I have written about the sisters of my grandmother many times. Great Aunt Margie was a favorite of her nieces and grand nieces and grand nephews. Great Aunt Mary not so much. Together with their sister Caroline, both aunts fought Standard Oil in 1952, protecting their and their neighbors' farms north of Pittsburgh.
In my post about Aunt Margie, I mentioned her membership in the Mechanical Bank Collectors of America (MBCA). In fact, both Aunt Margie and Aunt Mary were longtime members. Aunt Mary collected so many mechanical banks that she was written up in a Pittsburgh newspaper in 1947.
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| Girl Skipping Rope bank |
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| From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 14, 1947, page 10 |
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Save A Penny - Ann Copeland plays with the mechanical banks collected by her aunt, Mrs. Mary Hunter Gerken of Allison Park. Here she is watching the dentist who will pull his patient’s tooth when a penny is inserted. Banks in the background include Jonah and the Whale, Atlas and the World, the Milking Cow, baseball and football players, the Girl with a Skipping Rope, the stock market Bull and Bear, the Speaking Dog, Uncle Sam, Paddy and his Pig, and Professor Pug Frog and Punch and Judy.
Saves the Banks Made For Saving the Pennies
By Susan B. NevinTHRIFT HAS BEEN HELD a virtue almost from the beginning of time, and saving pennies has been encouraged in many ways. Mrs. Mary Hunter Gerken of Allison Park, however, saves the banks made for saving the pennies.
Having acquired one mechanical bank she wanted another, and from there the collection grew. Of the 275 known designs of mechanical banks, Mrs. Gerken has 130.
Bank collectors help each other, according to Mrs. Gerken, and are always willing to trade duplicates, or find missing parts. Collector John D. Meyer of Tyrone, who also writes about banks, has been particularly helpful to her.
Perhaps the oldest known bank is a mechanical alms box in the Metropolitan Museum, made in the Han Dynasty between 206 B.C. and 220 A.D. Through subsequent centuries, in all countries, there were many kinds.
When the first large copper pennies were made in this country in 1793, youngsters were encouraged to save them in home-made banks of gourds and shells or whittled from wood or clay. About 1840 the mechanical bank began to appear, though the first patent was not taken out until 1869. In these banks the insertion of a penny or pressing of a lever causes figures to move and perform feats in order to lure a child to deposit his savings.
Bankers Collect
Oddly enough most bank collectors are men, many of them bankers. But Mrs. Gerken comes of a collecting family. Her mother, Mrs. Percy Hunter, collects pitchers and has such unusual ones as that of blown candy-glass from Italy and one commemorating Lafayette’s visit to this country. Miss Margaret Hunter, Mrs. Gerken’s sister, collects boxes—for snuff, perfume, beauty patches or pins—and also has some very beautiful Meissen and Dresden figurines.
Mrs. Gerken’s mother had a Tammany or Boss Tweed mechanical bank when she was a little girl. When the penny is inserted Boss Tweed puts it in his pocket and bows. But Mrs. Hunter’s bank disappeared long since, and the first one Mrs. Gerken found was a Boy in the Cabin Door. With her second acquisition, a drab looking Santa Claus, Mrs. Gerken made a great mistake. She painted Santa a handsome new red coat, thus destroying the value of the bank for a collector. Now she knows that old banks are simply waxed, but may be repaired if necessary.
Designs Humorous
Designs are frequently humorous and many tell stories. After the Civil War there were many on military subjects, designed for boys. There were a number of Uncle Toms, and the Freedman, one of the rare ones today, deposits the penny in his bank and thumbs his nose.
There are several versions of Jonah and the Whale. In Mrs. Gerken’s example, a woman in a skiff pushes Jonah into the gaping jaws of the whale when a penny is inserted. A penny slipped into the pocket of a dentist causes him to pull a tooth from the agitated patient. A baseball pitcher throws the penny, the batter misses and the catcher deposits the coin. Punch and Judy perform, and Atlas revolves the world on his shoulder.
