Stanley Clark Bagg’s Coin Collection

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When Stanley Clark Bagg’s name appeared in a Montreal city directory in 1866, he was not listed as a “gentleman,” as one might expect. Instead, he gave his occupation as President of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal, a voluntary position related to his hobby.1

Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873), or SCB, made his living renting or selling the real estate properties he had inherited from his grandfather, but what he really enjoyed doing was collecting and studying old coins.  

He explained his interest in numismatics (the study of coins) in an article he wrote for the Society: “In coins and medals, more than in any other monuments, the past is preserved and its heroes and great events are kept memorable, forms of worship, manners and customs of nations; titles of kings and emperors may thus be determined; — in fact, coins have been frequently of the greatest service, by illustrating doubtful points of history, and even by bringing to light circumstances and events unknown to us before.”2

He gave the example of the Roman Empire: while most of the statues, arches and palaces the Romans built have crumbled to dust, “paltry coins remain monuments of the might of the age; they represent, and record, fresh as the day they were coined, such great historical facts in their inscriptions as Victoriae Brittanicae and Judea Captae.”3

There was a memorial article about Stanley Clark Bagg, one of the founders of this society, in the October, 1873 issue.

A small group of English-speaking and French-speaking numismatic enthusiasts, including SCB, started getting together around 1860. When they founded the 20-member Numismatic Society of Montreal on Dec. 8 1862, it became the first numismatic society in Canada and the fifth in North America. Adelard J. Boucher was the society’s first president and SCB was founding vice-president.

The society’s name changed in 1866 to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal. At that time, SCB was the organization’s president.4 He also served as an editor of the society’s quarterly journal.   In 1863, SCB read the first paper before the Montreal society, the article entitled “Notes on Coins.” His second presentation, given later that year, was “Coins & medals as aids to the study and verification of holy writ.” His presentations were published in the society’s journal.   In order to keep up with the latest discoveries about coins, archaeology and science, SCB was a member of several organizations, including numismatic societies in London and in Philadelphia. He was also a corresponding member of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and a life member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Natural History Society of Montreal.5

Inside SCB’s coin case (photo courtesy Victor Isganaitis)

No one knows what coins he had in his own collection, but he probably had some special ones. In his will, he left his collection to daughter Mary Heloise Bagg, who later married Robert Lindsay, but I have been unable to find out what happened to it. Some individual coins may still be in the family, or perhaps everything was sold. In 2016, a coin-carrying case that SCB had owned, as well as an inventory and about 40 coins and medals, came on the market and at that time I corresponded with the dealer, who sent me some photos.   Coin expert Ted Banning suggests that SCB’s most important contribution to the field was not as a collector, nor even as a writer, but as one of the founders of the Numismatic Society.6 Twenty years after SCB’s death, the society played an important role in saving one of Montreal’s most important heritage buildings, the Chateau Ramezay.   The Chateau Ramezay was built in 1705 by Claude de Ramezay, a Governor of Montreal in colonial New France. Over the years the building had various owners and uses, including the offices of a fur trading company and the headquarters of invading American forces in 1775-1776.   When the government decided to sell the building in 1893, the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal rallied public opinion to save it from demolition. The City of Montreal acquired the building and rented it to the society, which converted it into a museum, open to the public. In 1929, the city ceded the building to the society. Today it remains a museum and a UNESCO-recognized historic site.7

Notes and Sources:  

  1. The listing reads, “Stanley Clark Bagg, JP, President of Numismatic and Antiquarian Society, Fairmount Villa, 583 Sherbrooke Street.” Mackay’s Montreal Directory, 1866; p. 76, entry for Stanley Clark Bagg; digital image, Ancestry.ca, Canada, City and Area Directories, 1819-1906, (database on-line, accessed March 17, 2020.)  
  2. Stanley C. Bagg, “Notes on Coins,” The Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, p 4, Montreal: The Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal, October, 1873. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=aeu.ark:/13960/t77s8v32h&view=1up&seq=10(accessed March 19, 2020)  
  3. Ibid p. 8., https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=aeu.ark:/13960/t77s8v32h&view=1up&seq=15(accessed March 19, 2020)  
  4. Warren Baker, “The First Twelve Years: Canadian Numismatic Publishing 1863-1875, an Annotated Bibliography,” Montreal, 1989.  
  5. “In Memoriam Stanley Clark Bagg, Esq., J.P. F.N.S.” The Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, p 73, Montreal: The Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal, October, 1873. https://books.google.ca/books?id=aX83AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=In+Memoriam+Stanley+Clark+Bagg&source=bl&ots=GIMssMetqS&sig=ACfU3U2ygp033V5ub7hQjtxWrbnz0HcumQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZ2JaC7aboAhUNbs0KHTwYDo4Q6AEwEXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=In%20Memoriam%20Stanley%20Clark%20Bagg&f=false (accessed March 19, 2020)  
  6. Ted Banning, “Bagg helped bring social numismatics to Montreal,” Canadian Coin News, March 19, 2012.  
  7. See https://www.chateauramezay.qc.ca/en/

