Alabama Gold Read online

  GOLDVILLE

  Documentation of James C. Johnson’s purchase of Hog Mountain land on June 4, 1842, three years after his discovery of gold. Courtesy of Tallapoosa County Probate Records, Dadeville, Alabama.

  The discovery of the Log Pit Vein in northeast Tallapoosa County was an accident. Numerous times, prospectors walked by what appeared to be an old, rotten log until one day, a curious prospector decided to inspect the log closer. Breaking off a piece, he observed gold in what turned out to be a large quartz outcropping. With the spread of the story, the population of the piney back woods area quickly grew from a few scattered cabins into a gold mining town of 3,000 to 3,500 people mostly living in tents close to their digging sites. More permanent structures were built with pine or oak cut from the surrounding wilderness. They included fourteen stores, two hotels, several saloons, gambling establishments and a pit for cock fighting. Gold mining was the hub of the town’s economy and stimulated a bustling commerce in the town. On January 25, 1843, the town was incorporated under the name Goldville. A number of other mines existed around Goldville. Birdsong Pits was the first and was owned by Edward Birdson and operated with the help of slaves between 1840 and 1850. Other mines included the Mahan, Ealy and Jones Pits. The amount of gold taken from Log Pit reportedly was $30,000.18

  Michael Tuomey, Alabama’s first state geologist, recorded the following description of Goldville in the first state geological survey in 1857: “The Goldville mine was discovered in 1842. The most productive portion of it was worked in the ‘Log Pit,’ where the richest part of the vein varied in thickness from 4 to 2 feet. It was worked at this pit to a depth of 105 feet. The ore was valued at $2 per bushel.”19

  HOG MOUNTAIN

  In 1839, a Mr. Johnson discovered gold at Hog Mountain. Working with primitive tools, he dislodged ore and hauled it in an ox-drawn wagon to Hillabee Creek, where he washed the gold. In 1842, the original land title was made to James C. Johnson, marking the dimensions as #1/2NW1/2sec.15,T.24N.,R.22E. That same year, a ten-stamp mill and amalgamation plates were employed in the removal of ore from Hog Mountain, also known as the Hillabee mine and the Hogback mine, location Secs. 10 and 15 T. 24 N., R. 22 E.20

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  Tallapoosa County’s Gold Mining Districts

  Devil’s Backbone, Eagle Creek, Goldville and Hog Mountain

  Tallapoosa County was created by the Alabama legislature on December 18, 1832, with land acquired on March 24 of that year from the Creek Cession of 1832. Located in the east-central part of the state, the county is bordered by Clay, Randolph, Chambers, Lee, Macon, Elmore and Coosa Counties. The four gold mining districts in Tallapoosa County are the Devil’s Backbone, Eagle Creek, Goldville and Hog Mountain. The Devil’s Backbone District in the Lake Martin area had mining activity in the 1840s, from the 1890s until World War I and renewed activity in the 1930s. The Eagle Creek District is located between Goldville and Dadeville, the county seat since 1838, when Creek Indian removal was taking place. Eagle Creek was the site of numerous gold mining operations beginning in the late 1830s: Tapley, Griffin, Morgan, Jennings, Greer, Johnson and Hammock mines. Placer gold was panned in the streams and tributaries. No one gold discovery distinguishes the area, but it was actively worked by prospectors during the 1800s and the early 1900s.

  Hog Mountain ore was mined successfully in 1844 and 1845, using the crudest appliances and hauling the ore to the creek with oxen. Courtesy of Peggy Jackson Walls.

  Goldville, in the northeast corner of Tallapoosa County, was the scene of Alabama’s second gold rush. Following the discovery of gold in 1842, gold diggers rushed into the sparsely populated piney backwoods, creating a population of about three thousand people overnight. Located three miles from Hog Mountain District, the Goldville District is about fourteen miles long. Hog Mountain is unique in the quantity and quality of gold in blue quartz veins of the Hackneyville Schist. The mine was the scene of three major gold mining operations: gold rush days, 1840–49; pre–World War I, 1890–1916; and the Depression era, 1933–37. The cyanide process was first introduced into the state at the Hog Mountain mine in 1903 by the Hillabee Gold Mining Company. Covered with pine, oak and hickory trees, Hog Mountain is situated near the junction of Hillabee and Enitachopco Creeks. Moore Creek drains the western side of Hog Mountain, and a tributary to Jones Creek drains the eastern side. Hog Mountain is also known as the Hillabee or Hogback mine.

