Adams, Edgar H., correspondence, 1920-1933 [ANS Garrett papers, box 1, folder 1a]

Adams, Edgar H., correspondence, 1920-1933 [ANS Garrett papers, box 1, folder 1a]

Year: 1875

T. Harrison Garrett (1848-1888), whose family managed the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, began collecting coins as a student at Princeton in the 1860s. His son, John Work Garrett (1872-1942), greatly expanded the collection. John joined the American Numismatic Society (ANS) in 1920, and in 1921 was elected fellow. He served as member of the Council (now the Board of Trustees) of ANS from 1921 to 1929. John graduated from Princeton in 1895 and was a career diplomat, serving as secretary of the American Legation at the Hague beginning in 1901 and ambassador to Italy from 1929 to 1934. Following an unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate nomination in 1922, he retired to Evergreen House, the family estate in Baltimore. Upon his death in 1942, the estate, along with the family’s numismatic and other collections, were left to Johns Hopkins University, where he served as a trustee from 1937 to 1942. The University auctioned off most of the numismatic collection in the 1970s and 1980s