Daily AncestorSpanish dollar
A Spanish dollar, or piece of eight, was a silver coin worth 8 reales that circulated widely in colonial America and became the model for the U.S. dollar.
Spanish and Spanish American silver dollars were the most common large coins in the colonies, many arriving through trade with the West Indies. Each colony gave the coin its own value in local shillings, so the same dollar was worth different sums in different colonies.
The Coinage Act of 1792 made the new U.S. dollar equal in value to a Spanish milled dollar as then current. Foreign coins, Spanish dollars among them, remained legal tender in the United States until 1857, so they still appear in accounts of the early 1800s.
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Daily Ancestor. "Spanish dollar." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/money-measures/spanish-dollar. Last checked 2026-10-03.