Auraria & The First American Gold Rush

Etowah River, near Auraria, Georgia

Auraria is a ghost town in Lumpkin County, Georgia, southwest of Dahlonega, the county seat.

In 1828, a man walked along Findley Ridge and kicked a rock–and discovered it was full of gold. This was in Cherokee territory, and part of present day Lumpkin County, Georgia. The first American gold rush subsequently ensued. 

The Indians were dismayed at the influx of unauthorized settlers. Cherokee leader Major Ridge (aka Pathkiller II, whose maternal grandfather was a Highland Scot) long opposed U.S. government proposals for the Cherokees to sell their lands and remove to the West. However, rapidly expanding white settlement and Georgia's efforts to abolish the Cherokee government caused him to change his mind. Advised by his son John Ridge, Major Ridge came to believe the best way to preserve the Cherokee Nation was to get good terms for their lands from the United States before it was too late. On December 22, 1835, Ridge was one of the signers of the Treaty of New Echota, which exchanged the Cherokee tribal land east of the Mississippi River for land in what is now Oklahoma. The treaty was of questionable legality, and it was rejected by Chief John Ross and the majority of the Cherokee people. Nevertheless, the treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate. The Supreme Court under John Marshall forced the treaty on the Cherokees, and the Cherokee removal from Georgia began. The land east of Auraria was purchased by U.S. Vice President John Calhoun, and he established the Calhoun Mine there. The banks of Etowah River, Camp Creek, and Cane Creek had many mines (e.g., Barlow Mine, Battle Branch Mine, Ralston Mine, Whim Hill Mine, Hedwig-Chicago Mine, Gold Hill Mine, Etowah Mine).

(Source: Wikipedia)

The North Georgia Gold Rush (part 2)

From The New Georgia Encyclopedia, by David Williams (Valdosta State University); the Georgia Humanities Council and the University of Georgia Press:

By late 1829 north Georgia, known at the time as the Cherokee Nation, was flooded by thousands of prospectors lusting for gold. Niles' Register reported in the spring of 1830 that there were four thousand miners working along Yahoola Creek alone. While in his nineties, Benjamin Parks recalled the scene in the Atlanta Constitution (July 15, 1894):

The news got abroad, and such excitement you never saw. It seemed within a few days as if the whole world must have heard of it, for men came from every state I had ever heard of. They came afoot, on horseback and in wagons, acting more like crazy men than anything else. All the way from where Dahlonega now stands to Nuckollsville [Auraria] there were men panning out of the branches and making holes in the hillsides.

The sudden influx of miners into the Cherokee Nation was known even at the time as the Great Intrusion. One writer said in the Cherokee Phoenix, "Our neighbors who regard no law and pay no respects to the laws of humanity are now reaping a plentiful harvest. . . . We are an abused people." But there was little the Cherokees could do; it seemed the louder they protested, the more eagerly the miners came.
Gold rush towns sprang up quickly in north Georgia, particularly near the center of the gold region in present-day Lumpkin County. Auraria became an instant boomtown, growing to a population of 1,000 by 1832. The county seat, called Licklog at the time, in 1833 became known as Dahlonega, for the Cherokee word tahlonega, meaning golden. Within a few months after its establishment nearly 1,000 people were crowded into the settlement, with about 5,000 people in the surrounding county.

The North Georgia Gold Rush (part 1)

from The New Georgia Encyclopedia, by David Williams (Valdosta State University); the Georgia Humanities Council and the University of Georgia Press:

There are several popular stories of the beginning of Georgia's gold rush; but in fact, no one is really certain who made the first discovery or when. According to one anecdote, John Witheroods found a three-ounce nugget along Duke's Creek in White County. Another says that Jesse Hogan, a prospector from North Carolina, found gold on Ward's Creek near Dahlonega. Yet another finds a young Benjamin Parks kicking up an unusual-looking stone while on the lookout for deer west of the Chestatee River in 1828. Despite the popularity of these claims, no documented evidence for gold in Georgia is found until August 1, 1829, when a Milledgeville newspaper, the Georgia Journal, ran the following notice.

GOLD.—A gentleman of the first respectability in Habersham county, writes us thus under date of 22d July: "Two gold mines have just been discovered in this county, and preparations are making to bring these hidden treasures of the earth to use." So it appears that what we long anticipated has come to pass at last, namely, that the gold region of North and South Carolina, would be found to extend into Georgia.

