Women making money

Women were always involved in making money in the U.S. Mint, and later women had a prominent role in managing the nation’s currency.

U.S. Treasurer

The U.S. Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing are both overseen by the Treasurer of the United States. Every bill printed by the mint has the signatures of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasurer of the U.S.

Since 1949, there have been 14 U. S. Treasurers – all of them women. Here are three:


Appointed by President Truman in 1949, Clark was the first female U. S. Treasurer


Ivy Baker Priest followed Clark, and then became the first woman elected to statewide office in California, that of State Treasurer, in 1966.

Katherine Ortega was Treasurer during the Reagan administration. She began her career as a teenage teller at a bank in Tularosa, New Mexico, a predecessor bank of today’s Wells Fargo.

U. S. Mint

Women have always been part of the money printing and minting process. In the 1850s, women worked at the United States Mint in San Francisco, making gold and silver coins. In the Mint’s Adjusting Room, their nimble fingers carefully weighed the circular blanks or “planchets” ready to be stamped into coins. They rejected those too light and filed down those too heavy, making sure each coin was worth its weight in gold.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing prints currency and postage stamps for the federal government. Since 1862, when the Bureau hired Miss Jennie Douglas to cut and trim newly-printed dollar bills, women have worked to produce the nation’s money supply.

Nellie Tayloe Ross

In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Nellie Tayloe Ross as the first female director of the U.S. Mint.  Ross was also the first woman governor of a state, Wyoming, in 1925. She directed the Mint for twenty years, overseeing construction of new facilities at Fort Knox, West Point, and San Francisco. She lived to be 101 years of age.