New Hampshire April 3, 1742 Mendes I Cohen Reprints 10s-20s-40s-7s6d Uncut Sheet Backs VF

New Hampshire April 3, 1742 by Mendes I. Cohen Reprints 10s-20s-40s-7s6d Uncut Sheet of Backs Very Fine.

These are reprints from the original plates in the 1850s. This is a nice  mid-grade uncut sheet example of the four highest denominations of this  issue.

Cohen was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1796, one of nine children of Israel I and Judith Solomon Cohen. The family moved to Baltimore in 1803. As a young man he worked in the family businesses: Cohen’s Lottery and Exchange, and Jacob I. Cohen, Jr. and Brothers Banking House. The Cohens’ lottery raised money to help finance construction of Baltimore’s Washington Monument in Mount Vernon. In 1821, they and their lottery were the subject of a Supreme Court lawsuit Cohens v. Virginia, asserting the federal government’s right to review and overturn state Supreme Court decisions.

In the War of 1812, Cohen and his brothers Philip and Jacob joined a volunteer company (Nicholson’s Artillery Fencibles–serving under Captain Joseph H. Nicholson) charged with defending Baltimore.

By 1829 Cohen retired from the family business a wealthy man and traveled the world collecting artifacts, visiting England, Russia, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, and most of the countries in Central and Western Europe. He attended the coronation of William IV in June 1830 and the funeral of King George IV in August 1830. He met Pope Gregory XVI on January 29, 1831 and represented Maryland at the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838. He was the first American citizen who received permission from the Ottoman Empire to visit Palestine and he wrote about the hardships of the Jews of Jerusalem.

Afterwards Cohen returned to the United States and became a public servant, first as an aide to the Maryland governor, Thomas Veazey who gave him the ceremonial title “Colonel” in recognition of his service in the Battle of Baltimore. He was elected to the House of Delegates from Baltimore City in 1847 and was the first Jewish member of the Maryland General Assembly. And served as a trustee to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad as well as a board member of the Hebrew Benevolent Society and in 1858 he initiated plans for the Hebrew Hospital of Baltimore, now known as Sinai Hospital.