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1240a

Introduction to the Pigeon Roost Mining Company, Belfast Mining Company, and Bank of Darien Notes

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Introduction to the Pigeon Roost Mining Company, Belfast Mining Company, and Bank of Darien Notes
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The Pigeon Roost Mining Company,
Bank of Darien and Belfast Mining Company
With Notes on Auraria and Dahlonega, Georgia

By Fred N. Holabird, copyright 2008, 2018

For complete story, photos & footnotes see “Gold! At Pigeon Roost” by Fred Holabird & Al Adams available for $9.95 at FHWAC.com

Introduction
The story of the Pigeon Roost Mining Company is intimately interwoven with that of the Bank of Darien and the Belfast Mining Company, all three of which issued their own scrip or paper money. In fact, the Pigeon Roost scrip is in all probability a direct product of the Darien Bank. This paper unravels that complex story step by step.
The Pigeon Roost Mining Company has long held interest with bank note collectors because of the fancy scrip issued by that company in the mid 1830’s. Not much has been published on the company. As I researched the Company over the past two years, I quickly became deeply involved with the Georgia gold rush, and the development of the mines there, much of which started with or at the Pigeon Roost. Over time, I enquired about American mining scrip as a whole, and it soon appeared that the Pigeon Roost Mining Company scrip was, in fact, the first known gold mining scrip issued in America. It is an integral and important part of America’s first Gold Rush, and a symbol of the harsh banking conditions of the times. It precedes any scrip from the coal mines of the east, iron mines of the north, and gold mines of the Appalachians. As such, it is deserving of a better story than what has been told, if one could be found.

Further discoveries were made in the course of the research on Pigeon Roost. Prominent California gold coiners and assayers John L. Moffat, Joseph Curtis and Samuel Ward were all intimately involved with the Georgia gold rush at the time of the Pigeon Roost Mining Company currency issuancy, and remained so long afterward. These men, originally from New York, used their gold, assaying, brokerage and banking experience to capitalize on Georgia gold, though it was not at Dahlonega or Auraria, but in nearby Nacoochee in Habersham County. Their names came to light in the early political maneuverings of the formation of the Dahlonega Branch Mint. California Gold Rush assayer Gorham Blake also played an important role, though mostly after the California Gold Rush. He was active nearby in neighboring White County.

The Pigeon Roost Name
The Pigeon Roost mine name was chosen because the area was reported to be the site of roosting pigeons. It was along a ridge top, where an original Georgia deciduous forest once stood. The name appears to have been used as early as 1828, about the time of the first Georgia gold discoveries, though the first written reference I located was 1829. It may have been a convenient spot in the flyway, or may even have simply been a favorite migration spot. Today, however, there are no pigeons in the area, other than a few scattered about on rooftops. The original trees that adorned the ridge top are long gone, replaced by Ash and other secondary growth after the primary forest was harvested for mining and domestic use. As for the pigeons themselves, they will never come back. The pigeons of Pigeon Roost were no normal pigeons – they were at the time, but not now. They were a species that once was called “the most abundant bird on the planet,” the Passenger Pigeon. “Passenger Pigeons were denizens of the once great deciduous forests of the eastern United States. The birds provided an easily harvested resource for Native Americans and early settlers…”, noted Stanford scientists in a paper on the extinct bird. Naturalist John James Audubon noted “The pigeons were picked up and piled in heaps, until each [hunter] had as many as he could possibly dispose of, when the hogs were let loose to feed on the remainder.”
By the end of the Civil War, the pigeons were gone from Georgia, and extinct from the planet by 1914.

The Pigeon Roost Site
The area was originally inhabited by Cherokee. As part of an old treaty with the Government, the Cherokee were deeded all the land on the north side of the Chestatee River. When gold was discovered near here in 1828, Anglos began prospecting and found gold on the north side of the Chestatee River. Working up Cane Creek (one of the tributaries) by panning and sluicing, miners soon ran into a series of rich gravels perched on a shallow ridge. They also found a highly weathered rock and soil that contained much gold when panned, and underneath were small veins of quartz with native gold. One of the sites was loaded with pigeons, and the name Pigeon Roost soon christened the ridge.

The Pigeon Roost location would have excited any miner in the 1830’s. The main site of the Pigeon Roost is not like what you’d expect from a mine in the West. There is no specific place where you can put an “X” on a map. Its an area that has been massively mined by placer methods – first by hand with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows. Then later, after the introduction of hydraulic mining that came after the Blake Report of 1858, hydraulic monitors plowed down the soil and ran it all through the sluice boxes, out into Cane Creek, and into the Chestatee River. There is one prominent cut at Pigeon Roost at the head of the placer workings, that certainly must be the central part of the first mine there. Today it is a cut with near vertical walls of about 75 feet. Along the northern edge are three prospect pits scattered about, but few are elsewhere on the property. Clearly, the old miners had little understanding of geology. Several decades later in California, it would become more evident where to prospect and how. The science of mining exploration had not yet developed, and even the placers were not well understood. Indeed, the first paper published on any American Placer mine was that published in the Yale’s American Journal of Science and the Arts, edited by Yale professor Benjamin Silliman in April, 1833. William Phillips, an engineer, wrote “An Essay on Georgia Gold Mines” that describes the early placer mines of the Chestatee region that undoubtedly included the Pigeon Roost as well as the placer at Calhoun, which sits directly on the Chestatee. Phillips tried to unravel the geology of the placers here, and did an excellent job. His notations about the weathering of the rock and the discussions of the placer deposits parallel the observations made today.

Other descriptions of the Georgia gold region about the Chestatee were less scientific in nature, and much more visual. As an example, a nine pound three ounce nugget was found by Col. C. D. Gibson on the Calhoun lot in the Chestatee River, reported in the national press in April, 1833. Items involving the Calhoun Mine are present in this sale.

Deep drains were cut through the Pigeon Roost over the years. The miners discovered the vast elevated fossil river channels, and mined them until they hit the bottom. Sometimes these old channels had cut deep channels in the schist, often to a level at or below the current river level, necessitating a drain. These drains are often deep cuts through schist leading to the river, since the old river channels created an undulating natural surface, just like the hill surfaces now. Removal of the gravel and weathered rock and soil changed the slopes and topography permanently.

The Discovery
The Pigeon Roost mine sits along a ridge high above and out of sight of the Chestatee River. It was discovered when miners panned gold up the tributaries, in this case, Cane Creek, which has its confluence with the Chestatee about a mile down stream of another rich gold bearing creek, the Yahoola River. About a mile and a half up stream in Cane Creek, the miners found an elevated gravel channel which also covered small, rich gold in quartz veins cutting the local schists.

The actual discoverer of the Pigeon Roost is lost to history. What we do know comes from one of the dozen or so newspapers that still exist printed in Auraria, The Western Herald, first published in 1833.

The first mention of Pigeon Roost located by the author was from a letter written by B. L. Goodman and Milton Gathright (you will hear of him later) datelined Pigeon Roost, January 27, 1830 published in the Annual American Historical Association:

We the citizens of Georgia who are engaged in the gold digging business in the Cherokee Nation beg leave to make the following communication: we are well aware that it is wrong of us to intrude upon the rights of Georgia by digging for gold upon her unappropriated and unsurveyed lands, as we have been doing for some time past & that we of right ought to be stopped. Therefore at the time you visited us last in June we abandoned our search for gold in the nation and returned to our homes. But finding that your reasonable request and the exertions of Capt. Brady had not induced the citizens of other states to abandon their searches, we again returned to the Nation. And our excuse for this acting may be found in this: That we believe the soil of this nation and the minerals therein belong to Georgia and that we have a prospective interest in the same, and that we are more excusable than the citizens from other states or the people of the Nation. Therefore we thought that while others are grasping for the wealth of our state that we would strive for a part. But sir, notwithstanding all this, we are now willing to abandon our searches for gold again, provided all other persons are compelled to do so. But let it be distinctly understood that if affected means are not adopted to restrain and prohibit all other persons from digging that we will again return with the full determination of being the last to quit the mines upon any subsequent occasion.

