Collecting Friends: An American Silver Half Dollar in Mexico

An American Silver Half Dollar in Mexico

Dennis: November 2023 found me in upstate New York for the Thanksgiving holiday, visiting family and doing a little historical sightseeing. I was able to tour the Starr Clark Tin Shop and Underground Railroad Museum in the town of Mexico, New York, thanks to volunteers and officers of the Mexico Historical Society. President Allie Proud was on hand, along with volunteers Jim Hotchkiss and Barry Haynes. They gave an in-depth tour for me and my family, a wonderful cap to our week in New York before we headed back home to Atlanta.

I’ll tell you more about the tin shop and museum in another installment of “Collecting Friends,” because they have some fascinating numismatic connections. But for now I want to focus on a huge surprise that awaited me in Mexico—specifically, a huge COIN! When we pulled into the parking lot across from the museum, the last thing I expected to see was a gigantic silver half dollar. And yet, there it was, in mural form, on the side of the Town Hall building.

The Town Hall of Mexico, New York, features a monumental Walking Liberty half dollar. (Photograph by Dennis Tucker, November 2023.)

It was a Walking Liberty half dollar, dated 2004 (the year it was painted by Syracuse artist Kenneth C. Burke), and it’s part of a mural called “Mexico—Path to Freedom.”

This northeastern New York town was very important in the passage of slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad in the early 1800s. In a plaque accompanying the mural, the Walking Liberty half dollar is identified as symbolic of the “financial support of freedom” offered by Mexico’s businessmen.

A numismatist might ask, “Why not show a Liberty Seated half dollar, the type minted from the 1830s to the 1890s?” That’s what would have been in circulation during the Underground Railroad era, when abolitionists like Mexico tinsmith Starr Clark risked their businesses (and their own safety) to support others’ freedom.

The town’s connection to the Walking Liberty half dollar was explained to me by Mexico Historical Society volunteer Jim Hotchkiss. “Audrey Munson, the artist’s inspiration for Miss Liberty on the half dollar, lived in Mexico before she became America’s most famous model, and again after her career crashed,” Jim told me. He’s assembled a collection of Munsonabilia that includes postcards, magazine articles, sculptures, and other mementoes.

[Image: Historian Jim Hotchkiss has taken an interest in America’s first supermodel, Audrey Munson, who lived in Mexico. (Photo by Dennis Tucker, November 2023.)]

Some of the Munson memorabilia collected by Hotchkiss and displayed at the Mexico Historical Society’s museum. (Photo by Dennis Tucker.)

The beautiful Miss Munson grew into the nation’s first supermodel after she was discovered by a photographer in her late teens. This led to high demand as a sculptors’ model. Silent-film contracts followed—and plenty of headlines and buzz.

Numismatists know many of the artists she posed for. They included coin and medal designers like Robert Aitken, John Flanagan, Daniel Chester French, and Adolph A. Weinman.

In the 1910s Munson was the toast of New York’s art world. She posed as a model for the Three Graces sculpture in Hotel Astor’s Grand Ballroom, then for public works like the Spirit of Commerce angel at the Manhattan Bridge, the figure of Columbia at the USS Maine National Monument, and Civic Fame on top of the Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street, among many others. Munson famously modeled for nearly two-thirds of the statuary of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Another important contract: posing for Adolph Weinman’s 1916 half dollar design—the job that brought her lasting fame in numismatic circles. (Retired U.S. Mint chief engraver John Mercanti has studied Munson’s life. I remember him telling me he wants to write a Broadway musical about her!)

[Image: Sunset magazine, October 1915, featuring Adolph Weinman’s Descending Night. The statue’s model was Audrey Munson, who would later pose for Weinman’s Walking Liberty half dollar design.]

Sadly, Audrey Munson’s charmed life was derailed in 1919. A doctor—the model’s landlord— became obsessed with her and killed his wife so he would be available to marry. Munson was innocent, but her reputation became embroiled in the sensational case. She and her mother fled New York City and ended up back in Mexico, New York. She was unable to find significant work—Jim Hotchkiss told me how she would be seen wandering up and down the town’s streets—and she and her mother sold kitchenware to support themselves. In 1922 Audrey Munson tried to commit suicide by poison. In 1931 her mother asked a judge to commit her to an insane asylum. The once-famous supermodel was institutionalized at the age of 40 and spent the next 65 years being treated for schizophrenia and depression. She died alone in an asylum at the age of 104.

