and Sundman.
Obverse: Eagle standing on flag in front of U.S. Capitol over busts of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. Engraved by G.F.C. Smillie. 1899 silver certificates have a blue seal, serial numbers, and a big blue one on the left side of the bill.
Reverse: This Certificate Is Receivable For Customs, Taxes and All Public Dues, And When So Received May Be Reissued
Signatures: (as depicted) James Carroll Napier, Register of the Treasury and Lee McClung, Treasurer of the United States.
Predominant colors:
Printer & Engraver: Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Inscriptions: Silver Certificate - Series of 1899 - Act of August 4 1886 - Register Of The Treasury - Treasurer Of The United States - This Certifies That There Has Been Deposited In The Treasury Of The United States One Silver Dollar Payable To Bearer On Demand Washington, D.C. - United States Silver Certificate - Amer Septent Sigil Thesaur - This Certificate Is Receivable For Customs, Taxes and All Public Dues, And When So Received May Be Reissued
The Fourth Issue of Silver Certificates, Series 1899, were also released in three denominations, $1 (The Black Eagle Note), $2 (The Agriculture Note) and $5 (The Indian Chief Note).
1899 1 Dollar Silver Certificate Black Eagle
United States One Dollar Bills
United States One Dollar Bill, Silver Certificate Black Eagle, Series 1899
One Dollar Bills : United States Military Payment Certificates US MPC
James Carroll Napier (June 9, 1845 – April 21, 1940) was an American businessman, lawyer, politician, civil rights leader, and Register of the Treasury from 1911 to 1913. He is one of only five African Americans to have their signatures on American currency.
James Carroll Napier was born to William Carroll Napier and Jane Elizabeth Napier (née Watkins), who were slaves at the time of his birth, in Davidson County, Tennessee. William was the son of his White master, Dr. Elias Napier, and a slave named Judy. They were emancipated in 1848. Napier attended a private school for free blacks in Nashville, until it was forced to close by whites in 1856. Napier's family moved to Ohio, and in 1859 he enrolled in Wilberforce College. He later transferred to Oberlin College, the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students in addition to white males. He left Oberlin in 1867 without a degree. Napier eventually received his law degree from Howard University in 1872. The year later, he married Nettie Langston, daughter of John Mercer Langston, Howard University law school's first dean.
Career
After returning to Tennessee from Oberlin College, Napier served as the Commissioner of Refugees and Abandoned Lands in Davidson County, for a year, before moving to Washington, D.C. to serve as State Department Clerk – the first African American to hold the office. After receiving his law degree, he returned to Nashville, where he became influential in Nashville's African American community, serving on the Nashville City Council and the Tennessee Republican Executive Committee. Napier was the first African American president of the city council, and worked to hire African American teachers for the black public schools, and organize the Black Fire-engine Company. Owing to his work in Nashville and his association with Booker T. Washington, Napier had become an influential African American leader.
In 1911, Napier was appointed Register of the Treasury for William Howard Taft's administration, where he served until 1913, when he resigned in protest of a segregation order requiring white and black employees of the Treasury Department to use separate restrooms.
Returning to Nashville, Napier resumed his law practice, and served as president of the National Negro Business League, opening a Nashville chapter in 1905. Napier was a founder of the One Cent Savings Bank in 1904 (later renamed the Citizen's Savings Bank and Trust Company and still ongoing as of 2017), helped organize the 1905 Negro streetcar strike (although it was not until 1958, with the formation of the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, that Nashville's African American community would lay the foundation for fully dismantling racial segregation). Napier presided over the Nashville Negro Board of Trade (now the Nashville Black Chamber of Commerce), and served on the boards of Fisk and Howard universities. He also was instrumental in founding the Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College (now Tennessee State University). He later served on the board of the Nashville Housing Authority, the first black person to do so. In 1910, he helped organize a Memphis chapter of Sigma Pi Phi along with Josiah T. Settle of Memphis.
Death
After five months of illness, Napier died in Nashville, on April 21, 1940.
Honors
Napier was granted an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Fisk University. A historical marker was erected by The Historical Commission of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County in 1970 to commemorate Napier's accomplishments.
Thomas Lee "Bum" McClung (March 26, 1870 – December 19, 1914) was an American college football player who later served as the 22nd Treasurer of the United States.
Early career
McClung was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father was Frank H. McClung, a merchant, and he was related to Albert Sidney Johnston and John Marshall. McClung graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy.
