"Died on the Train": 1878 Mourning token for L. Frank Gray, on 1858 Seated Liberty half dollar

"Died on the Train": Mourning token inscribed "L. Frank Gray/July 1st 1878" on 1858 Seated Liberty half dollar



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Host coin: 1858 USA Seated Liberty half dollar.
Obverse: original Seated Liberty design, unaltered.
Reverse: "July 1st/L. Frank Gray/1878." inscription, with name in Old English lettering, ornamental border around rim.

Ex-"10michaelelps951", eBay, 10/29/2015.

This love token was only my second purchase towards a new love token/engraved/counterstamped type set endeavor. I was (and still am, as of this post) primarily seeking pictorial love tokens, which this is not. However, the engraving style is nice, and I was intrigued by the presence of a full date (month, day, year) and mostly full name, thinking that might make it possible to discover some of the history behind this piece.

I had assumed this was a birth/christening gift, but after finalizing the deal with the seller I did some quick web searching, and discovered that an L. Frank Gray in fact died of consumption (tuberculosis) on that day, while traveling on a train. So unless there is some other intersection of the same name and date in history, it would appear that I fortuitously nailed the history of this piece down. It is a mourning token!

Interestingly, I also found some newspaper obituaries and details on his final resting place online. It doesn't get any better than this. This is one thing that can be amazing about love tokens- you can pin so much more of their history down than you could with a regular coin!

Syracuse Sunday Times, July 7, 1878





The findagrave.com memorial contained a treasure trove of geneaological and historical information, and a picture of Mr. Gray's tombstone.

(It seems the researcher has herself now joined him in the hereafter, so I must posthumously thank her.)

This piece was once part of my Engraved/Counterstamped/Oddball Type Set.

 

Nope, never got that far. The coin is owned by someone else now. There were 2-3 people on Collectors Universe who snapped up my better love tokens in the recent purge/reorganization. Most of them bought 2-3 pieces each. I did well in the sales. This research pays off. It was always kind of a chore to me before ("research" is such a groan-inducing word, isn't it?), but I now find it rather fun.

Of course I've got the Internet at my fingertips now. Much earlier, when I tried tracking down the owner of a 1974 class ring I dug while detecting, there were roadblocks all thrown up all around, never mind that I was dealing with the alumni organization of the same school I myself graduated from ten years later, in the Class of 1984.

But the minister who married my wife and I is an avid detectorist (a beach hunter, unlike me), and he had as much fun tracking down the owners of lost rings as he did finding the gold in the first place. He always gave the goodies back to the amazed owners, who often had lost the items years if not decades before. And knowing him, he always declined any reward.