WOMEN: Goddess

Last week, in her native Philadelphia, a goddess died. No portent marked her passing, and though she had been a goddess for 48 of her 68 years on earth, few of her multitudinous devotees would have known that their divinity was dead if explanations had not been made in her obituaries. Few indeed of the millions and millions of worshipers who carried her effigy with them—at toil and at play, in sickness and in health—as their most valued icon, suspected that she had lived a mortal existence.

For, unlike the publicity-mad deities apotheosized nowadays by ogling mayors at all-American beauty contests, Miss Anna Willess Williams sought to keep it a secret when she posed for Engraver George Morgan and let him affix her profile as Goddess of Liberty to the silver dollars issued by the U.S. Mint at Philadelphia in 1878. In 1880 a newspaper man divulged her secret and she was flooded with offers to exploit her beauty—fair complexion, blue eyes, Grecian nose and crown of soft-spun golden hair—on the stage. She refused, staying on as principal of a house-of-refuge girls' school. She later taught kindergarten philosophy at a normal school, not retiring until 1924. Not only did she take no false vanity in the accident of her unblemished features, but besides preferring to the worldly career they might have brought her the career of service which she brought herself, she disliked talking about silver dollars and dismissed her posing as "an incident of my youth."

The total coinage of this, the standard silver dollar, under the Act of 1878, was $378,166,793.

If, as legend tells, George Washington threw a silver dollar across the Potomac, it doubtless bore a British stamp. Later, his own features appeared on experimental, unauthorized dollars of the young country he fathered.

In 1794, Liberty was introduced on the first official U.S. dollar. The model's name is forgotten, but her hair hung loose on her shoulders. In 1795 she was given a Phrygian cap. After 1804 it was coined no more.

For the dollar of 1840, an unknown model posed for Artist Christian Gobrecht, seated on a rock, wearing a Greek chiton, a staff in her left hand, a U.S. shield in her right.

The trade dollar of 1873 shows Liberty wearing a diadem, seated on a bale of goods by the sea.

In 1900, the Lafayette dollar showed the conjoined heads of Washington and Lafayette.

In 1903, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition gold dollars were of two stamps: one with the head of Jefferson, the other with a bust of McKinley.

In 1904 and 1905, the Lewis and Clark Exposition coins bore Lewis on one side, Clark on the reverse.

The McKinley Memorial gold dollars of 1916 had a bust of McKinley.

In 1921 the peace dollar was designed by Artist de Francisci, whose wife was his model.

The Lincoln penny of 1909 is the only U.S. coin ever struck for general circulation bearing the bust of an American (as such) living or dead.

The five-cent piece of 1913 bears the head of Chief Iron Tail of the Sioux tribe, executed by Artist Fraser.