Creek Villages of the Federal Period

by Denise Farnsworth

A number of my novels include the history of Georgia and surrounding states when large portions of the Southeast belonged to Creek and Cherokee Indian Territory. I'm often surprised at how many people are unaware that the Cherokees fought with the British during the American Revolution but allied to Andrew Jackson's Americans during the War of 1812, facing off against their longtime enemies, the Creeks, who were allied to the British. Most of the fighting of this portion of the war, known as the Creek War or Red Stick War, took place between the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers in modern-day Alabama. My novella that just released in Freed by the Frontier starts on the Georgia border in 1814 and unfolds in Creek Territory, depicting what life was life in a Creek village. Today’s article will relate something of the structure of a Creek Indian town during the Colonial to Federal period.

Naturalist William Bartram was an observer at the land cessation meeting that occurred in 1773 in Augusta, Georgia, between the white colonists and the Creek and Cherokee Indians. The journal of his travels from the coast to middle Georgia provide significant early information about the Creek Indians. He described 60 towns, 30 of which spoke the Muscogulge tongue. The five clans were Panther, Bear, Wind, Bird and Snake.

Creek reenactor at Horseshoe Bend

In each town, white clay, paste, or chalk was used to draw plants, flowers, and trees on the red clay houses, especially those creating the public square. On white walls, colored chalk was used. Each family would have a round winter and a rectangular summer house. In 1790, Caleb Swan described these as being between 12 and 20 feet long and 10 to 15 feet wide, constructed with poles stuck in the ground, walls lathed with canes and packed with clay, and roofs pitched from a ridge pole and covered with bark and four to five layers of shingles. The huts had one door and a chimney and would last only a couple of years. Families often lived in clusters of homes. Major villages were surrounded by walls.

The town council was held every forenoon in the public square, presided over by the mico, with the war chief on his left and the second headman on the right. The mico or king received great respect at the Great Rotunda or winter council house, but outside important meetings, he dressed and was treated the same as the others, hunting and working the fields with his family. He was, however, entitled to the first fruits of harvest and use of the national granary. Should a king or mico also be war chief or high priest (in charge of guarding the eternal fire in the Great Rotunda) he would indeed have great power.

Between the public square and rotunda of each town was the chunky-yard, chunky being a game which involved rolling a small disk and shooting arrows or spears at the disk. The yard itself was a large, sunken ground with what was known as the chunky-pole, four square pine pillars rising to an obtuse point. At the top, the Indians could fasten an object to shoot at with bows and arrows and rifles. Near each corner of the lower and farther end of yard was a lesser, 12-foot-high pole, but a more fearful sight than the chunky pole, as it was decorated with the scalps of enemies and crowned by a grinning enemy skull. Here in the days before Bartram’s arrival, captives could have been forced to run the gauntlet or burned to death. Thankfully, that practice had been abandoned by then, and Bartram was full of praise for the hospitality of his hosts.

Each family had a lot bordered by poles and including a garden spot where corn, rice, squash, etc. were raised. A portion of everything went to the aforementioned public granary, which was for the use of guests of the tribe or families that fell on hard times. Bartram observed that the Creek were very given to sharing and loaning. A man could clear and settle as much land as desired within his tribe. Occasionally, a Creek Indian would own an independent plantation and would live in their private villa, wealthy from trade with whites.

Freed by the Frontier: Three unforgettable romances prove that God's greatest blessings often come disguised as our greatest challenges, and that true love can bridge any divide.
https://www.amazon.com/Freed-Frontier-Lone-Star-Redemption-ebook/dp/B0GX2WN3ZB/

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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Creek and Cherokee Territory

The Dahlonega Mint

by Denise Farnsworth

By the middle of the 1830s, the Georgia Gold Rush was in full swing. Miners who had first filled their pockets (or goose quills, the early method of storage and measurement for payment) with gold dust panned directly from the streams had moved on to tunneling into the hills with vein mining. Boom towns sprang up where gold dust and nuggets could be traded directly for provisions and services. Larger mining operations offered script called "miner's money" that could be redeemed at company stores. But for those who wanted to secure their gold, a problem arose.