This situation created havoc on the Cherokee lands, ultimately removing the Cherokee.

With the attendant influx of miners and the production of the precious metal, Georgia State Representatives began to change their minds about just who should own the land where the gold had lain for eons. The state was divided up into land lots with the intention of selling the lots by public auction, regardless of Indian Treaties. Large land lots were over 200 acres, and small land lots in the gold region became known as “Gold lots.” There were 35,000 gold lots available for the October 22, 1832 lottery drawing, for which 133,000 people had registered a claim for a lottery lot. There are three original gold lottery tickets in this sale.

“By 1832 the location of the best mining sites was common knowledge, and many of the new mining companies had already selected the lots they planned to purchase,” wrote David Williams in The Georgia Gold Rush. Many of the groups that wanted specific gold lots attended the auction in Milledgeville, the Georgia Capital, and waited for their lots to be drawn, and purchased the lots from the new owners.

A Mining Company Emerges, 1832
A number of people knew of the lot on Pigeon Roost and others that were quite valuable. A group of five men in Jefferson, Georgia led by Allan Matthews and a man named Appleby were prepared to spend up to $10,000 for the right lot, which was 746, the Pigeon Roost. They called themselves the Jefferson Company, aptly named after their hometown of Jefferson, Georgia. In so doing, they were part of, or started, a custom that became regular practice for the next thirty five years or more, transcending the California Gold Rush, the Colorado Gold Rush, and the Comstock Rush: the use of a hometown name in the naming of a new mining venture, representing a group of investors from that town.

The Pigeon Roost lot was won by a poor farmer who couldn’t read. His only requirement to secure title was to pay an $18 grant fee to the State of Georgia. A sealed bid auction was held in Jefferson for the lot. When opened, the bids came in at $2,000 to $8,000; but the champion that day was the Jefferson Company at $10,000, making the farmer a man of new wealth, which he reportedly carefully controlled to his family’s benefit for the rest of his life.

The Jefferson Mining Company reportedly mined the property for about a year. It may not have been particularly productive, because the old investors that constituted the Jefferson Mining Company apparently wanted their investment back. Matthews got a new group together that included local dignitary General Alexander Ware and bought out the old investors for the same $10,000 that they had paid for the lot the prior year.

The Pigeon Roost Mining Company Begins
On October 10, 1833, the Auraria Western Herald printed a story about the mine that was soon to become known as the Pigeon Roost:

We understand that the lot on Pigeon Roost, owned by the Jefferson Company, sold to General Alexander Ware and Allen Matthews Esq. for the sum of ten thousand dollars… It is one of the best speculations which have come within our knowledge during the past summer. We were shown a few days since, a specimen of gold taken from a vein recently discovered on the lot, superior to anything of the kind we have seen. From the extent of this vein and the richness of the metalliferous slates of which it is imbedded, we believe it intensely of more value than any lot yet discovered in the country.

Ware was a wise choice for a partner for Matthews. With a home along the Chattahoochee River, Ware was influential in dealings with the Indians. He was friends with Macintosh (worked with him in 1825), who had put in the main road through the Territory earlier, known as the Macintosh Road, which stretched across Georgia to Wetumpka, Alabama, crossing the Chattahoochee, encompassing a distance of 118 miles. Early on, Ware had a home in Fayette County on the border of Georgia and the Creek (Indian) Nation. Here he learned to work closely with the Native Americans and befriended them. As a Navy officer later in 1830, Ware was on a ship in Havana and jumped ship, with the knowledge of the Captain. He and two others were upset at the poor treatment of the sailors, the lack of food, and mostly the Captain’s brazen move to take the ship to Europe instead of returning to the States, as planned and apparently ordered. The Captain had them arrested and jailed. Ware and the others sued for reinstatement and back pay, and won the case, including the back pay. With Ware, Matthews would have little trouble dealing with the Cherokee, on whose land the Pigeon Roost was located, and who were about to get booted out of the State. Matthews remained a resident of Auraria for a number of years. He was a partner of Milton Gathright, John D. Field and others in numerous real estate dealings in and around Auraria. Matthews was also a distinguished lawyer of the western circuit of Georgia, whose eldest daughter married Capt. Daniel Candler in Auraria, whose son, a prominent politician, was known as “the one-eyed plow boy of Pigeon Roost.” Gathright may have been one of the original partners in the Pigeon Roost and Jefferson Company as evidenced by his activity there in 1829 and later activity with the Pigeon Roost “bank” acting as cashier.

Shortly after Ware and Matthews acquired the property, the mine on Pigeon Roost, previously known as the Jefferson Company Mine, quickly became known as the Pigeon Roost Mine. An early newspaper article described the mine:

The unremitting vigilance and perseverance, and the unexampled success of Messrs. Ware & Matthews, in the development of a vein mine upon a lot owned by them conjointly, will, we hope, inspire our citizens with a spirit of investigation and industry, so necessary to the advancement of their interests in their avocation.

We had the pleasure, a few days since, of witnessing the operations of this mine, and an examination of the ores taken from it; we venture the assertion, that the ores of an equal richness are not to be found in any vein yet opened in the southern country. A shaft upwards of one hundred feet has been sunk upon the vein; at this depth we are informed by these gentlemen, that the ore is equal in richness to that in any other part of the vein. It is from six to nine feet in width, extending in a direct line N.E. and S.W. from three to five hundred yards, at which point it seems to be shut out by a sudden interruption of a vein of horn-blend rocks. This vein is embedded in the mica slate, of an ashy color, which produces to the touch a sensation similar to that of fine soapstone. The ores present a variety of colors such as lead, grey, yellow, black and variegated, produced, we imagine, from a combination of different oxyds, such as iron pyrites, arsenic, & c., interspersed with the red and yellow ochres. The gold is seldom perceptible to the eye.

Messrs. Ware and Matthews have recently erected a small stamping mill, for reducing the ores, which has just gone into operation. They made with twenty hands, in sixteen of the first hours of operation, 414 dwts of gold. The washing process is quite simple, and to us it seems that the whole machinery is imperfect, for the ores, after passing through the stamping mill, arte scarcely reduced to the fineness of small hominy. We have no doubt but that these ores will yield a third more on a second pounding and washing.

Ware and Matthews made a move to incorporate the company in the Georgia Legislature in early 1834, and it was passed December 20, 1834. As such, it became the fourth mining company to incorporate in all of Georgia, following the Augusta Mining Company, the Habersham Mining Company and the Naucoochy Mining Company, all of which were incorporated in late 1832. Through 1835, eight mining companies were incorporated in Georgia, most of which were in Lumpkin County, but only the Pigeon Roost incorporation papers listed the specific lots the companies owned. The Pigeon Roost Mining Company was the only one of these eight not to list the directors, and only Matthews’ name appears on the application. The Belfast Mining Company was incorporated simultaneously, indicating that its properties may have been part of or associated with the four specific lots mentioned in the incorporation papers. The exact tie between the two companies is not known, and warrants further research. Curiously, on the list of the original eight Georgia mining companies, only one man doubled as directors for two companies: John Humphries for the Naucoochy and Belfast mining companies.


Auraria. The Product of the Pigeon Roost Mining Company
The Pigeon Roost Mining Company was the largest and probably the highest producing mine in the region. The mining camp of Auraria was built on the flat ridge top above the Pigeon Roost and other nearby mines. The Auraria site offered good ground for a small town. It had plenty of flat land for small farming, adequate annual rainfall for water, as well as year-round active streams on both sides of the ridge. The first cabin went up in the Auraria site in 1832, built by William Dean. Nathanial Nuckolls built a small tavern next, and the small mining camp became known as “Nuckollsville”, a popular name perhaps because of the miners tendency for hard drinking and fighting. By the fall, trees and brush were cleared and the town of Auraria began to materialize. It received its state charter as a town in 1833, and in so doing, perhaps became America’s first “official” gold rush mining camp.

