DICK JOHNSON ON OBITUARIES IN NUMISMATICS

There are three times in a person's life that their name appears "in the paper" -- when they are born, when they marry, and when they die. Death notices, obituaries, are important. That fact came to mind when I read the article in last week's E-Sylum where editor Wayne Homren mentioned obituaries use in numismatics.

When I was most active researching biographies of prominent – and not so prominent – artists of coins and medals. I recognized this is a special field of research. I took a course in genealogy at the local community college to learn how to do biographical research.

The members of the class, mostly grandmothers searching their own family history, were so enthralled with this activity they didn’t want to stop when the course ended. Myself as well. We formed a genealogy club to meet every month.

We had speakers, went on field trips, and exchanged tips among club members. I learned a lot. I learned sources, reference works, and how best to work in archives. I learned how to verify and cite the data uncovered in this research.

This was ideal for my researching biographies of engravers, diesinkers and sculptors, the artists who created coins and medals. I also learned how important individual obituaries were.

The New York Times was useful for more famous artists and there is a two-volume index to all obituaries in this newspaper for 150 years. But for artists who never reached that level of fame I had to search local newspapers.

Newspapers and City Directories were the most useful for my pursuit. Here is where I encountered microfilm where both sources are preserved. If you don’t like staring at a microfilm screen for hours at a time you can’t be a researcher.

I learned that obits in early newspapers were little more than the name of the deceased, with a few lines of type. They lacked the career data I was seeking. I was fortunate when an obit listed the year the deceased was born.

The date of their death, however, was more important as it fixed the end of an artist’s working life. Any coin or medal issued after that date was either a restrike or reissue. I gathered as much biographical data I felt was important to an artist’s connection to his coin and medal creations.

It is this data that has been brought together and now published in book form as Who’s Who Among American Medallists. Medallists here means all forms of die-struck numismatic items. Most all American artists of coins made medals as well. The technology is the same, except medals don’t have a denotation.

Even with the most arduous research I wasn’t able to learn as much as I wanted for all 4,137 artists listed in the book. It does underscore, however, the importance of obituaries as Wayne Homren mentioned last week.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
THE DYING ART OF THE OBITUARY (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n38a18.html)

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