Michael Hodder and Q. David Bowers
It has been a great pleasure to research and write this book with Q David Bowers. The Holden-Norweb family was, and is, a fascinating one, with a history that reaches back to our own country's beginnings and that can be traced further in the records of our parent's past. To an historian, the challenge of this book was to place the two families into their historical contexts. Their importance to history rewarded us with episodes which, we hope, will be found interesting by other readers.
Most histories written about coin collectors arid their collections have concentrated on their hobby activities. This was, originally, to have been the procedure we were to follow. After only a short time, however, our focus changed. We had found that the Holdens and Norwebs enjoyed roles in our country's history that not only illustrated, as in a microcosm, broad changes in the historical scenes of their times, but that also played significant parts in its unfolding.
Liberty Emery Holden was one of the earliest and most important developers of Utah's silver mines, around Bingham Canyon.
Yet his memory in Utah had been forgotten, despite its importance to the state's history. This book has rectified that lapse in the historical record. Albert Fairchild Holden, his son, created one of the greatest of the early 20th century business trusts. Yet, like his father, history had unfairly overlooked his importance. His story was a tragically short one, but in the score of years he was active he accomplished more than other men failed to in a lifetime.
Emery May Holden Norweb certainly became our favorite figure in this story. She was a beautiful young woman in 1917, and it was not hard to see how she could turn a young man's head. Her early childhood was as tragic as her father's and her diaries from the time have a poignancy that outlasts the years. Her marriage to Henry Norweb was her salvation, as she would have said herself. Her father's influence on her personal development gave her the courage to persevere through trying times. It also gave her a love of numismatic study and acquisition, and so, directly, gave us a great collection to appreciate.
The Holden-Norweb families presented an unusual challenge to a research numismatist. We knew of Mrs. Norweb's importance to our hobby before we started. There were vaguely remembered stories of her father, Albert Holden, being a collector of coins, but no one we contacted had heard of him before. It was our good fortune that his daughter preserved the pedigrees of many of his coin purchases in her own collection records. Using these, and with the help of other numismatic researchers, we have been able to present to a modern generation of collectors a colleague who had been forgotten by an earlier one. During his most active period, from 1907-1910, Albert Holden created a coin collection that today would be considered one of the finest ever assembled. Had he lived beyond 1913 I have no doubt that, in its size and contents, his collection would have rivalled that formed by T Harrison Garrett and continued by his son, John Work Garrett. That he did not provided the impetus to his daughter to continue in her father's path. To my mind, one of the most significant results of our research has been the resurrection of a major collector whose obscurity, although self-chosen, is no longer warranted or deserved.
Throughout its creation this book has been a labor of love. Other researchers have proven their own love for numismatics, by giving their time and resources freely and often in larger measure than expected. My personal thanks go to John J. Ford, jr., my friend and mentor in numismatics.
This book has been largely about fathers and their influences on their children. In closing, I would like to dedicate my small part in this project to my own father, who taught me the value of perseverence by his example of that most demanding virtue.
Honor and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part; there all the honor lies.
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, iv (1734)
Michael Hodder