Once used as currency, peppercorn came to denote a paltry sum | History

We can trace monetary exchange in the Berkshires from wampum belts to peppercorns to pounds and shillings to dollars and cents to cryptocurrency.

Peppercorns? I first encountered them in researching an early Great Barrington tavern, whose keeper, Samuel Lee, worked out an arrangement with nascent Berkshire County officials to build a small log outbuilding to house drunks and convicted miscreants.

Terms of an indenture contract were to last “so long as the said Samuel shall be and remain a Deputy gaoler or prison keeper of said county, and for three Months after he shall resign, or be apart if the same shall happen before the Expiration of the said term of Seven Years. He the same Mark [Hopkins, county treasurer] and his Successors in said Office Yielding and paying therefor to the said Samuel the Yearly an Annual Rent of a pepper corn if the same shall be demanded on the premises.”

This wordage appears in the minutes of the Berkshire County Commission housed at Berkshire Middle District Registry of Deeds, dated July 6, 1763.

Lee wouldn’t go broke with the proposition. He earned more for feeding the inmates.

The same year, Elijah Williams secured leases on three properties in Stockbridge: 50 acres from Hendrick Waumpunkeet and Jacob Hunkaugg, 50 acres from Abraham Wnupas and 140 acres from Robert Nungkauwaut (Konkapot). “The usual terms,” according to the late historian Lion G. Miles, “required a one-time payment of cash by the lessee and a token rent of ‘one peppercorn’ per year.”

What was a peppercorn worth? Not much.

Peppercorn berries or fruit grow on vines native to Southeast Asia. Dried, they are used as black pepper seasoning. The peppercorn has some antioxidant properties. In the Middle Ages, peppercorns were a valued trade good. Peppercorns were sometimes a medium of currency for ancient Greeks and Romans.

That all fizzled by the end of the 18th century, when pepper, cloves, nutmeg and other spices were easier to come by. Deflated, peppercorns lost their value; the term remained in legalese, however, meaning a very minimal cash payment. Taverner Lee would have received at most £10 rent.

Jesse Cook of Great Barrington in 1802 leased a farm plot with even less prospect of profit: “Provided the said Clement & Susanna [Laman] shall pay (if demanded) one peppercorn annually for the rent of the farm land, and pay all taxes… .” reads in part the deed, dated July 8, 1802.

A different meaning is evident in a bite of Cheshire history, the gift of a giant cheese to President Thomas Jefferson the same year. Accompanying the sedan-sized curd was a note, as excerpted from The Pittsfield Sun for Feb. 8, 1802:

“The ADDRESS Of the inhabitants of the town of Cheshire, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. To THOMAS JEFFERSON, President of the United States of America.

“The Greatest Cheese in America, for the Greatest Man in the World.

“Sir, NOTWITHSTANDING we live remote from the seat of national government, and in an extreme part of our own state, yet we humbly claim the right of judging for ourselves…

“Our joy, of course, must have been great on your elevation to the first office in the nation…

“Sir, we have attempted to prove our love to our President, not in words along, but in deed and truth. With this address we sent you a CHEESE, by the hands of Messrs. John Leland and Darius Brown, as a pepper-corn of the esteem which we bear our chief magistrate and as a sacrifice to republicanism… .”

You get the drift; the cheese could only serve as a modest token of their admiration.

Corn, the North Adams Transcript once explained, was an English word, “of old it meant any small, hard, granule. ‘Pepper-corn’ is one survival, while ‘corned beef’ is another. Corned meet gets its name from the fact that it was first prepared with coarse grains of salt — salt corns. Acorns were so named because early Englishmen naturally mistook its derivation to be from ‘oak corn.’ “

The word went out of use even in legal jargon, except for occasional reference to “peppercorn rent,” meaning very affordable housing — which we know doesn’t exist any longer in the Berkshires.

Peppercorn also remained in the language of cuisiniers. The Pittsfield Sun, for example, offered this recipe in its issue of Feb. 22, 1882:

“Gravy Soup. Take six pounds of shin beef, cut off half a pound of lean and put what is left into a saucepan; add four or five quarts of cold water and a large pinch of salt; when boiling skim it well and put in two carrots, one turnip, three large onions, five or six cloves, a few peppercorns and any trimmings of leeks and celery; leave it to boil five or six hours, skim off the fat, strain it through a cloth into a basin, leave it to cool; cut the lean meat very small, pound it, and work it into two whole eggs, a little salt and any cooked trimmings of uncooked carrot, onion and celery, pour in the stock, stir it over a quick fire until it boil, leave it to boil from ten to fifteen minutes, strain through a napkin into a clean stewpan, let it come to the boil and serve.”

Chew on that.