David Schenkman has an artical in the latest TAMs journal about Ada Rehan, a famous 1800's stage actress. Rehan modeled the statue Justice for Montana's state exhibit in the1893 Columbian Expo. The statue was poured with 1600 pounds of silver and was 12 feet tall. There's much more to the article about Ada of cource. I just thought this really jumped out. Ada Rehan: Nineteenth Century Superstar--David E. Schenkman TAMs Journal March/April 2026 https://www.mtmemory.org/assets/display/677503-max?u=1523bcbfb448dfcd9dac886338aeb149
Just curious...where is this statue located....and does anybody have a Ford F-3500 I can borrow....plus a steel chain ?
That question wasn't really directed at anybody, just a comment on the amount of gold and silver used. Found this on-line: 24,000 ounces of sterling (about 22,200 ounces of pure silver) ...almost 12,000 ounces of gold, over 800 pounds At the end of the fair, the statue traveled to various county fairs and stores and eventually ended in Omaha where it was consigned to a smelter and melted in 1903.
I assume the "souvenir" on the linked image refers to the card, not the sculpture! A bit over $50 million in melt value at today's prices. Wonder if any of the smelted gold or silver made it into anything I own today...
I too commissioned a sculpture made of silver. It guarded my late wife's jewelry box and was a wee bit smaller: My favorite bit of silver history involves the Manhattan Project. The project needed a large quantity of conductive wire to make calutrons to enrich Uranium. Copper was a critical resource for the war, and while the project could have requisitioned it, it could not do so secretly. Instead, Colonel Kenneth Nichols negotiated a loan of silver from the Treasury. 14,700 tons of the stuff, or, if you prefer, over 428 million troy ounces. Eventually all but about 15,500 troy ounces was returned to the Treasury.
Borrowing from the treasury was probably a good move. I'm pretty sure buying 15 tons of silver on the open market would have been a bit noisy.