But it wasn’t a normal mining camp in the scheme of what everyone thinks of today. It was built at a time when this part of Georgia was out in the frontier, a long way away from the conveniences of a normal town. There were no local hardware stores and no quick supply of goods nearby. There was no local industry of any kind, other than mining that might have aided the support of its citizenry. The closest supply terminus would have been Athens or Milledgeville, both about 100 miles or more away. The camp grew slowly, with hand-built cabins from wood from the local forest. It wasn’t fancy.

Bank Services Needed in Auraria, 1833
As the Pigeon Roost Mining Company and other mines prospered, the need for a bank or banking system arose. Without controlled circulating specie, miners were left with dealing in gold dust. It was too easy to dilute the gold dust, and the need for a camp assayer soon arose. Banks from the few Georgia towns within a hundred miles or so all discussed the possibilities of opening a branch in Auraria, and indeed, many of these banks traded in gold dust and advertised their services. One of the first banks to advertise their gold dust buying was the Farmers Bank of Chattahoochee at Clarksville. In local newspapers they stated that the bank “is now in operation, and the mint value paid for Gold by the cashier Mr. Rossignol.” Rossignol later became superintendent of the Dahlonega Branch Mint (1841-1843.) According to Lumpkin County Records, the Farmers Bank of Chattahoochee had a branch in Auraria or Dahlonega, but not until about 1834-1835. This may have been the specific branch that was mentioned in connection with the Clarksville branch, or perhaps was in its planning or infancy stages.
Banks in the 1830’s, however, were not that same as those today. The commercial infrastructure and personal banking needs of the Dahlonega region were not advanced. In fact, there was no other industry in the region. Without multiple industries, or a single large industry such as cotton, there were few jobs. This is easily evidenced by the lack of organized town structure at both Auraria and Dahlonega during the period. Families were self-supporting, raising their own crops, trading for goods and services, and the basic concept of a commercial town really did not exist.

Circulating Money Needed
Typical of any American mining camp on the frontier, there was little circulating currency of any kind, primarily because of the lack of a commercial infrastructure. In the early 1830’s there were three forms of circulating money: 1) U. S. gold, silver and copper coins 2) private bank or company scrip 3) currency backed by State or local governments 4) private gold coins. One of the alternatives available to Georgians for circulating money was to coin their own gold. Templeton Reid was America’s first to strike privately minted gold coins. He did it in Gainsville, Georgia from July to December, 1830, two years before the birth of the mining camps of Auraria and Dahlonega. The Bechtlers started coining gold in July, 1830 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and later proposed coining Georgia Gold in late 1831, but the fist Georgia gold was not coined by them until 1834, and even then it was coined in North Carolina. Newspaper discussion of the private gold coins was not commonplace, particularly in Georgia gold country. One quote in the Western Herald showed the interest:

The expense of coining gold is bagatelle, and unworthy of consideration compared with the advantage of procuring (for) southern gold finders a market for their products but still would it not be more advantageous for the country to give such a value to [their] coins as would give them a chance to be circulated? Would it not be most desirable to have coins of the denomination of half ($5), quarto ($2.50), and eight ($1.25) in circulation? Then the paper [of a] less value than $5, which is a disgrace to the commercial community, and increase [proportionally] the danger to be apprehended from counterfeiting, would be abolished and our c[urrency] would be kept in a comparatively somewhat healthy condition. Every man of [means] in the country would rejoice at the abs[ence] of notes of less value than $5, [with the] substitution of coin in their place. This [situation] besides being of such importance is kee(ping) currency sound, be a great spur to the (illegible) of our southern gold miners – they w[ill get] a larger market for their produce, a[nd] of course extend their works.

In short, some discussion took place about the coining of gold, but it never took place after the initial Templeton-Reid effort.

The trade of gold by using gold in commerce required some form of umpiring. The usual umpires were banks or local assayers. Local assayers were not plentiful, nor were any in America at the time known to be graduates of the large and prestigious mining schools of Europe. The only record of any assayers in Auraria were John Powell and John N. Rose, who advertised their services in the Western Herald. The pair offered their services for assay or refining, and for pouring gold into bars. Unfortunately, none of the latter survive. Powell also advertised to provide a special new invention that washed gold faster and cheaper than panning or sluicing. His ads stated that it was much easier to use than a rocker. Others advertised themselves as mining experts, a probable precursor to “mining engineer”, though that term did not exist in 1833. D.C. Gibson was one of these men offering his services, but they did not include assaying.

Outside assayers also threw their lot into the Georgia gold rush. Samuel Beebee of New York City advertised for Georgians to send their gold to him in containers “gold can be correctly assayed in this city, as at the mint.”
A number of southern banks paved the way for the paper currency. The Farmers Bank of Chattahoochee, the State Bank of Georgia, the Bank of Darien and many more issued private currency. The Bank of Darien was pro-active in the Auraria-Dahlonega region, and opened branches at both sites early in the gold rush, with a primary business of buying gold from miners. The Bank of Darien became a central force in the gold region. The assay office of Rose & Powell was purchased by the Darien Bank about 1833, and Rose continued in his capacity as assayer and gold buyer for the Bank through at least 1835.

The Farmers Bank of Chattahoochee opened a branch at Clarksville in Habersham County about 1834 or 1835. Advertisements in the newspapers often discussed the value, or lack of value, that these notes had. One ad in the Western Herald noted: “Merchants and Planters Bank money: We understand that bills of this bank are in demand and are now worth 85 a 90 cents per dollar.” Another read: “Merritt & Co. will pay 45 cents cash for Merchants and planters Bank notes or 50 cents in goods at Auraria, Lumpkin County or at Sheffield, Newton County.” The discounts were commonplace, as were bank failures. The Merchants and Mechanics Bank and the Bank of Augusta failed in 1833, and their notes were utterly worthless, unless the miners didn’t know about the failures, and unscrupulous merchants were able to pass them on.

Other assayers in the Georgia gold region did not advertise widely, if at all. Perhaps of utmost importance was John Little Moffat, a jeweler and assayer from New York City who was an early entrant into the Georgia Gold Rush. His work in Georgia began while a partner in the firm of Wilmarth, Moffat and Curtis, a prominent jewelry firm in New York City. Moffat and Curtis had developed a significant jewelers and gold bullion business in New York. Gold bullion stamped with Wilmarth, Moffat and Curtis was well respected in the international gold bullion market.

As gold dealers, Wilmarth, Moffat and Curtis had received shipments of gold from Georgia, and had thus become known to some Georgia gold miners. Moffat was so intrigued by the Georgia gold fields that he and his family moved to Naucoochy in Habersham County by 1836, perhaps as early as 1835. The move may have been made to facilitate Moffat and Curtis’ gold business, placing Moffat directly in the gold fields facilitating the purchase of gold.

