PARISH, Jr., DANIEL

Copyright © 2011-2017 John N. Lupia III

Parish, Jr. Daniel (1842-1914) President ANS 1883-1896. 2 East 16^th Street, New York

Daniel Parish, Jr. joined the ANS April 13, 1865, and assumed a leadership role almost immediately: that same year he was elected Corresponding Secretary. During the course of his association with the ANS over the next twenty-five years, Parish assumed numerous positions of increasing responsibility.

Initially, Parish served as Librarian from 1866-1870. By 1870, Parish had been elected First Vice-President. A donor, in 1878, to the ANS library. Parish would serve as either First or Second Vice-President for the next thirteen years. In 1883, he succeeded Charles Anthon as ANS President upon the latter's untimely death. In June of that year he donated $50 for the fund to collect $1,000 to buy a complete set of facsimile Greek and Roman coins for the ANS. The following year Parish would be elected President in his own right and remained as President until retiring in 1896. During Parish's tenure as president, the ANS substantially revised its Constitution in 1894 to incorporate the many revisions that had been made in a piecemeal fashion since 1884. Even after retiring from the presidency due to ill health, Parish continued to serve on numerous committees and served as First Vice-President once again from 1905-10. From 1910 until his death, Parish also served on the Board of Governors.

On December 6, 1894 read a paper, “Some New Light on the Washington Season Medal.”

He donated “The Capture of Louisburg” medal to the ANS in 1895.

Daniel Parish, Jr., was the very first to ever publish an extensive list of all known coin auction catalogues of auctions held in America. His three-part series that ran from August to October 1866 published in American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. 1, Nos. 4-6, August, September, October (1866) : 29-30, 35-36, and 43-44, served as the foundation for Emanuel Joseph Attinelli's, Numisgraphics, published a decade later. There is very strong evidence that suggests that Daniel Parish, Jr was assisting Attinelli in the production of his book, and that it is he whom Attinelli refers to in his Preface as the anonymous numismatist who owned the largest collection of coin auction catalogues in the country, which included the original broadside of the Watkins sale in June 1828. That broadside was sold to Richard Hoe Lawrence who donated it to the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society where it still remains. You might say that Daniel Parish, Jr., is the ghost writer of Numisgraphics, but credit is due to Dr. Attinelli who records throughout Numisgraphics, of the various people to whom he wrote inquiring about auctions, and catalogs and personalities, and mentions those who loaned him copies and so forth of various material to complete his manuscript. This is also true regarding the other two parts of Numisgraphics, that the whole book serves as the very first American Numismatic Library Manual containing as complete a bibliography as possible of all known American coin auction catalogues, annd other numismatic literature. Remember it was Daniel Parish, Jr., who was the Librarian of the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society and the whole of Numisgraphics, smacks of Parish's exhaustive work, augmented, supplemented and revised by Dr. Attinelli. Technically, Numisgraphics, is a co-authored book written by both Parish and Attinelli but due to the humility and modesty of Parish who wished to remain anonymous is known solely under the authorship of Dr. Attinelli. Daniel Parish, Jr., is our true and authentic unsung hero in American numismatic history!

To commemorate his many significant donations to the ANS, the Society commissioned a medal designed by Lea Ahlborn in 1890. In 1908, it elected Parish Honorary President for Life. Daniel Parish, Jr. died in December 1914. At the time of his death, Parish was also Chairman of the Executive Committee of the New-York Historical Society, an organization that he had been associated with for thirty-two years. Subscriber to Crosby’s Early Coins of America.

Henry Parish was a brother of Daniel Parish Jr., former President of the American Numismatic Society. He was the nephew of Henry Parish, of Parish & Kernochan, a nephew of Thomas Powell, one of the wealthiest citizens of Newburg. He came to New York City about forty-five years before, and made at least $1 million in the dry goods business. During the panic of 1832, he bought up goods and shipped them to his agencies in New Orleans, Savannah and Charleston, to be sold at very large profits. He suffered a stroke that paralyzed him several years before his death. (Obituary. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Mar. 15, 1856.) His uncle's will left him half his lot and store at No. 172 Pearl-street, at the corner of Pine, whose other half was owned by Joseph Kernochan. His brother, Daniel Parish, and friends Joseph Kernochan and Joseph Delafield were executors, and Henry and William Delafield were additional executors and trustees. A codicil removed his brother and left the residue to his wife, Susan Marie. (Will of the Late Henry Parish. New York Times, Apr. 2, 1856.) His uncle's will was still being contested when his aunt died and left everything to her brothers [who were the sons of John Delafield.] (Law Reports. New York Times, Aug. 7, 1861).

Work :

Daniel Parish, Jr., “List of Catalogues of Coin Sales, Held in the United States from 1828 to the present,” American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. 1, Nos. 4-6, August, September, October (1866) : 29-30, 35-36, and 43-44

Bibliography :

Proceedings of the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society, of New York At the Annual Meeting, March 18, 1879: page 13

The Numismatist, Vol. 4, No. 5, May (1892) : 73;

Proceedings of the American Numismatic and Archeological Society (1903) : 27

Smith-I 179-180

The Numismatist, Vol. VII, No. 1, January (1894) : 12;

The Numismatist, Vol. 8, No. 1, January (1895) : 25

American Numismatic and Archaeological Society, The Numismatist, Vol. IX, No. 1, January (1896) : 25.

Gnecchi, Ercole and Francesco, eds., Guida Numismatica 4^th edition. (Milano : U. Hoepli, 1903. Edition) : 556, No. 5765

"Daniel Parish Dies," New York Times, Dec. 18, 1914.

Pete Smith, “American Numismatic Pioneers : An Index to Sources,” Asylum Vol. XXII, No. 3, Consecutive Issue No. 87, Summer (2004) : 297;

Sylvester Sage Crosby, The Early Coins of America; and the laws governing their issue. Comprising also descriptions of the Washington pieces, the Anglo-American tokens, many pieces of unknown origin, of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the first patterns of the United States mint. By Sylvester S. Crosby. (Boston, 1875);

Adelson, Howard L., The American Numismatic Society, 1858-1959. (New York, ANS, 1958);

Pete Smith, American Numismatic Biographies, (Rock River, 1992); http://www.numismatics.org/archives/parishbio.htm