Messrs. Key and Morgan are the Engraver’s assistants. The former has already received notice; the latter, Mr. George T. Morgan, was born in Birmingham, England, in 1845; he studied at the Art School there, and won a National Scholarship at the South Kensington, where he was a student two years. He is best known to the country by the so-called “Bland dollar,” which is his design and execution.
We have reason to congratulate both the Government and the people that the engraving service is well and judiciously furnished.
BENJAMIN RUSH,
An eminent physician and philanthropist, was born near Philadelphia, December 24, 1745; he graduated from Princeton College in 1760; he afterwards studied medicine in Edinburgh, London, and Paris; returning to this country, he was elected Professor of Chemistry in the Medical College of Philadelphia in 1769. In 1776 he was elected to the Continental Congress, and was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence in the same year; he was afterwards appointed Surgeon-General of Revolutionary Army, and voted for the adoption of the Constitution of the United States in 1787. Dr. Rush was a popular lecturer, and eminently qualified as a teacher of medicine. When the yellow fever scourged the City, and the public buildings were closed in 1799 and 1800, he was very successful in his treatment of the victims of that epidemic. It is said that he visited and prescribed for one hundred patients in a single day. He was treasurer of the first United States Mint during the last fourteen years of his life. Dr. Rush died in Philadelphia in April, 1813. Among his nine children was Richard Rush, the statesman.
Note.—Dr. Rush was the author of the first pamphlet on temperance published in this country, showing the injurious effects of alcoholic drinks on the human system, and is justly regarded as the father of the temperance movement, the Centennial of which has lately been celebrated throughout the United States, September, 1885.
CASHIER.
Mark H. Cobb, the Cashier of the Mint from 1871 until the present time (1885), was born in Colebrook, Connecticut, in 1828. In 1861, Hon. Simon Cameron, then Secretary of War, appointed him Chief Clerk in the War Department, he having previously been his private secretary. After Mr. Cameron’s resignation as Secretary, Mr. Cobb, at the solicitation of the late Col. John W. Forney, accepted the position of Enrolling Clerk of the United States Senate in 1862. In 1871 he was appointed to the responsible position of Cashier in the United States Mint.
Albion Cox, first assayer of the Mint was appointed April 4, 1794. His commission, signed by Washington, until recently, hung upon the walls of the assay office. But little is known of Mr. Cox, save that he was an Englishman by birth, and a good officer, as appears from the following report to the Secretary of the Treasury made by Director Boudinot, under date, December 3, 1795. He says: “The sudden and unexpected death of the assayer, Mr. Albion Cox, on Fryday last by an apoplectic fit, deprived the Mint of an intelligent officer, essentially necessary to the future progress in the coinage of the precious metals. Until this officer is replaced, the business at the Mint must be confined to striking cents only.”
He therefore held office about a year and eight months.