Q. David Bowers
Business Strikes:
Enabling legislation: Act of January 18, 1837 Designer of obverse: Robert Ball Hughes (after Gobrecht)
Designer of reverse: Robert Ball Hughes (after Reich)
Weight and composition: 412.5 grains; .900 silver, .100 copper
Meltdown (silver value) in year minted: $1.007 Dies prepared: Obverse: Unknown; Reverse: Unknown
Business strike mintage: 184,618; Delivery figures by day: May 31: 11,000; June 30: 16,500; August 31: 5,000; September 30: 52,000; December 31: 100,118.
Estimated quantity melted: Unknown Approximate population MS65 or better: 0 or 1 (URSO)
Approximate population MS64: 15 to 25 (URS5) Approximate population MS63: 20 to 40 (URS6) Approximate population MS60 to 62: 40 to 60 (URS7)
Approximate population VF20 to AU58: 3,500 to 5,000+ (URS13)
Characteristics of striking: Usually seen well struck, but there are exceptions (including some lightly struck on stars 4 through 6 on the obverse and lightly struck at the top of the shield and on the eagle's neck on the reverse).
Known hoards of Mint State coins: None
Proofs:
Dies prepared: Obverse: At least 1; Reverse: At least 1.
Proof mintage: 2030 estimated
Approximate population Proof64 Or better: 2 to 4 known (URS2)
Approximate population Proof60 to 63: 5 to 10 known (URS4)
Commentary
In circulated grades this is one of the most plentiful of all Liberty Seated silver dollars.
The Year 1842 in History
The Opium War that began in 1839 ended with the Treaty of Nanking on August 29, 1842. China ceded the city of Hong Kong to England. Amoy, Canton, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai were designated as cities in which foreigners could conduct trade and have special privileges, including freedom from many legal restrictions. This would open up a great trade between China and other countries, particularly England, and would have great implications in years to come, as the Chinese preference for silver would cause trading agents to pay in Mexican silver pesos (8 reales) and, later, after 1873, also in American trade dollars.
The WebsterAshburton Treaty, signed August 9, 1842, finalized the MaineCanada border, but the northern border of the Oregon Territory remained in dispute. The Oregon Trail was mapped by United States Army Lieutenant John Charles Fremont, age 29, who had eloped the previous year with the 16yearold daughter of Thomas Hart Benton, U.S. senator from Missouri, a prominent figure in congressional discussions of the monetary situation (and remembered by numismatists for the BENTONIAN CURRENCY inscriptions on certain Hard Times tokens). Benton's autobiography,
Thirty Years in the U.S. Senate, also called Thirty Years' View, presents an interesting window on many aspects of nineteenth century finance and was consulted by the author of the present text.
Abolition remained the most soulsearching and divisive issue on the American scene, a situation greatly aggravated when in March the Supreme Court upheld the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, but interpreted it by saying while slave owners could recover runaways, the states had no legal obligation to render assistance to the slaveholder.
In Massachusetts, children under the age of 12 were limited to working no more than 10 hours per day. This was the era of great expansion and prosperity of textile mills in New England towns, and young children were among those employed to tend the looms. Child labor would be exploited for many decades; and it was not until the efforts of Jacob Riis and others after the turn of the twentieth century that there would be a widespread public outcry against it. However, in 1842 child labor was not in the forefront of social causes. After all, children were then legally property or chattels, like wives and slaves. Connecticut established the first system of public education in the United States. Elsewhere, few children, especially those in rural districts, had much in the way of formal education.
Phineas T. Barnum, who purchased Scudder's Museum in New York, exhibited "Tom Thumb," a fouryearold midget (real name: Charles Sherwood Stratton). Tom Thumb was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a town that was home to Barnum and which nearly a century later in 1936 would feature his portrait on a commemorative half dollar. Later designated as General Tom Thumb by Queen Victoria, the young performer would eventually reach a height of 40 inches. As an adult he married Lavinia Warren, also a midget, in a ceremony publicized by Barnum. Later, many of Barnum's artifacts, including those related to Tom Thumb, would go to Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and to the Cliff House in San Francisco.
In literature, "The Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe, was published, as was "The Rainy Day," a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a piece of verse largely forgotten today except for the line, "Into each life some rain must fall." American Notes, a book by Charles Dickens, told of the English author's travels to the United States where, it seemed to readers of the text, he found nothing but misery, mistreatment of citizens, etc., as he looked on the dark side of American life. For him, the American glass was half empty, not half full.
The New York Philharmonic Orchestra presented its first concert on December 7, 1842. In the same city, Delmonico's Restaurant opened opposite Bowling Green, the first of several locations it would occupy over the years, as it grew to be the eating place of choice for financiers and society figures in the ensuing years of the nineteenth century.
Niles' Register, October 8, 1842, carried this notice: "A letter from California, dated May 1, 1842, says: 'They have at last discovered gold not far from San Fernando, and gather pieces of the size of an eighth of a dollar. Those who are acquainted with these 'placeres,' as they call them (for it is not a mine), say it will grow richer, and may lead to a mine. Gold, to the amount of some thousands of dollars, has already been collected.' San Fernando, above mentioned, is 27 miles from Los Angeles on the road from Sacramento City in Los Angeles." Unpublished Mint record copies obtained by the author show that deposits were made of the San Fernando metal. Later, this "little California gold rush" of 1842 was to be largely overlooked by historians.
At the Philadelphia Mint a few dozen Proof sets were made for collectors, for presentation to dignitaries, and for other purposes. The quarter dollars included in these sets had a different date logotype than that found on circulating coins of this denomination, and in later years the Proof only 1842 Small Date quarter became known as a major rarity. The first significant book (indeed the first book of any kind) published in America on numismatics appeared. Titled A Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of All Nations, Struck Within the Past Century, it was written by Mint officials Jacob Reese Eckfeldt and William Ewing DuBois. Various coins, including the 1804 silver dollar (a coin whose existence was not known to numismatists earlier), were illustrated by means of plates made by the Saxton medalruling machine. Eckfcldt and DuBois were the numismatic experts at the Mint and managed the Mint Cabinet, which was growing each year as additions were retrieved from bullion deposits received at the Mint.