BOOK IN PROGRESS: THE HISTORY OF THE MORRISTOWN MINT BY MICHAEL HODDER
The E-Sylum (4/19/2009)
Book Content
Members of the Colonial Newsletter Foundation (CNLF) are currently reviewing a draft of Michael J. Hodder's manuscript The History of the Morristown Mint 1786-1788: A Study of a Confederation Period Coinage.James Spilman writes:
This publication has been a long time coming to see the light of day, but "the end of the tunnel" is now in sight. This current version has been through many reviews, the most helpful being a recent review by Ray Williams.
I asked Mike Hodder about the project. He writes:
This unfinished manuscript was originally written for the American Numismatic Society many years ago. It was inspired by the absence of the Morristown chapter in Damon Douglas' own manuscript on New Jersey coppers. I got a grant from the state of New Jersey, and the monks of St. Mary's Abbey in Morristown kindly put me up during my research.
I spent my days in the county archive reading through bundles of court papers that hadn't been opened since the late 1780's. I wrote a short summary for The Numismatist and submitted the first couple of chapters to the ANS, which turned out not to be interested. Remember, this came at a time when the institution's focus was on the numismatics of antiquity.
I gave the manuscript to Jim Spilman years ago, and he asked if he could publish it as a technical note and I gave my OK. Although it was unfinished and unpolished, there may be something in it that might be useful to some. My goal was to place Walter Mould's coinage operation into its social setting. He had his own powerful backers, particularly among the civil administrative officers in Morris County.
I spent my days in the county archive reading through bundles of court papers that hadn't been opened since the late 1780's. I wrote a short summary for The Numismatist and submitted the first couple of chapters to the ANS, which turned out not to be interested. Remember, this came at a time when the institution's focus was on the numismatics of antiquity.
I gave the manuscript to Jim Spilman years ago, and he asked if he could publish it as a technical note and I gave my OK. Although it was unfinished and unpolished, there may be something in it that might be useful to some. My goal was to place Walter Mould's coinage operation into its social setting. He had his own powerful backers, particularly among the civil administrative officers in Morris County.
Jim's goal has been to turn the manuscript into an eBook for use of CNLF researchers. He writes:
The major problem has been technical. The original text was in 10 point dot matrix print, and the footnotes in much smaller type and well beyond the capability of OCR scanners of the period.
Hodder cataloged examples of the coins Morristown Mint coins in the recent Stack's sales of the John J. Ford collection. With permission from Stack's, shown above are images of lot 198 from the Ford I sale, courtesy of Vicken Yegparian at Stack's.