Willie Tell accurately shoots the apple from the boy’s head in one bank and in the Milking Cow, the cow becomes fractious and kicks over the boy who is milking her. A mule kicks over his driver in another, and a lion chases hunters up a tree in still another.
Mrs. Gerken keeps a jar of pennies nearby so that young nieces and other visitors may operate the banks. But she has “saved” no fortune in this way, for she empties the banks occasionally and refills the jar.
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This article has been republished on a page of the MBCA website. A search of Gerken on the MBCA website produces several results, including mention of some of the banks she owned.
Mary Gerken and her mechanical bank collection were written up again in a 1956 article in The Pittsburgh Press (that also includes a photo of my aunt Ann Copeland).
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| From The Pittsburgh Press, 6 August 1956, page 7 |
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Toy Banks Fascinating Hobby
By JOAN HERROLDBack around Civil War times the pig-tailed set treasured a type bank which today sends Mrs. Mary H. Gerken of Middle Road, Allison Park, into ecstasies.
It was the brightly-painted mechanical bank.
Parents in those days bought for a dollar this little engineering wonder of childhood. Today some of the survivors are worth their weight in gold.
More than 150 stare from the upstairs den of Mrs. Gerken, a tall, gray-haired and excessively modest woman.
Bank collectors consider her far up among the top 10 in the U.S. Hers are especially noteworthy for their rarity and fine state of preservation.
Her collection started like this: “Fifteen years ago [1941] I attended an antique show at the old Schenley Hotel. You never know what treasure you might see at one of those, you know.”
Mrs. Gerken was smitten with “The Cabin,” a mechanical bank. When the “banker” shoves a brush on the side of the cabin, a boy turns a somersault and kicks a coin into a slot in the cabin’s roof.
Fascinated by the toy’s mechanism, she soon acquired seven more, including a Santa who obliged by dropping a coin down a chimney.
“Then I said I was going to quit,” she sighs. “But that resolution only lasted until I unearthed a ninth bank.”
Time was when they could be picked up readily enough in any antique store. Today most are in the hands of other collectors.
Mrs. Gerken’s most recent additions were three banks from the collection of the late Walter P. Chrysler, founder of the automobile empire.
Altogether the mechanical bank era, from 1869 to 1910, produced about 230 models. Most were cast iron, a very few of tin.
Mrs. Gerken and her sister, Margaret L. Hunter, who is co-owner, have many favorite banks. One is a baseball grouping which includes a pitcher, batter and catcher.
The pitcher throws the coin, the batter swings and bobs his head and the coin disappears into the catcher’s chest protector.
Other of their favorites are a confectionery store scene, a merry-to-go-round [sic] and a fowler who shoots a bird into the air when he is inspired with a coin.
[Photo Caption] ANN COPELAND...Mrs. Gerken’s niece chose a merry-go-round as her favorite bank.
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As I have noted before, be sure to ask your siblings for family stories that they remember;
my younger brothers often remember stories that I do not. My brothers told me the following stories that I didn't remember.
Their membership in the MBCA was so important to Aunt Mary and Aunt Margie that when my mother was planning her wedding for September 1963, she had to schedule her wedding date around the MBCA Convention which was held in Greenwich, Connecticut on September 21, 1963. (My parents got married the following Saturday.)
Ultimately Aunt Mary and Aunt Margie had the second or third largest collection of mechanical banks in the country. Sometime after Aunt Mary died in 1971, Aunt Margie (her heir) sold the mechanical bank collection for $30,000 in cash so she wouldn't have to pay taxes on the sale. It appears that she gave some of the cash to our grandmother because when she came to visit us in Massachusetts, she would bring $100 bills and would have one ready to pay cash for a lobster dinner for the family!
I descend from the parents of Mary (Hunter) Gerken and Margaret Hunter through their youngest sister, Helen.
This week's theme is Member of the Club.
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