Q.David Bowers
Massachusetts & California Co.
The operations of the Massachusetts & California Co., another early coiner associated with California, are largely an enigma. Several $5 issues are known, but they are alloyed extensively with copper, unlike pieces made from native California gold which contains a high silver content. It is quite possible that the pieces were issued in the East, probably as patterns, in the manner of the known impressions from the same dies in copper and silver.
The firm, formed in Massachusetts, may have transacted business in California, for Adams relates that letterheads of the Massachusetts & California Co. were discovered in California and that Frederick P. Tracy, who later became a prominent California attorney, served as the group's secretary.
Much of the information known today about the Massachusetts & California Co. is derived from several articles which appeared in The New York Tribune in 1849.
On January 23 it was reported that "In Northampton (Mass.) Rev. F. P. Tracy is the agent of a company who have raised $6,000, and are soon to leave." The same newspaper reported on February 3 that the brig Mary Wildern had departed for the gold regions with the Massachusetts & California Mining and Trading Co. aboard. Another issue provided a list of companies organized to go to California and mentioned that the Massachusetts & California Trading Co. had a membership of 150 people.
Most significant was an item from an unnamed May 1849 newspaper, probably published in Massachusetts, which was reprinted in the American Journal of Numismatics in January 1898:
The Massachusetts & California Co., formed in Northampton, Mass., which originally contemplated a capital of only $6,000, has increased it to $50,000. Only a quarter of the amount, however, is to be paid in at the outset. Josiah Hayden of Haydensville is president of the company, and S. S. Wells of Haydensville, Miles G. Moies, and others, direc-tors. Rev. F. P. Tracy goes out to California as its active agent. It is the intention of the Company to establish a private mint at California, and, with the approbation of the Government, to make coins of the same denominations as the coins of the United States, and of equal, if not a little higher, value. Mr. William H. Hayden goes out as assayer, having qualified himself for the purpose by a series of studies under Prof. Silliman, and by all the information that could be obtained at the United States Mint. Mr. Hayden is a graduate of Yale College, and is son of the president of the company. The machinery will coin about $10,000 a day. It is the intention of the Company to purchase gold dust, at the current price, and transform it into coin for circulation. Should the Government establish a Mint there, it will be worth its denominational value, or more, at the Mint. The agent and those who accompany him will go by one of the land routes.
Pacific Company
The maker of the 1849 $5 and $10 pieces bearing a Liberty cap with resplendent rays and the name of the Pacific Co. is unknown. Adams and subsequent authorities, basing their suppositions on several sources, some of which are contradictory, have concluded that the assaying firm of D. C. Broderick and F. D. Kohler made the $5 and $10 pieces bearing the stamp of the Pacific Co., dated 1849.
Pacific $5 and $10 pieces assayed at the Philadelphia Mint showed intrinsic values of $4.48 and $7.86 respectively. Adams wrote that the $10 of the Pacific Co.: ... enjoys the distinction of being the least valuable of all varieties of $10 pieces ever struck by private persons in this country, making the much condemned Baldwin $10 stand out as the acme of purity in contrast.
No $5 or $10 coins bearing the names of Kohler or Broderick are known today, so articles such as the following, from an unnamed source quoted by Adams, lead to the supposition that the Pacific Co. coins may have been made by them:
Broderick met some former friends on the coast in the spring of 1849, and, as there was a lack of coin on the coast, and several months being required to procure it from the East, it was proposed to form a company to assay and coin gold. Frederick D. Kohler was selected for the assayer, and Broderick became his associate, performing the severe manual labor required. They coined so-called five and ten dollar pieces, and the profits upon these coins, which contained only four dollars and eight dollars respectively, and upon the gold purchased at $14 per ounce, soon placed Broderick in good circumstances, and laid the foundation for a fortune large for those times. In the autumn of 1849 the firm sold the business and Broderick began to think of returning to politics.
Today, $5 and $10 pieces of the Pacific Co. are among the rarest in the California series. Only a few specimens are known to exist. In addition patterns or trial pieces exist of the $1, $2.50 and $5 values.
Dubosq & Co.
Coins issued by Dubosq & Co., San Francisco, were once very plentiful in circulation. Today they are amongthe most elusive. The only known examples are $5 and $10 pieces bearing the 1850 date, although records suggest that coinage was accomplished in 1849 and 1851.
The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, January 18, 1849, noted that the Gray Eagle had sailed and gave a passenger list, including Theodore Dubosq, Sr., Theodore Dubosq, Jr., and Henry A. Dubosq. The article noted:
Mr. Theodore Dubosq, jeweler, North Second Street, we understand, takes out with him machinery for melting and coining gold, and stamping it with a private mark, so as to establish a currency which will afford the greater cone venience and facility for dealing in the raw material.
On May 31, 1849, the Alta California carried this notice: "We learn that Mr. Theodore Dubosq, jeweler from Philadelphia, who recently arrived in the Gray Eagle, has brought with him the necessary machinery for striking private coins."
Although Dubosq arrived at a time in which coins were rare in circulation and other private minters metwith success, it is not known whether gold coins were actually struck by him in the 1849 year, although trial pieces in copper of that date are known to have been made.
An 1851 article noted that from January 1st to March 31st of that year Dubosq & Company had produced $150,000 value in gold. As no specimens bearing the 1851 date are known, they may have been dated 1850.
The Banking House of James King of William sent seven $10 and three $5 Dubosq coins to the United States Assayer, Augustus Humbert, for evaluation on March 21, 1851. It was subsequently reported that the $5 issue had an intrinsic value of $4.96 and the $10 was worth $9.93. Even though the report was very favorable to Dubosq, the firm, which conducted business in the name of Dubosq & Godwin (although the coins were simply marked "Dubosq & Co."), wrote to say that the pieces, due to the value of silver in them, were worth even more than the high figure reported:
Having read in the Daily Alta California an account of the assays of the different private coins made in San Francisco, assayed by you, in which you have not mentioned the value of silver contained in our coins, if it is not too much trouble, we should like you to make public what our coins would yield in Philadelphia ...