100 Year Old 1 Dollar United State of America Silver Coin

In the early 1900s, the Comstock lode was deteriorating as the supply of silver was decreasing, which resulted in a halt in silver coinage production. Then came the Pittman Act in 1918, which resulted in the melting down of over 270 million stored Morgan Silver Dollars and the selling of the bullion abroad, leading to a reissue of the Morgan Silver Dollar in 1921.

The Designer: George T. Morgan

The exquisite Morgan Dollars were named after their designer, George T. Morgan. During the year 1876, the Director of the United States Mint, Henry Linderman, realized that the nation desperately needed a new silver dollar coin. He decided to hold a competition between William and Charles Barber, who had worked at the Philadelphia Mint for years, and George T. Morgan, a young new engraver whom Linderman had brought over from England. Morgan was born in Birmingham, England in 1845 and was working as an engraver for the Royal Mint in London before being recruited as a “Special Engraver” for the U.S. Mint’s Philadelphia branch. While both Charles and Morgan created the same design for the coin, Linderman obviously liked Morgan's design better.

Morgan used Philadelphia school teacher Anna Williams as a model for Lady Liberty for one of his Half Dollar patterns in 1877 because her Greek profile was almost ideal. He expanded this pattern to the size of the Silver Dollar after the Bland-Allison Act was passed in 1878, and this was the model that was finally used for the Silver Dollars approved by the Act; the coin that soon became known as the Morgan dollar.

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