There is a second, and more serious angle to this whole question. So far the problem has been the alleged relationship between the San Francisco Branch Mint bars, Mrs. Keenan, and the Brother Jonathan, for which there is no evidence at all, in spite of the elaborate suggestions in the auction catalogues. Now we turn to the question of the integrity of the bars themselves. A typical example reads as follows:
995 FINE [in circular logo:]
16.54 OZS U.S.MINT
2184 1865
VAL $340.20 SAN FRANCISCO
E and M on the two assayer's cuts
no. 2178, 14.59 oz., .995 fine, $300.00;
no. 2179
no. 2180, 24.24 oz., .998 fine, $500.00;
Bowers & Ruddy, 18 Mar. 1982 (Clifford), lot 178;
melted, according to Stack's, 11 June 1997, text at lot 1027.
no. 2181, 21.59 oz., .995 fine, $ --
(the value is not visible in the photograph);
no. 2182, 24.21 oz., .999 fine, $500.00;
no. 2183, 21.07 oz., .995 fine, $433.37;
*no. 2184, 16.54 oz., .995 fine. $340.20;
NASCA, 28 Apr. 1980, lot 2423;
Superior, 28 Jan. 1985, lot 2126;
Stack's, 11 June 1997, lot 1027
no. 2185, 15.67 oz., .995 fine, $322.33;
no. 2186, 15.01 oz., .995 fine, $308.73.
Stack's, 11 Nov. 1974 (Gibson), lot 184
no. 2187
no. 2188
The problem of the bars' authenticity can be quickly handled. They are false, as can be deduced from their own physical evidence.
1. Fineness. It has been possible to read the fineness claimed on eight of the eleven bars of the set, namely .995 (6), .998 and .999. This of itself condemns them. Today professional producers of gold bullion normally achieve finenesses of .999, and even .9999. That was not possible 150 years ago.
But there is more to it than that. John Kleeberg has already shown in regard to other false assay bars that both very high gold content, and the maintenance of such a level through a series of bars, are sure signs that the bars are spurious.<1> It is to the point that the genuine California bars recovered from the Central America, bars manufactured in 1856 and 1857, were refined to a variety of levels, depending on the quality of the gold brought to the assayer in the first place. For example, the fineness of the 47 bars sold in the Sotheby New York auction of June 20-21 2000 averaged .840, and only five of them achieved a fineness of .900 or greater, the maximum being an isolated .941. Furthermore the overall range of fineness not only varied between the extremes of .580 and .941, but the individual finenesses fell at 40 different points along that scale.
Kleeberg also pointed out an essential fact about the manufacture of the spurious bars as against the genuine ones. The genuine bar was cast, then assayed (a corner tag being taken for that purpose), after which the resulting fineness, the weight, and the calculated dollar value were punched into the surface of the bar. The spurious bars were made the other way around: first the metal was assayed, then the bar was cast. That is the only way in which a set of such bars could have been produced with finenesses differing from each other by only a few thousands. (There is of course no reason why the forger needed to assay the gold himself anyway. He could simply have purchased commercially pure metal from a proper assayer.)
These observations apply equally to the Brother Jonathan bars. It is not possible that in 1865 the San Francisco Branch Mint could not only have reached a fineness of .995 -- and even achieving the still higher levels of .998 and .999, almost perfect purity -- while at the same time maintaining such a level over the whole series of bars. The attempts of the forger to be impressive beyond what was physically possible are proof that the bars are false.
2. The Tax Stamp. There is no tax stamp, such as was required in 1865. See Kleeberg on this subject in "How the West was Faked".
3.The Assayer's cuts. These bars mimic the genuine thing as exemplified by the Central America bars in the detail of showing two assayer's cuts at opposite ends. However as Kleeberg has pointed out, on the genuine bars the cuts always occur not just at the opposite ends, but also the opposite faces of the ingot, never on the same face as is the case with all of the fake bars.
4. The Logo. Perhaps most important is the logotype carried by each of the bars in this set: the date 1865, surrounded by the legend "U. S. Mint San Francisco".
It is customary in all modern discussion to refer to the San Francisco coining operation by the name "San Francisco Mint" But that was not its name. In 1865 the mint structure of the United States was such that there was only one mint, at Philadelphia; all other operations were under Philadelphian control and were styled Branch Mints. Thus the reports of the branch mints always went to Philadelphia, and were reproduced in its annual reports as eminating from "The Branch Mint of ..." It was only with the Reform of 1873 that the branch mints (Carson City, Denver, New Orleans, San Francisco) were spun off, to become autonomous operations, "Mints" in their own right, reporting thereafter directly to the Treasury in Washington. This is all laid out in the Mint Report for 1873.
In keeping with its status the operation at San Francisco was styled a Branch Mint from its beginning in 1854, and this designation appears on all its documents until 1873. Its ledgers, which still survive, are printed with this designation as heading. Its correspondence, much of which still survives, carries the written heading "U. S. Branch Mint" (shortly "U. S. B. Mint"), or alternatively "Branch Mint of the U. S." This is invariable -- there are no exceptions.
We would not know this from common parlance today. So for example, the Bowers and Merena auction catalogue, 29 May 1999, "The S. S. Brother Jonathan Treasure Coins", provides all kinds of information about the minting operation in San Francisco in and around 1865, but wrongly refers to it repeatedly as "the San Francisco Mint" -- which it was not.
The forgers of these bars, misled by our usual practice, mistakenly imposed on them a logo bearing the name "U. S. Mint", which was not in use at San Francisco in 1865. It was not used and could not have been used, until the reorganization of the country's entire mint structure in the Reform of 1873 constituted the San Francisco operation as a U. S. Mint for the first time.
All eleven of the so-called "Brother Jonathan bars" are twentieth-century fakes, exposed by the absurd claims to almost perfect fineness, the missing tax stamp, and the erroneous logo.
NOTE 1. John M. Kleeberg, in Coin World 1 March 2004, pp. 58-60.