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President Roosevelt provides Leslie M. Shaw with lists of the Commissioners “to test and examine the weight and fineness of the coins reserved at the several mints during the calendar year 1902.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-01-17
President Roosevelt is glad that William Sturgis Bigelow liked the double eagle coin. He agrees with Bigelow’s opinion that it is the best coin minted in 2000 years. He was able to strike 100,000 of them before Congress stopped him due to the cost. He is interested in the experiments Bigelow is doing regarding how to cast better coins and would like to see the Assyrian samples.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-01-10
President Roosevelt informs artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens that the letter cheered him. Roosevelt asks Saint-Gaudens to “refine the head of Liberty” if he can and “keep the figure of Liberty for at least one small issue of the coins.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-05-12
President Roosevelt tells Augustus Saint-Gaudens that he has told Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw that the coinage is his “pet baby,” and that Saint-Gaudens should go ahead making the design. Although Shaw thinks that Roosevelt is “a mere crack-brained lunatic” about the matter, he says that a certain number of gold coins have to be stored in vaults, and there is no object to having them be artistically designed.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-01-06
President Roosevelt asks Director of the Mint Roberts if Dr. Leonard P. Kinnicutt can be named as a member of the Assay Commission for 1905.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-12-31
President Roosevelt is displeased by the “atrocious hideousness” of American coinage and asks Secretary of the Treasury Shaw if someone like Augustus Saint-Gaudens could design coinage that would have more beauty “without asking the permission of Congress.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-12-27
Assistant Secretary of State Bacon encloses a letter for President Roosevelt from Lloyd Carpenter Griscom, Ambassador in Rome, reporting that he gave King Victor Emmanuel III copies of the new coinage.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-02-12
Senator Lodge explains to President Roosevelt why he got the dates wrong for Hieron II. He had been thinking of Hieron I, but knew he was wrong when Roosevelt, who typically gets dates correct, thought Hiero II had lived a century after Alexander the Great. Lodge also discusses Philistis, the wife of Hieron II, and the coinage on which her head appears. He promises to show it to Roosevelt some time.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-12-14
Augustus Saint-Gaudens writes to President Roosevelt concerning his commission to redesign the federal coinage. Saint-Gaudens discusses his poor health as well as his plans for the coin designs.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-06-28
Uncle Sam looks skeptically at a “Democratic coin” with Alton B. Parker’s face on it. “Anti-protectionism,” “anti-patriotism,” “anti-expansion,” and “anti-prosperity” are on the four parts of the coin and “doubtful money” is on the bottom.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-10-15
Teresa Richardson will be grateful if her husband, Clifford Richardson, can be named one of the commissioners to visit Philadelphia and examine the coinage of the various mints on the second Wednesday of February.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-12-06