Dr. John Heysham Gibbon - assayer and melter-refiner of the Charlotte Mint
Zoins
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Interesting information on Gibbon, Assayer and Melter-Refiner of the Charlotte Mint who was nominated by President Andrew Jackson. Was he a political appointment as speculated below?
Any other useful background info on John Gibbon?
http://www.shissem.com/Hissem_Heysham-Gibbon_Branch.html#Dr. John Heysham-Gibbon
On 27 February 1837 the President, Andrew Jackson, nominated J. H. Gibbon to be assayer of the branch mint at Charlotte, North Carolina. On 2 March the Congress consented. In 1838 Gibbon accepted the appointment and moved his family there.
Was John a trained mineralogist or was his appointment purely political? While he may have been an amateur "rock hound," and could have practiced this avocation in Panama, I have to think he was chosen more because of his family and political connections.
Men hired to make coins at the Charlotte facilty attended special training at the Mint in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and John probably did too. When the Charlotte Mint opened, the superintendent's salary was $2,000 per year. The chief coiner, John R. Bolton, earned $1,500 per year. The assayer, J. H. Gibbon, earned $1,000 per year.
Unlike at the Philadelphia Mint where the roles of assayer and melter-refiner were separated, at the Charlotte Mint Dr. J.H. Gibbon had both jobs and was, when the Mint first opened, overwhelmed by the tasks. This caused a several month delay in minting the first coins because he simply couldn't do all the work by himself. Does this portray an unfamiliarity with his duties that would be implicit in a political appointment?
Gibbon remained the Assayer during the entire period the facility was a U.S. Mint and throughout the Civil War under the Confederacy.
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Also:
"February 9, 1839
Honorable Levi Woodbury
Secretary of the Treasury
Sir,
I have had the honor to receive your letter of the 6th inst, asking me to furnish you with
the information necessary to enable you to reply to a resolution of the House of Representatives, calling upon you to state “what will be, as nearly as you can estimate, the necessary additional expense of machinery, or of persons to be employed, if a law shall be passed directing the coinage of small change at the Branch Mint in North Carolina, as desired by the Legislature of the State of North Carolina.”
In reply to your letter, I have to state, that if proposed coinage be confined to dimes &
half dimes, the present machinery of the Branch Mint will be sufficient for the purpose, and the additional expense will be confined to the assayer’s department, which is not provided with the apparatus for the assay of silver, or with suitable molds for the ingots. The assayer [Gibbon], moreover, is not instructed in the art of assaying silver, and it would therefore be necessary for one of the officers of this mint to go to Charlotte in order to establish there this new operation in a safe and satisfactory manner. The whole expense, on these accounts, will not exceed one thousand dollars...."
Interesting information, thanks for sharing !!!