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 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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“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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Gold Mining Methods in 1830s Georgia

Sluice box

by Denise Farnsworth

My last two posts introduced the Georgia Gold Rush and its first boom town, Auraria. Today let’s look at the gold mining methods used in the early days of the bonanza.

The typical picture we imagine of a miner bent over a creek with pan in hand reflects placer or deposit mining. Prospectors often searched for a bend in the stream where the eroding bank might reveal a gold-bearing layer. Gold flakes washed into the stream would be caught at the bend with other rocks and minerals in a gravel layer. The process of plunging and swirling water over the contents would eventually reveal the heavier gold flakes on the bottom of the pan.

Other early methods were not much more advanced and consisted of washing the gravel layer of a stream through a sluice box or a splint basket into a trough rocker, a hollowed-out log about a dozen feet long. While the water from the sluice box passed through the trough, it was kept in constant motion. The gold sank to the bottom through the continually moving silt and was caught by transverse cleats.

Diving bell on its side with bottom exposed.

Enterprising miners with some cash on hand soon broadened efforts by drifting flatboats on the Chestatee and Etowah rivers to dredge the bottom. In early 1833, a diving bell was launched on the Chestatee by a former Tennessean named McCallom.

Eventually, placer mining petered out, and hard rock mining was required. To locate a vein mine, a miner would begin at a spot in the creek known to have placer deposits and work their way upstream, test-panning as they went. An abrupt drop in the gold content indicated a vein in the surrounding hills. Soil testing continued until it was located. Then tunneling operations would begin. 

The ideal tunnel was seven feet square, but most ran only two to four. Timbers were needed to reinforce the rock riddled with fissures. Wheelbarrows or tracks and carts might be employed depending on the size of the mining operation. Vertical shafts were also dug, usually twenty to thirty feet deep but occasionally over a hundred. Once the ore was extracted from the vein mines, it was taken to a stamp mill to be crushed. These mills ranged from a single stamp hung from a bent sapling to as many as ten stamps powered by a water wheel.

The more complex mining methods required organization and financing. A number of gold mining companies were formed during the Gold Rush. Some of these included: 

• Augusta Mining Company, Habersham Mining Company, and Naucoochy Mining Company, 1832
• Pigeon Roost Mining Company and Belfast Mining Company, 1834
• Georgia Mining Company, Chestatee Mining Company, and Cherokee Mining Company, 1835
• Lumpkin County Mining and Manufacturing Company, 1837

The easy gold played out by the early 1840s so that when gold was discovered in California, prospectors were all too eager to abandon the Georgia hills. They took their tools, their expertise, and even their town names with them. But later in the 1800s, another surge of hard rock mining occurred with the use of high-powered drills and hydraulic mining methods. Many Georgia mines continued lucrative operations well into the 1900s.

Look for further upcoming posts about the Georgia Gold Rush. Book one of my Twenty-Niners of the Georgia Gold Rush, The Songbird and the Surveyor, set in Auraria in 1833, is now available! 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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