  Colonel B.L. Dean, businessman and mayor of Alexander City, wrote the following report regarding northeast Tallapoosa gold mines for W.B. Phillips, who included the notes in his 1892 Alabama geological survey:

  The first work in this part of Tallapoosa County was done between 1840 and 1850 by Edward Birdsong.…He owned and mined part of S.W. ¼ and N.W. ¼ of Section 4, T. 24, R. 23. His widow…could give more information about the mining interest in those days than any one I know. She said to me once that she was the cause of her husband’s stopping work; the country was full of miners and she could not afford to raise her children where the Sabbath was a day of hunting and gambling. Her husband’s work was carried on with Negroes. In illustration of the gold fever she said that her Negro cook, after attending to all of her duties at the house, would take her pan and wash out 75 cents worth of gold in a day, crushing the ore in a little hand mortar.

  Towards the southwest we come next to the Jones Pit, in Sec. 5, T. 24, R. 23. On this property a great deal of work has been done with wooden stamps and the Arastra. There was also at one time a steam engine at the mine. Reports as to the yield of gold vary. The veins are from ten to twenty feet in width.

  Next are the Ealy Pits in the S.W. ¼ of Sec. 26, T. 24, R. 22. A great deal of work was done here by Mr. A. Ealy and the Hon. Daniel Crawford, Ex-State Treasurer…He said that he made the machinery himself; four iron-shod wooden stamps run by water power at Jarvis Mill. He hauled the ore to mines, crushed it with the wooden stamps and then “rocked” it in a rocker.…The best run he had ever made in one day…he said was $73 or $75. After the death of Mr. Ealy work was suspended, probably in 1845 or 1846, and has not been resumed since.

  Heavy sulphurets begin to show at the Mahan Pits, but the ore carries also free gold…the ore…assayed $22 per ton.

  Lastly, we come to the Ulrich Pits on the east bank of Hillabee Creek… Dr. Ulrich sunk several costly shafts, hunting for copper, but…finally discovered gold instead of copper, and erected a mill furnished with wooden stamps, taking the water for his power from Hillabee Creek. He worked in this way until the war [Civil War] , making his gold into bars and buying cattle with it, so I am informed by old citizens…Ulrich’s operations were conducted without the least regard to economical mining, and no thought for the future. Col. A.H. Moore [Hog Mountain] had some of the Ulrich ore assayed in North Carolina and told me that it ran $21 per ton.

  On the west side of Hillabee Creek these seams continue in a south west direction, crossing the road from Alexander City to Hillabee Bridge on the Duncan Place. This belt seems to be bounded on the east by a large slate dyke from 200 to 400 yards distant from the quartz seams…This ends what I have to say about the Goldville Belt.

  About two and a half miles west of the [Log Pit] we find a great mass of ore in the Hog Mountain. There are millions of tons of quartz in the Hog Mountain, all of it carrying gold. I saw assays of ore taken from 16 different places and they showed the ore to be worth from $4 to $16 per ton.21

  LINE OF GOLD MINES

  The hillsides of Northeast Tallapoosa County are marked by an almost unbroken line of gold mines: Mahan Pits, Croft Pits, Stone Pits, Ealy Pits, Log Pit, Houston Pits, Goldville Pits, Germany Pits, Jones Pits, Ulrich Pits and Birdsong Pits. The mines start at the Duncan community, about six miles east of Alexander City, and extend through the northeast corner of Tallapoosa County into Clay County.

