 By numismatic legend , Longacre 's Indian Head cent design was based on the features of his daughter Sarah ; the tale runs that she was at the mint one day when she tried on the headdress of one of a number of Native Americans who were visiting and her father sketched her . However , Sarah Longacre was 30 years old and married , not 12 as in the tale , in 1858 and Longacre himself stated that the face was based on a statue of Venus in Philadelphia on loan from the Vatican . James Longacre did often sketch his elder daughter , and there are resemblances between the depiction of Sarah Longacre and the various representations of Liberty on Longacre 's coins of the 1850s . These tales were apparently extant at the time , as Snowden , in writing to Treasury Secretary Howell Cobb in November 1858 , denied that the coin was based " on any human features in the Longacre family " . Lee F. McKenzie , in his 1991 article on Longacre , notes that any artist can be influenced by many things , but calls the story " essentially false " . 
