I bought #7 on ebay! - Seymour Leighton - Carnegie Hero Fund Medal
Tomthecoinguy
Posts: 849 ✭✭✭✭
I have been collecting Carnegie Hero Fund Medals for a number of years now, I especially like the US medals. I bought this one on ebay last week.
Each medal is unique, because they strike the name of the recipient and a brief description of the heroic act that led to the award right into the medal. This tragedy actually happened on on a holiday, July 4, 1904.
The Carnegie Hero Fund started in 1904, and still gives out medals today. They have given out more than 10,000 over their more than 100 years of operation. The medals come in gold, silver, and bronze. They maintain an honor roll of all the awardees, so if you have a medal you can find out when it was given out and what the number was.
Being one of the first 9 medals given out, it means that this medal was handed out by Andrew Carnegie himself. It was part of the first award ceremony on May 24, 1905
Correction: The medals were still in the design stage on May 24, 1905 when the awards were made. It took two years before the medals were struck, I cannot find any evidence of an awards ceremony, from what I can put together it was likely mailed to the widow some time after they were struck in October 1906.
This medal will be the prize of my collection, I never could have imagined that one day I would be able to own such an early example of this medal.
Comments
Nice, historic medal. Congrats for picking it up!
The medal says Seymour J. Leighton died while attempting to save Mary G. Kane and Evelyn Bliss. Since it says "attempting", did he fail in his efforts?
Yes they did, unfortunately all three of the people died. I found an article from a couple of days after the incident and they were still looking for the bodies. This medal was awarded posthumously if I remember correctly about 10% are.
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Very interesting series. What other numbers do you have so far?
181 - Charles R. Leonard - Street Car Conductor saved a women aged 63, August 9, 1907
2174 - Alfred H. Davies December 24, 1926 - He tried but failed to save a co-worker who fell into a Hydrogen Sulfide tank. Interestingly, another medal was awarded to the person that pulled Alfred from the tank after Alfred's failed attempt.
2456 -Charles A. F. McIsaac Medal - September 21, 1929 - attempted to save someone from being hit by a train, but she died two days later. It took Charles a year without being able to work, before he could recover from his injuries.
He also started a number of Hero Funds in other countries I have a Belgium silver medal, and a couple of French bronze medals.
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Great series of medals, though I do not know how the families could part with them. Superb documentation of the heroics of people in everyday life...but then, that is where the real heroics occur. Not in sports or tinseltown, but in the communities of hardworking people, helping their neighbors. Cheers, RickO
I agree it is best when they stay in the family, although in some of the cases I think the lineage may just end. One of my medals, #161 it was awarded for something that occurred in 1907. I lucked out in my research and found a local newspaper article from 1980, which documented the provenance up until that point. The winner of the medal didn't have any kids so it went to his nephew, and the owner at the time of the article was the late nephews wife. My guess is the medal was on the market after she died. She looked pretty old in the 1980 article.
If you look at what comes on the market, they do tend to be the older medals.
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