The first gold rush in the United States occurred a few years after the discovery, in 1799, of a hunk of "heavy yellow' metal in or along Little Meadow Creek (153k) in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, by Conrad John Reed, aged 12. Conrad was one of the three boys and five girls born to John Reed, a former Hessian soldier who had been brought to the Colonies to help suppress the Revolution. Reed had deserted King George III's forces instead, and had made his way northward from South Carolina to what was then Mecklenburg County. Here he married Sarah Keiser (or Kisor) and accumulated through time a large farm. It was not, however, until 1802, three years after his son had found the "heavy yellow rock," that Reed learned that it was gold. The rock, described as being the size of a small smoothing iron and weighing about 17 pounds, had been used as a doorstop in the Reed home. Later a Fayetteville jeweler gave Reed $3.50 for the nugget, worth thousands. These events were to have important repercussions for Reed, his family, his county, his State, and the Nation, because they focused attention on the region and resulted in this county's first gold rush.
Reed and three others began prospecting Little Meadow Creek in Cabarrus County and found nuggets in the gravel in and near the stream. His partners advanced capital, both money and labor, and Reed received one-fourth of the gold found. Although the mine was operated only during the seasons when there was no field work for the slaves, the proprietors realized a substantial profit for a time.
A number of nuggets and a good quantity of dust were recovered in the auriferous sands along the stream. In 1803 there was wild excitement when a slave recovered a lump of gold weighing 28 pounds from a place on the northwest side of the "lake" (a wide place in the Little Meadow Creek). Other discoveries followed as methods of working the placers became more sophisticated. At first the miners (often slaves belonging to the partners) had roved the bottoms digging up "stones, clay, &c. and picked up what they could find." Next they began washing the sand in frying pans, but by summer of 1805 they were employing rockers - "boxes of convenient size, with tin bottoms, made full of holes, which were placed on steel sliders, in larger boxes . . . ." Portable pumps then poured water on the sand and clay. As the grit slid backward and forward, small particles of gold fell through the holes with the sand into the box below, and the gravel remained in the box above. By 1806, the miners had erected a small still and were employing mercury to separate the finer particles of gold from the sand. Mercury will amalgamate with gold and silver while rejecting lesser minerals,. When it is used to collect, the gold and any silver are removed by using heat to evaporate off the mercury.
The successful mining operations on the Reed plantation naturally caused great excitement in the area, and neighbors began prospecting their own lands. Many were successful, and soon other mines - such as the Parker, Harris, and Phoenix - were in operation. Elias Boudinot, Director of the United States' Mint, in 1804 called the attention of President Thomas Jefferson to the recent events - events that would mean so much to the struggling young Nation which theretofore had depended solely upon foreign countries for its sources of gold. William Thornton, architect of the Nation's capitol, sought an option on lands surrounding Reed's acreage and established the North Carolina Gold Mining Company. His grandiose plan failed because landowners, dreaming of striking it rich themselves, declined to sell their property, and because President Jefferson appointed Thornton to head the Patent Office.
Two decades later, in the mid-1820's, as more sophisticated methods of mining were introduced to the region, shafts (202k) were sunk at nearby mines to tap veins of ore. Separating the gold from the quartz in which it was found required huge Chilean grinding stones, bigger rockers, and retorts. The larger capital investments and returns were publicized, thousands of people headed for the diggings, and our Nation's first gold rush was on. Companies were organized, boom towns sprang up, and the economy of the area thrived.
Gold from the Reed and other North Carolina mines found its way to the Philadelphia mint and into the Nation's coinage, to Europe, and into industrial circles. This precious metal was also used unminted as a medium of exchange throughout the Piedmont.
Although shafts had been sunk to exploit the veins at some of the other North Carolina mines in the mid-1820's, it was 1831 before the first shaft was sunk at the Reed mine to tap the veins from which the deposit gold had been washed by the elements. This initial shaft was very productive - it alone is said to have yielded from $18,000 to $20,000 worth of gold - and many others subsequently were sunk at the Upper and Lower Hill workings. The gold-bearing quartz ore mined from the shafts was crushed either by the huge grinding wheels of the Chilean mill or by the iron heads of the stamp mill. The fold then was removed from the crushed quartz by the use of rockers and mercury.
In 1834 the aging John Reed entered into an agreement under which his sons and sons-in-law would provide labor for the mining operations; as landowner, he would get one-third of the income and his partners would share the other two-thirds. Late that year, however, a dispute arose when a 13-pound nugget was recovered, and the ensuing ten-year litigation prevented full exploitation of the Reed mine. Sarah Reed died in 1843, and the former Hessian soldier, who had finally become an American citizen in 1842, died in 1845. Both were buried on the eastern slope of Mansion Hill, and the obscure cemetery forms a valuable asset to the historic site.
In accordance with John Reed's will, his plantation was sold following his death. The new owners were his grandson, Timothy, and his son-in-law, Andrew Hartsell. Another son-in-law, George Barnhardt, had already begun a profitable mining operation at nearby Gold Hill, a site that emerged as North Carolina's most famous "boom town" in the gold mining region.
In 1848 national attention was drawn to California and soon thereafter to the Rocky Mountains. North Carolina's long hegemony in the gold mining had ended, but the search went on.
