A permanent home is being considered for the brass door knocker that once adorned the front door of the Dahlonega Mint. The item is believed to be among the only relics from the catastrophic fire Dec. 19, 1878, that leveled the former gold coin production facility.

At the time of the fire, the former Mint structure was serving the North Georgia Agricultural College’s administration building, having been given to help start the college in 1873.

After the fire, the college’s new administration building was constructed on the remaining foundation. One can today tour under the building to see that foundation.

The 7-inch brass door knocker that was mounted on the front door of the Dahlonega Mint likely fell off the door when the building collapsed, and it, accompanied by whatever coin production equipment survived the blaze, was sent to the New Orleans Mint, where it was used until that facility was closed in 1909.

The design of the door knocker reflects the design of the Great Seal of the United States: an American bald eagle clutching the arrows of war in its left talons and olive branch of peace in its right. A shield is on the chest of the eagle, and the eagle holds a ribbon in its beak.

If the door knocker had any initial inscriptions, the periodic polishings it has since experienced would have gradually removed them.

Holes for which screws could be used for mounting the knocker are at the top of each of the wings.

Historians question whether the door knocker was still on the front door of the former Mint building at the time of the 1878 fire and removed along with Mint machinery, or if it was secured sometime later. The recessed back of the brass door knocker exhibits remnants of soot from a fire.

Upon the closing of the New Orleans Mint in 1909 as a production facility, its superintendent, Hugh S. Suthon, acquired the Dahlonega Mint’s door knocker. Years later, while visiting his personal physician, Dr. Hershel W. Bass, in Gadsden, Alabama, Suthon learned that Dr. Bass’ wife was Dr. Joseph J. Singleton’s great-granddaughter. Singleton was the Dahlonega Mint’s first superintendent.

On a subsequent visit to Dr. Bass, Suthon brought the door knocker with him for presentation to Susan Singleton Bass, for return to Singleton descendants in the state where it originated.

A family reunion of Singleton descendants was held in 1998 in Dahlonega, and attendees included Francina Bass Perrot and her daughter, Susan Perrott King. King carried the door knocker with her to show her relatives and relate the history behind it.

King detailed that during her years growing up, the door knocker had been affixed to the front door of the family’s home in Columbus, Georgia, and required periodic polishing to maintain its brilliance.

Serendipity

Through a serendipitous series of coincidences, numismatist and Georgia gold specialist Bob Harwell from Hancock & Harwell in Atlanta, Georgia, is now entrusted with helping guide the decision of this family that has held the historic door knocker for well over a century.

Harwell, during his more than four decades as a professional numismatist, has assembled for collector clients a number of complete sets of Dahlonega Mint gold coins, which were struck between 1838 and 1861, after which the Mint premises were seized by the Confederacy at the opening of the American Civil War.

As happenstance, some 25 years ago, while attending a cocktail party at a friend’s house in Atlanta, Harwell was introduced to Susan Perrott King, the great, great, great granddaughter of the first superintendent of the Dahlonega Mint.

In 1841, three years after the U.S. Senate approved President Andrew Jackson’s appointment of Dr. Singleton as the first Dahlonega Mint superintendent, hostile political forces secured Singleton’s ouster.

After his tenure as superintendent, he extended his involvement with gold, as he possessed significant gold mining interests in the region, including the Singleton Mine, and subsequently assumed operation of the Calhoun Mine, the property of South Carolina native John Caldwell Calhoun (American statesman and political theorist, and seventh vice president of the United States, from 1825 to 1832).

In his conversation with King, Harwell learned that the former Dahlonega Mint door knocker had been affixed to the front door of her family’s home in Columbus for decades, before it was removed and taken with the family upon their relocation elsewhere.

Fast forward to May 2024

Harwell was contacted by King about the future disposition of the door knocker and her wish that it remain in the state of Georgia. Harwell said strong consideration is being given to find it a home in an historical museum, but that decision has not yet been made. King entrusted possession of the door knocker to Harwell to maintain until she and her family determine its disposition.

Additional historical perspective can be discovered in the 1986 reference, The Neighborhood Mint: Dahlonega in the Age of Jackson, by co-authors Sylvia Gailey Head and Elizabeth W. Etheridge.

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