In 1836, numerous people nominated Moffat for Assayer at the soon to be completed (or so they thought) Dahlonega Branch Mint. Moffat’s New York partner Joseph Curtis remained close friends with Moffat, and was also one of the men recommending Moffat for the Assayer position. Both Curtis and Moffat went on to exceptionally important careers in the California Gold Rush. In 1849, Moffat & Co. started a smelting assaying and coining business in San Francisco. The partners were Curtis, Philo Perry and Samuel Ward. Important gold ingots and coins bearing Moffat’s name and various US Assay Office gold pieces reflect the men’s important involvement in the gold business in California. In fact, only Rose and Moffat had ingots marked with their names.
The US Government formally made plans to build a Mint in the Georgia gold region in 1835. Much political horseplay accompanied the efforts to locate the best site for the Mint, but conditions had not improved much in the remote mining camps of Auraria and Dahlonega. A description of Dahlonega from 1835 perhaps best illustrates the point:

…it is also very evident that no information which could be available in making the estimates (for the building of the Mint), could be obtained in Dahlonega – an obscure frontier village, with only a few rude, and unskillful workmen, whose prices could not govern in estimating the cost of a building…

Pigeon Roost Issues Scrip Currency
The direct history of the Pigeon Roost over the next few years is difficult to reconstruct. The Pigeon Roost Mining Company issued company scrip almost immediately after the corporation was approved by the Georgia Senate December 20, 1834. It was issued from January, 1835 (serial number 12 is known) to about August, 1838, ceasing coincidental with the opening of the Dahlonega Branch Mint. Their mine office or “bank” was reportedly a small wood building with iron doors. The doors exist to this day, privately owned, and are no longer held at the Auraria town site. The wooden building lasted until the second decade of the twentieth century.

The scrip was issued in denominations of $5, $10, $20 and $100 notes. No notes are known for $20 and $50 denominations, though the $20 is known to have been issued through the historical record, and the $50 was thought to have been printed. Examples of $20 and $500 notes are known, but not issued. They were used for currency in 1861, and were printed on the back with another company’s scrip, the Palace Mills Flour and Milling Co. of Palace Mills, Georgia. In all likelihood, one of the Pigeon Roost (or Bank of Darien) officers kept the “remainders” or unissued pieces and reused the paper during the Civil War when paper was rare and at a premium. A total of 25 Pigeon Roost notes have been recorded in a private census, and there are certainly more in unrecorded collections.

The Pigeon Roost Mining Company scrip was probably used in a typical manner. It would have been dispensed from the Company store or office in Auraria for wages, goods and services. Normally, a small company of this nature would only pay out as much scrip as the company held internally in gold to back it up. Scrip was good for the moment- it wasn’t meant to hang on to for long periods in the manner of modern currency, just like a dividend carrying bond is good until the bonds are paid off. The companies would advertise that you have 90 days or so to turn in your bond coupons, after which they were null and void. Pigeon Roost scrip probably acted in the same manner. But some individuals kept their scrip, paying debts with it, and eventually the holders of the notes kept them too long. At some point, the Company assumed the outstanding notes were lost, and used the money elsewhere.

Though we do not have immediate access to the currency laws present in 1835, the laws on currency in Georgia in 1838 may have been similar. The Free Banking Law in Georgia “Allowed a circulating medium, in the similitude of bank notes.” They were overseen by three State agents, who approved the signors. The currency was to fit one of three criteria: 1) backed by stocks of the United States, the State of Georgia, or such other states as approved; 2) supported by bonds or mortgages of unencumbered land within Georgia, worth at least double the amount for which they are mortgaged. Notes thus note: “Secured by pledge of real estate.” 3) on mortgages of land, town property or negroes, four times the value of the notes received, provided all are insured. The bills or notes thus delivered to persons or associations… payable on demand at their respective places of business within the state, and to be loaned and circulated by them as money.” The notes were to be redeemable in gold and silver. These laws were typical of the period, and is why we saw the phrase on many southern notes of the period “payable in specie” or in “gold.” The Pigeon Roost notes say “Payable in specie or current bank bills.” Later notes were required by the Federal Government to be paid in specie, but in the bank panic of 1837-8, many companies refused.

From the surviving Pigeon Roost Mining Company bank notes, we can surmise the following:
Date Cashier President
1835 Milton Gathright illegible
1836 Francis V. Bulfinch S. Ripley
1837 Francis V. Bulfinch(thru 11/9) S. Ripley(thru 11/9)
Milton Gathright(after 11/9) A. Milbanks(after 11/9)
1838 M. M. Clarke James Wood

For a one year period around September, 1836 and September, 1837, some of the Pigeon Roost MC notes were payable to Wetumpka, Alabama merchants Thomas E. Clarke (9/37), a probable relative of M. M. Clarke, and J. Jones (9/36). Little else is known of the Wetumpka tie. One might speculate that the Bank may have been investigating the possibilities of placing a branch at Wetumpka, but this may be far-fetched in view of the poor economic conditions of the period. The mere fact that these notes survive may be testament to the fact that they were received far from Auraria, and that no other banks would accept them in trade as “current bank bills”, thus they were retained by the families as “worthless currency” since it may have cost too much to travel back to Auraria or Dahlonega to redeem them, which they would have had to do before the end of August, 1838.
It is important to note that the Pigeon Roost scrip was issued and signed by many of the regions stalwart public figures. The presence of these men offered confidence in the scrip to local merchants and miners. The presence of Gathright was enough to convince even the toughest critic that the notes were valuable. And at the end of the run in 1838, Bank of Darien President James Wood himself signed the notes. These were not mere examples of puppet currency, designed and crafted to fool the innocent, they were an attempt at a sound circulating currency in the absence of any other form of money.

Hard Times. The 1837 Depression.
The nationwide depression of 1837-1838 had a major impact on the American banking industry. Many historians have simply placed the ruin of the Bank of Darien and Pigeon Roost into this “category.” But this is far too simplistic a view. The truth is far more complicated, and involves the opening of the Dahlonega Branch Mint.

The Auraria-Dahlonega region was wholly supported by gold mining. The concept of a United States Branch
mint arose early on, and was manifested in 1835 when the building of the Mint was approved and planning commenced. Gold production continued, and did not slow down during the 1837 depression, as best can be interpreted from the records. In more modern times, gold mining increased during depressions (particularly placer mining), but the scant written historical record remaining from the mid 1830’s in Georgia doesn’t allow an interpretation of that magnitude.

The development of the Branch Mint, however, placed an undue burden on the local banking structure. The Bank of Darien and Pigeon Roost did not operate as “banks” as we know them today, as stated previously. Their primary purpose was to purchase gold dust from miners and provide coin or currency in current funds in exchange for the gold dust. With the certain advent of the completion and opening of the Branch Mint in 1838, competitive pressure was placed on the private banking sector. Once the Mint opened, their purpose became obsolete. This fact is manifested by several letters found in National Archives, particularly well illustrated in this letter from Dahlonega Mint contractor Ignatius Few to Mint Director Robert Patterson on May 23, 1835. In the letter and attached Report to Patterson, Few discussed the possible sites for locating the new mint building. He was dismayed at various delays in communication between several other contractors and the effects the delays might have on the citizenry:

wrote to him again yesterday requesting him to give immediate attention to the business (of finding a building site). I regret this delay especially because I find that those who are concerned in mining operations near Dahlonega are sustaining a loss of from 6 to 8 per cent in exchanging their gold for current money which falls especially on those who have least capital employed in the business, and they are already disposed to believe that the measures adopted for the purpose of carrying the law establishing the Mint into effect are unnecessarily tedious, and that a longer time than probably will be found necessary will elapse before the business of coinage can commence.

Still later, the problem of currency discounts and availability continued. With the inevitable opening of the Branch mint about to take place in the first part of 1838, Mint Director Patterson had requested Dahlonega Branch mint Superintendent Joseph Singleton send him some money for unspecified reasons.

In your letter of (March 15, 1838) you requested that I would send you a small amount of money say $300.00 in Treasury notes. I have endeavored to procure such notes for you, and could not, therefore I cannot at present do any better than to send you three hundred dollars of our Georgia money hoping that it may answer the purpose for which you desire it.

Clearly the lack of circulating specie and currency in the Georgia region continued long after the opening of the Branch mint at Dahlonega.

The Aftermath of the Bank Crash of 1838
After the financial crash of 1837-1838, people continued to use broken or failed bank notes to pay debt, hoping no one would notice. They were virtually imperceptible from legitimate bank notes, and the public was easily deceived. Discounts on legitimate currency increased during this period of uncertainty. This point is well illustrated in correspondence from the Dahlonega Branch Mint to Georgia Congressman J. A. Cobb:
Yours of the (September 20, 1839) covering ninety dollars of Darien Bank Bills has been received in due course of mail, … The said $90 constituting a general apartment Darien money, I could not get it off at less than 10 pr. cent discount, accordingly I enclose you eighty one dollars in current bills.

