“Grandma” Agnes Paschal – Georgia Gold Rush Angel of Mercy

Pre-Civil War Hotel in Auraria

by Denise Farnsworth

My last several posts introduced the Georgia Gold Rush, offered a tour through its first boom town/ghost town of Auraria, and discussed mining methods. Today let’s focus on a beloved resident of Auraria, Agnes Paschal. Mrs. Paschal is one of several real-life characters who make an appearance in The Songbird and the Surveyor, first novel of my Twenty-Niners of the Gold Rush series. Oftentimes, I limit historical characters to brief cameo appearances. It can be difficult to confirm enough information about a person to grant them significant page time. The life of Agnes Paschal, however, was well-documented enough that she gained several conversations with my main characters in her role as healer and Baptist church leader.

Agnes was born to Burrell Brewer and Elizabeth Patrick Brewer in 1776. According to Ninety-Four Years, an account of her life penned by her son. George W., Agnes was 5’5” with fair skin, very black hair, and a sweet temperament. She received no formal education but had a good head for numbers, a love of theology, and a penchant for herbal remedies. She had no ear for music and could not dance. Her father died in 1799 and a year later, her mother. Agnes became the companion of a wealthy woman in Lexington, Georgia. There she met former soldier George Paschal, whom she married in 1802. The couple opened a tavern and a store. Doctors boarded with them and taught her medicine.

From 1811-1817, the Paschals ran an inn at the paper mill town of Scull Shoals, south of Lexington. As the War of 1812 ended, loans came due, and drought lowered the river, manufacturing efforts in the settlement waned. The couple moved to manage Bowling Green Inn in Oglethorpe County, catering to wealthy planters. George taught school. Agnes converted the owner of the racetrack for local thoroughbreds, Ferdinand Phinizy, to Methodism, and they closed the race grounds. Agnes found her calling as a healer during the outbreak of a fever that returned for three subsequent summers. She became famous for red-pepper tea,well-ventilated convalescent rooms, and her stand against leeching, bleeding, or blistering.

The Paschals raised a family and became pillars in Oglethorpe County until George’s death in 1832. Their son, George W., a lawyer, persuaded his mother to move with him to the boom town of Auraria in gold country. They purchased the Nuckolls’ hotel and tavern, tore out the bar, and made additions. They soon built a better hotel on the north end of town with signage that read, Mrs. Paschal and Sons. Former Vice President John C. Calhoun lodged with the Paschals two weeks at a time, overseeing his lucrative gold mine. His oratory drew many listeners to their porch.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Paschal went about her work of healing the body and soul. She was known to engage drunken miners in conversation that reminded them of their parents and godly raising. She collected subscriptions for a Baptist church, built so poorly of logs that it fell down the first winter of 1833-34. After that, “Grandma Paschal” opened her hotel dining room for services. When there was a fever among the people, she became known as an angel of mercy. Even when the county seat moved to Dahlonega and many residents followed, Mrs. Paschal never left Auraria. She was laid to rest in the cemetery there at the age of 94, beside her husband, whose body she’d brought from Oglethorpe County. Her children went on to notable military and political careers. George W. acted as a lieutenant in the Georgia Volunteers. He married Sarah Ridge, daughter of Cherokee Chief Major Ridge, and moved to Arkansas.

Look for further upcoming posts about the Georgia Gold Rush. Book one, The Songbird and the Surveyor, set in Auraria in 1833, is now available for purchase. A marriage of protection. A past full of pain. In Georgia's wild gold country, love might strike when it's least expected. https://www.amazon.com/Songbird-Surveyor-Twenty-Niners-Georgia-Gold-ebook/dp/B0F556951W/

Denise Farnsworth, formerly Denise Weimer, writes historical and contemporary romance mostly set in Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Auraria: Georgia’s Gold Rush Ghost Town

 by Denise Farnsworth

Auraria in 1932

Gold in Georgia! My last post on HHH explored the 1830s gold rush that few people are aware of. This month, let’s zero in on the first boom town of that gold rush, Auraria—also the setting for my upcoming release, The Songbird and the Surveyor. This mountain country crossroads proves especially intriguing since it’s been a ghost town for the past fifty years or so.

William Dean built the first cabin between the Chestatee and Etowah rivers in the summer of 1832. Nathaniel Nuckolls soon established a tavern and hotel to serve the miners that flooded North Georgia following the 1829 discovery of gold. The town that grew up along the narrow ridge there, traversed north to south by Gold Diggers’ Road, was first known as Nuckollsville.

Graham Hotel ruins

Land that originally belonged to the Cherokees, who were slated by the national government for removal by 1838, was surveyed into 160-acre farm lots and 40-acre gold lots and reapportioned to white settlers through a land lottery in the autumn of 1832. In November, Nuckollsville was renamed Auraria. Within six months of the lottery, a hundred families, eighteen to twenty stores, twelve to fifteen law offices, and four to five taverns comprised the rowdy village. The population soon swelled to over a thousand…with twenty saloons and five hotels. Auraria was a wild place, much akin to the later boomtowns of the Wild West. Georgia law prohibited gambling in public places, but there were exceptions for “respectable gentlemen” for dice games, board games, a bluffing game which became poker, and vingt-et-un (twenty-one), which came from New Orleans and became blackjack. Fights and horse thefts were common, as were houses of ill repute.

