1797 Draped Bust Dollar, 10x6 Stars, Large Letters. BB-71, B-3, R.2.

Electronic Auction 520
Lot: 672. Estimated: $ 1 000

United States, Silver

Sold For $ 4 250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

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1797 Draped Bust Dollar, 10x6 Stars, Large Letters. BB-71, B-3, R.2. Graffiti on obverse: “Lucinda Walker” / Graffiti on reverse: “N Mc”. In NGC encapsulation 6461819-003, graded Fine Details, Graffiti. Colorful iridescent toning.

From the Hendin Family Collection. Ex Aaron Hendin, MD (1918-1990), by bequest.

The graffiti on the obverse is carefully engraved “Lucinda Walker”. A Lucinda Walker was born Lucinda Taylor, daughter of Susan Taylor and Chief Richard Fox Taylor of the Cherokee Nation. Lucinda was born circa 1834 in the Old Cherokee Nation. She married a cousin, John Osborn Walker circa 1854. According to the Eastern Cherokee application of her only child, daughter Emma, born 19 November 1855, the family lived in the Tahlequah District (they can be found as family #259 on the Cherokee Drennen Roll) where Lucinda died in 1859 at the age of 25. While the graffiti on the obverse makes this an interesting possibility of the person’s identity, the graffiti on the reverse makes this identification more compelling. We find below the wings of the eagle the following graffiti: “N” “Mc”. The half sister of Lucinda’s father was Nellie McDaniel, who married a white man, James McDaniel. It is possible that Lucinda’s father’s half sister, Nellie, had this silver dollar engraved with Lucinda’s married name as a wedding present upon her marriage. Lucinda Taylor would have been about 4 years old when her father, Chief Richard Fox Taylor, served as “conductor” in The Trail of Tears Removal of the Cherokee to Oklahoma in the winter of 1838. Conductors were tribal leaders chosen to lead roughly 1,000-person detachments of Cherokees on the 770-mile journey, which took more than 100 days to complete. Though born Cherokee, Taylor had served as a volunteer guide in the U.S. military under Captain Gideon Morgan in the Creek War 1814-1815. Chief Richard Fox Taylor served as Cherokee delegate to Washington D.C. and was elected Assistant Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, serving from 1851-1853. The Trail of Tears was a two-decade process, starting with President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830, by which more than 60,000 Native Americans of five different nations were forcibly removed from their homelands in the rich Mississippi Valley to far more barren lands hundreds of miles to the west. Little Lucinda certainly would have been part of that episode, and it is difficult at this remove to think about what hardships she and her family might have endured, even though her father, Chief Taylor, was favored by the U.S. government.

Read more about this coin in The E-Sylum.

Closing Date and Time: 20 July 2022 at 13:43:40 ET.

All winning bids are subject to an 18% buyer’s fee.