George Washington's Anthony Wayne Letter John Sallay writes:

Dave Bowers was also quick to spot the item. He writes:

John Sallay adds:

Len Augsburger writes:

Kay O. Freeman writes:

John Adams writes:

Kay adds:

Dave Bowers adds:

Len Augsburger adds:

A landmark of early U.S. numismatic literature, Mease's article in this volume of the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society is arevision and expansion of his 1821 article published in the Collections of the New-York Historical Society, the first article written on anumismatic subject for numismatists.

While a number of American publications of numismatic interest predate Mease's 1821 article, theseearly publications were written for merchants, bankers, lawyers, politicians and other people who dealt with monetary issues on a dailybasis. Works had not been written from the point of view of one who studies coins and medals. Indeed, no works written for numismatistswere published in this country, to the best of my knowledge, between Mease's 1821 article and this 1834 revision.

In his groundbreaking lecture on the topic of U.S. numismatic literature, William S.F. Mayers writes, "the first actual attempts atsystematic classification and record of the coins struck in or for the American colonies and United States, appear in the shape of papers tobe found in the collections of State Historical Societies" ("The Literature of American Numismatics," Norton's Literary Letter, No. 3, 1859,p. 6). Mease's articles are specifically mentioned by Mayers in his article, showing that these works, long forgotten until recent years, werestill in the memory of some in the late 1850s.

Though the 1821 version of the article is included in Attinelli's masterful 1876 Numisgraphics(p. 109), it is listed under "Historical Society of New York. Collections" with no mention of its contents or importance (and this revisionisn't mentioned at all by him). Mease's 1821 article was reintroduced to modern scholars by Eric Newman in the Summer 1992 issue ofThe Asylum, the quarterly journal of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society, and has since been discussed by Joel Orosz in later issues of thesame publication. The Newman article was also published in the August 1992 issue of The Numismatist.

James Mease, M.D. (1771-1846) was a polymath who published on an number of different subjects, including medicine, geology, andhistory. He was well known as the editor of the Domestic Encyclopedia (1803-04) and the Archives of Useful Knowledge (1811-12). His Picture ofPhiladelphia (1811) is a foundational work of local history and contains the first useful description of the U.S. Mint operations. Active inthe American Philosophical Society and the Philadelphia Athenaeum, some of his papers are deposited in the William L. Clements Libraryat the University of Michigan. Mease would go on to publish the first numismatic examination of American coins in 1838.

Joel Orosz writes:

To read the complete New York Times article, see:At Sotheby's, Tracing the Lives Behind the Letters(www.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/arts/design/16sothebys.html)