For those interested in browsing Mint history
RogerB
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US Mint (RG104), entry 235, volumes 5-7 have recently been added to the NNP database. These are fair copies (manuscript) of letters sent by the Director's office between February 10, 1875 and February 2, 1876. Most letters are to one or more of the mints, Assay Offices, or the Secretary of Treasury, but others are to vendors, artists, members of Congress and citizens. The range of subjects is very broad, covering almost everything related to the Mint Bureau.
Each volume has an alphabetical index by recipient, but there is no reference by subject. Letters are approximately in chronological order.
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Comments
oh boy! this should be fun!
I wonder how many complaints about the 20 cent coins are there.
I'm diving in. Wish me luck.
edit https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/567024
Good luck! If you find anything cool please share.
If one wanted to read, what would one search for? I appreciate the NNP, but find the search function hard to use.
October 9, 1875
Sirs; I will will thank you to send me by Monday's mail the following pieces of silver, viz.
10 proof 20c
One trade dollar (proof)
Very respectfully,
H.R. Linderman, director
October 12, 1875
I enclose herewith the sum of $3 52/100 dollars ($3.52) for the payment of the 10 proof 20c pieces, and one proof trade Dollar, enclosed in your letter of the 11th.
I will thank you to send me six (6) other proof 20c pieces and one Trade Dollar.
Very respectfully,
H.R. Linderman, director
Most of the U.S. Mint documents on NNP are handwritten and not transcribed (the cost do so would be on the order of a million dollars). So they are generally not searchable, but at least you can access them online (National Archives material is posted at https://nnp.wustl.edu/Library/Archives?searchLetter=U).
Ideally technology will catch up so that the handwritten material can be transcribed via software. If anyone out there has a solution that works we are all ears (would be happy to supply a few sample docs for testing purposes).
Great resource for historical research. I have been thinking about future research of modern communications at the Mint.... Most companies do not archive emails. Will valuable communications be lost? Perhaps @RogerB can provide information on this subject... Cheers, RickO
Various records preservation acts require Federal (and most state) agencies to identify and archive emails. The rules are rather complex and each agency has a records manager to help with the work. However, back in the old days - prior to about 1950 - written discussions and meetings were recorded in memoranda or letters from one officer to another. Now, those routine communications are scrubbed and cleaned up so that much of the "flavor" and "disagreement" is removed. Some of this is technology driven and some is a byproduct of the number of people involved and the large quantity of decisions that have to be made and documented. (A good modern example is to read the US Mint Historian's accounts of various commemorative coins. They are dead, lifeless commentaries that eliminate all disagreement, questions, resolutions and solutions. The "rose-colored gold" coins are an example - the problems were openly discussed by Mint staff, but this critical information is not in the official account.)
As to machine recognition of handwriting, I have an approach which can work for the greater majority of government document that were written by trained clerks. Individual personal letters are probably not going to be transcribed my machine - there are simply too many idiosyncratic variations. (But - this is what makes our signatures important identifiers, too.)
Thank you @RogerB....Glad to hear there are measures in place for preservation. Cheers, RickO
Personally, I think the "cleanliness" of modern materials is an historical problem. In old letters and internal documents, we can read about disagreements between various officials. In modern stuff, most of that is gone, so we loose the context and relative importance of decisions.