ANDREW ELLIOT, 18TH-CENTURY COIN MAVEN

Andrew Pollock reported the following on the C4 (Colonial Coin Collector's Club mailing list: "I stumbled across the following paragraph in Sibley's Harvard Graduates, Volume X, under the biographical sketch of Andrew Eliot (Class of 1737):

"Eliot [third minister of the New North Church of Boston] was sincerely interested in history. He rescued old coins from silversmiths and sent them to the collectors among his English friends. He remarked that pine-tree shillings of several dies were still common, but that he had only seen one New England sixpence in his life."

The date of his numismatic interest is not mentioned but his death is said to have occurred in 1778.

Shipton, Clifford K. "Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College in the Classes 1736-1740, with Bibliographical and Other Notes." Volume X. Boston, Mass. Massachusetts Historical Society. 1958."

Your Editor's web search for Andrew Eliot turned up a reference to the E-Sylum archive, where Eliot was mentioned in the Vol 1, No 5. issue (October 14, 1998). Joel Orosz had mentioned Eliot at a talk to the Chicago Coin Club.

"I've never written anything about Elliot, only spoke about him, as you note, to the Chicago Coin Club. It was Eric Newman who first discovered that Elliot was a coin collector. He wrote about Rev. Elliot in "The Secret of the Good Samaritan Shilling", if memory serves. This is a great find on Pollock's part - it adds an important fact to our knowledge about 18th century U.S. numismatics- that the NE Sixpence was exceedingly rare even then. Elliot did die in 1778. Thanks for sending Andy my way - this is great stuff!"

Wayne Homren, Editor

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The E-Sylum: Volume 3, Number 38, September 17, 2000, Article 9

ANDREW ELLIOT, 18TH-CENTURY COIN MAVEN

Wayne Homren, Editor