406, Lot: 925. Estimate $150. Sold for $320. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

PERU, Republic. 1821-pres. AV Medal (22mm, 7.18 g, 12h). The Birth of Maria Julia Carlota du Bois y Gonzalez. Dated 3 December 1877. NACIO EL 3 DE DICIEMBRE DE 1877, MARIA JULIA/ CARLOTA/ DU BOIS/ Y/ GONZALEZ / C ALFONSO GONZALEZ Y ORBEGESO - LUISA GONZALEZ DE DREYFUS, “Padrinos.”(Godparents) in script in center of bilobe. Adams II 643 (this medal). EF, holed for suspension.

Ex Dr. Lawrence A. Adams Collection (Classical Numismatic Group Electronic Auction 361, 14 October 2015), lot 643; Heritage (22 August 1990), lot 1840.

Auguste Dreyfus was born to a Jewish family in Wissembourg, Alsace, in 1827. By 1852, he and his brothers had established a cloth trading business in Paris, but Auguste had moved to Peru by 1859. Here, he converted to Catholicism. In 1868, he arranged an exclusive contract with the Peruvian government to be their sole exporter of bat guano, then an extremely important component in the manufacture of gunpowder. This contract made Dreyfus fabulously wealthy and enabled him to underwrite several loans to the government. 

Auguste married Sofia Bergman in 1862 and, after her death in 1871, remarried to Luisa González Orbegoso, Marquise de Villa Hermosa, in 1873. This second marriage bore him two sons - Louis and Édouard - and two daughters - Maria Emilia and Maria Julia. Louis eventually inherited his mother’s title by special permission of Spanish king Alfonso XIII. Édouard would go on to become an important lawyer, as well as a painter, writer, and amateur composer, the latter under the pseudonym Jean Dora.