  One of the most famous mines in northeast Tallapoosa County is the Dutch Bend, or Ulrich, due, in part, to the popular story of how gold was discovered at the site. Dr. Ulrich was a native
of Germany who came to northeast Tallapoosa County in 1840 with a group of settlers from Savannah, Georgia, looking for a terrain similar to his homeland, where he could settle, plant vineyards and produce commercial wines. He purchased 1,200 acres of land near Hillabee Creek. In the process of digging a large tunnel into the hillside to use as a wine cellar, he discovered a vein of gold. After finding other veins of oxidized ore, he built a stamp mill to process the ore, powered with water from Hillabee Creek. Thinking Ulrich was Dutch, locals referred to the property as Dutch Bend because it was located on a sharp bend in the Hillabee Creek. Dr. Ulrich hauled the ore from the tunnel in small cars on wooden tracks. He kept no records as to cost and production; therefore, it is impossible to know how much gold was produced at Dutch Bend in the early years of gold mining in Alabama. Dr. Ulrich had the gold made into small, one-ounce bars and traded them for mining supplies and other purchases.22

  Many old workings, some of them tunnels, from 50 to 700 feet all driven in the immediate vicinity, show the crude mining work of half a century ago. It was here Dr. Ulrich extracted ores by his slave labor, but in no instance did his work extend to greater depth than 20 to 30 feet. He only sought the decomposed and free milling ore. All the work done clearly established the Geological features of the formation. The veins are “True fissure,” extending vertically down to unknown depths and increasing in width with downward development.23

  A line of gold mines extended from Duncan, five miles outside Alexander City, to northeast Tallapoosa County. From Big Ten Maps; courtesy of Tallapoosee County Historical Museum.

  This picture of a gold mining pan is used with permission of Pine Mountain Gold Museum, located in Villa Rica, Georgia. Courtesy of Peggy Jackson Walls.

  The miner is using a sluice box to recover gold from the mixture of water and ore. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

  A great deal of alluvial mining was done in Hillabee Creek and other branches in northeast Tallapoosa County. One of the first methods pioneer miners used to retrieve gold from alluvial deposits was hand panning. The miner filled his pan with one-half alluvial sand and one-half gravel. Adding water to the top, he shook the pan vigorously side to side at an angle to separate the gold from the rock. Other devices included the gold mining rocker box, a wooden trough with deep cross riffles resembling a washboard. The trough was mounted on rockers. The miner would feed water and alluvial material into the upper end. The rocking motion moved the sand and gravel through and out of the trough, leaving the gold in the riffles.

  The old-fashioned sluice box had removable troves that were about one foot wide and often hundreds of feet long to accommodate large amounts of gravel that twenty or thirty men could shovel into it continually as a large stream of swift water washed over the ore. The final step was to remove gold from the box.24

  SOUTHERN TALLAPOOSA COUNTY GOLD MINES

  The Devil’s Backbone District in the Weodowee formation extends west of the Tallapoosa River as far as Elmore County. On the east of the river, the district continues in a northeast direction into Chambers County. Rocks in the belt are primarily slate, phyllite, quartzite and schist of sedimentary origin. In the middle section, the beds dip at steep angles toward the southeast with heavy sections of quartzites exposed in a ridge, known by locals as the Devil’s Backbone. Antebellum miners worked in the auriferous gravels along the streams without gaining any large amounts of gold. Many of the mines now are covered by Lake Martin.25

  BLUE HILL GOLD MINE

  Jonathan Steiner on March 11, 1843, acquired a patent from the US government for the land that would later become known as Blue Hill. By 1845, James Dowd Phillips had purchased three hundred acres, called the “Winn Creek Place,” the site also of a Winn Creek post office. James Dowd Phillips and his wife, Sarah Ann Hampton McNiell, immigrated to Dadeville in 1845, following other settlers and prospectors from Georgia. With the gold rush at Goldville in northeast Tallapoosa County and a town of around three thousand people, “gold fever” was rampant in Tallapoosa County. In 1849, when the cry of “gold” came out of California, thousands of miners abandoned their “diggings” and headed west with the hope of striking it rich in the western gold fields. Among them was forty-four-year-old James Dowd Phillips, who left behind his thirty-five-year-old wife, Sarah Ann, to take care of the family estate with the assistance of servants. James and Sarah had five girls ranging in age from two to nine, with a child on the way. Born while his father was prospecting in California, the son was named Charles California Phillips. James continued mining in California until late 1851 or early 1852. After he returned to Tallapoosa County, another son, Josiah Samuel, was born on November 14, 1852. Sarah Ann saved the letters James wrote to her while he was in California. The following, postmarked “California Mines Nov. 10th/50 near Mocalumne River,” documents the date and location of the mining camp where he worked.

