MORE ON THE GRANT REUNION BOOK AND MEDAL

 

I can provide some additional information concerning the 1893 booklet that includes medals relating to the 1880 Republican convention. The medal is an electrotype that was produced in1880 or 1881 and distributed to the Old Guard delegates who supported Grant. According to an 1888 article that originated with a St. Louis newspaper and was reprinted by the New York Times, the medal was the brainchild of two prominent Grant supporters, Senator Don Cameron of Pennsylvania and Chauncey Filley, a former mayor of St. Louis. An encyclopedia of Missouri history published in 1901 and available on Google books also has an entry concerning the medal. According to this source, Cameron paid for the medals while Filley arranged for its production by the James Kershaw engraving company of St. Louis, including securing from Grant an up to date photograph to be used for the portrait.

The versions of the medal given to the Grant loyalists, as opposed to those used in 1893, are engraved with the name of the recipient. Attached is a photo of an example I bought on eBay a number of years ago. It was presented to John J. Meigs, who had been a delegate from Elko County, Nevada. Meigs was born in Vermont in 1838. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1860 and served as a surgeon in a Vermont regiment during the Civil War. At some point afterwards, he settled in Nevada but by the mid 1890s, he had moved to Oakland where he lived until about 1910. He spent the remaining years of his life in Stockton, dying in 1922.

 

 
Medal presented to John J. Meigs

 

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
GRANT REUNION BOOK AND MEDAL (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n15a16.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web