Once the confusion of the legitimate currency vs. illegitimate currency was out in the open, the scam artists went to work. In one court case cited as Smith vs Click, a man named Smith tried to buy a horse in 1842 for $80 using bank notes of “The Pigeon Roost Banking Company.” “Click inquired if the notes were good; to which Smith replied they were good to him.” Smith’s creditors would not accept them as “current bank bills,” and they were deemed worthless.

Afterwards Click said in the presence of Smith that he knew they were worthless, for he had passed this money five or six times, and taken it back. To which Smith replied, he had not taken it back more than two or three times.

In another humorous instance, a seller of quack medicine and carbonated mineral waters in Virginia in 1842 was in a conversation with a customer, who said:

“I have a ten dollar note of the Pigeon Roost Bank; the discount is only fifty percent… persuade yourself that it is better than Virginia money.” Response: “I go for current good money sir, no rotten banks!” “The president and directors of the Pigeon Roost Bank, Georgia promise to pay – faugh! It smells of guano! Deuce take the Yankees! Utilitarians! manufacturers of wooden nutmegs! Pigeon Roost! Indeed! Ha! HA! Ha!”

When the banking crisis was in full swing, Georgia recognized that it was in trouble, and the president of the Bank of the State of Georgia told Congress in 1842:

The period at which we have assembled is one distinguished for great difficulty in the monetary affairs of the country; our city and State participate in an embarrassments of the eventful crisis; though the banks of this city, the branches of this institution, and the banks of our sister city, Augusta, in the discharge of their high obligations to the country and to the stockholders, have continued to redeem their liabilities in specie, not withstanding an exceedingly deranged currency in the interior of our own state, while the banks in the cities north of Charleston, as far as Ne w York, had suspended specie payments: and great and serious diminution in their profits has been the result.

If banks had to pay out dividends every other month, as directed the mining companies, saving cash and specie would be nearly impossible.

Part of the 1837-1838 bank failures were possibly due to the specie question. The fed had hoped to make silver and gold the circulating medium of currency. But banks, businesses including railroads chose to issue notes for everything from small change to $10 or $20 dollars. As the banks bankrupted, silver and copper change disappeared and was hoarded. Banks not in foreclosure had to suffer depreciation of their currency at disproportional rates to competitor banks. To adjust for this, the merchant had to adjust the price of goods.
An efficient demand ensures a supply… abundant issues of paper cause specie to flow out of a country, destroying the paper causes the specie to flow in. This is the way to create a sufficient demand for gold and silver… withdraw your paper money and the precious metals will flow in…
The concept was sound, but the practice was a failure. As the Pigeon Roost “bank” and Bank of Darien went down in financial failure, so went most of the South.

Pigeon Roost Players in Later Days
Allen Matthews who had originally incorporated the Pigeon Roost Mine, went on to be a prominent lawyer in the Dahlonega region. He was still active in gold mining there in the early 1840’s. In 1842, he became one of the few mine owners to make a claim against the Government for non-delivery of gold coin from the Dahlonega Mint after making a gold deposit. His attorney, none other than his old partner Milton Gathright, filed papers September 9, 1842 against Branch Mint Superintendant Paul Rossignol. On August 1, 1842, Matthews deposited “about 150 pennyweights of gold bullion” for coinage in the name of F. Summerover on behalf of the Augusta Insurance and Banking Company. Rossignol informed Matthews that the coin gold would be ready in about a week. A week later, when Matthews went to collect the gold, he was told it would be three more weeks before delivery. Upset at the delays, and not at all sure if he would ever see his gold again, Matthews sold his gold deposit certificate to the Dahlonega Branch Mint superintendent Rossignol for three fourths of one per cent discount.

Milton Gathright remained a lawyer in Auraria, until the completion of the Mint more or less forced everyone to move to Dahlonega, which became the new business center. He became a judge for the Inferior Court at Dahlonega, and remained a prominent citizen until his death.

The Pigeon Roost Notes-
The Pigeon Roost Mining Company notes come in four forms, all from one batch made by the same printer. The printer is the same as the Bank of Darien Notes. These forms are:

Fully issued notes, signed by the cashier, president and issued to a person. The person’s place is not always filled in. It can be assumed that when that happens, the person is probably an Auraria resident. The two other places that are known for recipients are Dahlonega and Wetumpka, Alabama.

Partially issued notes, signed by Bulfinch as cashier and Ripley as president, with serial numbers assigned. The notes are not filled out, not circulated, and are the apparent remainders, ready to fill out, or from the original printer’s book of notes for the bank, kept by bank personnel ready to issue when needed. These would have been kept in the safe. when the bank closed, they were probably retained as collector items, and the rest of the books ended up in Columbus, Georgia, used by a printer there for the Palace Mills notes in 1861.

Fully unissued notes. These would have been retained as collector items after the bank closed. the entire books full of unissued notes were retained by perhaps the Bank of Darien, and when they closed, the blank notes were probably sold as scrap. They were subsequently used by the Palace Mills Co. There are very few (less than 5) blank, unissued notes known today.

Uncut pages of Pigeon Roost bank notes were used by the Palace Mills Company of Columbus, Georgia. These notes allow interpretation of the original books, which had two $5 notes to a page, another book with a $5 and $10; another with $10, $20. And probably another with $100 and $500, though $100 on the back of Palace Mills have not been seen.

Serial Numbers. The serial numbers are wholly non-sequential. They may have been sequential during business years (fiscal years defined by State Charter startup date) by denomination, or under the auspices of specific cashiers or presidents. There are not yet enough notes known of any single denomination to ascertain the exact sequence.

Pigeon Roost Notes: There are currently known in collections, samples of $5, $10, $20 and $100 notes from the Pigeon Roost. There is proof of $500 by their use on the back of the Palace Mills scrip from 1861, but no known issued notes are known. It makes sense that these represented too much cash to be left outstanding when the bank closed. It is a surprise that a $100 note exists for the same reason.

Pigeon Roost Bank. A Branch of the Bank of Darien.
Through the course of research for the Pigeon Roost scrip, a number of rings on a bull’s eye appeared that led to a single, irrefutable conclusion: The Pigeon Roost Bank was a bank branch of the Bank of Darien, of Darien, Georgia.

In the early 1830’s, the Bank was the largest bank in Georgia. In 1828, the Bank sent Roswell King to North Carolina to work with miners to get a deal to handle their gold, and look into opening a branch bank there. The Bank of Darien had no charter in North Carolina, and in all probability contracted with a North Carolina bank to purchase the gold. Regardless, the venture must have been very successful, because King was awarded a gold medal for his work there in 1830 by the Bank, and the medal was retained by the family and hence its place in the historical record.

King was subsequently sent to the Georgia gold fields, probably after the 1832 land and gold lottery and subsequent removal of the Cherokee from the land north of the Chestatee River where the new towns of Auraria and Dahlonega sprang up in 1832 and 1833 respectively. Auraria was the center of the gold mining activity, but was very difficult to get to because of being located along a long ridge between two rivers. Dahlonega was in a much more convenient location, but mining activity there was slow to start.

King’s first appointed agent in Auraria, Thomas Bowen, failed miserably for the bank. He absconded with all the gold. The event was even reported in the Columbian Phenix on May 10, 1834:
A merchant who was entrusted with 60 or 70 pounds of gold belonging to the Bank of Darien, Georgia, to be taken from its agency at Auraria to Darien, lately wrote them not to be uneasy, as with his treasure he was at Charleston, and about to embark for a foreign port. He had in his possession between twenty and thirty thousand dollars.

