Oliver Pollock: The Man Who May Have Invented the Dollar Sign

The Man Who May Have Invented the Dollar Sign

Oliver Pollock might be responsible for the most widely recognized symbol in the world, and almost nobody has heard of him. He's the man most often credited with creating the dollar sign — that ubiquitous $ — and he did it while running guns and money through New Orleans to fund the American Revolution.

Born in Ireland in 1737, Pollock emigrated to America and eventually settled in New Orleans, which in the 1770s was a Spanish colonial city at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Spanish officials granted him free trade privileges, and Pollock became one of the wealthiest merchants in the colony. He married Margaret O'Brien in New Orleans in 1770 and built a commercial empire that would prove crucial to American independence.

When the Revolution broke out, Pollock became the secret link between the Spanish government in New Orleans and the American rebels fighting the British. He was appointed the commercial agent of the United States at New Orleans in 1777, and he used that position to funnel money, supplies, and weapons up the Mississippi to support the war effort. He personally financed General George Rogers Clark's campaign to conquer the Illinois Territory and borrowed seventy thousand dollars from Spanish Governor Bernardo de Gálvez to keep American operations running.

As for the dollar sign — Pollock is credited with abbreviating the Spanish peso, or "pieces of eight," by writing a P with an S over it, which eventually evolved into the $ symbol we use today. He supposedly started using it in his financial records around 1778. The historical evidence is debated, but Pollock remains the leading candidate for the man who gave America its most recognizable financial symbol.

Congress didn't reimburse Pollock's war debts until 1791, and he spent years in debtors' prison for the money he'd personally advanced to the Revolution. He died in Mississippi in 1823, largely forgotten by the country he'd helped create.

New Orleans was the staging ground for one of the most important financial operations of the American Revolution, and Oliver Pollock was the man who ran it. He may have also invented the symbol that the whole world uses to represent money. Not bad for an Irish immigrant working out of a Spanish colonial port.