PIERRE EUGèNE DU SIMITIèRE (1737-1784)

Pierre Eugène Du Simitière (1737-1784), Swiss engraver working in Philadelphia. He is among the early numismatists of the 18th century in America and a contemporary of Rev. Johann Christoph Kunze (q.v.). He was a typical gentleman of his time when educated men were absorbed with a keen interest and fascination with the physical and historical world and of human endeavors throughout historical times preceding their own. As a typical educated gentleman of the 18th century he was a collector of many things that fall within the three domains or categories of collectibles : Natural History, Antiques and Antiquities and the Curious and Curiosities.

From 1764 to 1765 he was in Charleston, North Carolina and may have been involved in preliminary steps that later evolved into the first American Museum established in 1773. Regardless, nine years later we find in 1782, he opened his American Museum of Natural History. In 1785, a coin auction of the collection formed by Pierre Eugène Du Simitière was sold posthumously on March 10th.

Notices about Du Simitière's coin collection were cited in magazine articles in 1868 and again in 1874 and 1879. Publications about Du Simitière's Museum were published in the 1880's culminating with William John Potts, "Du Simitière, Artist, Antiquary, and Naturalist, Projector of the First American Museum, With Some Extracts from His Notebook," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Volume 13, October (1889).

Notices about this auction broadside were published in recent years in 1900 by Robert F. Roden, who dated the sale on March 10, 1784; in 1937, by George Leslie McKay for The New York Public Library in the Union List; the sequel to that work was by Harold Lancour in 1944 who cites this as his first entry; Hans Huth's study that followed in 1945. In 1960, Paul Ginsberg Sifton, published his Ph.D. dissertation, Pierre Eugène Du Simitière (1737-1784): Collector in Revolutionary America. This was followed by Edwin Wolf 2nd, Marie Elena Korey, eds., Quarter of a Millennium: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1731-1981 (Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia,1981). Wolf and Korey wrote extensively about the first American coin auction sale and published a breathtakingly handsome full photograph of the 1785 auction broadside on page 44 of their very impressive and gorgeously illustrated huge thick tome. This was the best early description of the Du Simitière coin auction published by 1981. Their article on Du Simitière ran from pages 43-46, illustrating him as a magpie collector.

In 1985, John C. Van Horne, wrote and published the Exhibition Catalog celebrating the Bi-Centennial of Du Simitière's Museum in a catalog titled : Pierre Eugène Du Simitière : His American Museum 200 Years After. An Exhibition At the Library Company in Philadelphia. July to October 1985. Horne also published the full photograph of the 1785 auction broadside.

Due to this exhibition Joel J. Orosz learned about Du Simitière and his coin collection and posthumous auction and then immediatelywrote an article, "Pierre Eugène Du Simitière: Museum Pioneer in America," Museum Studies Journal, (1985) : 11-14, which does not mention the coin auction. Three years later in 1988, Du Simitière was given an in-depth prosopographical study by Joel J. Orosz in his work, The Eagle that is Forgotten, where he wrote about the coin auction for the first time. That was seven years years after Wolf & Korey published the photographic reproduction of the Du Simitière auction catalogue of 1785 and wrote about that in their landmark book. Joel J. Orosz, repeats most of what they had had already published as well as that by Van Horne three years earlier making The Eagle that is Forgotten, a handy reference work that concisely collates all useful material and information on Du Simitière in one volume.

To read the complete article, see:
DU SIMITIÈRE, PIERRE EUGÈNE (http://www.numismaticmall.com/numismaticmall-com/du-simitiere-pierre-eugene)

To read an earlier E-Sylum article, see:
BOOK REVIEW: THE EAGLE THAT WAS FORGOTTEN (https://www.coinbooks.org/v22/esylum_v22n18a08.html)

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