Q.David Bowers
Patterns and Other Issues
A number of other firms produced patterns for Calif-ornia gold coinage, either in the East prior to planned departure for the gold areas or in California. Only two gold specimens were ever located bearing the imprint of Templeton Reid, the famous Georgia coiner, with the imprint of California. Dated 1849, these pieces, of $10 and $25 denominations, came to the Philadelphia Mint for assay around that time. It is not known whether Templeton Reid issued these pieces in Georgia as patterns, with the thought in mind of moving soon to California, or whether he was in California for a short time and produced a limited coinage issue. The $25 piece is the only privately issued gold coin of that denomination.
A copper trial piece, struck on a United States large cent of 1849 and bearing the imprint of the Ithaca Mining Co. is known to exist and may possibly have represented a contemplated coinage by a firm bearing that name. Copper trial pieces are known of a $10 issue of Moran & Clark, a Sacramento firm, although the patterns mention San Francisco. Associated with the company was Dan Moran who by November 28, 1850, had returned to the eastern United States and was believed to be conducting an auction business in New York City. Meyers & Co. issued a copper trial piece for a half-ounce coin. A gold ingot is also known.
Blake & Agnell (or Agrell), refiners and assayers located at 52 J Street in Sacramento, between Second and Third streets, in 1855 produced pieces with their imprint as did the successor to the firm, Blake & Co., composed of Gorham Blake and W. R. Waters. Blake & Co. operated under that title from December 29, 1855 until Blake retired in 1859, after which the business was continued as Waters & Co. Coins and ingot patterns exist bearing the dates 1855 and 1856.
A trial piece with the name of H. Schaeffer, attributed to the 1849-1850 era, is known to exist in copper. The piece is believed to have been the work of Heinrich Schaeffer, who earlier was an employee of Bechtler in North Carolina and who witnessed the will of the elder Christopher Bechtler. Prof. William E. Hidden, who investigated the piece and reported his findings to Adams circa 1912 wrote:
I learned in Rutherfordton [North Carolina] from a son of Heinrich Schaeffer that his father had a set of dies made soon after the discovery of gold in California, and it was his intention to hasten there and begin a mintage business similar to that which had been so prosperous under the Bechtlers. This set must have been made as late as 1849 or 1850, some half a dozen years after the death of both the original Bechtlers [Christopher and his son Augustus]. It follows that the old punches [of letters] were used for the Schaeffer dies, and the design shows a continuance of the Bechtler ideas ....
Described by Adams as having the "most artistic design of any of the California private issues" are the pieces bearing the inscription SAN FRANCISCO STATE OF CALIFORNIA. Denominations were made of $2.50, $5, $10, and $20. The largest denomination depicts the head of Liberty surrounded by 13 stars, LIBERTY on the coronet, and the date 1851 below. The reverse shows the arms of California: a seated female figure, gazing through the Golden Gate, holding a spear and resting upon a shield, a bear at her feet. The denomination 20D. is given. Examples are known in silver, copper, and white metal. The workmanship on the $20 and other denominations is much more detailed and elaborate than that found on other California issues of the 1850s, indicating their British origin.
A $20 size issue with the legend CALIFORNIA GOLD MINES A.D. 1850, depicting two bears embracing on the obverse, and with the reverse showing an eagle on a wheat sheaf, is thought to have been the work of William Lemme, an early San Francisco die cutter. It is not known whether this piece was intended as a pattern for a $20 coinage or was simply used as a token or gaming counter in one of the gambling halls or other places of public accommodation.
Trial pieces and coins bearing the names of Pelican Co., Sierra Nevada Mining Co., J. H. Bowie Co., (who may have been the first California coiner), and others have attracted interest.
Related to the issues of private companies may be the "model" series of California issues. They are of the denominations of quarter dollar, half dollar, dollar, quarter eagle, and half eagle, and were used as game counters or "spielmunzen" (play money). The design of the half eagle is typical. The obverse shows the inscription MODEL HALF EAGLE in three lines within an open olive wreath. Above appears CALIFORNIA, with the date 1849 below. The reverse shows an heraldic eagle surrounded by 13 stars.
Circulating in large numbers from the 1850s until several decades later were tiny California gold pieces, usually anonymously issued, of the denominations of 25c, 50c, and $1. Pieces were made both in the round and octagonal shape and typically bore on the obverse a Liberty head or the head of an Indian. Hundreds of different varieties, most of which had relatively low gold content, were issued and some served as small change.
Moffat & Co.
Moffat & Co., while not the first coiner of gold in California, became the most important private mint in San Francisco. At time when the coinage of other assayers, bankers, and minters was being seriously questioned, the issues of Moffat were readily accepted by merchants. Later, the facilities of the firm were incorporated into the San Francisco Mint.
A biographical sketch of John Little Moffat was pro-vided to Edgar H. Adams by R. Burnham Moffat, of New York City, a grandson who in 1909 published the Moffat Genealogies:
John Little Moffat at the age of twenty-three years married Hannah Curtis, daughter of Reuben Curtis, of Danbury, Connecticut. Fourteen children were born to them, but only five survived infancy, and but three of those five married and had issue. Mr. Moffat lived in New York City from his marriage until about the middle of the 'thirties, when he moved to northern Georgia, in the valley of the Nacoochie, where he had purchased some gold mines which he had begun to operate. He had previously owned a gold mine in North Carolina, and on three separate occasions during his life made, and as many times lost, what in those days was deemed a very considerable fortune. In his youth he learned the trade of a silversmith, and throughout his life found satisfaction in the thought that he "had a trade.'; Lack of persistence seems to have been the defect in what otherwise was a character of high purpose, charm, and manly lovableness. He was identified in turn with the Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Dutch Reformed, Quaker, Methodist, and Swedenborgian faiths, but found the satisfaction he sought in none of them-except possibly the last, with the teachings of which he became familiar during the closing years of his life.
When the gold fever fell upon the country, following the discovery of gold in California, it found Mr. Moffat at the bottom of one of his waves of financial success, and he joined the throng of "forty-niners" ... While in California he became Assayer for the United States Government, and during the few years of his stay there established a reputation for unswerving integrity in the assaying of gold, which survived, for many years, his return to the East. He died in Brooklyn, New York, at the home of his son, Dr. Reuben Curtis Moffat on June 19, 1865, at the age of seventy-seven years, idolized by his daughter and surviving sons.