The first recorded manifestation by Charles Francis Adams of an interest in coins, an interest which would absorb him to the end of his life, came in 1833 when he discovered among his grandfather’s papers some “old coins of the time of the English Commonwealth, 1649,” evidently sent to John Adams by the English antiquarian, Thomas Brand Hollis (vol. 5:141–142, above). Two years later, in June 1835, when John Quincy Adams made known his intent to give to his son the collection of medals and coins that he had been in the process of gathering at least as early as his ministry to Russia, 1809–1814, Charles Francis Adams was able to understand fully the significance of the gift, recording that “This is a present of high value to me,” and later calling the gift, “one of great consequence.” John Quincy Adams added to his announcement the wish that Charles should arrange the collection and have it “put up in suitable boxes and draws.” Over the next several weeks the transfer of the collection was effected (p. 151–152, 169, 174, below). Meanwhile, Charles, with his cabinetmaker, James Sharp, began the planning of a piece of furniture to house the medals and coins which, after xiiinumerous delays by Sharp both in the planning and execution, was delivered in October (p. 163, 248, below). Without waiting for the completion of the cabinet, Adams was “occupied in making out my coins on paper so as to from a tolerably accurate idea of the surface they will occupy” (p. 176, 185, 187, below). Diagrams in Charles Francis Adams’ hand of the projected arrangement in nine drawers, with the various coins and medals drawn in outline, are in the Adams Papers, Microfilms, Reel No. 601. That containing part of the French coins is the one illustrated in the present volume.

As evidenced by the diagrams, the collection which John Quincy Adams presented to his son consisted mainly of European coins of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The more valuable part, the ancient coins, which he had kept in “a casket” in Washington and which it was his intent to send to Charles Francis, were not to be found when John Quincy Adams returned to Washington (p. 185, 249, 280, below). There is no evidence that they turned up later.

Characteristically, Charles Francis Adams’ first efforts were directed toward acquainting himself with the literature of numismatics, especially that which bore upon antiquity. By 1838 he felt himself sufficiently grounded to volunteer to make a catalogue of the Boston Athenaeum’s collection of Roman coins. His offer was accepted by the trustees; the catalogue, running to seventy-five pages, remains at the Athenaeum. Not until 1846 or thereabouts did he feel his historical and numismatic learning and his means sufficient to justify substantial outlays for the purchase of coins. By then the fields of his interest, ancient, medieval, and modern European, especially the coinage of England and of France, had been fairly well defined. His taste had become committed too to coins that were reflective of important historical developments, rather than to coins of great rarity or of numismatic significance.

Thereafter he began buying fairly regularly, though never lavishly, from local collectors and dealers and at the Philadelphia and New York auctions. It was during his years in London, 1862–1868, however, that in the auction rooms he made his largest and most important purchases. As his son Henry wrote, “He would disappear from the Legation day after day to attend coin sales at Sotheby’s, where his son attended alternate sales of drawings, engravings, or water-colors” ( The Education of Henry Adams , Boston, 1918, p. 213).

Upon the death of Charles Francis Adams, the collection begun by his father and greatly augmented by Charles, numbering some ten thousand coins, passed by will to his son Henry. Henry Adams made some minor additions of his own, chiefly in the coins of the countries of the Middle and Far East in which he traveled, but he never showed an addiction. In 1913 he gave the collection to the Massachusetts Historical Society. The Society, in turn, as its scholarly activities shifted almost exclusively to the field of historical manuscripts—after taking care that those ancient and American coins in the Adams and in its other collections which were not pres-xivent in the collections of a principal local institution were added to those collections, and after reserving the medals for its own uses in historical studies—dispersed the remainder of the collection at auction sales in 1971.

A more comprehensive account of “Charles Francis Adams, Numismatist” by Marc Friedlaender is listed for publication in the Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings for 1974.