92 Facts About Franklin Peale

Franklin Peale was a son of painter Charles Willson Franklin Peale, and was born in the Philadelphia Museum, a museum of curiosities which his father ran in Philadelphia.

In 1833, Franklin Peale was hired by the Mint, and was sent for two years to Europe to study and report back on coining techniques.

Franklin Peale returned with plans for improvement, and designed the first steam-powered coinage press in the United States, installed in 1836.

Franklin Peale was made Melter and Refiner of the Philadelphia Mint that year, and Chief Coiner three years later upon the retirement of the incumbent, Adam Eckfeldt, who continued in his work without pay.

Eckfeldt's labor allowed Franklin Peale to run a medal business using Mint property.

In retirement, Franklin Peale continued his involvement in and leadership of many civic organizations; he died in 1870.

Franklin Peale was given the name Aldrovand, after the Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi.

Charles Franklin Peale recorded family births on the flyleaf of a copy of Matthew Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, rather than in a Bible, and after recording "Aldrovand" added the notation, "if he likes that name when he comes of age".

Franklin Peale was one of sixteen children his father would have by his three wives.

Elizabeth Peale died when Franklin was eight years old, but his father soon remarried, and the child was thereafter cared for by his stepmother.

Franklin Peale was given little classroom education, though he did spend some time at a local school in nearby Bucks County, as well as at Germantown Academy and the University of Pennsylvania.

At age 17, Franklin Peale began to work for the Delaware cotton factory of William Young, on the Brandywine River, learning the making of machines.

Franklin Peale was an apt student, becoming adept as a turner, founder, and draftsman.

Franklin Peale was tolerated in his desire for a mechanical career by his father, who considered it a foolish whim.

At age 19 Franklin Peale returned to Germantown, where, having designed and supervised the installation of the machinery for a cotton factory there, he was put in charge, and continued to manage the factory for several years.

The Peale family began a lengthy effort to show that Eliza Peale was mad when she married Franklin, a ground for annulment.

Franklin Peale was required to post assets as security for the support of his former wife; his sister Sophy lent him some of her stock in the museum for that purpose.

In 1820, Franklin Peale left factory management to assist his aging father in running the museum, and remained there for over a decade.

When Charles Willson Peale died in 1827, Franklin became the manager of the museum, and like his siblings, inherited stock in it.

At the time, the museum was located in the Old State House, and Franklin Peale worked out a system for using the State House bell to inform fire companies of the location of a blaze.

Franklin Peale taught natural history, mechanics, and chemistry, livening the talks with experiments.

Franklin Peale was for many years actively involved with The Franklin Institute, writing articles for its Journal and serving on key committees.

Franklin Peale departed from New York for Le Havre on May 8,1833, arriving in Paris late in the month.

Franklin Peale had been instructed to learn "parting," a newly developed method for separating gold and silver.

The staff there was cooperative, and Franklin Peale was able to learn the "humid" method from watching the assayer as he verified the silver content of the coins from the French branch mints.

Franklin Peale's notes were supplemented by detailed engravings of all the fixtures used in the process, published and sold by the Paris mint at an expense of 98 francs 50 centimes, which Franklin Peale deemed worth the purchase on the US government's behalf.

Franklin Peale purchased a set of the apparatus for the humid method, made and sold by the mint; Franklin Peale paid 500 francs for this.

Franklin Peale sketched the Monnaie de Paris's Thonnelier model coin presses.

Franklin Peale copied the Paris facility's Tour a portrait reducing lathe.

Franklin Peale journeyed to London, hoping that Moore's connections could get him instruction in the parting process.

In England, Peale studied the method of assaying via the humid process at Percival N Johnson's refinery, and in 1835 introduced it to the Philadelphia Mint, replacing assaying by cupellation.

Franklin Peale returned to France where, as the refiners wanted payment for teaching him the French method of parting, he learned it by observing the assayer at the branch mint in Rouen.

Franklin Peale was not completely happy with this, as he was not allowed to practice it himself, or to experiment, but felt that he could reproduce what he had seen on his return to Philadelphia.

