See quotation.
1842. The miners carried much of their gold to a Mr. Bechtler, within four miles of the village in which I reside; he is a very good assayer, and a very honest man. He converted a large portion of it into what we call, in the gold region, the Bechtler coin, or the miner’s currency; that is, pieces of gold, resembling but not imitating coin, with the proper value and the assayer’s name marked thereon. Before the establishment of the branch mint at Charlotte, those Bechtler pieces constituted a portion of the currency in the gold region.—Mr. Graham of North Carolina in the House of Representatives, April 4: Congressional Globe, p. 316, Appendix.
