The Richard M. Geiger Collection

Ex. Andrew Carnegie Collection. Rob: This is a large and very impressive display-sized specimen, with damage only to the periphery and not to the display face. The dark bandings you see are natural and create a weird visual effect, but I like them. Unlike most large specimens we see today, moreover, it is not repaired! It has Carnegie's nubmering on the right side of the specimen and has an even older number from a previous collection glued to the left side. ----- Photos courtesy of / ©2005 The Arkenstone Rob: Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, on November 25, 1835. The son of a weaver, he came with his family to the United States in 1848 and settled in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. At age thirteen, Carnegie went to work as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill. He then moved rapidly through a succession of jobs with Western Union and the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1865, he resigned to establish his own business enterprises and eventually organized the Carnegie Steel Company, which launched the steel industry in Pittsburgh. At age sixty-five, he sold the company to J. P. Morgan for $480 million and devoted the rest of his life to his philanthropic activities and writing, including his autobiography. During his lifetime, Carnegie gave away over $350 million. He died in Lenox, Massachusetts, on August 11, 1919. (this information was taken from a Carnegie Corp. biography posted online at: www.carnegie.org/sub/about/biography.html). Little did most of us know that not only did he endow the Carnegie Museum to purchase minerals for public display, but that Carnegie HIMSELF was ALSO a mineral collector, accumulating a small but respectable collection of almost 250 specimens that were housed at his Millbrook estate in upstate New York. In 1983, Dr. Gary Hansen, a mineral dealer in St. Louis, was contacted about purchasing this collection as the home was being prepared for donation by the Carnegie descendants to the state of New York. Upon arriving at the manor, Hansen found that the collection had remained on display in the original showcases purchased during Carnegie's lifetime, and left completely intact for the 64 years since his death! He took the photos below, at that time, to document this fact. Also preserved was Carnegie's original, meticulously typed collection catalogue which is now in the possession of Gary Hansen. When I took these specimens, he allowed me to make xeroxes from the original catalogue to go with each piece (see example below for specimen #2 - a pyromorphite from Pennsylvania), and also gave me his own statement for each specimen documenting its origins in the collection. Hansen sold nearly all of the specimens in the early 1980's, though he kept this selection of mixed specimens for his own enjoyment; and they have remained with him for these 20 years ever since. I purchased Gary's collection this summer and with it this last subset of the collection of Andrew Carnegie.