A note from your president
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The United States Mint has just released some of the new designs for the back of the 2009 Lincoln Cent. A total of four different coin images will trace Abraham Lincoln’s life from his youth to the presidency. The present front of the one-cent coin, with Lincoln’s head, will remain the same.
One design that has been unveiled shows Lincoln as a young man, holding a quill pen and reading a book. The second shows Lincoln as an Illinois legislator.
Two proposed designs, with slight differences, are both being considered to show the cabin where Lincoln was born in Kentucky on February 12, 1809.
A final new version of the cent will represent Lincoln as president. So far, the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which will choose the final designs, has yet to decide on the concept for the fourth coin. Possibly, other commemorative US coins will also be issued to honor Lincoln in 2009.
The Lincoln Cent itself will also celebrate an anniversary in 2009. (Trivia fans, take note: the US has never issued a “penny”; a coin worth 1/100th of a dollar has always officially been called a cent.) The coin, designed by sculptor Victor David Brenner, replaced the Indian Head Cent in 1909. In 1959, Frank Gasparro designed a new reverse that depicted the Lincoln Memorial, replacing the old image of ears of wheat.
Architect Henry Bacon, Jr. (1866-1924) designed the Lincoln Memorial, which was built from 1914 to 1922. (Daniel Chester French sculpted the great statue of Lincoln inside the Memorial.) Bacon, born in Illinois, grew up in and around Wilmington, where his father was a civil engineer working on navigational improvements to the Cape Fear River. The work of the elder Bacon, who died in 1891, included the dam that closed New Inlet.
Henry Bacon, Jr. was a nationally famous architect based in New York, but he always kept in touch with his Wilmington roots. Among Bacon’s works in Wilmington are the Confederate Memorial on 3rd and Dock Streets, and the 1901 Donald MacRae House, next to St. James’ Church on 3rd Street. Bacon is buried in Oakdale Cemetery.
Visit the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission at http://www.lincolnbicentennial.gov
"The Philatelic History of Wilmington" at http://www.wingnet.org/rtw/sumwps018.htm is part of the Wilmington Philatelic Society's web pages. They have some interesting old postcards and postal history of Wilmington, including some nifty Civil War material. The most noteworthy in that line is a cover that was run through the blockade to Wilmington. Bearing a British stamp, it went to New York, then Nassau, Bahamas; ran into Wilmington on the blockade runner Fanny, got a Wilmington postmark, got marked 12 cents postage due, and went on to Augusta!
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