Templeton Reid (Georgia) Gold (1830-1849)

In 1830, during the Georgia gold rush, Templeton Reid, a Milledgeville silversmith and machinist, moved to Gainesville to assay the miners' gold and turn it into money. That year he struck pieces of two and a half, five and ten dollars. Greysheet describes his as the first private gold rush mint in the United States.

The venture was short. In August 1830 a writer signing himself No Assayer told a Georgia paper that one of Reid's ten-dollar pieces held only about $9.38 in gold. The Mint's assayers, Jacob Eckfeldt and William Du Bois, later wrote that Reid's coins had been brought to Philadelphia in quantity on two occasions and not after 1831. The pieces they tested were of high fineness: a ten-dollar piece of 248 grains at 942 thousandths, and a quarter eagle of 60.5 grains at 932 thousandths.

Reid's name appears again on two coins dated 1849, of ten and twenty-five dollars, which reached the Mint during the California gold rush. Eckfeldt and Du Bois described them in 1852 as the only specimens received, too few to cut for assay, and apparently of California gold with nothing added. The larger piece was stolen from the Mint in 1858.

The Georgia pieces read GEORGIA GOLD on one side and TEMPLETON REID ASSAYER with the value on the other. Three of the four 1830 pieces carry the date; the fourth, a ten-dollar piece, has GEORGIA GOLD inside a ring of forty stars instead, struck with the same reverse die as the dated ten. Collectors and grading services number the Georgia pieces by Donald Kagin's catalogue of private gold, K-1 to K-4, and the two pieces of 1849 as K-1 and K-2 of Reid's California issues.

1830, Georgia. The quarter eagle (K-1), the five-dollar piece (K-2), the dated ten-dollar piece (K-3) and the undated ten with forty stars (K-4).

1849, California. The ten-dollar piece (K-1), received at the Mint early in 1850 and now in the Smithsonian Institution, and the twenty-five dollar piece (K-2), stolen in 1858. A copper piece with the twenty-five dollar design is listed by PCGS and NGC; when and how it was made is not recorded in the sources used here.

Reid used the gold as it came from the ground, without adding copper. The Mint's figures for his Georgia coins are 942 thousandths fine for a ten-dollar piece of 248 grains and 932 thousandths for a quarter eagle of 60.5 grains; the five-dollar piece was not tested. The 1849 pieces weighed 260 and 649 grains and were judged to be California gold without added alloy. No record gives the number of coins Reid struck, so the pages carry no mintage figures.