Room inside hotel in ruins

Legitimate businesses also thrived. Mining companies formed and assaying labs popped up. A newspaper, The Western Herald, began publication in 1833. Agnes Paschal and her son, George W. Paschal, a lawyer from Lexington, Georgia, purchased the Nuckolls hotel and soon built a new one. They also helped establish the first Baptist church. Former Vice President John C. Calhoun stayed at their establishment two weeks at a time, overseeing his thriving gold mine. Drovers brought hogs from Tennessee and wild turkeys to camps outside town to help offset the scarcity of meat in the area. John Ware established a confectionery in a new building. The Athens Stage Line arrived Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings and left for Augusta on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings. Another line ran from Pendleton, South Carolina, via Carnesville, through Auraria and on to Gainesville, Georgia.

In April of 1833, due to a legal dispute over the land where the courthouse for the new Lumpkin County was to be located, the court announced the selection of a courthouse site north of Auraria, near where gold was first discovered at a place then called Licklog or Headquarters…later Dahlonega. Dahlonega and Auraria held rival Fourth of July celebrations that summer, with town lots being sold in Dahlonega. Soon county offices and businesses closed in Auraria and reopened in Dahlonega. Auraria held on through the early twentieth century with just a few homes and businesses, but the heyday had ended. Hulks of crumbling buildings soon lined Gold Diggers’ Road, forgotten, mere shadows of a colorful past.

Look for further posts about gold mining methods and the rowdy towns and characters of the Georgia Gold Rush. Book one, The Songbird and the Surveyor, set in Auraria in 1833, can be pre-ordered now for the Nov. 3 release. https://www.amazon.com/Songbird-Surveyor-Twenty-Niners-Georgia-Gold-ebook/dp/B0F556951W/

Denise Farnsworth, formerly Denise Weimer, writes historical and contemporary romance mostly set in Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Georgia Gold Rush! What?

By Denise Farnsworth

Pre-CW Graham Hotel remains, Auraria

As a native Georgia author, I was frequently surprised by the number of people who were unaware that not only did Georgia’s gold rush precede those in California and Alaska, but Georgia gold was typically purer. The first book of my very first series, The Georgia Gold Series, touched on the Gold Rush but went on to focus more on the Civil War. I’ve always known I might return to the unique time period of the 1830s to write more thoroughly about the days when miners bent over creek water with pans and sluice boxes and boom towns as wild as any in the West cropped up across North Georgia. This year and next, it’s happening with my Twenty-Niners of the Georgia Gold Rush Series.

Around 1828, Benjamin Parks was returning from a lick log on the west side of the Chestatee River when he kicked up a nugget that started the frenzy. By the next year, gold activity stretched from the Clarkesville to Canton. Desperate men—up to ten thousand as 1829 closed—paid big rents to mine areas for forty days or less. That the land was part of the Cherokee Nation did not deter prospectors. The Indian Removal Act was introduced in Congress and supported by President Andrew Jackson, even though Cherokee warriors had helped him rout Creek Indians allied to the British during the War of 1812.

The Cherokee lands were surveyed into 160-acre farm lots and 40-acre gold lots and reapportioned by lottery drawing to white settlers in the autumn of 1832. Every citizen had one draw with additional draws to heads of families and Revolutionary War veterans. Names of those eligible were placed in one huge drum while the numbers of each lot were placed in another. Some won lots that included Cherokee farmsteads with homes, outbuildings, businesses, and orchards, though the government was to compensate the families for such improvements. Incentives were offered for Cherokees who relocated to Oklahoma early. Otherwise, lottery winners had to wait for the May 1838 removal deadline.

One of the first boom towns, now a ghost town, was Auraria, located in Lumpkin County on a ridge between the Etowah and Chestatee rivers. Within six months of the lottery, a hundred families, eighteen to twenty stores, twelve to fifteen law offices, and four to five taverns comprised the rowdy village. Mining companies formed and assaying labs popped up. A newspaper, The Western Herald, began publication in 1833. Nathaniel Nuckolls opened the first hotel, later purchased by Agnes Paschal and her son, George W. Paschal, a lawyer from Lexington, Georgia. Former Vice President John C. Calhoun stayed at the hotel two weeks at a time, overseeing his thriving gold mine. Drovers brought hogs from Tennessee and wild turkeys to camps outside town to help offset the scarcity of meat in the area.

In 1832, farther west, 130 white families in Cherokee County set up a government. Cherokee Court House (or Etowah/Edawah) soon became Canton, and Harnageville soon became Tate. Residents in Canton planted mulberry trees and imported 100,000 silk worms.

Auraria, 1932

Back in Lumpkin County, a dispute about the legality of the land where the courthouse was to be placed led to the county seat being moved five or six miles north to Headquarters/Talonega/Licklog, close to where Parks had his bonanza. Town lots were sold on the Fourth of July, 1833. Within months, government offices and businesses deserted Auraria for the newly named Dahlonega. A jail and 18x32 log courthouse with a door so low that a tall man had to stoop to enter were hastily erected. As in Auraria, gambling dens, saloons, tenpin alleys, and houses of ill repute proliferated well before the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians could organize places of worship.

Look for further posts to share more about gold mining methods and the rowdy towns and colorful characters of the Georgia Gold Rush. Book one, The Songbird and the Surveyor, set in Auraria in 1833, can be pre-ordered now for the Nov. 3 release. https://www.amazon.com/Songbird-Surveyor-Twenty-Niners-Georgia-Gold-ebook/dp/B0F556951W/

Denise Farnsworth, formerly Denise Weimer, writes historical and contemporary romance mostly set in Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses. 

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