The Eagle That is Forgotten: Pierre Eugene Du Simitiere, Founding Father of Numismatics
Orosz, Joel J. (1988)
Book Summary
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.
Dr. Joel Orosz learned about Du Simitière from secondary sources in 1982, examined his papers at The Library Company of Philadelphia in 1983, and published his doctoral dissertation, Curators and Culture, which he successfully defended in 1986. Orosz wrote an article, "Pierre Eugène Du Simitière: Museum Pioneer in America," in Museum Studies Journal, (1985) : 11-14, in addition to the present work in 1988. [Q. David Bowers, Joel. J. Orosz]