Franklin Peale visited the German mints of Dresden, Stuttgart, and Karlsruhe.

On June 17,1835, Franklin Peale submitted his report to Moore, 276 pages of his observations at the various European mints he had visited, and his comments and recommendations.

Franklin Peale warned, "in the organization of Mints in both France and England that there are offices and incumbents, that are useless, and who render no services of importance for their appointment".

Franklin Peale recommended favorably the French practice of not appointing a coin designer, but having competitions judged jointly by Mint officers and by artists.

Franklin Peale urged the passage of a single, comprehensive Mint Act, to replace the scattered bits of legislation passed over the years; this was done in 1837.

Franklin Peale recommended that the Philadelphia Mint strike medals, as did its French counterpart.

Franklin Peale suggested that the Mint establish a museum of coins and coining, as the Paris facility had.

Franklin Peale returned from Europe with plans he had drawn for a steam-powered coinage press, borrowing the steam machinery design from English mints and the toggle joint technology from French ones.

Robert Patterson III, son of the Mint Director under whom Franklin Peale served for many years, wrote that through Franklin Peale's report, "our Mint was placed in full possession of all that was then worthy to be known" from foreign mints and refineries.

Patterson indicated that he had often thought, as he passed through the Philadelphia Mint's coining department, that a plaque should be set up to Franklin Peale reproducing the tribute to Sir Christopher Wren in London's St Paul's Cathedral, Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice.

Franklin Peale was nominated as Cloud's replacement by President Andrew Jackson on December 21,1835, and was confirmed by the Senate on January 5,1836.

On taking office as Melter and Refiner, Franklin Peale implemented the changes he had recommended based on what he had seen in Europe.

Franklin Peale wanted additional mechanization in the mint's Coining Department, headed by Chief Coiner Adam Eckfeldt, whose son Jacob was the Philadelphia Mint's Assayer.

One of the innovations that Franklin Peale introduced as Melter and Refiner was the use of salt in parting, using it to recover the silver dissolved in nitric acid when gold bullion was being purified.

Franklin Peale, accompanied by his daughter Anna, arrived in Charlotte on September 23,1837.

Franklin Peale found that necessary equipment had not yet arrived, and without it he could do little.

Franklin Peale spent time visiting the mines on which the Charlotte Mint would rely for bullion.

Franklin Peale proposed to Patterson that he continue to New Orleans after Dahlonega, to which the Mint Director replied that he would "exercise my veto upon your proposed long delay" and "your presence [in Philadelphia] cannot be dispensed with".

Nevertheless, Franklin Peale recommended that construction on the building continue, as he deemed Congress unlikely to pass another appropriation for construction.

Franklin Peale was back at his desk at the Philadelphia Mint on December 23,1837.

Roger Burdette discusses the influence Franklin Peale had on the Mint in the 1830s:.

Franklin Peale went to basic principles of equipment used at these great mints, and adapted it to the American model of efficiency.

Franklin Peale did this by designing, striking and selling medals for private commission, using government property and labor, and the Philadelphia Mint's facilities.

Franklin Peale's enterprise was very profitable, as his expenses were minimal.

Franklin Peale had no relationship to the families that dominated the Philadelphia Mint, such as the Pattersons and Eckfeldts, and the connection with the Southerner Calhoun was objectionable to Peale, Patterson, and their associates.

Franklin Peale sometimes worked on medals for the government, taking care to exclude Longacre from the process.

In 1846, Peale designed and engraved the Coast Survey Medal.

Franklin Peale believed that all national commemorative medals, those authorized by Congress, should have their dies lodged at the Philadelphia Mint, and be struck there, and with Patterson's support urged the issuance of medals for presidents for whom no Indian Peace Medal had been designed, such as John Adams and William Henry Harrison.

Franklin Peale's improvements had made it possible for dies to be reproduced mechanically, relieving the Mint's Engraver of much of his routine duties.

Franklin Peale sought to sabotage Longacre's attempts, with the goal of having him dismissed, and such work contracted for outside the government, allowing the medal business to continue undisturbed.

