The Norweb Collection - An American Legacy

CHAPTER SIX

The Norweb Collection

Early Years (1905-1914)

Emery May Holden Norweb took an early interest in coins, clearly due to her father's influence, also perhaps due to en-couragement from her grandfather Liberty Holden, as well. At the age of ten, in 1905, she was given her first coin, a Braided Hair type half cent, date unknown. The coin probably came to her from her grandfather. The inventory books and card files of the Norweb Collection do not mention this coin, and presumably it is no longer in the collection.

Many years later, Mrs. Norweb told friends that she remembered 1907 as being the first year that she began buying coins herself, using her weekly allowance to make purchases from dealers her father trusted. There are no purchase records in her own name dated that early, however. In 1908 she bought two Braided Hair half cents from Scott Stamp and Coin Company's Chicago branch, paying $3.25 for them, which she remembered was her total allowance for two weeks. At about $1.60 each the half cents must have been either high grade or rare dates, or both, given the pricing of the time. For example, an EF-40 1808 0-2 bought from David Proskey in 1909 cost $2.00. A Proof 1857 0-1, bought from Thomas Elder's sale of the Peter Mougey Collection (1910), cost $2.25. Unfortunately, neither of the two half cents she referred to can be identified specifically in the collection today.

Emery May became more involved in her father's coin collecting activities early in 1908, following the death of her older sister Elizabeth in February of that year. Her sister Elizabeth had been her father's favorite, but after her untimely death Albert Holden focused his attention on young Emery May. From 1908 until her father's own unexpected death in 1913, Emery May was his confidante, record-keeper, and collaborator in his collecting hobby. She seems to have maintained his inventory records, keeping them up to date with each new acquisition, listing coins by denomination, date, condition, vendor, price paid, and pedigree. Where relevant, she included standard reference numbers: Crosby for colonial coins, Hays-Frossard for 1794 large cents, etc.

Some of the information Emery May recorded for her father's collection was kept in a copy of the 1893 edition of Scott Stamp and Coin Company's Standard Coin Catalogue-Silver and Gold. Emery May noted in her specially-bound copy of this early price guide the dates of coins already in the collection, which by 1908 was growing at a fast rate, to avoid duplication. Since the rare 1838-0 half dollar was checked off, we can be sure that the records in Emery May's copy of this reference reflect purchases made at this time, since her father bought the 1838-0 half in the Wilson Sale, held in early October, 1908.

The original inventory records from this early period have not been preserved. Much of the information they must have contained was transferred into the Norwebs' inventory books and index card files, starting in the late 1930s. We may never know what her father's own records looked like. The actual contents of the collection, as it stood in 1913, can only be partially reconstructed from the information that was seen fit to preserve. We do have other sources of information about the collection at that time, however, ones that reflect Emery May's rather sophisticated participation in the hobby, for a teenager.

Beginning in 1908, Emery May also kept a loose leaf folder containing tissue paper sheets, on which she made rubbings of many of her father's coins. The folder was arranged chronologically, starting with colonial coins and going on through federal issues grouped by date. 1793 issues were filed before 1794 dated coins, for example. Colonial coins were arranged in the sequence made popular by Sylvester S. Crosby in his The Early Coins of America, published over 25 years earlier. Following federal issues were territorial gold coins. Albert Holden had a large collection of California fractional gold coins, but none was included in his daughter's folder, probably because they were too small to take rubbings from. No commemorative silver coins were included, either, although we know that Albert owned an 1893 Isabella Quarter, 1892 and 1893 Columbian half dollars, and a 1900 Lafayette dollar. No other silver commemoratives were struck before he died in 1913. The 1915-S Panama Pacific half dollar would have been the next silver commemorative Albert would have been able to buy, had he lived.

Albert also owned specimens of the 1904 and 1905 Lewis and Clark commemorative gold dollar, and both varieties of the earlier 1903 Louisiana Purchase Exposition commemorative gold dollar. None was included in Emery May's book of rubbings. In fact, no gold coins of any kind were included in the folder, possibly because it was felt that gold metal was too soft and gold coins might be marked by taking rubbings from them.