Miners could send their earnings to the Philadelphia mint or deposit it at the branch bank in Savannah. But they would receive only two-thirds of the gold’s estimated value at the time of deposit, with the balance paid when the mint fixed the bullion’s value. Or they could use a private minter like Templeton Reid in Gainesville. But a letter to the editor of the Georgia Courier revealed that Reid’s coins held less than face value…which was true because he’d failed to account for silver and tin alloy.

In 1834, a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate allowed for the establishment of branch mints in the South. By the next year, the locations for these mints had been fixed—New Orleans, Louisiana; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Dahlonega, Georgia. Dahlonega’s mint was to be constructed using the same plans as the Charlotte Mint. Architect William Strickland, well known for his Greek Revival style, designed a structure of two stories composed of brick, covered with stucco, and containing twenty-seven rooms.

Lawyer and Methodist minister Ignatius Few was appointed commissioner in charge of the new mint. He purchased ten acres just south of town from William Worley for $1050. Few quickly encountered multiple challenges inherent to the mint’s remote mountain location, such as securing bricks, stone, lumber, and good labor. Benjamin Towns of Athens won the construction bid and agreed to finish the mint within eighteen months.

By early 1837, Few allowed the delivery of machinery although construction was not quite complete. Fifteen large crates containing over $15,000 of equipment including two state-of-the-art steam presses, shipped from Philadelphia to Savannah, then upriver to Augusta. There they began a two-week trip on ten wagons to Dahlonega.

Dr. Joseph Singleton

Receiving wind of the construction delays, the Philadelphia mint dispatched inspector Franklin Peale, who arrived in Dahlonega in November 1837. His report: “The workmanship of the Mint edifice is abominable.” And it went on from there to describe inadequate bricks, a leaky roof, and defective first-floor arches. By the time the mint opened in February 1838 under Superintendent Dr. Joseph Singleton, the contractor was still at work, the water pump to supply the steam engine did not work, and copper and silver necessary to the coining process had not arrived. 

Despite these technical problems and a host of staffing issues and in-fighting that followed, almost a thousand ounces of gold were deposited during the first two weeks the mint was open for business. The first coins, eighty half eagles, were struck on April 21, 1838. The first quarter eagle was minted almost a year later. In 1849, gold dollars were produced. The mint operated until the Civil War began in 1861.

Dahlonega quarter eagles

For a deep dive into the staffing and operations of the Dahlonega Mint, you can consult The Neighborhood Mint by Sylvia Gailey Head and Elizabeth W. Etheridge. For a fictional romance about the town of Dahlonega during the opening days of the mint, try my latest release, 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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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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The Humble Gristmill

by Denise Farnsworth

It could be argued that the gristmill provided life to a community of the 1700s and 1800s, grinding corn or wheat into meal to make bread, porridge, grits, and feed for livestock. Not only that, it served as a gathering place for neighbors to catch up on gossip, for families to picnic, and for baptisms to occur in the mill pond. And yet, we rarely find it as a central location for historical fiction novels. That plus my experience working as a docent at Freeman’s Mill in Gwinnett County, Georgia, inspired me to make the heroine of my recent novel a miller’s daughter, then a miller in her own right.

Let me take you on a virtual tour of how Freeman’s Mill on the Alcovy River—constructed shortly after the Civil War by brothers John Griffin and Levi Loveless—operated.

***

Freeman's Mill

A dam stores the water at the highest point above the mill. When the miller arrives, he turns the wheel on the millstone platform inside the mill to open the sliding sluice gate in the dam to channel water through the millrace to the wheel. The mill is in operation.

When a farmer approaches the ledger desk, the miller weighs his corn and keeps a portion for payment (often a tenth), which he places in the toll box. A peg panel on the side of the receiving hopper is used to tally the totals. The remaining corn is run through a sheller to separate the kernels from the cob, then sifted over to the receiving hopper with screens of various sizes to clean the kernels. Next, the miller lifts a lever on the side of the hopper to open and close the chute and drops the kernels to the basement. A grain elevator carries them up to the attic. Then they drop to the second floor through a gravity chute and are cleaned again as they pass a grain blower. The kernels land on the grinding surface of the millstone where the furrows crush them into cornmeal.

