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Matthew Patay's
Note of the Month
July 2004
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Map and flag images provided by Graphic Maps
This month's featured note
is from the country of Liberia.
The denomination is 10 Dollars and the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money
(SCWPM) Number is P-22.
The note is dated 1999.
(front)
The banknote is purple and black on multicolored under print.
Joseph Jenkins Roberts (March 15, 1809–February 24, 1876) the first President of
Liberia,
is at center.
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The following information
was obtained from:
Virtualology.com
Joseph Jenkins Roberts
(1809 - 1876)
ROBERTS, Joseph Jenkins, president of Liberia, born in Norfolk, Virginia, 15 March, 1809 ; died in Monrovia, Liberia, 24 February, 1876. He was a negro and the son of "Aunty Robos," as she was familiarly called in Petersburg, Virginia, whence she emigrated with her three sons to Liberia in 1829. When the colony of Liberia was founded by the American colonization society he was first lieutenant-governor and then governor of the colony, and, upon the formation of the republic in 1848, he was elected its first president, serving four years. When there was a revolt against President Edward J. Roye (q. v.) in 1871, he was again made president, serving until 1875. He encouraged agriculture, promoted education, favored emigration from the United States, and placed his people on friendly terms with European nations. From 1856 until his death he was president of Liberia college.--His brother, John Wright, M. E. bishop, born in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1815; died in Monrovia, Liberia, 30 January. 1875, was educated in Liberia, entered the Methodist ministry in 1838, served as pastor, presiding elder, and secretary, and was made bishop in 1866.
Edited Appletons Encyclopedia, Copyright © 2001 VirtualologyTM
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(back)
Worker tapping rubber
is at center.
The following information
was obtained from:
Denison University
Liberia from
1912 to 1930
by Philip A. Waite
(excerpt)
In 1923, the Firestone Rubber Company explored the possibilities of establishing a rubber plantation in Liberia. In fact, the conditions in Liberia are ideal for rubber trees and a one million acre plantation was established in Harbal. This was a great economic boost for Liberia due to the employment of 25,000 workers. A loan for 5 million dollars was secured shortly afterwards that allowed Liberia to consolidate and bond all internal and external depts. In addition, certain public works were to be developed with money from this loan. One of which was the establishment of Liberia's first radio station which broadcast its first message in 1927.
The following poem
was obtained from:
Bong-Town.com
The miles of rubber trees bend
from the sea.
Each of the million acres cost a dime
nearly two Liberian lives ago.
Sweat, too,
has poured like sap from trees, almost free,
from men coerced to work by poverty
and leaders who had sold the people's fields.
The plantation kiln's pink bricks
made the homes of overseeing whites
a corporation's pride
Walls of the same polite bricks divide
the worker's tiny stalls
like cells in honeycombs;
no windows breach the walls,
no pipes or wires bring drink or light
to natives who can never claim this place as theirs
by digging in the ground.
No churches can be built,
no privy holes or even graves
dug in the rolling hills
for those milking Firestone's trees, who die
from mamba and mosquito bites.
I asked the owners why.
The cost of land, they said, was high.
Jimmy Carter, Always a Reckoning, 1995
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For more information about Liberia visit:
The CIA World Factbook Website
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