Bond Pays Interest for 375 Years

 Facebook posted this "memory" this week, and it's worth repeating here. Below is a baby blanket that was the single most difficult pattern I ever did. Not to be repeated. Ever. But, from the distance of several years, I have to admit it was worth the effort.

 

Celtic Design Baby Blanket

 

 

Background to this week's Mosaic Moments:

My parents moved to a suburb of New Haven, CT, while I was in college. I ended up marrying a Yalie, whose father, brother, and nephew also attended Yale. Although long widowed,I still receive the Yale Alumni Magazine each month. I should also add that when newly married, after two years living practically on campus, my husband and I moved to a suburb where I became a member of a Congregational Church even older than Yale. It was, allegedly, the church at which the area's ministers met and laid their books on a table - donations toward the founding of Yale University. (The church celebrated its 375th anniversary shortly after my move to Florida in 1982.)

The Yale Magazine is always well done, but this month there was an article that truly boggled the mind. It seems there is a water district in the Netherlands, formed in 1323 (yes, that's the correct date) for the purpose of building a dike along the Lek River. Incredible as it seems, this water district is still in operation.

 

Water District Bond purchased by Yale in 2003

In 2003 Yale's Beinecke Library (rare books) bought one of five bonds issued by the water district in 1648. Below, a direct quote from the article:

The bond shows us exactly how the seventeenth-century Dutch were able to raise enough capital to build and maintain their remarkable system of dikes, canals, and polders (land reclaimed from the water). In a sense, bonds like these made the modern Netherlands possible.

The various water districts were even allowed to levy taxes and mobilize citizens into "dike armies" to support the upkeep of the canals in case of emergency.

The bond was written, signed, and sealed on vellum, deliberately designed to last for centuries. One of the stipulations was that anyone wishing to receive interest on their bond had to show up in person! The article notes that in 2015 Yale Beinecke (library) curator Timothy Young went to Europe and collected twelve years of past interest payments, amounting to 132 euros. 

The article ends:

While the seventeenth-century document remains in the Beinecke, the requirement to present its allonge* every few years to collect payment is a reminder of the important role that finance plays in constructing and maintaining the physical world we live in. 

*what might be called an Addendum, issued to record interest payments after space ran out on the original document. (Note all the scribbles in the margins added over the years.)

Grace note:  I have to tell you, if I hadn't read it in the Yale Alumni Magazine, I wouldn't have believed it. What an amazing story, particularly when I've lived forty years in a state that considers anything built before the 1950s old!

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Don't forget to keep an eye out for the debut of my latest Gothic, Menace at Lincourt Manor, now getting the once-over from an eagle-eyed friend of mine.

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For a link to Blair's website, click here.

 For a link to Blair's Facebook Author Page  click here.

 

Thanks for stopping by,

Grace (Blair Bancroft)