The August 26, 2018 issue of The E-Sylum, the on-line weekly publication of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society edited by Wayne Homren, contained an announcement fromNewman Numismatic Portal project coordinator Len Augsburger that the portal had just received a huge accession from Andrew Pollock III pertaining to national bank notes.

The announcement revealed that Pollock had compiled a complete yearly listing of the bank presidents and cashiers that he abstracted from the annual reports of the Comptrollerof the Currency for all 14,348 national banks chartered through 1935.

Whoa, this was beyond belief! National bank note collectors have been dreaming about a compilation of that data for decades but the task was so huge, it had never beenaccomplished.

I immediately logged on to the portal and with a little guidance from Len Augsburger was able to access this trove. Here is how to do it.

Start on this page:
https://archive.org/details/NationalBankSpreadsheetsGuide

In the right-hand column, about half way down, select "zip." A large (31Mbyte) zip file will download to your computer. It takes a minute or more. Depending on youroperating system you should be able to examine the data directly after downloading (some earlier versions of Windows may require "unzip" first.

I couldn't believe it, there it was. Not only did Pollock list the presidents and cashiers, he also included the all-important annual total bank resources and circulations.

This compilation ranks right up there with Louis Van Belkum's compilation of the bank-by-bank national bank note issuance and summary bank history information that comprisesthe cores of the Hickman-Oakes and Kelly catalogs.

I had not run across Pollock so my curiosity was seriously piqued. I immediately asked Len Augsburger to forward an email to him and was rewarded with a cordial response onAugust 27th. August 27th happened to be my birthday. Obtaining this information and "meeting" the compiler ranks as the most splendid birthday present of my 76 years. Thefollowing is a verbatim transcript of his first reply.

I knew the source he was mining. He was looking at digital scans of the annual reports of the Comptroller of the Currency that are available through the fabulous FRASER digitallibrary maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRASER is the acronym for Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research reached via https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ .

This fellow had abstracted the data from scans of 73 volumes that take up 15.5 feet of shelf space in my library. Beyond belief! I had to learn more. I quickly followed up withmore questions.

I asked: "In a nutshell, how did you actually distill the data in your spreadsheets. I understand that you mined the Comptroller reports on FRASER but it took serious computerskills to abstract the relevant data from those scans. Give me a thumbnail sketch of the process.

His answer startled me.

I then asked "Are you a collector of nationals, and if not, what drew your interest to these data?"

There we have it. The fellow spent three years, up to 80 hours per week, usually adding 500 entries per day to get this enormous job done. The total number of entries in hisfile is 502,460-that's half a million folks. Why, because he enjoys compiling data from original sources for other people to use and enjoy. Much more on that below.

Here are some facts. A few serious national bank note collectors begun the process of compiling these data and some got quite far into the project. Andrew Shiva of the NationalCurrency Foundation for one set a goal of doing this job as a priority several years ago and employed help to do it. That attempt fizzled as did similar undertakings by othersbecause the people burned out. The job became overwhelming once they bogged down in the middle years when the number of operating banks surged from over 3000 to over 8000 banks.Remember, they faced writing a spreadsheet line for every one of those banks for every remaining year.

As soon as I realized that Pollock had succeeded, I knew we were dealing with an incredibly disciplined, dedicated and determined individual. Not only that, he was a masochist.And for what? He doesn't even have a dog in this national bank note fight!

But this isn't the end of this man's story. He has been compiling authoritative lists of data and maintaining websites for much of his life. Let me introduce you to the ones Iknow about.

He is the author of two books.

Advertisement Index to the Boston Newsletter and Massachusetts Gazette, 1704-1776. Heritage Books CD-ROM. 2001. This index features approximately 10,000-12,000alphabetically-listed entries for individuals, businesses, ships, etc. incorporating historical and biographical information gleaned from an estimated 50,000-60,000advertisements. Nearly 3,700 pages.

United States Patterns and Related Issues. This is the standard reference book on experimental U.S. coins issued from 1792 to circa 1979. Over 500 pages.

Pollock has created websites on a variety of numismatic, religious and ornithology topics. The first two in this list are the most popular.

Numismalink Directory is a classified directory of internet resources pertaining to rare coins, medals, tokens and paper money. It profiles numismatic bibliographicresources, organizations and educational sites. The list of links to world mints is the most comprehensive anywhere.
http://www.numismalink.com

Deo est Gloria Directory of Religious Life Communities is a directory of Roman Catholic religious life communities, one of the largest online directories of monasteriesand religious orders in the English-speaking world with more than 1,800 listings.
http://www.deoestgloria.com/

Numismatic Register: The 17th-Century Coinage of Massachusetts, Maryland, and the Sommer Islands
http://www.coinfacts.com/Administrative/numismatic_register_colonials.htm

Numismatic Register: Bechtler Gold Coins
http://www.coinfacts.com/numismatic_registers/
bechtler_gold_coins_register.htm

Numismatic Register: US Half Dollars, 1794-1797
http://www.coinfacts.com/Administrative/numismatic_registers/
half_dollars_1794_to_1797.htm

Index of Harvard Graduates and Attendees Mentioned in Sibley's Harvard Graduates, Volumes I Through XVIII, classes from 1642 through 1774
http://www.numismalink.com/sibley.index.pdf

Binomial and Trinomial Index to the Auk, 1884-1940 (Ornithology).
http://www.numismalink.com/auk.index.html

Pollock earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry at Worchester Polytechnic Institute in 1979, then worked as a chemical technician for several years until joiningBowers & Merena in 1987. During his pre-numismatic career, he worked for Badger, a division of Raytheon, in Weymouth, MA, from 1980 to 1983 in their process developmentdepartment.

He resumed schooling, this time at the University of Kentucky, to study biology between 1983 and 1984, then returned to Quincy, MA, to work for H. V. Shuster evaluatingpharmaceuticals, dietary supplements and other consumer products between 1985 and 1987. Then it was on to Bowers & Merena.

Juggling work and study before leaving Bowers & Merena, he then earned his Masters of Library Sciences degree from Simmons College in 1999 and in 2000-2001 served as thearchivist at the Kingston Public Library in southeastern Massachusetts where he oversaw the local history room and created findings aids for some of the repository's collections.He now resides in New Hampshire.

He has just established himself as a giant in the field of national bank note currency.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NNP ADDS NATIONAL BANK CHARTER INFORMATION (http://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n34a07.html)