Christopher Bechtler: A Fascination with Gold / Processing Gold at the Bechtler Mint

Christopher Bechtler: A Fascination with Gold, also, Processing Gold at the Bechtler Mint. . Christopher Bechtler: A Fascination with Gold Christopher Bechtler was a brilliant man of seemingly boundless energy. , At the technical college in his home town of Pforzheim, he learned jewelry and clockmaking and became a skilled metalsmith. Upon his arrival in North Carolina in 1830 he opened a jewelry and clock-making business. , A year later, local mine owners persuaded Bechtler to use his skills to assay their ore and turn out coins and ingots. They had become frustrated by the refusal of Congress to establish a federal mint closer to the southern gold-producing states than the mint in Philadelphia. , What was Here? , Only some foundation stones and a few broken bricks and fragments of pottery have been found at the site of Christopher Bechtler's house and mint. What the buildings looked like is a mystery. One visitor described the house as a “cottage.” Another said that a double floor in the shop captured any gold dust falling through. Nothing more is known about the buildings on this site. , Much more is known about the man and his work. The press he used to make coins is displayed in Rutherford County. His roller is in the Museum of History in Raleigh, NC. The notices he published in the newspaper can be followed. The deeds to his hundreds of acres of land purchases are in the county court house, as are other documents such as his naturalization papers from 1832, his transfer of this land and the shop and tools to his son Augustus in 1840, his will from 1842, and a listing of his estate sold at auction in 1844. , [Captions] , . Christopher Bechtler, Sr. Bechtler published many notices in The North Carolina Spectator. We can read about the opening of his jewelry business, his coining business, his effort to collect money owed to him, even a notice about a lost cow from the family farm. , . Christopher Bechtler, Jr. Two sons, Augustus and Charles, immigrated with Bechtler but no portraits of them have been found. Carl Christ Bechtler (pictured at left), the nephew of Christopher Bechtler, immigrated at the same time. Carl Christ was also known as Christopher Bechtler, Jr., which has caused some confusion for historians trying to assign documents to the right Bechtler. , Processing Gold at the Bechtler Mint Using only this hand-operated equipment, the Bechtlers' minted $2.25 million in coins between 1831 and 1840. , Once gold ore was separated from the rock and gravel, it was: , 1) Smelted and poured into a mold. , 2) Bechtler's roller device produced strips of gold that varied in thickness for coins of different values. , Coin-sized blank “planchets” were: , 3) Punched out of the strips and 4) Placed between dies in the press.