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John Reed (c. 1759-1845) deserted his Hessian unit during the Revolutionary War to establish himself as a farmer in North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County (present Cabarrus County). As John and wife Sarah went to a local church one Sunday morning in 1799, their son Conrad stayed behind to play near Little Meadow Creek, on family property. Young Conrad found a seventeen-pound yellow rock in the stream, which he brought home and used as a doorstop for over three years. The elder Reed made several unsuccessful attempts to discern the rock’s value. In 1802, a merchant in Fayetteville offered the family three dollars and fifty cents, which they quickly accepted. Later John discovered that the strange rock Conrad found was in fact a gold nugget, and the merchant received over $3,000 from its sale. The Reed family would have the last laugh, however. Conrad had found only a small sample of a large deposit of gold underneath the family property.
After quickly turning a substantial profit selling nuggets the family found along the creek, John Reed ventured into a four-man partnership in 1803 to purchase slaves to search for gold when the creek dried up in early autumn. The venture was rewarded with a twenty-eight pound nugget, the discovery of which sparked an era of gold fever on the Reed property. By 1824, over $100,000 (over two million today) was realized in gold sales. The Reed Mine helped establish North Carolina as a golden opportunity for the mining industry, a reputation that the Barringer mine and other mines in the nearby Gold Hill district helped to solidify twenty years before the sensational California gold rush of 1848. So much of the valuable mineral was discovered in the Charlotte area, that in 1837, the Federal Government established a branch United States Mint to receive the gold to transform it into currency. In recognition of the mine’s contribution to state history, the Reed Gold Mine is now a state historic site.
References:
Richard F. Knapp, Golden Promise in the Piedmont: The Story of John Reed’s Mine (1999)
Richard F. Knapp and Brent D. Glass, Gold Mining in North Carolina (1999)
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, V, 185-186—sketch by Richard F. Knapp
North Carolina Historic Sites, “Reed Gold Mine”
Reed Gold Mine State Historic Site website: http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/reed/reed.htm
Reed Gold Mine Website: http://www.itpi.dpi.state.nc.us/reed/
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