Newman Portal Adds Boston Numismatic Society Archives

One of the oldest numismatic societies in the United States, the Boston Numismatic Society (BNS) for many years (1870-1891) published the American Journal of Numismaticsand today continues as an active numismatic organization. BNS member Yale Lansky, working with Newman Portal, has facilitated scanning of the Society archives, and these recordsare now available on Newman Portal. The series consists of eight volumes of Society proceedings (1860-1992), treasury book (1860-1982), and a two-volume history compiled in 1998by Thomas P. Rockwell. The earliest records contain well-known names including Jeremiah Colburn, Thomas Appleton, Augustine Shurtleff, and others.

Appleton reported in the minutes the launch of the Society on February 11, 1860:

As today, exhibits were an important component of meetings, and the Society proceedings carefully record who exhibited what, so that anyone researching these individuals, ortheir collections, will find this an important source of information. Moreover, the series as a whole documents a formative period of American numismatic history, when collectorsbegan gathering in a formal way in order to create enduring institutions. Some succeeded and some failed, and we are fortunate that BNS has persevered and faithfully preserved animportant part of the historical record.

Image: Constitution of the Boston Numismatic Society (1860), article one

Link to Boston Numismatic Society archives on Newman Portal:
https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/archivedetail/535143

The Newman Numismatic Portal is actively looking for opportunities to digitize content from the archives of numismatic organizations. Already available are archives of theWestern Pennsylvania Numismatic Society and the Rochester Numismatic Association, With the new scanning facility in place at the American Numismatic Associations, the ANS archiveswill be digitized in the coming months and years. If your club has an archive, NNP will digitize some or all of it free of charge.

High on our list are the early archives of the Boston Numismatic Society. Do they exist?

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
BOSTON NUMISMATIC SOCIETY ARCHIVES SOUGHT (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n52a12.html)