Peter Cross

Who was Peter Cross?

Peter Filatreu Cross was an assistant engraver to James B. Longacre at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Although the U.S. Mint archives state he was born in England in 1820, he was born in New York City to William Cross and Hannah Woods Cross, and despite Mint records stating that he died in 1856, he appears in the 1860 U.S. Census in Philadelphia. He married Harriet Chapin and had one child, Maria B..

He is best known for his work on the reverse of the 1849 one dollar gold coin. The value of gold required the coin to be so small — 13 millimetres in diameter) — that too many people were losing them, so it had to be redesigned. He also designed medals of the period, including a medal of Commander Duncan Ingraham.

Cross is buried at Lawnview Cemetery in Rockledge, Pennsylvania. He was disinterred from the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Philadelphia circa 1951 when that cemetery was removed to make way for the Raymond Rosen housing project, which itself was demolished in 1995 as part of an urban renewal program.