SIGMUND BOWMAN ALEXANDER (1864-1912)

Sigmund Bowman Alexander (1864-1912), Brookline, Massachusetts. Coin dealer and principal of the firm of Alexander & Company. He was born on March 16, 1864 at Boston, son of Jacob Alexander (1834-post 1820) and Maria Bowman Alexander (1846- post 1820). His father was a Jewish immigrant from Germany and his mother was a native of Massachusetts. Maria Bowman was the daughter of an Englishman and a German mother.

He was engaged as a specie broker and insurance broker as a young man circa 1883, though his publications claims 1873 when he was just 9 years old. He dealt in United States and foreign coins, paper money and U. S. postage stamps as postal money or encased stamps in the day when Henry Ahlborn, Ebenezer Locke Mason, Jr., and William Elliot Woodward were also dealing at Boston. Alexander began publishing coin catalogues with a neat format about 1883 that continued until he changed the title to The Hub Coin Book in 1895.

He was also a writer, novelist, playwright and involved in the theatre. His first known novel was published in 1887, Ten of Us: Original Stories and Sketches. (Boston : Laughton, McDonald & Co., 1887). He wrote his second known novel in 1888, The Veiled Beyond : A Romance of the Adepts (New York : Cassell, 1888)

On January 3, 1888, his brokerage house was broken into by Patrick J. Geary, an unemployed widower with two starving children who grabbed the Swedish money from the storefront window after he smashed the glass to retrieve it.

Alexander & Company met with such great success selling the United States and Foreign Coin Catalogue that they went into a subdivision as a book publisher and bookbinder for their coin book renaming it The Hub Coin Book.

On June 8, 1896 he married at the Adath Israel Temple, Boston, to Blanch Liebmann (1871-1922) of Baltimore, Maryland, daughter of Dr. Augustus “Gustav” and Fanny Liebmann. They had a daughter Ruth Liebmann Alexander (1897-). They lived at 210 West Newton Street, Boston, Massachusetts.

He died at the age of 47 and 10 months of cerebral hemorrhage on January 5, 1912 at his in-law's home, 82 Naples Road, Brookline, Massachusetts.

The estate of Alexander managed by his wife Blanch kept publishing the Hub Coin Book and publishing it from her home state and city, Baltimore, Maryland by I. & M. Ottenheimer printers. The Hub Coin Book went into at least 34 Editions.

To read the complete article, see:
ALEXANDER, SIGMUND BOWMAN (https://sites.google.com/a/numismaticmall.com/www/numismaticmall-com/alexander-sigmund-bowman)

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