Using a wheel, the miller can raise or lower the stones. The base or bedstone is stationary. The top runner stone does the grinding. The stones should never contact each other. The smaller the space between the millstones, the finer the meal. The meal is dropped off the edge of the stones into the receiving bin. 

***

Inside & outside Hagood Mill, SC

A mill might operate six days a week during harvest season (June to October). The miller re-sharpened the stones at least once a year. The runner stone was removed using a millstone crane with bails attached to the end to lift it from the casing. Once the stone was safely laid down, the dresser would use the bush hammers and picks to redress the stones. The bush hammers removed the high points, then the picks chipped a pattern to create grooves called furrows and lands. The furrows allowed air to pass through and let out heat and ground material. The picks needed constant sharpening, and the miller would go through a bunch of them to dress a pair of millstones. A millstone dresser required a good blacksmith to re-temper his picks.

Book Two of The Twenty-Niners of the Georgia Gold Rush, The Maiden and the Mountie, is now available. A marriage of necessity. A secret buried deep. In Georgia’s gold country, love may be the most dangerous treasure of all. https://www.amazon.com/Maiden-Mountie-Twenty-Niners-Georgia-Gold-ebook/dp/B0FNYFLLJ3/

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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The Mystery of the Red Bank Cherokee Gold

by Denise Farnsworth

I first learned of the legend of the Red Bank Cherokee gold while working as a historical interpreter, preparing a county summer camp for kids called History Mysteries. Later, I lived in the area which serves as the setting for my novel releasing this month. The names of creeks, rivers, and long-vanished Indian towns showed up on road signs and swirled in my memory, and eventually, The Maiden and the Mountie wove that golden legend into the story of the Cherokee Removal during the Georgia Gold Rush.

In 1829, a resident of Red Bank, John Wright, told General John Coffee that his town had been founded around 1784 on both sides of the Etowah River (then called the Hightower), six miles above the Cherokee town and mine of Sixes and two miles below Hickory Log. This location differs significantly from the one provided by Forest C. Wade in his 1969 book, Cry of the Eagle. Wade was born in 1914 in Cherokee County and learned trail sign and lore from his grandfather, a part-Cherokee and gold miner from the gold rush boomtown of Auraria. Wade claimed the Red Bank tribe lived a mile north of Hightower along Red Bank Creek (later known as Bannister Creek). Maps in the Cherokee Footprints three-book series by Rev. Charles Walker clearly show Red Bank Village in the location John Wright testified, although Red Bank Creek detailed off the Alabama Road is of interest. For my novel, I went with the former location as best recorded by historical record.

So how did the tiny Cherokee village of Red Bank come to figure into North Georgia legend?

Rising Fawn

In 1835, after the Treaty of New Echota signed away Cherokee land, it was said that Hightower-area Chief Rising Fawn called a meeting of over a dozen lower chiefs. Since the Cherokees would not be allowed to take the gold they had mined for many years with them on their forced journey west, Rising Fawn crafted a plan to hide it until the families or their descendants could return. He asked Jacob Scudder, a local tavern and mill owner and blood brother to the Cherokees, to become guardian of the treasure.

A secret tunnel would be constructed at night, two hundred feet long, with slab doors to conceal the square vaults of depositors. An overhead deadfall was devised to release a large stone by a trigger. Each tribe was to create a network of sign trails using ancient symbols on trees and rocks. Pull trees, knee trees, saddle and humped trees were also formed.

In addition to personal deposits, it was rumored that in January 1838, a shipment of gold bullion coming from the U.S. Treasury to the new Dahlonega mint on the Federal Road was diverted by five masked riders. The cargo of seven gold bars weighing fifty pounds each was never found…and may have been added to Rising Fawn’s tunnel.

Scudder was to take a tenth toll when the Cherokees returned to fetch their treasure.

