Michael Hillegas Was America's First Treasurer. His Rew...

In 1907 the United States Treasury issued a ten-dollar gold certificate, the kind of note that promised the bearer actual gold coin on demand, and put a face on it that virtually no American could identify. Not Washington, not Hamilton, not Franklin. The engraving, repeated on the 1922 series, showed Michael Hillegas.

If the name draws a blank, that's the point of this post. Hillegas was the first Treasurer of the United States. He held the job for fourteen years, from the summer of 1775 until the day Alexander Hamilton's Treasury Department opened its doors, and he held it through the death of an entire national currency. The government he kept books for eventually printed his portrait on the most trustworthy money it made, a century too late for him to see it, and then everyone forgot him again.

This series has covered the Revolution's financiers, brokers, and speculators. Hillegas is something rarer: the custodian.

The keeper, not the player

Michael Hillegas was born in Philadelphia on April 22, 1729, the son of George Michael Hillegass, a prosperous merchant in the iron and sugar trades who had immigrated from Germany. The son inherited the business, married Henrietta Boude at Christ Church in 1753, and settled into the exact profile this series keeps finding at the republic's origin: a Philadelphia merchant with a ledger, a reputation, and a seat in the room. He served in the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly from 1765 to 1775, and when the province organized its Committee of Safety in 1774 under Benjamin Franklin, Hillegas became its treasurer.

Then the war arrived, and with it the founding line on his résumé. The Treasury Department's own official history records it: on July 29, 1775, the Second Continental Congress assigned responsibility for the revolutionary government's finances to Joint Continental Treasurers, George Clymer and Michael Hillegas.

Readers of this series have met George Clymer, the signer who took every job nobody wanted. For the war's first year the two men shared the purse. When Clymer resigned in August 1776 to focus on his congressional work, Hillegas carried the office alone, and per the Treasury's history he was first called Treasurer of the United States on May 14, 1777, which makes him the original holder of a title that still exists; the signature on today's currency descends from his desk.

Fourteen years of catching a falling knife

Understand what the job actually was. Congress had no power to tax. Its war chest was paper: bills of credit backed by faith in the cause and a promise of eventual redemption. The Treasury's official history counts $241.5 million of Continental paper issued, and describes the ending bluntly: by May 1781 the dollar had collapsed at a rate of 500 to 1,000 against hard currency, protests swept the colonies, and angry Americans coined the phrase "not worth a Continental."

Hillegas was the man holding the books while that happened. Not causing it (the arithmetic of an unfunded war caused it), and without the authority to fix it, since the fix required exactly the taxing power and national bank that wouldn't arrive until Robert Morris's Office of Finance in 1781 and, ultimately, Hamilton's department in 1789. His office was reorganized three times between 1778 and 1781 as Congress groped for a structure. Through all of it he counted, signed, settled, and accounted. Wikipedia's consolidated biography adds two personal details: he reportedly poured much of his own fortune into supporting the war effort, and his son Samuel was authorized to sign the Continental currency itself, a family literally putting its name on the money as it died.

There is no fresco for this kind of service. The men who conjured money got the drama: Morris and his personal notes, Salomon and his bills of exchange. The man who kept the ledger of a collapsing currency for fourteen years got a clean set of books and anonymity. Every treasurer, comptroller, and small-business bookkeeper who has ever kept honest accounts through a disaster they didn't create knows exactly what job Michael Hillegas had.

Handing the keys to Hamilton

The ending has a precision that feels scripted. On September 2, 1789, the First Congress created the permanent Treasury Department. On September 11, Hamilton took office as the first Secretary of the Treasury, and Michael Hillegas resigned the same day, closing out a continuous fourteen-year tenure that bridged the entire gap between the Battle of Bunker Hill and constitutional government.

His successor as Treasurer of the United States was Samuel Meredith, and if you've been following this series' family webs, that name should ring: per the DSDI biography of George Clymer, Samuel Meredith was Clymer's brother-in-law and longtime business partner. The purse Hillegas had shared with Clymer in 1775 passed, fourteen years later, to Clymer's own family. Founding-era Philadelphia was about forty people.

Hillegas lived another fifteen years as a respected Philadelphia merchant and a member of the American Philosophical Society, and died on September 29, 1804. He's buried in Christ Church Burial Ground, a few steps from Franklin, which by this point in the series functions as the founders' common room: Morris is behind Christ Church, Wilson was reburied beside Franklin, and Willing rests in the same ground.

The gold-certificate irony

Sit with the specific honor the country finally paid him. Hillegas administered the most catastrophic paper money in American history, notes that died at a thousand to one. When the Treasury reached for his face in 1907, it printed him on a gold certificate: paper whose entire promise was that it was not faith-based, that a bearer could walk in and take metal. The government put the custodian of its worst money on its best, which is either an apology or a joke, and works fine as both.

There's a straight line from Hillegas's ledgers to the theme that runs through this whole series and through my book The W-2 Trap: currencies are promises, promises can and do fail at scale, and when they fail, the loss lands on whoever is holding the paper rather than the assets. The Continental's 500-to-1 collapse is the founding American case study in why earners who hold only claims (wages, receivables, unfunded promises) get transferred out of their wealth during monetary stress while asset holders ride through. The first Treasurer of the United States watched it happen from the front row, with his own fortune reportedly in the pot and his son's signature on the notes.

Fact-check notes and sources

Official record (July 29, 1775 appointment of "Joint Continental Treasurers, George Clymer and Michael Hillegas," the caption "Michael Hillegas, first Treasurer of the United States, 1775-89," first called Treasurer of the United States on May 14, 1777, the three reorganizations 1778-1781, $241.5 million of Continental dollars, the May 1781 collapse at 500 to 1,000 to 1 and the phrase "not worth a Continental," creation of the Treasury Department September 2, 1789, Hamilton's role): U.S. Department of the Treasury, "History of the Treasury".
Biographical detail (birth April 22, 1729, German immigrant father in iron and sugar, Provincial Assembly 1765-1775, Committee of Safety treasurer 1774 under Franklin, marriage to Henrietta Boude 1753, sole treasurer after Clymer's August 6, 1776 resignation, reportedly contributing much of his personal fortune, son Samuel authorized to sign Continental currency, resignation September 11, 1789, Samuel Meredith succession, American Philosophical Society membership, death September 29, 1804, burial at Christ Church Burial Ground near Franklin, portrait on the 1907 and 1922 ten-dollar gold certificate series): Wikipedia, "Michael Hillegas", attributed here as the consolidated account; the "personal fortune" claim is reported there with its own hedge and is presented the same way.
Samuel Meredith as George Clymer's brother-in-law and partner: DSDI, George Clymer.
A claim sometimes attached to Hillegas, that he opened one of America's first music stores, appears in none of the sources consulted and is omitted.

This post is informational, not financial advice. Historical institutions are mentioned as nominative fair use; no affiliation is implied.

Michael Hillegas Was America's First Treasurer. His Reward Came 103 Years Late.