The Tennessee / North Carolina Boundary

From A History of Watauga County, North Carolina, by John Preston Arthur, published 2002, Genealogical Publishing Company, page 120:

Running the State Line.— As the Cherokees occupied the territory southwest of the Big Pigeon River in what is now Haywood County, no provision was made for running the line beyond this point. Generally speaking, the line was to follow the tops of the Stone, the Smoky and the Unaka Mountains from Virginia to Georgia, but to be surveyed and marked only from Virginia to the Pigeon. The surveying party consisted of Col. Joseph McDowell, David Vance, Mussendine Matthews, speaker of the House, commissioners. John Strother and Robert Henry were the surveyors. The party met May 19, 1799, at Captain Isaac Weaver's, near what is now Tuckerdale, a station on the new Virginia-Carolina Railway, in Ashe County.

From the diary of John Strother, surveyor:

“25th [May 1799]. – We had a very disagreeable night the morning appears gloomy – some of our horses lost. Mr. Logan cut his foot; it will be bad. The horses were at length found. We all eat our breakfast & set out on the line, went ¾ mile. It set in and rained hard and obliged us to take up camp at the first place that offered, which was a branch of Roan’s Creek, where we spent an uncomfortable evening. The next day being the Lard’s day we spent it here in prayers for a plesant tour to ye Painted Rock. Genl McDowell left us this day. He is sick.”

Gold Quality: Georgia vs North Carolina

From The Gold Placers of the Vicinity of Dahlonega, Georgia, by William Phipps Blake, Charles Thomas Jackson, published 1859:

It is the universal testimony of those who have worked in the placers of Georgia, that the gold is generally in larger lumps and particles, or is coarser than in the placers of the western parts of North Carolina, in Burke, McDowell and Rutherford counties. Mr. Blake also observes that the quality of the gold is excellent, rarely yielding less than 90 per cent., or 900 parts in 1,000, the difference being silver. The standard of gold of the United States consists of 900 parts of gold to 100 of alloy.

Gold: North Carolina to Georgia

From The Gold Placers of the Vicinity of Dahlonega, Georgia, by William Phipps Blake, Charles Thomas Jackson, published 1859:

According to [John] Wheeler,* the first piece of gold found in the United States, was picked up in 1799, by Conrad Keed, a boy twelve years of age, in the bed of a small stream on his father's farm in Cabarus [sic, Cabarrus] county, North Carolina, It was about the size of a small smoothing-iron, and was kept for several years in the house to hold the door open, and then sold to a silversmith for three dollars and a half. In the same stream many pieces of gold were afterwards found at intervals of several years, the largest being the twenty-eight pound lump so often cited. In 1829, the placers were opened in Burke and McDowell counties, in the same State, and from these mines the gold was traced southward into Georgia, where it was first discovered on Duke's Creek, in Habersham, now White county, in part, in the same year. The first fragment found weighed three ounces, and was taken out by John Witheroods, of North Carolina, but his claim of priority of discovery in Georgia is disputed by Jesse Hogan, also of North Carolina, who claims to have first taken out gold on a branch of Ward's Creek, in Lumpkin county, not far from Dahlonega, then in the Cherokee nation.

... At that time [1829] Habersham was an organized county, but the rest of the gold region was included in the Cherokee nation, over which the United States exercised a supervisory care. The richness of the newly-discovered mines soon brought together a large number of miners from Georgia and the adjoining States. These commenced mining chiefly on the lands of the Cherokees, and on that portion now included within the limits of Lumpkin county, the Chestatee River then being the eastern boundary of the Cherokee nation. This rush for the mines brought into the country thousands of men of great diversity of character, many of them dissipated and regardless of the future. Shanty groceries were set up all over the country, where whiskey was freely sold, and mountebanks attended with all kinds of tricks and shows, in the endeavor to share the easily-gotten gold of the miners. Drinking, gambling and righting were rife, and laws were little known and less cared for. The poor Indians saw with dismay their beautiful hill-sides, where they and their fathers had chased the deer for centuries, occupied by these centres of vice and immorality, and their lovely valleys and cool dells dug over and rendered hideous to the sight. These were known as the "times of the intrusion." To protect the Cherokees from this intrusion the United States stationed troops about five miles below where Dahlonega is now situated. The attempt was made to drive back the intruders beyond the Chestatee into Habersham county, where mining was also in progress, but with little or no success. While the miners were being driven from one creek or valley they would return to another, and so the robbery of the Cherokees continued. Parties often formed to cross the river in the night, and secure as much rich gravel as possible from some selected spot, with which they would recross the river in order to wash it out during the next day. Many deposits were stealthily worked and in great precipitation and haste, only the best spots being selected.

*History of North Carolina, ii. p. 64.

