The Private minting ol Gold
For a while, gol<l dust itself was used as a
medium of exchange in North Carolina.
Then camp the Beehtlers with their famous
private mint.
WE went off the gold standard
several years ago. as most of
the nations have done; its
circulation as currency is now pro¬
hibited; and our immense stock of
the yellow metal is safely buried in
the vast underground and well-
protected vaults of Fort Knox. Ken¬
tucky. Its only use now is as jew¬
elry and in the arts.
The saying, "thar’s gold in them
thar hills," referred to the western
mining region, but the same saying
could have been applied to a large
section of our State, as it was once
one of the principal gold producing
sections of the Union. As early as
1799, an extensive deposit of the
mineral was found by Conrad Reed
in what is now Cabarrus County,
one of the nuggets weighing twen¬
ty-eight pounds, being the largest
ever found in the eastern part of
the United States. This mine yield¬
ed over a hundred other nuggets
weighing more than one pound
each! The gold fever became pro¬
nounced; everyone was looking for
gold, and it was discovered in more
or less paying quantities in nearly
every county west of the Yadkin
River. The industry flourished until
the discovery of gold in California
and the rush of the ’49ers made fur¬
ther mining in this state unprofit¬
able. The mining was all of the
"placer" type, and in many places
in Rutherford. Burke, Gaston,
Mecklenburg, Cabarrus, and other
counties, the old "dumps" from the
placer mining can still be seen.
In the early days, the gold dust
itself circulated as a medium of ex¬
change, as the nearest mint was at
Philadelphia, a trip which required
nearly a month to complete by
stage coach. The result was that for
lack of a coinage, the dust itself
passed current at rates of exchange
fixed by the merchants.
To remedy this want of a mint.
Christopher Bechtlcr, a native of
Baden, Germany, who was a
skilled jeweler and gunsmith, with
his two sons and a nephew, came
to Rutherford County in 1830, and
established his own private mint
for the coining of gold money in
1831 — the only private mint in
the southeastern United States.
By R. C. LAW HENCE
Strange as it may seem, at that
time there was no federal statute
preventing the private minting of
gold, although there were federal
regulations concerning the coining
of copper. However, the govern¬
ment lost nothing by the transac¬
tion, or through the establishment
of the Bechtlcr mint, as his coins
actually contained a trifle more
gold than the coins minted un¬
der governmental authority. The
Bechtler coins contained a few
more grains of the copper alloy.
Millions in coin was minted by
Bechtler in this mint. He did the
minting for the original miners of
the gold, charging a commission
or "senoirage" of two per cent for
his services. He was a man of ex¬
cellent reputation, skilled in the art
of assaying the metal, and his cus¬
tomers accepted his values without
question.
In this mint was minted the first
one-dollar gold coins ever produced
in the United States, for it was not
until seventeen years later than the
federal government undertook the
coinage of one-dollar gold pieces.
Bechtler also minted coins of the
value of two dollars-and-a-half and
five dollars. His first dies were de¬
fective. and the first coins his
mint produced were somewhat
crude, but later he secured new
dies and produced coins of excel¬
lent design and good workmanship.
His coins were pale yellow in color,
with a slight brassy tinge. They
were of various designs, more than
thirty-five different dies having
been used by him, and his coins
varied both in size and in weight.
Some were stamped "Carolina
gold"; but all of them bore the
Bechtler mint mark. Some of these
old coins are still in existence and
have a value as high as $500.00,
although naturally most of them
are in the hands of collectors.
After the death of the elder
Bechtler the mint continued in op¬
eration by his sons until the early
'50s. But in 1837, the government
established a mint in Charlotte,
which of course relieved the de¬
mand for the private mint in Ruth¬
erford, and therefore it ceased
operations in the '50s, and with it
the Bechtler coins passed into his¬
tory and into the hands of the col¬
lectors of curios.
SONNET IN SOUTHERN
I may not call you Blessed Damosel,
My Little Colleen or My Bonny Lass.
And though your lovely face might just have well
Have "launched ten-thousand ships,” I let it pass.
Sampson could sing. "My Heart at thy sweet Voice" —
"Juliet is the sun!" So Romeo could portray it.
In elegant iambics. But I have no choice —
This is the way a Southerner must say it.
"Reckon Ah'm crazy 'bout yo'. Honey Child!
Moonlight on magnolias and honeysuckle vine —
Nothin' in Dixie lak the sunshine of yo’ smile.
So tell me. Sugar, that some day yo’ll be mine —
Sharin' ma cabin and supper cooked by Dinah,
Ma hominy, ham and cracklin' bread down in Carolina!"
— Anne Blackwell Payne.
THE STATE. May 15. 1948
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