Stanley Clark Bagg’s Family

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This is the fifth in a series of articles about Stanley Clark Bagg on Writing Up the Ancestors. To read the previous posts, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on Older Posts. There are at least two more to come.

Portrait of Stanley Clark Bagg, probably painted from a photograph following his death in 1873; Bagg family collection.

In February 1841, my future great-great-grandfather wrote a letter to my future great-great-grandmother, explaining that his grandmother had asked him to write. It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see that he was smitten. Perhaps his grandmother had also noticed.

Stanley Clark Bagg (SCB), 20, who lived in Montreal, wrote to Catharine Mitcheson, 18, in Philadelphia: “Grandmother not having received a letter from yourself or your respected parents for a very long time, felt desirous to hear from you or them, and requested me to write, hoping that you or someone of the family would have the goodness to write.”1

I do not know when SCB and Catharine first met; they lived a long way from each other, but their families had reason to communicate because they were related. SCB’s grandmother, Mary (Mitcheson) Clark (1776-1856,) was the older sister of Catharine’s father, Robert Mitcheson (1779-1859.) Both grew up in County Durham, England and immigrated to North America as adults, Mary to Montreal and Robert to Philadelphia.

In the summer of 1840, Catharine and her older brother, Robert MacGregor Mitcheson, who was studying to become an Episcopal minister at the Theological College in New York, visited Montreal.2 They arrived in July and probably stayed through the beginning of September to attend the wedding of another cousin, Mary Maughan, to Montreal merchant William Footner.3

In his letter, SCB continued, “This winter is quite a gay one and scarcely anything is talked of but the parties and concerts, but still we are very lonesome and have been so since you and Robert left here, particularly after Mary was married. We all regret very much that you and Robert are not here to participate in the pleasures of the season, but hope shortly to have the pleasure of again seeing you here. Father has gone a few days journey and now I am entirely alone, and can assure you that keeping ‘Bachelor’s Hall’ is not the most agreeable mode of living.” After adding some gossip, SCB ended the letter, “Wishing you every happiness that this world can afford. I subscribe myself, your affectionate cousin, SC Bagg”.

A Notman photograph of Catharine Mitcheson Bagg; year unknown; Bagg family collection

SCB and Catharine were first cousins once removed, but if anyone objected to their blood relationship, they must have overcome those objections. They were married three years later, on September 9, 1844, at Grace Church Episcopal Chapel, Philadelphia. Catharine’s brother, now Reverend Robert M. Mitcheson, performed the service.4

They signed a marriage contract several days before the wedding, stipulating that they were to be separate as to property.5 SCB pledged to pay all household expenses and expenses for their children. He stated that he had mortgaged one of the properties he had inherited from his grandfather. If he died before Catharine did, that money would be used to fund a $100-a-year annuity for her, however, if she remarried, she would no longer receive this annual payment. These clauses were designed ensure she would live comfortably, and to protect her from his creditors, but also to protect his property from a second husband if she remarried.

SCB and Catharine settled in Montreal, where he worked as a notary and where he owned extensive property. The couple spent their first year or two of marriage living with SCB’s father in his home, Durham House, while their own house, Fairmount Villa, was under construction nearby. Their first child, Mary Ann Frances Bagg, was born at Durham House on Aug. 19, 1845. She died at age two while they were visiting Catharine’s parents in Philadelphia.6 Twenty years later, SCB wrote a poem about losing his first-born daughter. Here is an excerpt:

Ah! I knew the love of angels 
Not long on earth remain. 
Therefore my sobs of anguish 
Which I could not restrain. 

 When I look’d into the cradle, 
Where my babe in slumber lay; 
I saw its poor, frail body, 
But its soul had passed away.   