"Scotch-Irish Blood in America"

From History of the McDowells and Connections, by John Hugh McDowell, pub. 1918, C. B. Johnston, page 45:

Courage and Thrift of Ancient Clans Infused Into American
Character—Recent Investigations Which Grace a
Revolutionary Lineage Back to 373 A. D.
The Scotch-Irish blood in America has been a strong influence in the molding of our national character. In Virginia, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, and along the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountains, the firmness, the courage and thrift and love of liberty of the ancient clans have been engrafted into American character for many generations. Recent investigations in Scotland and Ireland plainly show that among the founders of the American Republic were sons of the strongest strains of blood in the world.

The Great Georgia Gold Rush

White County, Georgia, was created in 1857 from part of the original land lot county of Habersham, which was created in 1818 from Indian treaty lands. In early times, the area of White County formed a transitional boundary between the Cherokee and Creek Indian nations. Gold was found there in the late 1820s along the Nacoochee River (then known as Duke's Creek) touching off the Great Gold Rush of that century. During the gold mining years, nine gold mines operated in what became White County, and operations remained profitable until as late as 1940.

Two parties of sixty-one families emigrated to the Nacoochee Valley in the early part of 1822. These two parties came from Burke County, North Carolina, and rapidly spread over the entire county.

History records of Habersham County indicate that "Alexander Erwin, a North Carolinian, son of a man who as a mere boy fought at the battle of Kings Mountain, came to the county in 1829. He, with Gen. B. F. Patton, a brother-in-law of Dr. George Phillips, put up a store for the purpose of trading with the Indians. Their place of business was the old O'Callaghan building on the site of the present Court House. Too old for service when the War Between the States broke out, he kept the post office and helped to look after the affairs of the town, but he sent three gallant sons, Capt. W. S. Erwin, J. B. Erwin and Capt., afterwards Judge, Alex S. Erwin."

The Warriors Path becomes The Great Wagon Road

In the 18th-century migrations, few trails in America were more important than the Indian route which ran east of the Appalachians from Pennsylvania to Georgia. This Ancient Warriors Path had long been used by Iroquois tribesmen of the north to travel south and trade or make war in Virginia and the Carolinas. By a series of treaties with the powerful Five Nations of the Iroquois, the English acquired use of the Warriors Path. After 1744 they took over the land itself. The growth of the route into the principal highway of the colonial backcountry was important in the development of the nation. Over this road came English, Scots-Irish, and German settlers to claim land. The Warriors Path led from the Iroquois Confederacy around the Great Lakes through what later became Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to Bethlehem, York, and Gettysburg, into western Maryland around what is now Hagerstown, across the Potomac River at Evan Watkins Ferry, following the narrow path across the "back country" (or "up country" or "Piedmont") to Winchester, Virginia, through the Shenandoah Valley, to Harrisburg, Staunton, Lexington, and Roanoke, to Salem, North Carolina, to Salisbury, where it was joined by the east–west Catawba and Cherokee Trading Path at the Trading Ford across the Yadkin River in Rowan County, to Charlotte, then to Rock Hill, South Carolina, where it branches into two routes to Augusta and Savannah, Georgia.

(Source: The Scots-Irish From Ulster and The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, by Brenda E. McPherson Compton, http://www.electricscotland.com/history/america/wagon_road.htm)

The Great Wagon Road

(click image to enlarge)

The Great Wagon Road was an early American thoroughfare and the heavily-travelled main route for settlement of the southern states, particularly the backcountry. Beginning in Philadelphia, the Great Wagon Road passed through the towns of Lancaster and York in southeastern Pennsylvania. Turning southwest, the road crossed the Potomac River and entered the Shenandoah Valley at Winchester, Virginia, continuing down the valley via the Great Warrior's Trail. The Shenandoah portion of the road is also known as the Valley Pike. South of the Shenandoah Valley, the road reached the Roanoke River at the town of Big Lick (today Roanoke, Virginia). From there, the road passed through the Roanoke River Gap to the east side of the Blue Ridge, and continued south through the Piedmont region and the present-day North Carolina towns of Winston-Salem, Salisbury, and Charlotte, ultimately reaching Augusta, Georgia on the Savannah River. South of Roanoke, the Great Wagon Road was also called the Carolina Road.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Scotch Irish, aka Scots-Irish, aka Ulster Scots

The people we call Scotch Irish, known in the old country as Ulster Scots, were largely descendants of mixed Germanic peoples who over many centuries had moved into and taken over the Scottish Lowlands. Beginning in the early seventeenth century many migrated to Ulster in Northern Ireland, and starting about 1715 the Scotch Irish began a massive migration to America. By 1775, when the War of the Revolution began, some quarter million had arrived. Most of them ended in the Back Country from Pennsylvania south into Georgia.

(Source: Jackson's Way: Andrew Jackson and the People of the Western Waters, by John Buchanan; John Wiley & Sons, 2001)