He Made Money

On March 28, 1896, Emanuel Ninger of Flagtown decided to spend the day in New York City. This is a trip that he had made many times over the last 14 years, travelling by train and ferry to Lower Manhattan. On this day, as on most, he was carrying $300 in his wallet - all in 20s and 50s. The curious thing about these bills is that they did not bear the insignia of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. That was because he had made them himself.

20 April 1896 Fort Wayne News

For 14 years he had worked alone in a small room of his house, painstakingly hand painting US currency - usually about six notes per month. And despite his anonymous notoriety, Secret Service agents were no closer to catching him in 1896 than they had been in 1882.

Ninger was a star - his notes were not only technical masterpieces, they were incredible works of art. Collectors regularly paid twice the face value for one of his notes - if they could be found! His copies were so perfect that at least one made it all the way back to Washington D.C. and was officially retired along with thousands of other old bills. The mistake wasn't found until years later when the genuine bill bearing the same serial number came in for retirement!

An 1880 Series Ninger-drawn counterfeit.
Note the missing Bureau of Printing and Engraving attribution
which should run vertically to the left of Lincoln's portrait

By working alone and eschewing the usual distribution routes preferred by professional counterfeiters, Ninger was able to make a good living for years. When he stepped off the ferry that March day and headed up Cortlandt Street, he was full of confidence and eager to go about his business - exchanging the bills in his wallet for the real thing.

One of the stops he made was at a Third Avenue grocery store, where he managed to pass a $20 bill in exchange for a bottle of whisky. After a few more stops, he headed back to Cortlandt Street and stopped in a saloon. He asked the bartender for a glass of Rhine wine, and while his glass was being poured, he took out one of his home-made fiftys and laid it on the bar. When the bartender picked the fifty off of the wet bar, the ink began to come off on his hand. Ninger fled the saloon, but the bartender guessed that he would be heading for the ferry - and he was apprehended there by police.
Ninger confessed quickly, and took Secret Service agents back to Flagtown to show them his studio. One agent remarked on Ninger's abilities, "Why, by a legitimate exercise of his wonderful talent as shown in these bills he might have made $200 or $300 a week." Instead he was only making that much a month.


Despite protests from the art community, Ninger was convicted and served a prison sentence. When asked why he didn't put the references to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving on his forgeries, he replied that HE had made the bills, not the Treasury. And indeed he had.