And out of my lone window 
I saw the angels soar. 
And between them gently resting 
My precious babe they bore.7

Eventually, the couple went on to have five children, one boy and four girls: Robert Stanley (1848-1912), Katharine Sophia (1850-1938), Amelia Josephine (1852-1943), Mary Heloise (1854-1938) and Helen Frances Mitcheson Bagg (1861-1935.) Fairmount Villa was a large house and it must have been filled with noise and activity for years. SCB probably had to get used to this because his own upbringing had been so different: he was an only child who lived in the countryside, his father was often busy with business and financial concerns, and his mother died when he was 14.

Unfortunately, SCB did not live to witness any of his children’s successes as adults, attend their weddings or enjoy his nine grandchildren. He died of typhoid fever on August 8, 1873, age 53, at Fairmount Villa, surrounded by family members. At the time, son Robert Stanley had recently graduated from law school and was studying in Europe, while his two youngest daughters were still minors.

As adults, the Baggs do not appear to have been a closely knit family, and at one point there was a serious dispute about the management of SCB’s estate. Nevertheless, Robert Stanley Bagg (often with his widowed mother’s input) managed the family real estate business for 27 years, and the Bagg girls grew up to be confident and capable women who travelled extensively and contributed to decisions about and kept track of property sales, and organized large social events.  

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Reflections on a Great-Great Grandmother,” April 14, 2014 https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/?p=169

Janice Hamilton, “Fanny in Philly,” March 29, 2014  https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/?p=171

Janice Hamilton,  “Mary Mitcheson Clark,” May 16, 2014  https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/?p=164

Janice Hamilton, “Stanley Clark Bagg’s Four Forgotten Daughters”, Sept 30, 2017, http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.com/2017/09/stanley-clark-baggs-four-forgotten.html

Janice Hamilton, “My Great-Great Aunts, Montreal Real Estate Developers.” Oct. 11, 2017  https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/?p=88

Janice Hamilton,“A Visit to the Holy Land and Egypt; A Mediterranean Cruise in 1919, part 2,” Nov. 21, 2019, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/?p=46

Janice Hamilton, Helen Frances Bagg, A Happy Exile,” Jan. 6, 2016,  https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/?p=125

Janice Hamilton, “The Life and Times of Stanley Bagg, 1788-1853,” Oct 5,  2016  https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/?p=108

Janice Hamilton, “Stanley Clark Bagg’s Early Years,” Jan. 8, 2020, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2020/01/stanley-clark-baggs-early-years.html

Janice Hamilton, “Fairmount Villa,” Dec. 18, 2019, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2019/12/fairmount-villa.html

Notes and Sources:

  1. Transcription of SCB’s letter, plus notes, probably by grandson Stanley Bagg Lindsay; Lindsay family collection.
  2. Ibid.
  3. “Married: Sept. 8 1840 at Durham House by the Rev. Dr. Bethune, William Footner to Mary Maughan;” Mary Maughan’s mother, Elizabeth, was the younger sister of Mary (Mitcheson) Clark and Robert Mitcheson. Source: black notebook listing Bagg and Mitcheson family births, marriages and deaths; private collection.
  4. Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records; Reel: 1078, database, Ancestry.com (http://:Ancestry.ca, accessed Dec. 22, 2019,) entry for Stanley Clark Bagg, 9 Sept. 1844; citing Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
  5. Nicholas-Benjamin Doucet, “Marriage entre Stanley Clark Bagg et Catharine Mitcheson,” notarial act # 30488, Sept. 5, 1844, BAnQ. To learn more about the laws of Quebec regarding civil matters, including community of property in marriage, see Bettina Bradbury. Wife to Widow. Lives, Laws and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Montreal. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.
  6. The child’s death is recorded in the Bagg family Bible, Bagg Family Fonds, McCord Museum, Montreal. She died in Philadelphia on Oct. 14, 1847. The funeral was held on Oct. 21, 1847 at Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, (Ancestry.ca, citing Gabriel Drouin, comp. Drouin Collection. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Institut Généalogique Drouin) and she is buried with her parents, grandparents and other family members in the Bagg family crypt, Mount Royal Cemetery.
  7. Stella (pseudonym of Stanley Clark Bagg), Leisure Moments: A Few Poems, Montreal: printed by Daniel Rose, 1871. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=aeu.ark:/13960/t92819p4n&view=1up&seq=10