  A Letter to Sarah Ann Phillips

  In the following letter to Sarah Ann, James described life in a mining camp located near Mocalumne River.

  Postmarked: Sacramento, Cal.

  Mrs. James D. Phillips

  Winn Creek P. Office

  Tallapoosa County, Alabama

  California Mines Nov 10th/50 (near Mocalumne River)

  My Dear Sarah Ann

  I have again delayed writing you much longer than I should only that I have been anxiously waiting a letter from you yet I have not rec’d any since I wrote you; and having now an opportunity of sending this to the office I write you a short letter and will write you more as soon as I get your letters—which I hope will be in a few days as I hear there are some at the office for me.—I have just got out of a sharp spell of fever & chill & fever. I was taken about the last of Sept. with the Billious fever at Sacramento City to which place I had gone with my team to haul provisions to the mines. I hired a man to drive my team back to the mines and I rode on the wagon; I could not bear the idea of being sick long in S. City as it is indeed a place of very bad water and much filth about the streets. I got back to my cabin at the mines quite sick—but in a few days broke the fever. I then took the chills & fever which held me for some time so that I am now just getting cleverly about and feel quite well only that I am yet weak—you will I know sympathize much with me for my sickness and I fear you will conclude my health getting worse instead of better—but I am clearly of the opinion that my general health is much improved—especially my old complaint as I have not had any trouble from cough since last spring and very little sick head ache to which I had been so subject. The exposure of driving a wagon sixty miles of the most dusty road you ever saw and most of the way very bad water—and then the bad water and filth of a City worse if possible in warm weather than Mobile or N. Orleans was enough to give much stouter constitutions than mine sickness.—The water where we are in the mines is good and there has been but little sickness about us—the weather is now very pleasant—with frosty mornings—and the season for chills & fever proper. There has been much sickness this summer in some of the Northern mines also on the Sacramento River & in S. City—it has mostly been among those who came over land this year—and many of them have gone to their last homes—the immigration has generally been very sickly this year (last year generally healthy) and the number of deaths before they reached California is estimated as high as ten thousand and hundreds have died since they got in. I have scarcely heard of a death among those who have been in the mines all summer—Sacramento City has been for some 4 or 5 weeks the scene death & destruction from that fill destroyer the Cholera—it has doubtless been very bad probably worse according to the population than ever it was in N. Orleans—it is said not to be so bad but seems now to be abating—there seems to be but little or no apprehension of it in the mines—not now that we of Tallapoosa County feel it is raging in Mobile & N. Orleans.

  As to the news of the success of the miners generally this summer it has been very poor indeed hundreds of them have not made a cent but spent all they had made before. The rivers have no
t fallen so low this summer as they formerly had and they have not proved rich only in few places in the mines are not more than able to buy provisions for winter—and many of them not that—yet, some few made their pile in a few days and go home but this number is scarce and far between—The general hope now is for good winter digging—and great quantities of provisions are stored up in the mines and many in the cabins for winter quarters—provisions are from 25 to 50 cents pd & everything sells by the pound, not measure. [Margin Note: Write often and fully without fail. Direct your letters to Sacramento City as I believe I can get them more conveniently from there. I am providing much more comfortable winter quarters than we had last winter. We have had no rain here yet.]

  My dear wife. I know you are anxiously waiting for me to say when I am coming home but you are not more anxious than I am yet I cannot now set any time precisely—if I can wind up my business here profitably I shall be at the pleasant little home of my wife & little ones next spring—if my health should not be good I shall be sure to return this winter or spring— should my health seem to improve and I hope it will and my prospects here are anyways flattering I may stay longer.