by Thomas K. DeLorey

By some standards George T. Morgan’s career as an Engraver at the United States Mint was a bitter disappointment. Stuck in the Assistant Engraver’s position for over 40 years, he designed only one regular issue U.S. coin in a 49-year tenure, and succeeded to the Chief Engraver’s position only after his predecessor’s lack of imagination had caused coin design to be jobbed out of the Mint to more illustrious designers such as Augustus St. Gaudens and Victor D. Brenner. However, his one coin, the Morgan Dollar, is perhaps the best known U.S. coin today.

Born in Birmingham, England in 1845, Morgan attended the Birmingham Art School, and won a scholarship to the South Kensington Art School. He worked as an assistant under the Wyons at the British Royal Mint, and had the Wyon family not established a several-generation dynasty of engravers in the Tower Mint might have enjoyed a successful career there.

Morgan was brought to the Philadelphia Mint in 1876 as a “Special Engraver,” reporting directly to Mint Director Henry R. Linderman, whose office had been moved to Washington, DC, in 1873. Considering the Byzantine political system under which the Mint in Philadelphia operated in this era, with nepotism and political cronyism the order of the day, his action naturally makes one wonder what the 69-year-old Chief Engraver William Barber and his son, Assistant Engraver Charles Barber, thought of this arrangement. (more…)

Republished from The E-Gobrecht - the Electronic Publication of the Liberty Seated Collector Club

Part 1-The Hiring of Christian Gobrecht

During a recent research trip to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, my research partner, Joel Orosz, had the excellent idea to call for the Robert M. Patterson personal papers. Three letters from Samuel Moore to Robert M. Patterson dated June, 1835 were located. At this time Moore was the outgoing director of the mint; Patterson assumed the Mint directorship in July, 1835. Patterson’s father had also been the Mint director, serving from 1806 to 1824. Tying the family knot even further, the incoming director Robert M. Patterson was the brother-in-law of the outgoing director Moore.

The first letter is dated June 16, 1835 and deals with the issue of hiring Christian Gobrecht as an engraver. Moore wrote to the Secretary of the Treasurer, Levi Woodbury, on the same day regarding the same issue. The Moore/Woodbury letter is largely reprinted in Breen’s Secret History of the Gobrecht Coinages. Between the two letters, it is clear that the outgoing director Samuel Moore dearly wanted to get Gobrecht hired into the Mint, which indeed occurred later in 1835. The first Moore/Patterson letter reads as follows (the second and third letters will follow in a subsequent edition of the E-Gobrecht). (more…)

The motto IN GOD WE TRUST was placed on United States coins largely because of the increased religious sentiment existing during the Civil War. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase received many appeals from devout persons throughout the country, urging that the United States recognize the Deity on United States coins. From Treasury Department records, it appears that the first such appeal came in a letter dated November 13, 1861. It was written to Secretary Chase by Rev. M. R. Watkinson, Minister of the Gospel from Ridleyville, Pennsylvania, and read:

Dear Sir: You are about to submit your annual report to the Congress respecting the affairs of the national finances.

One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins.

You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were not shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation? What I propose is that instead of the goddess of liberty we shall have next inside the 13 stars a ring inscribed with the words PERPETUAL UNION; within the ring the allseeing eye, crowned with a halo; beneath this eye the American flag, bearing in its field stars equal to the number of the States united; in the folds of the bars the words GOD, LIBERTY, LAW.

This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object. This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed. From my hearth I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters.

To you first I address a subject that must be agitated.

(more…)