Only the Red Bank chief protested the plan, not trusting a white sub-chief. Instead, the thirty or so families buried their gold in 25 locations along the hillsides of Bannister and Bruton/Brewton Creek and in a smaller tunnel. The clay pots of gold dust varied from six to 40 pounds.

According to legend passed down by O.P. Orr of Cumming, who spent time with his grandfather in Cherokee County in the early 1900s, a caravan of Cherokes camped in the Heardsville and Frogtown areas for about a month in the summer of 1909. They were said to be descendants of the Red Bank Cherokees returned to recover their wealth. We can hope it was so.

However…an April 3, 1935 Georgia court case, Groover v. Tippins, gives the most credence to the fact that there indeed might have been Cherokee treasure left in North Georgia that was not recovered. The appeal records the fact that 37 pounds of gold dust and bullion with a value of $15,540 was found forty feet south of the public road leading from Frogtown to Silver City and 250 yards southeast of a large rock “containing various markings and circles.” It was otherwise said that three boys (presumably, including the plaintiff, Roy Tippins) found the treasure on Farmer F. R. Groover’s land. Groover was allowed to keep the prize.

What is legend? What is truth? Those questions are enough to inspire a unique twist to a story.

Book Two of The Twenty-Niners of the Georgia Gold Rush, The Maiden and the Mountie, releases February 17. A marriage of necessity. A secret buried deep. In Georgia’s gold country, love may be the most dangerous treasure of all. https://www.amazon.com/Maiden-Mountie-Twenty-Niners-Georgia-Gold-ebook/dp/B0FNYFLLJ3/

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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Fighting for the Gold Fields: The Land Battle in Georgia

by Denise Farnsworth

Council House Replica at Cherokee Capital

The ancestors of the Cherokee Indians occupied what is now North Georgia long before the inhabitants of the Valley Towns and Lower Towns in that region established trade with Great Britain. The native people allied themselves to the Mother Country during the American Revolution but with the Americans during the War of 1812. Despite Cherokee efforts to assimilate into the culture of their new white neighbors—including adopting the language, religion, their own newspaper printed in English and Cherokee, court system, and business and agricultural methods—when the state of Georgia gave up title to land to the Mississippi River, they received a promise from the federal government that the Indian people would be removed.

In December 1826, the state senate passed a resolution requesting the president take steps for a treaty to gain Cherokee lands. A series of December 1827 senate resolutions stated the Cherokee constitution was inconsistent with Georgia rights and that the General Assembly had the authority to claim Cherokee lands “not only upon ‘peaceable and reasonable terms [as stated by the Compact of 1802], but upon just such terms as they might [be] pleased to prescribe.” This declaration was based on the presumption that the lands which had been part of the British Empire had become Georgia land.

No one asked who the land belonged to before that.

In December 1828, state representatives authored a bill in the General Assembly to extend the laws of the state over the Cherokees. In 1829, the Indian Removal Act was introduced in Congress.

And then gold was discovered in North Georgia, near present-day Dahlonega. The state of Georgia stationed militia throughout the gold region to prevent confrontations between Cherokees and white settlers at mining sites. After the Cherokee land was awarded to white settlers through the land lottery of 1832, these mounted troops were also charged with protecting the Cherokees until they removed to their new homes in Oklahoma. Many chose to leave right away, but others lingered until the May 1838 deadline, hoping their representatives in Congress would find some way to secure their land.

Meanwhile, some settlers impatient to claim their new land harassed Cherokee families. Members of the Pony Club stole horses and cattle and committed other depredations designed to hasten the original owners from the land. Eventually, the mounted militia was tasked with rounding up the remaining Cherokees into removal forts and beginning the forced 800-mile march west now known as the Trail of Tears.

Book Two of The Twenty-Niners of the Georgia Gold Rush, The Maiden and the Mountie, releases February 17. A marriage of necessity. A secret buried deep. In Georgia’s gold country, love may be the most dangerous treasure of all. https://www.amazon.com/Maiden-Mountie-Twenty-Niners-Georgia-Gold-ebook/dp/B0FNYFLLJ3/

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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