The Gold Seekers: Gold, Ghosts and Legends from Carolina to California

Introduction

Introduction This is a book about the people of both the southern and western gold fields ... the southern where the gold rush first began ... and those who made the trek West where gold was discovered almost half a century later. Since the presence of human beings rarely occurs without ghost lore, there are several tales of the supernatural from the gold camps. Children have a refreshing amount of curiosity that we might do well to heed more often. So, because of a twelveyear -old boy named Conrad Reed, I have chosen the year 1799 to begin our story. It was a warm spring morning in the fragrant pine woods of the North Carolina Piedmont, and the children were eager to go wading in Little Meadow Creek. There were fish in the clear, sparkling water and as Conrad Reed aimed a bow and arrow at one of them, a strange rock captured his interest. The rays of the sun caused it to shine so brilliantly that he squinted his eyes almost closed to look at it. Then he positioned his feet carefully upon the stones in the water, crossed to the opposite bank and, reaching down, tugged at the gleaming rock. Strain as he would, it did not budge. The stone was far heavier than he had anticipated, and when he finally wrested it from the bank there was a sucking sound as it left the mud. "Mmm, that's pretty! What you goin' to do with it?" his little sister asked. "Tote it up to the house," replied Conrad matter-offactly . His father exclaimed over the weight, friends were 1 2 The Gold Seekers curious about its composition but nobody knew what it was, so his mother decided to use it for a doorstop. Three years later he prevailed upon his father to take it to the nearest trading post at Fayetteville for someone to examine . A jeweler-assayer offered John Reed the ridiculously low price of three dollars and fifty cents for a gold bar which he had made from the melted down rock and farmer Reed went home happy. And then ... who knows? Perhaps, a British sea captain chancing to pass through Fayetteville saw the bar, held it in his weathered hand and for it squandered almost the entire pay from his last voyage. He displayed it proudly to a wealthy merchant who was taking passage aboard his ship from the port city of Charleston, South Carolina, to England. When he saw it the gentleman coveted it and before the voyage was over he had convinced the captain to sell him the bar in order that he might have a piece of gold jewelry designed for his fiancee in London. A month later the merchant dropped an intricate pendant made from the first native American gold into the outstretched hand of a fair English lady. Then, just as we see the curtain of the forest part for a stag and close behind it, so the southern gold rush was lost to view ... at least to the compilers of history texts. Little was written about native North American gold until the forty-niners but the first discovery of gold caused a mass migration into the southern states; and signs of old mines may still be seen. There are chips of milk white quartz strewn along stream banks left from old mine tailings ; and there are brush heaps piled high in the midst of fields that often cover a deep and dangerous vertical shaft. There is forest land, pitted with holes and scarred by trenches with the appearance of a battlefield but no battle ever took place there ... only hordes of men bearing picks, .224.63.87] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 07:21 GMT) Introduction 3 shovels and gold pans who pitted themselves against red clay and rock. This was not meant to be a book describing all the various methods of extracting gold and certainly not a collection of essays on all the states where gold has been found. It is a book about several of the earliest discoveries of this metal that drives us to such excesses, some extraordinary people and ... the supernatural. Of the men and women who went West all encountered adventure, a few discovered gold, and many others returned empty-handed. As Castaneda, chronicler of Coronado 's expedition, wrote three hundred years earlier, "Granted they did not find the riches of which they had been told but they found a place to search for...