Henry D. Higgins was from Mishawaka, Indianan. He was a jeweler and an optometrist who also made barometers for farmers who needed to know something about the weather. Higgins had a few of his pieces made by the Childs company of Chicago, but he also made many of his own Civil War tokens. Higgins had two methods for making dies. One way was to taken and existing token and drive it into the face of a softened steel die. The impression he created would lose some detail, but he had an impression of the desired design. His more interesting varieties were made by his own hand. These pieces featured a variety of blooms, leaves, stars, horns and flourishes and some quite primitive lettering which gave his tokens a great deal of charm. He made tokens for other merchants as well as the “generic” patriotic token varieties which cannot be attributed to a specific business concern. Here is an example of Higgins’ work. First here is an original Monitor token, that was made by Scovill Manufacturing Company in Waterbury, Connecticut and Higgins copy of that piece. And here the reverse of that Monitor token, created by Higgins.
Nice post! and that is a very attractive HIggins token, most of them being very "mushy" (like the one I have) yet charming with the folksy motifs on the reverse.
