It is not often that you will find the wife of a famous coin designer equally as well-known as this next woman in our blog series covering Whitman Publishing’s 100 Greatest Women on Coins. Author Ron Guth talks about this famous woman who appeared on over 180 million coins and the lasting impact she has made on numismatics even today with the reemergence of the series she is so famous for.
#53 – Teresa de Francisci
Notably known as the wife of Anthony de Francisci, the sculptor and artist who created the design for the Peace dollar, Mary Teresa Cafarelli was born south of Naples, Italy, in 1898. She moved to the United States with her family when she was just four years old and would end up in Clinton, Massachusetts. There she graduated high school and just another two years later in 1920, she would marry Anthony de Francisci, who at the time was an up-and-comer in the sculpting field. He, too, was of Italian descent.
Anthony would enter a design competition in 1921 for a new Peace dollar, but his time was very constrained. He had less than three weeks to come up with a design and prepare a model for the coins to be ready by the end of the year. Because of the lack of time, he used his wife, Teresa, as the model for the bust of Liberty that appears on the obverse of the coin.
According to author Guth, Teresa was used as the model for the Peace dollars without question. Her portraits are considered nearly identical to the design used and Teresa also described seeing herself on the dollar coins. However, Anthony did say that the image was not entirely exact, but that the image used for the design was one that symbolized American ideals. He also said that the face was elongated.
The Peace dollar appeared in 1921 and in the early days of 1922. After the initial high relief details in 1921 slowed down production, they minted coins with a reduced relief in 1922. They continued producing coins from 1921-1928 with the Mints at Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco contributing. They were put on hold for a while before production started back up in 1934 through 1935.
It is only in recent years that that program started again when the United States Mint brought back the Morgan and Peace dollars in 2021 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the transition from the Morgan to Peace dollar. They have since released Uncirculated, Reverse Proof, and Proof versions of the coins every year since, excluding 2022 when silver demand was thought to be the cause of the down year.
Collecting Peace dollars is easy. They are readily available in both circulated and uncirculated conditions.