With this failure as a start of business, the Bank of Darien changed directions and got more conservative. They needed a contract with a local producing company, who would assure them that the gold would be safe and returns made to the bank. The Bank of Darien had a branch in Auraria for a very short time, and it may have only been there under Bowen’s cashiership.

King probably cut deals with local miners and mining companies, both in North Carolina and in Georgia. The first thing King did in Auraria was secure a trustworthy gold buyer. He was successful himself, as shown in local newspapers:

Col. Roswell King … informs us that he has purchased more gold within five of the last weeks, than he did in five months of last year, ending the first of August.

In this regard, the Bank purchased the assay office of Rose & Roswell, and made John N. Rose Jr. a cashier for the bank during the period 1833-1835. He did so well for the Bank that he was nominated as smelter for the upcoming Dahlonega Branch Mint, which was supported by Milton Gathright, a future agent and lawyer of the Bank of Darien and cashier for the Pigeon Roost Mining Company. In 1835 Rose sent the Bank’s forty pounds of gold from Auraria directly to the US Mint in Philadelphia.

In Auraria, the largest mining company, and apparently the most successful, was the Pigeon Roost Mining Company. King needed assurance that the bank could handle their gold, and an agreement must have been struck between the mining company and the Bank of Darien. The Bank probably agreed to back the notes if the PRMC sent all their gold to the Bank of Darien. Today, gold loans are made between mining companies and banks with regularity. Loans are made based on future production and a guarantee that all gold will be sold through the bank. I suspect this same, or a similar system was in place in 1835.

The Bank of Darien thus had their same New York printer, Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson print bank notes for the Pigeon Roost MC, and the “bank”, probably just a company office, was open for business in January, 1835 after the Georgia Senate had passed their incorporation in December 1834. The company continued to mine continuously through 1838. Meanwhile, the Bank of Darien opened a separate branch in Dahlonega about November 1, 1835. Anson Kimberly signed the notes as president of the bank that year, having succeeded Bank president and founder Thomas Spaulding in a power play in 1826. Kimberly was succeeded in late 1836 or early 1837 by one of the bank’s original investors and Georgia politician Jacob Wood. Wood was president of the Georgia Senate when the Senate awarded the Pigeon Roost MC its first State Charter.

In August, 1838, the Pigeon Roost Bank ceased to operate, or at least stopped issuing notes. The Dahlonega Branch Mint had opened earlier in the year, and the need for the Pigeon Roost Mining Company “bank” had ceased to exist, since the Mint paid higher prices for gold and returned US gold coin in exchange for miners gold. It also corresponded with the bank failures around the country. The Bank of Darien pulled in its reigns, and probably put the two branches (Auraria and Dahlonega) together. Undoubtedly, the Bank tried unsuccessfully to get the business of the new US Branch Mint in Dahlonega that year.

By the end of December, 1838, it appears that the Bank of Darien’s Dahlonega branch was also closed. Perhaps unable to get the contract with the Mint, and with dwindling mine product coupled with a new place for miners to sell their gold, business was doomed for any private bank in Dahlonega. The major industry was gold mining, and without direct access and control to the final product, there was insufficient money to support a bank, particularly a large bank. I suspect that there were corporate problems as well, with the possible expiration of the bank’s second state charter in January of 1837, probably extended to Jan 1, 1839.

As the Bank of Darien closed its branches, its days as a bank were numbered. “By 1839 Georgia again was in the doldrums of a depression, and the Darien Bank again found itself in deep trouble. In that year it ended specie payments and stopped discounting. The bank also suffered the embarrassment of having some $23,000 of its notes stolen. This circumstance necessitated the withdrawal from circulation of all old notes and the issuing of new ones signed by the new president, Anson Kimberly.”

Once called “The Strongest financial institution south of Philadelphia”, it closed its doors forever in 1841, though it took several years to dispose of the assets.

The Bank of Darien and Competing Banks
Competing banks soon came to the mining region. With the Pigeon Roost issuing and circulating scrip, other banks tried to enlarge their market. The most notable was the Bank of Darien, a Georgia bank along the coast in a city of regular cultural (cotton exports) and maritime trade. The bank was created in 1818, and opened in 1819 by Thomas Spalding, Jacob Wood, William Dunham and Calvin Baker and Phillip R. Young. Spaulding was the first president, remaining in that position until 1826. Jacob Wood was a major investor in the bank, but was not on the Board. A key to the bank’s success was that it was half owned by the State of Georgia, who had invested heavily in the initial funding. It was considered the largest and strongest bank in Georgia for decades. It established branches in Milledgeville, Savannah, Augusta and Marion. But Jacob Wood, one of the original investors was heavily attracted to gold, and soon the Bank expanded to Auraria and Dahlonega.

Records of the Bank of Darien’s dealings in the Georgia gold fields are difficult to locate. There is a lack of local newspapers extant from the period, and a surprising lack of corroborative information in surrounding area newspapers. One must consider the times (1830’s) and the place (remote Georgia on the western frontier) to understand the lack of information. There simply was little in the way of a news media infrastructure, and even in local papers from large cities there was very little local news. The center of coverage was always national news, because that’s what local people wanted – news of what was happening in Washington D.C. and around the country.

Historian Buddy Sullivan recounted a bit of the Bank of Darien’s history in The Darien Bank. The Darien Bank today is part of the Southeastern Bank system. Both of these banks are completely unrelated to the old Bank of Darien, which failed in the 1840’s. Other information on the Bank of Darien in the gold region is found in Coulter’s Auraria. These two references are the only two modern sources that cite reference to the Bank of Darien’s gold region branches in the 1830’s at Dahlonega and Auraria. The only other source of information came from a series of private letters regarding the building of the Branch Mint at Dahlonega during the period 1835-1838 in the National Archives. Curiously, Sullivan claims the Darien bank’s name in Auraria was the “Pigeon Roost Bank.”

The Auraria Branch of the Bank of Darien
As mentioned earlier, the Bank of Darien spent the first part of the 1830’s in Auraria buying gold through their agents. The man that got them going was Roswell King, the Bank’s agent who had secured gold contracts in North Carolina and was asked to do the same in Georgia.

The first agent for the Bank in Auraria was probably appointed by Roswell King, a prominent Darien plantation manager. The Bank probably established a presence in Auraria in late 1833 or early 1834, within a year of the formation of the remote mining camp town. The first agent may have been Thomas Bowen. In 1833 or 1834 he purchased 14,950 pennyweights (747 troy ounces) in Auraria from miners and mining companies. He was instructed to take the gold to the Savannah Branch of the Bank of Darien, but tempted by the fortune to which he was entrusted, he absconded with the gold, writing the Bank from Charleston to clear his conscience, told them not to pursue him, that they would not find him and to make the best of what they could from the belongings he left behind. The incident was reported in the Savannah Georgian newspaper, as reported by Merton Coulter.
Roswell King may have worked at the branch bank with Rose after the Bowen affair, succeeding the man he appointed. When news of the impending currency for the Pigeon Roost was released, King was recalled by Agnes Paschal in Ninety Four Years, when King helped reestablish a Sunday School in Auraria, which the Paschels were involved in.

“In 1828 Roswell King at the age of 63 was sent to as an agent of the Bank of Darien to inspect gold claims near Dahlonega… and to North Carolina to investigate the feasibility of opening a bank there.” He received a gold medal from the bank for his efforts in North Carolina in 1830. Once King had inspected the region for the possibilities of a bank, he became enthralled with the gold mines. He purchased some mining interests soon after, and moved there to further those interests. The stayed at least two years, working for a period for the Bank of Darien, though Roswell’s published biography does not recognize that he remained in Auraria for any period of time. King was no newcomer to gold mining, even though the business was new in America. In 1826 he was busy at the Chisholm Gold Mine in Montgomery County, North Carolina. In July, 1826 King was seriously injured “by the premature discharge of powder which he was placing in a rock for the purpose of blasting.” The Chisholm Mine that year yielded up to five pennyweights of gold per man at a time when miners from the Rudisill Mine in Mecklenburg County drove gold ore through the streets of Charlotte daily. This was the very beginnings of the Appalachian and Georgia gold rushes.

