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Could this help explain why some earlier Mint documents are missing?
RogerB
Posts: 8,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
Maybe they just "Faded Away" like Gen. MacArthur...?
2
RogerB
Posts: 8,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
RogerB
Posts: 8,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
RogerB
Posts: 8,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
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Didn't one of the Mint Directors send a huge collection of documents
to the landfill after there were no offers? Sometime in the 1960's or 1970's.
The only readily available ink in those days was Iron Gall & it is by today's standards, permanent.
Today it's called registrar's ink.
If you signed something like a marriage certificate at the court house, you used their "special" pen.
Water based (temporary) inks are everywhere today but the paper is even worse.
So far as I know, in 1870 the paper & ink were much better quality than today.
Paper had to have a smooth finish to work well with nibs & was expensive & very good quality.
I wouldn't imagine many documents were incapable of being preserved.
BTW...Carmine ink is red and made from crushed insects not iron gall.
It is long lasting by nature.
My Saint Set
While Stella Hackel is best known for destroying thousands of presscopy and other mint books and journals, Mary Brooks tossed a lot of material as did Eva Adams. Director Ross was ordered by Treasury to discard obsolete materials in the 1930s and there were earlier clearings of uncurrent documents in the 19-teens, 1890s, 1850s and possibly earlier. The Treasury department fire of 1834 seemed to encourage removal of non-current papers as being a fire hazard and storage problem. It was not until the Late 30s WPA that a systematic inventory of US Mint and other government agency papers was conducted as part of the National Archives dedicated by President Hoover.
To add a little - in the mind-1890s, Mint HQ undertook a project to copy early letters and reports into bound journals so that the content could be preserved. Parts of this are in Entry-3 Philadelphia which consists of these collected-document journals of early materials. Some document are found nowhere else, others are complete minutes of Assay Commission reports and statements, and still others are duplicates of documents in E-214, 215, 216 and 1.
Consider document thieves like the late Sandy Burglar
You must be wrong. Stuffing National Archive documents pertaining to your boss into your clothes (stealing) because you were forgetful is "just Sandy." And because there are TWO justice systems in the US he went unpunished and still had both of his hands!
Such a shame to consider what history may have been lost to purges and accidents...Perhaps the answers to some of our present day questions.... Cheers, RickO
All of the coiner's daily records and the medal dept. daily records are missing. These would likely have shown how many post 1854 proof (master) coins were made, and the quantities and metals of pattern pieces. All we have now are tiny fragments scattered among a million pages of other things.