Christopher Bechtler, trained in jewelry and clockmaking at the technical college in Pforzheim and skilled as a metalsmith, arrived in North Carolina in 1830 and opened a jewelry and clock-making business. In 1831, frustrated local mine owners persuaded him to assay their ore and produce coins and ingots because Congress had refused to establish a federal mint closer to the southern gold-producing states than Philadelphia. Although little is known about the appearance of his house and mint beyond a few foundation stones, broken bricks, pottery fragments, one description of the house as a cottage, and a report of a double floor in the shop to catch falling gold dust, much is known about his work through surviving equipment and documents. His coin press is displayed in Rutherford County, his roller is in the Museum of History in Raleigh, NC, and records include newspaper notices, deeds for hundreds of acres he purchased, his 1832 naturalization papers, his 1840 transfer of the land, shop, and tools to his son Augustus, his 1842 will, and an 1844 listing of his estate sold at auction. Notices published in The North Carolina Spectator trace his jewelry business, coining business, efforts to collect debts, and even a lost cow from the family farm. Augustus and Charles immigrated with him, while his nephew Carl Christ Bechtler, also known as Christopher Bechtler, Jr., created later confusion in identifying documents. Using hand-operated equipment, the Bechtlers minted $2.25 million in coins between 1831 and 1840 by smelting separated gold ore into molds, rolling it into strips of varying thickness, punching coin-sized planchets from the strips, and placing them between dies in a press.