John Rose, the local assayer who was employed by the Bank in Auraria was also referred to as the Cashier for the Darien Bank at the same time as the Bowen affair. In independent testimony, it was stated that Rose worked for the Bank during the approximate period 1833-1835. Bowen may have worked with Rose for a short while.
There are presently about two of the Auraria branch Bank of Darien notes known to the author, though none were physically seen. Longtime Georgia currency dealer Claude Murphy had two of these notes, as personally recounted to the author. No copies exist to determine the cashier, president or issue, though based on the Dahlonega branch notes, they would have been signed by the Principal Bank’s president and cashier, not the local agents. Haxby, in his mammoth work Obsolete Bank Notes (1988), records a $5 and a $10 note, both printed by Durand, Perkins & Co. of New York. As such, and coincidental to the known information on the bank, the notes probably only exist for 1834, though there is a possibility of late 1833. Haxby records the possibility that $5, $10 and $20 notes may exist printed by Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson. If this is the case, these notes would post-date 1835.

Virtually all of the known Dahlonega notes except one were issued to W. B. Wofford, indicating a single common source of the notes, which must have originated with the Wofford family. It makes sense that the Auraria notes may have also come from the Wofford “hoard.” Currency expert Haxby lists the commonality (rarity) of the Auraria notes roughly slightly rarer than the Dahlonega notes. This cannot, however, be the case. The Auraria notes are at least a 15:2 ratio rarer than the Dahlonega notes.

The Dahlonega Branch of the Bank of Darien
Cain, in the History of Lumpkin County, claims the Dahlonega branch of the Bank of Darien opened in 1835, but does not cite a source. Based on the known bank notes examined by the author, the opening date was perhaps mid-year 1835. Regardless, the opening date seriously reflects the choice of Dahlonega by the Federal Government as a site for the Branch Mint. The Bank of Darien’s presence in Dahlonega was a strong foothold in the regions gold and banking business, and the establishment of a branch bank there gave the Bank a serious foothold in doing business with the Federal Government, an important ingredient to a successful business located in a community with no business infrastructure other than the gold business. Other elements of the Bank of Darien’s local history was summarized in earlier sections of this paper.

Presently there are about fifteen Bank of Darien, Dahlonega branch notes known in denominations of $5, $10 and $20. A $50 note was recorded by Haxby, but not seen by the author. Based on a census of known notes taken by the author, all of the Dahlonega notes were signed by the cashier and president of the Bank of Darien in Darien, also known as the Principal Bank. The first or earliest notes known are all dated November 1, 1835, signed by E. L. Rus as Cashier and Anson Kimberley as President. The pair continued to sign notes through about May, 1837, when on May 20, 1837 a group of notes were signed by Rus and Jacob Wood. Jacob Wood was one of the original financiers of the Bank, and a powerful former President of the Georgia Senate and Georgia political leader. Wood signed the Dahlonega notes as president in 1837. By 1838, with Rus still remaining as Cashier, A. Mitchel replaced Wood as president. The last known issued note was written on December 12, 1838. The branch closed shortly afterward. All of the known Dahlonega branch notes are issued to W. B. Wofford, except one issued to “the bearer.”

Virtually all of the Dahlonega Branch Bank of Darien notes are issued to W. B. Wofford, as noted earlier, except two pieces issued to the bearer. This is an important anomaly. First, it indicates that these many notes survived as part of a “hoard”, perhaps more correctly stated as a family collection. The reason for the collection’s existence is important, and can be deduced from the family records. The reason it is important is that William Benton Wofford was a well known Atlanta lawyer and politician, and son of a political and philanthropic figure, Nathaniel Wofford. His brother founded Wofford College.

W. B. Wofford was born, raised, and lived his life in “cotton country” in rural Habersham County (now Banks County), except while practicing law in Atlanta. He was born in 1791 and died in 1858. He married his first wife Mary in 1812. She died in 1845 and William remarried Rachael Dill, who died in 1893, nearly 35 years after her husband’s death. Wofford served in the Mexican War, was a Major General of the Georgia State Militia, a member of the Georgia General Assembly, and was Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. He had ten children, including Judge John W. Wofford.

Wofford was a prominent lawyer, and a very active real estate investor in Dahlonega, particularly in 1837-1839 as a partner with John Field. Wofford placed his money in the Darien Bank in Dahlonega, but as his law practice grew to Atlanta, he was less able to monitor his Dahlonega currency. Wofford may have been working diligently in his Atlanta law practice in 1842 when the Bank of Darien closed. With his wife ill, and he in Atlanta, he may have been unable to cash in the notes, which he probably retained, hoping the bank would resurface. Undoubtedly when he died in 1858, his wife inherited the worthless bank notes, and may have kept them intact as a group until her death, at which time they were passed on to family, and perhaps later sold.

Haxby recorded three examples of the Dahlonega notes: a $5 and $20 printed by Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson and a $50 printed by Durand, Perkins & Co. If the latter is correct, that note appears to predate 1835, but the Bank of Darien may have used an older printed note and issued it after 1835 when they had all of the RWH& E notes made.

As a side note, many of the Bank of Darien branch notes, as well as the principal branch in Darien, are quite rare. No formal census has been taken to the knowledge of the author, but rarity ratings in the form of valuations by Haxby indicate that many of the small branches, such as Augusta, may be rare.

The financial panic of 1837 led to the bank’s downfall. Added to the fray was the fact that their first State Charter ended January 1, 1837. It was renewed for a brief period, but their state charter was not renewed in 1841. By that time Savannah was becoming the important shipping center for the cotton industry, and the railroads bypassed Darien, signing its preliminary death warrant, fully executed in the Civil War when the town was burned and sacked by Union forces.

The Belfast Mining Co. Scrip Notes
There is currently only group of notes from this mining company known, and all of them are in the form of a single uncut proof sheet of three notes formerly held in the Schingothe Collection.

The Belfast Mining Company was incorporated in 1834 at the same time and in the same legislative Act as the Pigeon Roost Gold Mining Co. Both companies were part of the second wave of mining companies to incorporate in Georgia, preceded only by the Augusta and Habersham mining companies in 1832. The incorporators of the Belfast Mining Company were Alfred B. Holt, John Humphries, James P. Haynes, John Madden, Josiah Shaw, Richard S. Perssee and John McLeod. Holt, known locally as Major Holt, was another lawyer from Auraria, also active politically, especially or the States Rights committees. The players in the Belfast were all business partners of Auraria miners and businessmen. Holt was partners with Field and Gathright from time to time on real estate deals. As such, he was intimately involved with the Pigeon Roost and the Belfast companies. The Company was undoubtedly formed by men who, or whose families, came from Belfast Ireland, such as McLeod and Madden.
The Pigeon Roost Mining Company offered for sale $400,000 in stock, and the Belfast Company offered $500,000 in stock in their initial offering of December, 1834. Based on the popularity of the Pigeon Roost and the surviving currency, it makes sense to assume the Pigeon Roost was well funded, and the Belfast may have never completed funding and become a full-fledged public company. The proof bank notes are a testament to the fact that Holt and partners tried to fill the same shoes as the Pigeon Roost Mining Company, but were unsuccessful.
The Belfast Mining Company, headed up by Alfred B. Holt, made the August Western Herald in 1833:

The richest specimen we have ever seen , was found a few days since, on Maj. Alfred B. Holt’s lot near this place. A rock weighing twenty or thirty pounds taken from a pit near the slate, with large particles of gold, from the size of a peppercorn to that of a marble, thickly interspersed through it. The rock has been broken, a part of it sent to New York, and a part to Milledgeville. Though the best specimen was kept by the owner.

