Harrison Riley: The Meanest Man in the Mountains

by Denise Farnsworth

What does it say about 1830s Dahlonega, Georgia, that one of its founders was a known murderer? During the gold rush, the towns that sprang up in the state’s mountains bore more resemblance to later Wild West settings than the charming villages to the south and east.

In 1834, Harrison Riley built Dahlonega’s first store on the east side of the courthouse and later added a tavern and gambling house. By the 1840s, he established the Eagle Hotel, the largest and most elaborate building in town at that time. Riley never married, but he fathered children with prostitutes and several of his enslaved women (one estimate mentions around a hundred). Eliza Jefferson gave birth to seven of them. In public as well as in private life, Riley demanded respect. He expected people to refer to him General Riley and even had it engraved on his tombstone. What people called him was actually “the meanest man in the mountains.”

Riley was known to carry weapons at all times, often drawing them in disputes on the street. In 1838, he violently assaulted a rival with swords, knives, dirks, sticks, fists, and even his teeth, leaving the victim disfigured. He survived multiple assassination attempts. He also faced numerous lawsuits for assault and gold swindles, using intimidation and bribery to avoid justice.

Riley’s worst crime occurred that same year and involved the murder of a family of slave traders. According to the tale, William Baxter Jr. of North Carolina had sold a number of slaves for his father in Alabama and accepted local currency. He then needed to travel through Georgia to exchange the currency. His son and niece accompanied him to Cherokee Nation, where they had the misfortune of encountering Riley. After learning about the large amount of currency Baxter carried, Riley sold him a slave, Isaac, who then acted as their driver, all as part of a plot to rob them. The brutal ax murder of the family occurred near the Tugaloo River in South Carolina, after they left Traveler's Rest stagecoach inn. Isaac, who had been promised part of the loot and his freedom, took the fall for the entire crime and was executed by burning.

Harrison Riley died peacefully…or not so peacefully…at his plantation in 1874.

Riley makes a couple of cameo appearances in my new release, the last novel of my Georgia gold rush series, The Schoolmarm and the Miner. A teacher seeking independence. A widower guarding his heart. In Georgia's gold country, the richest prize may be the love they’re afraid to claim. https://www.amazon.com/Schoolmarm-Miner-Twenty-Niners-Georgia-Gold-ebook/dp/B0GMRS3Q88/

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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Dahlonega: The Gold Rush Boomtown That’s Now a Hallmark Film Location

by Denise Farnsworth

Folks in North Georgia visit the mountain town of Dahlonega because of its adorable square where you can shop for locally made goods, fudge, Appalachian string instruments, and of course, sip coffee. In fact, it’s so cute, Hallmark has filmed movies there. You can take a carriage ride or visit the University of North Georgia. But if you do, you’ll notice something unique. Gold adorns the steeple of Price Memorial Hall on the university campus. And the brick courthouse in the middle of the square? The gold museum. Then there’s Consolidated Gold Mine near Wal-Mart where you can descend into a drippy mining tunnel. Visitors can dig into the area’s rich history as the heart of the 1830s Georgia Gold Rush.

This history serves as the backdrop for my Twenty-Niners of the Georgia Gold Rush series. You’ll remember articles about Auraria here on HHH, which featured the first boomtown, Auraria, just south of Dahlonega, the setting for The Songbird and the Surveyor. The Maiden and the Mountie highlighted Canton. And book three, The Schoolmarm and the Miner, releasing next month, brings 1839 Dahlonega to life.

Consolidated Gold Mine

In the summer of 1833, Aurarians thought their town would be the seat of the newly formed Lumpkin County. Then it was discovered that the lot Auraria sat on had been drawn fraudulently in the land lottery, and eyes shifted north to the little settlement where gold had first been discovered, then known as Licklog (for the hollowed log put out for the livestock of said discoverer of gold, Benny Parks) or Talonega (Cherokee for gold).

An 18x32 log courthouse was soon erected, with a door so low a tall man had to stoop to enter. Harrison Riley built Dahlonega’s first store. Watch for a future article on this “town founder,” also known as “the meanest man in the mountains” and the mastermind behind a brutal family murder. That might hint that early Dahlonega was a rough place.

Colonel W.P. Price, a lifelong resident, wrote, “Gambling houses, dancing houses, drinking saloons, houses of ill fame, billiard saloons and tenpin alleys were open day and night. Water Street where there is now no street and not a house standing, but where many stood fifty and sixty years ago, was the street where hundreds of miners and other people gathered, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, and made night hideous by fighting, cursing and swearing. Women were almost as numerous as men, and equally as vile and wicked.” Indeed, the tan yard at the end of Water Street was known as Sprawl’s Hotel. Drunken miners were escorted to an open vat and thrown in. This process was called “oozing out.”

Other early residents and Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian church members soon sought to bring a more civilized influence to Dahlonega. John and Mary Ann Choice built the Choice Hotel with stables in the rear. A black man by the name of James Bosclair, known as “Free Jim,” opened a cake and fruit store, then bought a mine and ran the largest general store. The current brick courthouse was constructed in 1834, and by 1838, the newly completed Dahlonega Mint brought a government-appointed staff...and a lot of in-fighting. The boxy, two-story, white-framed Dahlonega Academy overlooking town from a western hill offered education for the citizens’ children.

It’s to this setting that the heroine of The Schoolmarm and the Miner repairs to salvage her hopes of a teaching career squandered by her father. Little is she prepared for twin bullies, a haughty board president, and a widower who’s given up his career in law enforcement to raise his mischievous daughter. https://www.amazon.com/Schoolmarm-Miner-Twenty-Niners-Georgia-Gold-ebook/dp/B0GMRS3Q88/

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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