The Brick Store Museum holds over 30,000 pieces of archival material written by historic Kennebunkers. A Voice from the Past shares a document from the museum’s collection. Today’s entry is from Charles Dummer Barry, born in Kennebunk in 1850. Here, he writes his thoughts about money in his journal from West Newton, Massachusetts, at age 18.

Cynthia Walker, executive director, Brick Store Museum

West Newton

Wednesday Oct. 21, 1868

Cool and cloudy. The love of money is the root of all evil. Money is the circulating medium of a country and is that which we give in exchange for articles which we wish to obtain. I will take the gold dollar for an illustration. The gold if found in the ground but is quite scarce. The real value of a gold dollar is not its weight or its scarcity but the man which it receives by the United States and this is what gives its intrinsic value and, I might almost say, consecrates it. A person may go along the street with a basket full of pieces and attempts to pass it off he will be cast into prison.

Charles Dummer Barry, circa 1873 Brick Store Museum photo

Money is the representation of the value and uses of material things as relates to man. It also represents one’s struggles to acquire it and therefore the objects for which we strive.

It represents the Army and Navy, the great grainfields of the west, our school houses and all that seems good to us… It is those alone who work that deserve the dollar; but then the question comes up whether a person ought to receive any money by inheritance. Yes if he is always trying to make parents or whomever it is to come from happy and doing good to them whenever there is an opportunity: but then we should be very careful how we spend the consecrated dollar for that piece of money represents some portion of the person’s life who gave the money. Mr. James once took a bill at the Depot in this place; upon the back of which was written: “This is the last dollar of one thousand dollars left me by mother.” Some times money raises well, and some time sinks up, not only physically but morally. Oh, how terrible a thing to think of and still I know a case fully as bad if not worse than this. Hope is sinking, sinking by degrees and ere long I fear he will become as mere wreck. May I never be obliged to write even on a ten cent piece that which [he] wrote on the back of the bill.