Franklin Peale offered a competing design, showing a Liberty cap, very similar to one Gobrecht had made in 1836 when a gold dollar had been proposed.

In 1850, with the Mint faced with a vast increase in gold deposits due to the California Gold Rush, Franklin Peale suggested that the Mint hire women to supplement the staff assigned to weigh and adjust gold planchets, or coin blanks, describing the work as "being entirely suited to their capacity".

In 1851, Franklin Peale designed a new steam engine for the Philadelphia Mint, using a "steeple" design without exterior pipes.

Franklin Peale caused the Mint to purchase a large lathe for turning heavy metal rolls, which cost the government at least $2,000 and that Peale conceded had never worked and likely never would.

Franklin Peale bought from his nephew, George Sellers, a set of molds for casting ingots and accompanying equipment, which proved unusable as they were not adapted to the Mint's machinery.

An 1853 attempt by Franklin Peale to convert the Philadelphia Mint's wood-burning annealing furnaces to use anthracite coal destroyed the furnaces, cost the government several thousand dollars, and led to Franklin Peale being ordered to undertake no more such projects.

This, and similar practices whereby officials financed activities without an appropriation from Congress, were brought to an end after Franklin Peale proposed a $20,800 renovation of part of the Philadelphia Mint building in 1850, and ran over budget by $12,000.

Franklin Peale did his best to make McCulloh's position difficult, such as refusing to accept bullion for coins except from McCulloh personally.

President Millard Fillmore sent the article to Secretary of the Treasury Corwin for an explanation; Corwin forwarded it to Patterson, who confirmed that Franklin Peale was running a private medal business on the premises, but stated that there was no interference with the performance of Franklin Peale's duties as Chief Coiner.

The death of his predecessor caused Peale to write "a frantic letter" to the new Mint Director, George N Eckert, stating that he urgently needed an assistant.

Franklin Peale alleged that Mint workmen had been detailed to make repairs to Peale's house while being paid for their time by the government.

One man subsequently stated that he and another Mint employee spent two days working on Franklin Peale's house; another alleged that whenever the archery club of which Franklin Peale was a member met, Mint employees were sent to help with the arrangements.

McCulloh accused Franklin Peale of having Mint workers make furniture for his use when they would otherwise be idle.

Eckert was friendly towards Franklin Peale, and worked to discredit the accusations.

Franklin Peale left the Mint on December 2, [1854,] never again to return.

The reasons for Franklin Peale's firing were not publicly announced, and his friends and allies, such as William DuBois stated that it was so President Pierce could have the position to fill from the Democratic Party.

Taxay noted that this explanation ignored the fact that Martin Van Buren, under whose administration Franklin Peale had been appointed Chief Coiner, was a Democrat as president.

Franklin Peale had been elected a manager of the latter organization in 1839, served on many important committees, and was elected its president in 1863, still holding the office at his death in 1870.

Franklin Peale was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1865.

Franklin Peale catalogued his finds and added narrative descriptions, bequeathing the collection to the American Philosophical Society.

Franklin Peale was, at his death, president of the Skater's Club.

Franklin Peale was a lifelong skater, and developed a method for extracting a skater who broke through the ice that saved many lives.

Franklin Peale was among those consulted in 1870 by Treasury Secretary George Boutwell in preparing the legislation to reform the Mint that became the Coinage Act of 1873.

Franklin Peale advocated for the office of the Mint Director to be moved from Philadelphia to Washington; this was enacted.

Franklin Peale supported the abolition of the gold dollar and the three-dollar piece, but these coins were not ended by Congress until 1890.

Franklin Peale denigrated recent coin issues, saying that their designs have, "hitherto been lamentably, if not disgracefully deficient".

Franklin Peale married twice; his first marriage to Eliza Greatrake, contracted in 1815 while he was still a minor, produced one daughter, Anna, who survived him.

Franklin Peale enjoyed the company of children, making toys by his own hand for them.

Franklin Peale was in declining health in his final months, but was still able to continue his activities, and only a short illness preceded his death at his home at 1131 Girard Street in Philadelphia, on May 5,1870.