Saturday Morning, June 8, 2024
After you have read the gold article, please click on Books & Ephemera. There are a few people who would love to say hello.
Ten Years After
Two brothers. Two directions. Meet John and Peter Gardner, both born latter eighteenth century. The youngest of eight offspring, they grew up parentless, mother and father succumbing to early death. This situation only sharpened their resolve. While still under guardianship, the boys began investing in real estate and finance. Opportunity never knocked. For them, the door was always wide open.
Gold nuggets, souvenirs of the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Retrieved by prospector Perry Gardner.
We met John ten years ago selling the contents of his Victorian home. As an added denouement, on June 8th, we will now sell his personal library, his chosen career law. Brother Peter headed west as the United States expanded, seeking his future in a very young Tennessee. Here he continued his interest in real estate assembling over 1,000 acres. His marriage to Elizabeth produced two sons, Perry and James, the latter dying in infancy perhaps along with his mother at birth (family records are scanty).
Noah Webster's first published two-volume dictionary set.
This edition was the result of 28 years of research. In the process, Noah learned twenty-six languages. Seventeen percent of the words included had never been published.
Young Perry, born in 1826, inherited his father's and uncle's determination. Then a vast explosion rocked the world. The discovery of California gold. A frenzy swept the nation, drawing men west like a vast tsunami undertow. With the financial backing from his father, he, like thousands around him, joined the crusade, the lure of gold too great a bait. It is here we enter Perry's story.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Five days felt like fifty, each stride a struggle, each step a servitude. Mountains to cross, swamps to traipse. No roads. Few trails. Sunlight and shadow their guides. The American Frontier. Daytime rest short. Nighttime insects devouring their sleep. Endless trials. Enduring tribulations. Exhaustion taunted them each day. With their commitment on the brink of collapse, they cleared the last hurdle and reached the Ohio River at Paducah, Kentucky.
1800 Gold Half Eagle, capped bust to right, PCGS MS63.
In time, the family collected seventeen nineteenth century gold coins.
Their four-hundred-mile trek from Sullivan County, Tennessee now completed was simply a foreshadow of their coming days. Obsession plays by its own rules, but offers none. An unrelenting force beyond the grasp of reasoning. What would take six hours on interstates today took these nine men twenty days and nine lives on foot through unexplored purgatory. The year. 1850.
Mitchell's Map of the United States, 1834.
Sold by Mitchell & Hinman, No. 6 North Fifth Street, Philadelphia, 54" x 71".
America was expanding westward just one state beyond the Mississippi River. Contention on the Mexican border would explode into warfare twelve years later. Much of California, listed on an insert map (lr), is described as Unexplored Region, and was dominated by the Spanish.
↓ Title page for accompanying book to Mitchell's 1834 wall map, rarely surviving together. Another example of the integrity found in the Gardner family.
The Line of Demarcation
In 1846, border disputes between the United States and Mexico erupted into warfare. Bookmarked in history as the Mexican-American War, its outcome launched the presidential bid for General Zachary Taylor, a common theme in American politics (Generals Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower). The conflict lasted two years until peace was reached on February 2, 1848. What occurred during those two years beyond the battles became more significant to America's expansion west than the fighting itself.
Helter Skelter
On January 13, 1847, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed between Mexico and the United States ending all warfare in the California Territory alone. The region was now legally recognized as an entity of the United States. The dates, the timing, all falling into line.
1851 Gold Double Eagle
Twenty D. PCGS MS62+
All gold coins were photographed prior to grading, then once encased, photographed again.
One year later, on January 28, 1848, James Marshall, a carpenter working on John Sutter's lumber mill, noticed gold flecks in the trail race. If a face could launch a thousand ships, think what a handful of flecks could do. Abandon those vessels, literally, as attested to the empty frigates filling San Francisco's harbor.
The Gold Rush was on. A fever with few antidotes. Gold was already a known commodity in the territory. But now, legally, the floodgates opened. Stake claims were the primary real estate right. Where you dug was what you owned. Pandemonium ensued. What had been a hamlet of 1,000 inhabitants in 1848, by 1850, San Francisco expanded to 25,000 plus. The hills were alive with the sound of digging, dispute, and death.
Riding on the City of New Orleans
The History & Topography of the United States of America of North America, John Howard Hinton, Boston, 1846. Two volume set with illustrated title page. While Mr. Hinton published, Perry Gardner was rewriting the pages on his quest.
The breeze across the bow was an elixir. The nine men sat silent, watching the landscape drift by. Booked passage in Paducah brought salvation. They ate and rested on their way south, the wilderness a fading memory. At Cairo, Illinois, the Ohio River joins the great Mississippi, the spot made famous by Mark Twain. It was here Huckleberry Finn warned Jim of the impending danger. Once beyond this town, they were in the south and, for Jim, if captured, slavery or worse.
But those words were decades ahead yet to be penned. The nine men faced dangers of their own. New Orleans, crossing the Panama Isthmus on pack animals, sailing north to California, and the gold fields themselves. Success or failure. Wealth or poverty. No one thought about tomorrow. Survival today was tantamount. A waiting noose. Winners are few, players many. A moving lottery. The draw magnetic. And the paddlewheel kept on turning.
1807 Gold Half Eagle, capped bust to the right, PCGS MS63+
The heraldic eagle as a national symbol was selected over Benjamin Franklin's wish to make it the turkey. Wise though they were, little fear was felt from our Thanksgiving friends.
After the Gold Rush
Young Perry established a beachhead in California. The eight men accompanying him swore fealty to the Gardners through a signed agreement. All were offered a paid trip to California. In exchange, they would pay Perry half of their earnings and gold discovered in the first 314 days of mining. The agreement was honored.
The Trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, 1803. This, the first test of the Supreme Court's independence as a separate branch of the Federal government. If lost, the court's sovereignty would be neutralized. Impeachment in the House led to a trial in the Senate. On March 1, 1805, Justice Chase was acquitted on all counts. And the experiment of self-government survived.
At the end of the period, Perry himself returned home to Tennessee, via a land route. He had been sick for most of the adventure, now believed he had contracted malaria along the way. The cure, still one hundred years in the future, had a stake claim of its own. After arriving home, Perry Gardner died leaving behind his wife and a son. The unbearable conditions in the California Gold Rush shortened many lives. According to one letter written by Perry, about six men died a day. Desire and demise, those quick-step dance partners, forever exacting their toll.
In a Golden State
California reached statehood on September 9, 1850. What hastened this status was the need for civil government amid uncivility, gold mania driven. Another factor was monetary control. Although the U.S. Assay Office in San Francisco provided a service to establish reliable gold standards, nothing stamps approval like the Federal United States Mint.
1852 Gold fifty-dollar U.S. Assay San Francisco .900 Thou slug. PCGS MS63+
Opening its doors in 1854, the Mint's presence gave credence to California's meteoric rise in political dominance. The question unanswered is how Perry Gardner's father, Peter, obtained the 1852 .900 Thou slug. This specific coin was not struck until early 1853. By that point young Perry was buried back in Tennessee. The only answer we have is they were Gardners and opportunity has long been a trademark of family lineage. However this was achieved, the acquisition was remarkable. Once the US Mint was established, fifty-dollar gold coins were collected and remelted into smaller denominations for commercial circulation. The open window to obtain this coin was small, especially reaching 2,000 miles across America. But an open window it was. On June 8th, that small window will slide up just one more time.
Doors open at 8 AM. Auction starts at 9 AM. Open house Friday, June 7 from 3 PM to 5 PM.
Prior private inspection welcome. Call ahead for details. 215-794-7630. PA AU 1265L [bb]