EDOUARD FROSSARD (1837-1899)

I came across an interesting newspaper article this week in the San Francisco Chronicle for April 14, 1899. It announced that famous numismatist Edourad Fossard was dead. I did not recognize the name and began to search various resources.

 

Spelling was a problem. Similar articles giving the name as Edouard Fossard appeared in papers from Bay City, Michigan, Butte, Montana, Chambers, Nebraska, Esterville, Iowa, Macon, Missouri, Marion, Indiana, Muscatine, Iowa, Norfolk. Nebraska, and Warrington, Missouri.

Other articles giving the name as Eduard Fossard appeared in Earlington, Kentucky, and Unionville, Missouri.

He must have been famous for his death to get such wide coverage. I suspect most E-Sylum readers have gotten ahead of me by now.

Obituaries for Professor Edouard Frossard were published in the Brooklyn Citizen, the Brooklyn Eagle, the Brooklyn Times Union. The New York Herald, The New York Times, and The New-York Tribune. The New York obituaries were extensive and got the spelling right.

For many public records there is another contradictory record. I may mention both.

The Numismatist (Mar 1892) stated that he was born near Lake Leman (Lake Geneva) in Switzerland in 1937. His obituaries state that he was born in Paris, France. In The Numismatist it was mentioned that he received a good collegiate education but the school was not mentioned.

The Numismatist stated that he came to America in 1858. However, there is a ship record of Edouard Frossard, age 17, arriving in New York in 1854.

Before the Civil War he was a professor of languages at the school of the A. Boursand Academy in Brooklyn.

He married Hannah (a/k/a Anna) Amanda Philips (1841-1917). They had three children with one dying young.

Although an immigrant to this country, he volunteered with his two younger brothers for service during the Civil War. He enlisted as a sergeant-major with the 31st New York Volunteers. He was promoted to lieutenant, then captain and acting Colonel. He was "badly wounded whilst advancing boldly upon the enemy," at the battle of West Point, Virginia, on May 7, 1862. Frossard saw detached service at Fort McHenry, near Baltimore. He was appointed judge-advocate with the general court-martial.

After the war he opened a private school at Irvington-on-Hudson.

Frossard began collecting coins about 1872. He collected the U. S. Large cents and also worked to form a collection for George Merritt. In 1875 he was editor of The Coin Collectors Journal for J. W. Scott. His collecting grew into dealing and he opened a business in 1877.

He had one of the major auction companies of his era. Between 1878 and his death in 1899, he conducted 176 auction sales. He promoted the business and hobby through his newsletter Numisma. It reported on upcoming sales and had reports on past sales. He also had articles and general commentary. A hundred copies of the periodical were reprinted by RAMM Communications.

His auction series was continued with fifteen more sales by his son Ed, (Edwin Maire Frossard 1875-1939) between 1899 and 1901. Then he left the hobby and "went South" leaving considerable debt.

 

Frossard compiled Monograph of United States Cents and Half Cents 1793-1857 published in 1879. It was based primarily on the Merritt Collection.

With William Wallace Hayes, he compiled Varieties of United States Cents of 1794, published in 1893. The varieties became known by their Hays numbers. The book was reprinted in 1910.

 

With George M. Parsons, he wrote Franco-American Jetons, Fully Described and Illustrated [bound with] The Colonial Jetons of Louis XV and Other Pieces Relating to the French Colonial Possessions in America, and to their Conquest by England, published in 1899.

The Numismatist Directory for 1891 listed Frossard as member #42 at 787-789 Broadway in New York City. He placed his first ad in The Numismatist in the issue of July, 1891. In 1895 he was at 108 East 14th Street. Numbers were reassigned and he became charter member #14. He was an officer of the American Numismatic Association and served as Counterfeit Detector in 1892 but declined reelection. He was also a member of the New York Numismatic and Archaeological Society.

In the 1880 Census he is indexed as Edward Frassard. The variance in the last name is probably a misinterpretation of the handwriting, In 1880 he was listed as a teacher, born in France and living in Irvington, New York. Frossard began a feud with William Woodward in 1881. In his sale of January 10, 1881, Woodward described lot 469 as a gold coin of Pescennius Niger. It was actually a fake perpetrated by German forger Carl Wilhelm Becker.

Frossard published his fable, "The False Talisman," in the March 1881 issue of Numisma. Knowledgeable readers took this as an attack on Woodward. He.in turn, responded with a review of Frossard's book, "it is perhaps the only book ever written, from which no new fact may be gleaned…"

Woodward told the story of Ichabod Crane, a teacher at Irvington-on-Hudson. In this he challenged Frossard's claims of service during the Civil War.

It is an amusing piece of banter that is probably not justified. Frossard is mentioned in the Official Records of the war and he was honored for his military service.

Frossard also made an occasional mistake. He identified a Betts fabrication as the discovery of a new variety of Novum Belgium piece.

In the 1892 New York Census, he was listed as Edward Frossard, a coin dealer married to Anna.

His obituaries state that he had a stupendous art collection, the work of John Trumbull. When the collection came up for sale, it was exposed as a "massive, deliberate fraud."

Frossard was a member of The Masons and a member of the U.S. Grant Post 327 of the GAR,

He died at home at 221 Lexington Avenue, New York, on April 12, 1899, and is buried in White Plains Rural Cemetery. In 2015, he was inducted into the PCGS Coin Dealer Hall of Fame.

In my opinion, a much better telling of the Frossard story can be found in The Numismatist for January 1995, pages 71-74.

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