I wasn’t expecting that gigantic (physically and metaphorically) connection to coin collecting as I drove my car into Mexico’s Town Hall parking lot.

Coins can show up when you least expect them. 

Steve, you’ve explored all four corners of the globe. In your travels, have you ever encountered, or heard of, any other physically huge coin-related public art?

Steve: Dennis! I found one of my favorite pieces of art incorporating coins while exploring downtown New York City a few years ago. Margie Hughto’s 1997 work titled Trade, Treasure and Travel is at the Cortlandt Street station of the R and W trains. It consists of various ceramic relief tiles that were re-installed in 2011 in the new underpass connecting the Cortlandt station with the nearby Fulton Center, after the destruction of the World Trade Center a decade earlier. 

The artist said that she thought about the history of the financial district, when Cortlandt street ended at a busy ferry landing on the Hudson River. She shared, “I thought about the different peoples, products, objects and money that passed through the area, and I visualized a treasure vault filled with coins, gems and artifacts – rich, golden, glowing and somewhat mysterious.” Renditions of Peace dollars, Standing Liberty quarter dollars, Kennedy half dollars, Indian Head cents and Indian Head 5-cent pieces are seen, alongside fanciful interpretations of $1 Federal Reserve Notes and plenty of other coins both real and imagined. 

The work consists of 11 separate, but thematically related panels made of ceramic tiles, with plenty of coins alongside compasses, boats, streetcards, keys, ships, and animals both real (bulls and bears) and imagined (griffins and a sphinx). The reliefs were made in the artist’s Jamestown, New York, studio and students from the School of art and Design at Syracuse University assisted. Everytime I look at them, I always find something new to enjoy. 

The ceramic tiles of Margie Hughto’s work titled Trade, Treasure and Travel include plenty of depictions of coins. 

Be on the lookout for another installment of Collecting Friends next month or subscribe here and never miss a post! In the meantime, explore beautiful coins from the ANA's Edward C. Rochette Money Museum Virtual Exhibits.

About the Collecting Friends Blog

Hello! And welcome to the ANA’s blog series, “Collecting Friends.”

We decided to approach this much like a conversation between friends. One of us starts with a topic, then the other responds. Simple as that. Along those lines, we’ll keep the tone conversational as much as possible. 

We both write about coins professionally, and will keep our relative style guides in our writing. For Dennis, Publisher at Whitman Publishing, that means capitalizing “Proof” and italicizing Red Book and never saying anything bad about Ken Bressett, who’s awesome anyway. 

For Steve, who’s written with Coin World for 15 years, it means Winged Liberty Head dime instead of “Mercury” dime, and similar nuances and oddities. And, it means writing A Guide Book of United States Coins (better known as the “Red Book”). 

Both of us started collecting when we were little, introduced to coins by a chance encounter with an old coin that sparked our curiosity. One of Steve’s interests is coin valuation, and he gravitates towards the intersection of art and coins. Dennis enjoys medals and world coins, and studying modern U.S. coins in the context of older series, what came before.

We met in 2012 at the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Philadelphia at an event hosted by the Austrian Mint where there was both a Ben Franklin and a Betsy Ross impersonator. We’ve become great friends in the past decade. We even were appointed together to sit on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee starting in 2016, but Steve resigned soon after he was appointed to accept a full-time job at the Treasury Department while Dennis was re-appointed in 2020.

We taught a course together on numismatic publishing and writing a few years ago at the Summer Seminar, and while life has gotten in the way of us teaching another class, we jumped at our friend Caleb’s suggestion that we write a column. We hope you enjoy it! 

About the American Numismatic Association

The American Numismatic Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and encouraging people to study and collect coins and related items. The Association serves collectors, the general public, and academic communities with an interest in numismatics.

The ANA helps all people discover and explore the world of money through its vast array of educational programs including its museum, library, publications, conventions and numismatic seminars.