Description
ONTARIO, Ottawa - Thomas Church, Bowman #35-48, 29.0mm brass, thickness 2.25mm, 9.34 grams (number seen by Bowman 22) die rotation is approximately 15 degrees (medal)
Thomas Church was born in 1843 in Ireland. His father was an artist that painted murals, some of which are in the Canadian Parliament. The family lived in Ottawa since 1851 and Tom got in his career field as a lumberman by 1860. He eventually became the manager of the mill. He lost his left hand in an industrial accident a few months before the entire lumber yard and town was destroyed by fire in 1900.
In his mid-thirties he became a collector of Canadian coins and tokens. He began to experiment in cutting his own dies in the 1880s. Many of the dies had the style of early Canadian tokens found in the Breton series. He built a forge and workshop near his home and began to cut and harden steel dies. Church started by cutting dies and making tokens for his own amusement. He later produced tokens for Louis Laurin of Gatineau Point, and dairy tokens for C. W. Barrett. A quantity of souvenir tokens were produced for sale at Ottawa’s Central Canada Exhibition. Leading Canadian collectors of the 1890s had standing orders for his tokens, including F.R.E. Campeau, R.W. McLachlan, Joseph Leroux and F.-X. Paquet. Fred Bowman wrote about The Tokens of Thomas Church in the Canadian Numismatic Journal of October 1959. Bowman illustrates all the die variations in this article and also indicates the approximate mintages based on his access to six extensive collections of Thomas Church tokens. The numbers reported by Bowman are indicated in each listing.
Thomas Church was born in 1843 in Ireland. His father was an artist that painted murals, some of which are in the Canadian Parliament. The family lived in Ottawa since 1851 and Tom got in his career field as a lumberman by 1860. He eventually became the manager of the mill. He lost his left hand in an industrial accident a few months before the entire lumber yard and town was destroyed by fire in 1900.
In his mid-thirties he became a collector of Canadian coins and tokens. He began to experiment in cutting his own dies in the 1880s. Many of the dies had the style of early Canadian tokens found in the Breton series. He built a forge and workshop near his home and began to cut and harden steel dies. Church started by cutting dies and making tokens for his own amusement. He later produced tokens for Louis Laurin of Gatineau Point, and dairy tokens for C. W. Barrett. A quantity of souvenir tokens were produced for sale at Ottawa’s Central Canada Exhibition. Leading Canadian collectors of the 1890s had standing orders for his tokens, including F.R.E. Campeau, R.W. McLachlan, Joseph Leroux and F.-X. Paquet. Fred Bowman wrote about The Tokens of Thomas Church in the Canadian Numismatic Journal of October 1959. Bowman illustrates all the die variations in this article and also indicates the approximate mintages based on his access to six extensive collections of Thomas Church tokens. The numbers reported by Bowman are indicated in each listing.
