MORE ON M. DAVID AND HULMEVILLE BANKNOTES

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V17 2014 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 17, Number 36, August 31, 2014, Article 10

Dave Bowers submitted the following report on reader responses to his earlier requests. Thanks, everyone! -Editor

I am delighted to report that my two queries posted on The E-Sylum last week each scored a home run. One asked if anyone had any signed and issued notes of the Farmers Bank of Bucks County, Hulmeville, Pennsylvania, of the era 1815 to 1822. I received one response, from long-time bank note specialist J.A., who furnished the image I enclose here. I have written a little essay on this very curious institution and will submit it to one or another of the periodicals for consideration.

My other inquiry sought information on Mauritius (a.k.a. M, Moses, and, seemingly his given name, Moritz) David. In 1899 he sold an 1822 half eagle to Virgil Brand—one of three known examples, the coin that last appeared in 1982 in our sale of the Louis E. Eliasberg Collection of United States Gold Coins.

Seven readers responded, with the result that I have more information than I could have hoped for. One, John Lupia, shared a particularly extensive file. Still, if anyone has any advertisements for rare coins published by David circa 1899 to 1901 and will share them, this will be new information for me.

I attach the page 1 of issue 1 of David’s pioneering Antiques magazine, which contained information including about coins and was published only in two issues, January and February 1900. I have the ex-Library of Congress copies plus David’s letter concerning them.

The half eagle sold by David in 1899 earlier appeared in Édouard Frossard’s sale of the Hiram Deats Collection in 1892 and was unsold. If anyone has any information on the ownership or travels of the coin from 1892 to 1899 this is still a mystery to me.

Deats declared that he was leaving numismatics and taking up philately. His adventures with stamps, which I have not researched, may or may not have been worthwhile. In any event, he stayed in numismatics and remained prominent in the American Numismatic Association. He died on March 16, 1963, at the age of 92, having been an ANA member for over 71 years!

In my manuscript for the 1822 half eagle book I am doing my best to avoid guesswork, as this often turns out to be wrong. Witness what Walter Breen and Carl Carlson have theorized about this coin—many facts, of course, but also interleaved with fiction.

It would seem likely that Deats, the consignor, retained the coin after it was unsold. What happened then is currently unknown.

As to where Deats obtained the coin, this is also unknown. Robert Gilmor, Jr. in the 1830s and 1840s had the largest private collection of United States coins and may have had an 1822, but no inventory of his collection has surfaced. Joseph J. Mickley, William Sumner Appleton, John C. Schayer, and W. Eliot Woodward are on the list of owner-guesses by others, but I have not been able to confirm anything factual.

Col. Mendes I. Cohen can be eliminated as his magnificent collection of gold sold at auction conspicuously lacked the 1822 half eagle. Lorin G. Parmelee claimed to have one, and it was offered in the 1890 auction of his coins. It was determined to be a fake, removed, and replaced with Harlan P. Smith’s coin which Smith protected and did not let sell.

In the late 1870s J. Colvin Randall, a Philadelphia collector and dealer who at one time had a relationship with J.W. Haseltine, studied half eagles and cataloged them by die varieties. Some stray mentions of his attributions appear in auction catalogs. Does anyone have a copy of Randall’s study? Haseltine’s 1881 Type Table of silver coins was essentially swiped from Randall’s research.