Yale
He continued his education at Yale University, where he was a member of the Yale Bulldogs football team. McClung, who was always known as Lee from his college days onward, was perhaps the best-known football player in the country while playing for the Yale Bulldogs. He is thought to have designed the cutback play. In his athletic prime, he stood 5'10", weighed between 165 and 180 lbs., was on the varsity baseball team, and played in every football season from 1888 to 1891 on teams that compiled a 54–2 record and a 2,269–49 point total. McClung by himself was credited with scoring 176 points in 1889 and 494 in his career. He was captain of the unscored-upon Yale football team of 1891 (13–0 record, 488–0 point record), graduating the following year with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He never left a game during injury, despite football being considerably rougher at the time. On November 21, 1891, his famous team of eleven defeated Harvard 10–0, avenging their hard-fought loss of the year before. He played his last college game against Princeton five days later, on Thanksgiving, with the very same eleven Yale players defeating the Tigers 19–0.
He was also a class leader, received the largest number of votes as its most popular member in his senior year, and was a member of the Skull and Bones secret society. He was chairman of his class's Junior Promenade Committee.
McClung returned to New Haven in the fall for many years to assist in coaching. His reputation was long-lasting on the gridiron, and in 1941, even Time magazine was still referring to "a turtlenecked Yale man of the Bum McClung era." He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1963.
Railroad
McClung spent the year after graduation traveling in Europe and California, where he became the first coach at the University of California. He then entered the service of the St. Paul & Duluth Railroad Company at St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1899 he joined the Southern Railway Company and remained with it until 1901, when he became assistant to the second vice president of the company. McClung became assistant freight traffic manager of the company in 1902, and retained this position until 1904, when he was appointed treasurer of Yale University, assuming that office on December 15, 1904. While in this position, he drew fire for writing satirically about the sale of the defunct Ingham University, having called it "a defunct college that we should be very pleased to sell on very low terms to any one making due application... If it may prove an incentive to the consummation of the deal I should be very much pleased to throw in a cemetery which is located on the grounds." He also modernized treasury and accounting methods at the university.
Treasurer
On September 23, 1909, President William Howard Taft appointed McClung, a Southern Republican, as Treasurer of the United States. He took office on November 1 of that year. He was paid $8,000 annually. On January 8, 1910, he handed his predecessor a check for $1,260,134,946.88 ⅔, an acknowledgment of the money and securities in the department as of the day McClung took office; it took a little over two months to count all the assets, as is customary when a Treasurer departs. This was said to have been the largest financial transaction from man to man in world history at the time. During his time in office, he urged that worn, dirty banknotes be withdrawn at a higher rate in order to establish a sanitary currency. McClung served until his resignation of November 14, 1912 became effective a week later. He resigned his post because of a dispute in the Treasury Department, a so-called "mutiny" led by A. Piatt Andrew, then Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, who had troubles with Secretary Franklin MacVeagh which involved McClung. Andrew, who resigned on July 3 of that year, criticized MacVeagh's lax business methods and poor administrative skills, naming several Treasury officials as agreeing with him, including McClung. MacVeagh asked McClung to repudiate Andrew's statement concerning him, but he refused, and relations between them became strained. However, President Taft called a truce at the Treasury until after the election that year, with McClung announcing his resignation nine days after Taft's decisive defeat.
After McClung left office, his successor, Carmi A. Thompson, gave him an even bigger check on December 4, 1912, amounting to $1,519,285,908.57 ⅔. The day before, he had made a speech in Pittsburgh claiming that "It is physically possible to steal $100,000,000 from the Treasury of the United States."
McClung was a director of the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut, a director of the Marion Institute of Alabama, a national councilman of the Boy Scouts of America, and treasurer of the American Association for Highway Improvement. He was a member of the Metropolitan, Riding, and Chevy Chase Clubs of Washington, the University Club of New York City, and the Graduates and New Haven Lawn Clubs of New Haven. He was also elected president of the Yale Alumni Association of Washington on December 22, 1910. McClung never married. He had two brothers who went to Yale.
Death
McClung died in a private hospital in London after a three-months' illness of typhoid fever contracted at Frankfurt. His brother C. M. was with him when he died. His body was returned to the United States on board the steamer St. Paul, which left Liverpool on December 26, 1914. His funeral service took place at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, New York on January 4, 1915; he was buried in Knoxville's Old Gray Cemetery two days later following additional services at his sister's home.
One of his obituaries reminisced: "Ah! A remarkable athlete, a wonderful football player, a lovable classmate, a diligent student, a manly man–a type Yale men idealize for emulation. Such was Lee McClung."