Timothy Reed and Andrew Hartsell failed to profit from the property, and it changed hands a number of times. In 1835 Emmer Graham and James W . Osborn acquired it and formed the Reed Gold and Copper Mining Company. Their ambitious plans encountered the same economic problems - low-grade ore compared with the western ore, high cost of extraction, and water shortages - and even capital improvements failed to stabilize the operation. It was during the Graham-Osborn ownership that August Platz, mining engineer and assistant to the editor of the Mining Magazine, visited the mine and published in that journal the most instructive report ever prepared on the property. His detailed map, showing the buildings and underground workings, remains the most valuable contemporary documentation of the Reed Gold Mine.
Following dissolution of the Reed Gold and Copper Mining Company, the property was split up and sold to several individuals. After the Civil War, however, William L. Hirst of Philadelphia succeeded in buying up all of the original John Reed Land and brought James P. Bruner from Philadelphia to conduct mining operations. In 1875 success was being reported, including the discovery of one nugget worth more than $2,000. During this period of ownership by Hirst and his son, Anthony, hydraulic mining was considered for the Dry Hollow (between Upper and Middle Hills), but the water to exploit these "rich alluvial deposits" was the major problem. Little Meadow Creek was virtually dry during parts of the year; and, though Rocky River and Buffalo Creek were potential water sources, necessary capital was not forthcoming to harness the power.
Profit margins remained slight, and on January 10, 1895, Anthony Hirst sold the original Reed property plus one additional small tract to Oliver S. Kelly, O. Warren Kelly, and Dr. Justin D. Lisle of Springfield, Ohio. Dr. Lisle reopened the mine, and in 1895 "some prospecting and development work" was done. An old shaft on Lower Hill was retimbered; the west and south sides of Lower Hill and both banks of Little Meadow Creek "opened up for placer work," and a shaft "sunk neat the western limit of the property," opening "a large body of low-grade ore that is said to assay $7.50 per ton in free gold, and $11.55 per ton of gold in sulphurets."
Inside of a year a discovery occurred in Dry Hollow which again focused attention on the Reed Mine. On Thursday, April 9, 1896, in a placer at a depth of 3-1/2 feet, a nugget weighing nearly 23 pounds troy and measuring 10 inches in length and 4 inches in diameter, was found. Before the prize was stored in the vault of the Concord National Bank, it was weighed out to be 17 pounds in pure gold and was valued at $4,866.
This discovery encouraged the partners to make capital improvements. Heavy machinery was purchased; a ten-stamp mill, crusher, and steam pump were put into operation. From 1896 through 1901 the Kelly Company continued to exploit the mine. The placers were worked in "small way" and some quartz mining was done, but with the wild stampedes to the Klondike in 1897-98, Atlin in 1899, and Nome is 1900, the attention of capitalists, miners, and the public was focused on the Yukon and Alaska. There was no incentive for the Kellys to spend more money on a mine promising small returns on their capital invested. By 1903 the Reed Mine had been closed, to reopen only briefly in 1911-12, when the placers and old dumps were worked.
For the next 22 years, there apparently was no serious mining at the Reed. In 1934, however, with the Nation in the grips of world-wide depression and encouraged by an increase in the price of gold from $20.67 to $35.00 per ounce, a few unemployed miners reopened the placers, and several small nuggets were found. With pan and barrel rocker similar to those used a century earlier, a miner might recover in a day gold worth fifty cents. The hard work and small return soon drove the miners into other activities or onto relief roles, and the Reed again closed, never to reopen commercially.
It will, however, be reopened as a State historic site, for the property remained in the hands of the Kelly family until December 31, 1971, when it became the property of the State of North Carolina - again by a fortunate chain of circumstances.
Ownership was transferred to the O.S. Kelly Company in 1921 and to Armin L. Kelly in 1950. The original "mansion house" of John Reed and the other early buildings had all rotted down, and newer buildings had been erected from time to time. Around 1910 a substantial house was built for a tenant, but in recent years it too has deteriorated beyond salvation. Inasmuch as the Kellys held on to the property largely for sentimental reasons, only a few fields were rented out. The result was fortunate, because the property has in the main been allowed to lie fallow, and nature has taken its course. Although little is left except the tunnels, shafts, and foundations to remind one of the days of glory for the Reed Gold Mine, the property has escaped the terrors of the bulldozer and modern intrusions. Here, surrounded by paved roads and modern homes, lies the unspoiled plantation of John Reed with its boundaries almost unchanged since 1845 when the old German was buried upon it. Flora and fauna have grown without interference of man, and here on the border between busy Cabarrus and Stanly Counties one can return to nature - and, in a few years, to the "golden" days of the Reed Gold Mine.
Until the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill and the wild rush to California in 1848-49, North Carolina was the Nation's principal gold producing State. Other rich strikes in the West followed, and the North Carolina mines were practically deserted within a few years. Many miners who stampeded to the western gold fields and silver lodes, however, had learned their skills in North Carolina and the mountains of north Georgia. The rich Cherry Creek, Colorado, strike was made by disappointed North Carolinians enroute home from California. All this happened many decades after the Nation's first gold rush was set up by Conrad Reed's discovery in 1799.
The Reed Mine, site of the first discovery of gold in the United States, assumes a significance out of proportion to the value of the precious nuggets, grains, and ore torn from Little Meadow Creek and the adjoining hills. The Reed Mine was the seed from which the country's gold mining industry and subsequent gold rushes germinated.
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