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1. The Discovery of Gold in North Carolina America's first gold rush began in North Carolina, not in California. It all started with John Reed and not John Sutter -by chance, each was a German immigrant. And when gold was found on their land, they both shared the same concern about their crops and were more interested in farming than mining. But here similarities end. Sutter was born in 1803, one year after John Reed stood in Little Meadow Creek surveying a stream on his farm in which millions of dollars worth of gold lay glittering just below the water's surface. The North Carolina gold rush was a small-scale version of what happened in California and fate had cast just as unlikely a man in the lead role. John Reed was born in Darmstadt, Germany, in January of 1758. He had the misfortune of being conscripted into the army of Prince Frederick and loaned to the king of England to fight the American colonists. Reed arrived sometime during the winter of 1778 to 1779 and shortly afterwards left Long Island, New York, with British, Hessian, and Tory units to take part in the capture of Charleston, South Carolina . But he felt a deep sympathy with the colonists and resented being forced to fight for what he thought was an unjust cause. Attempting to escape, he was caught by the British and given thirty-nine lashes as punishment. Apparently in a state of euphoria after the capture of Charleston, they dealt with this insubordinate deserter in a most unusual fashion. After his punishment they simply told Reed to "go to the devil" and they washed their hands of him. He went to 7 8 The Gold Seekers Cabarrus County, North Carolina, where there were German settlers. John Reed spoke English poorly, so it was no wonder that he was attracted to a German-speaking settlement. He was in a strange country but he had farmed as a boy and started farming once more; in fact, by the time Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, John Reed was already saving his money toward the purchase of land. In 1799 the farm houses of Mecklenburg and the surrounding counties were far apart, the land sparsely settled and desolate. A Cornishman in the piney woods of Davidson County wrote, "I have been in dense tropical forests, on the silent plains of South America, on the equally silent steppes of Siberia, and in the deserts of Asia and Africa, but I know of no silence so awe-inspiring, even terrible as that of a great pine forest." Evidently land like this did not bother Reed at all. Shortly before 1799 he was able to buy 330 acres from the state of North Carolina at a price of fifty shillings per hundred acres, the going price at that time. There was nothing distinguished or especially talented about this immigrant. Everything about John Reed indicated that he was born to plow the hard red clay of Piedmont Carolina until he died, but that was not to be the case. On a Sunday morning in 1799 John Reed had no thoughts beyond his family and his crops in his mind when he and his wife climbed upon his only horse to ride double to church. The distance was too far for the three children to walk, so the older son, Conrad, was placed in charge of the younger ones until their parents returned from services. Twelve-year-old Conrad Reed took them down to Little Meadow Creek, which ran through the Reed farm, to shoot fish with a bow and arrow. While watching for fish, he 141.24.134] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 06:19 GMT) Discovery of Gold in North Carolina 9 Twelve-year old Conrad Reed accidentally discovers a seventeen-pound gold nugget near Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1799. (North Carolina Department of Archives and History Photo) Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1857 noticed a shiny yellow rock glinting in the sunlight and he waded in after it. It was far heavier to lift out than he had imagined; but he carried it back to the house and gave it to his father when he returned from church. It was about the shape of a small flatiron and just as heavy. Reed had never seen such an unusual looking rock and he was sufficiently curious to take it to William Atkinson, a silversmith in the nearby village of Concord. The man who 10...

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