CONFEDERATE HALF DOLLAR PEDIGREE RESEARCH

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V18 2015 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 18, Number 11, March 15, 2015, Article 19

Rolling down the highway this weekend with my family, I pulled up the latest issue of Coin World on my phone and read several articles. One that stood out as important for E-Sylum readers concerns the pedigrees of the four known original specimens of the 1861 Confederate Half dollar. Written by Nancy Oliver and Richard Kelly, the article presents some new evidence and promises future revelations. I'll look forward to learning more, as will the sellers and buyers of these important rarities. -Editor

Crescent City Letter on Confederate HAlf Dollars

When four 1861 half dollars were struck by the Confederate States of America at the New Orleans Mint, the coins with their distinctive obverse design were given to several prominent individuals.

The appearance of two Confederate 1861 half dollars at auction in the first quarter of 2015 has encouraged us to publish some recently discovered information directly related to the provenance of at least one of the four examples minted.

For 135 years, it has been accepted as fact that just four pieces of the Confederate government designed half dollar were struck at the New Orleans Mint in 1861, and it has also been accepted as truth that four individuals, whose names were revealed in an 1879 newspaper article, were the ones who received an example just off the press.

There is little question of the striking of four examples, since presently four are extant; however, recent evidence, gleaned from a statement from a gentleman who was there during the striking, may cause us to question, and even change previously held notions about who actually were the final recipients of said rarities.

In 1879, former New Orleans Mint coiner Benjamin Franklin Taylor first amazed the numismatic community when he announced in a letter, to a prominent numismatist of the time, the existence of the half dollar with a specially designed Confederate obverse.

Also in the letter, he included the names of four gentlemen he claimed had received the four pieces struck some 18 years before. Coiner Taylor noted that the first of the four Confederate pieces went to Charles Gustavas Memminger (Secretary of the Confederate Treasury), who immediately sent his to President Jefferson Davis. Another piece went to Dr. Edward Ames, a noted physician in the city, and another to Dr. John Riddell, noted scientist and college professor in New Orleans. And lastly (with the approval of the Confederate Congress) a piece went to Coiner Taylor himself.

However, some contradictory information on that same subject appeared in 1889, which could erase maybe one, or even two, of these gentlemen from the lists of recipients of said coin. An expert engraver of the time, Augustas Heinrich Marcus Peterson, furnished this astonishing news to a reporter by the name of Jorge Brisson.

We are presently working on putting together Confederate half dollar and die pedigrees that will appear in a follow-up story sometime in 2015. So far, while working with these pedigrees, we have discovered previously unreported owners of this very coveted coin. There might be some surprises in store!