The exact location of the mine is unknown, but was probably near to or adjacent to the Pigeon Roost Mine.
Holt and Matthews were friends and business acquaintances. Both Holt and Matthews were on a committee regarding the formation of Lumpkin County, and laws attendant thereto. John Humphries was on the Board of the Belfast Mining Company. He built the Lumpkin County Courthouse in Dahlonega. In 1835 he got into money trouble and his properties were seized to pay debts.

Indeed, Scottish and Irish emigrants came to the United States during the famines and wars with the British. Many settled in the southeast. Scots were many of the original settlers in the Darien area, and Irish were elsewhere. They were a people who became known as “Georgia Crackers”, original American pioneer settlers of the State of Georgia, and their descendants. These were frontier people whose culture of self-reliance and simplicity has survived into the modern day. By the 1760s the English, both at home and in the American colonies, applied the term “Cracker” to Scots-Irish settlers of the remote southern back country, as noted in a passage from a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth:

I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode.


The Belfast Scrip
The Belfast $50 and $100 notes were printed by Endicott & Clark of New Orleans. The $5 notes were printed by Underwood, Bald & Spencer (no city). Each are unique.

The Pigeon Roost Mine After 1840.
Activity at the Pigeon Roost during the 1840’s is unknown. It is likely that the company lost their State charter, and was sold at auction. Unfortunately, no records of any sale were found in the Lumpkin County Court House. A Georgia County since 1831 when Cherokee County was split up to sell gold and land lots, all deeds were recorded in Dahlonega, the County Seat, as necessary. The process of Deed recordation, however, is much more modern (post-Civil War), so it is little wonder that little or no information is found. Regardless, by 1848 when gold was discovered in California, a mass exodus took place of the Georgia miners to California. Locally, it was made famous by a speech from Dahlonega Branch Mint Superintendent Stephenson urging Georgians to stay home and built their fortunes there. Few Listened.

Efforts were made to promote mining in Georgia during the Gold Rush, as evidenced in perhaps the one professional journal extant at the time: It is a fact not generally known that there runs, along the whole Atlantic Slope of the United States, east of the Allegheny Mountains, from Maine to Georgia…an auriferous belt of country…[including] Charlotte in North Carolina ; and Dahlonega in Georgia, concentrating into veins of remarkable richness.”

The onset of the Civil War was the next hurdle. Gold production in the region was at a low, and Lumpkin County was suffering from a general depression. There was so little business conducted in the region, that it was of relatively no interest to either Union or Confederates.

After the Civil War, capital slowly came back to Georgia mining. The Government created the office of U.S. Mineral Commissioner to report on and promote mining in the United States. In its first publication in 1867, reporting on activities in 1865 to 1866, author James Taylor noted: “Since the California discovery of 1848, little attention has been given to alluvial mining in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia.” Most held the opinions that the “Allegheny vein-stones held no body of ore downwards which would warrant deep quartz mining.” Taylor also noted: “There are many depositories of gold in all directions around Dahlonega.” The advent of hydraulic mining was about to be brought into north Georgia: “It is understood that companies are now organized, who propose to introduce these hydraulic appliances upon the Chestatee and other tributaries of the Chattahoochee.”
An attempt was made to reincorporate the Pigeon Roost in Georgia 1876 but it failed. Investors then went to Ohio, where they were successful. In August, 1876 the Pigeon Roost Gold Mining Company was incorporated in Ohio. By this time, it bore no relation to the original company, though it did have part or all of the original mine site.

With all the mining activity and production in the West, Georgia was nearly forgotten.

Few people have any idea of the amount of gold that is dug out of the north Georgia hills and shipped to Atlanta every month…In fact, it pours in a yellow stream from the rich mountains into our favored city. There are single mills at Dahlonega that get out $5,000 worth of gold per month. We do not believe that less than $30,000 worth of gold per month reaches Atlanta…possibly $50,000.

While no reports of the Pigeon Roost surfaced, it was undoubtedly prospected, at the very least.

The mine resurfaced in news reports in 1878 when African-American miners struck a rich gold seam at the Pigeon Roost. The Castlebury brothers sold $70,000 in gold they mined at the Pigeon Roost placer mine. Another report said it was $75,000. Later they made news in the Atlanta Constitution:
Uncle Henry Castlebury, colored, while working a deposit mine on property owned by Col. Floyd, some 3 miles on the Auraria road, struck a rich gold bearing vein the other day.

Floyd apparently was leasing the mine from White, and subleased to Castlebury. At the time, the Engineering and Mining Journal noted that miners wages were 75 cents to $1 per day.

In 1880 the Pigeon Roost Gold Mine was sold by George White. Another sale was advertised in 1884. This time White bought it back.

Nothing was ever heard again of the Belfast Mine.

Notes and Epilogue

The Players:
Milton Gathright
Cashier, Pigeon Roost Bank. –
One of first prospectors on pigeon roost, 1829. Lawyer
Partners with Allan Matthews, Charles Ely, and John Field. They bought the Miners Recorder and Spy in the West newspapers from Albon Chase for $200, Feb 5, 1834. Witness to numerous land sales involving John D Field.
Attorney for Bank of Darien at Dahlonega, 1838-1842. Gathright acted as attorney for the Bank in more than 7 lawsuits during this period. Judge of the Inferior Court, Dahlonega, 1844.

J. L.(E.?)Wood. Owned a store house in Auraria. In the 1870’s, the store was used as a company store for the Ballard branch mine. E& MJ

James Wood. Possibly son of Jacob Wood. Possibly the same James Wood who was the first cashier of the Macon Branch of the Bank of Darien. Congressman, Georgia Apparently not the same as James E Wood, resident of Auraria after 1842.

Sylvanus Ripley. 1829 and 1830 Judge, Inferior Court, Cherokee County. Cherokee County was split up after the Gold Lottery of 1832, and Lumpkin was one of the new counties. Member Georgia Volunteers. Might be same man who went to California for the gold rush to Calaveras County and later to Virginia City, Nevada. 1835 County of Jackson, sold gold lots.

Jacob Wood President of the Georgia Senate, 1833 and 1834 of Macintosh, GA (Darien area). President of Darien Bank. Succeeded president Anson Kimberly.

George Buckley, surveyor. bNew York, married North Carolina 1824.

Thos E Clarke, Wetumpka resident in 1830’s. General superintendent of the railroad 1886. Probable descendent of Elijah Clarke, Georgia Revolutionary War hero.

M.M. Clarke. Auraria resident 1830’s. Probable descendent of Elijah Clarke, Georgia Revolutionary War hero.

John Stokes. Selling lots on the Chestatee 1836, 2 deeds recorded.

Wofford, Wm B. Dahlonega real estate, numerous transactions. Partner of John D. Field. 1837-1839. Biography above.

Francis V. Bulfinch, lawyer, land speculator. Bulfinch was a member of the Whig party. He was very active in the Dahlonega and Auraria gold regions, though records of his specific work are scarce. In late 1849 he lobbied strongly to be named Assayer at the Dahlonega Branch Mint under the newly appointed Superintendant A. W. Redding. Redding (“a wealthy farmer”) was appointed by the Whigs after they gained control of the State Senate and regained power nationally. Redding was a typical political appointment, made without benefit of experience, and much turmoil ensued during his tenure. There was so much political wrangling that all of the new officers were required to pass a test “at the Mother Mint” according to correspondence held by NARA. Bulfinch took a two week assay course from William Hume, the South Carolina State Assayer, and received his certificate on March 8th, 1850. [Records Group 56]

Anson Kimberly. Succeeded Darien Bank president and founder Thomas Spaulding in 1826. Power play. James Wood took over as president about 1835.

For complete story, photos & footnotes see “Gold! At Pigeon Roost” by Fred Holabird & Al Adams available for $9.95 at FHWAC.com
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