The Rush Started Here II: Hard Rock Gold Mining in North Carolina, 1825 to 1864

Abstract

From 1799 until the early 1830s, North Carolina's Piedmont had rich surface and near-surface gold deposits. Land owning farmers were interested in improving their finances through gold mining in the slow seasons. Those unable to work their deposits leased them to neighbors or landless prospectors for additional income. Over this thirty year period, the surface placer deposits were exhausted and ended the casual off-season gold mining. Dabblers and fair-weather farmers turned miners became entrepreneurs who sought investors for the hard rock mining necessaries of labor, machinery and processing technology. State government stepped in to help them by liberalizing the terms of incorporation for mining companies. The government support of mining stock companies facilitated private profits and improved the state (and ultimately federal) money supply by adding specie and advancing industrialization in mining and, contagiously, other industries and services such as textiles and the railroads. North Carolina's early industrial leaders invested in mining stock companies. However, the heaviest investments came from Northeastern industrialists and European, especially English, mining firms that insisted upon skilled managers, labor and the best technology with which to develop their investment. Thus, a new breed of miner and mining and milling supervisor, usually immigrants from the northern states or abroad, came to dominate North Carolina's gold fields from 1825 to 1864.

Mercury use and loss from gold mining in nineteenth-century Victoria

“…historical mining activity has thus contributed significantly to mercury contamination of numerous streams throughout Victoria (Bycroft et al 1982;McCredie 1982;Tiller 1990;Churchill et al 2004). Similar patterns have been reported from other major centres of nineteenthcentury gold mining, including California (alpers et al 2005;Isenberg 2005;Singer et al 2013), north Carolina (hines & Smith 2006;Lecce et al 2008), nevada (Wayne et al 1996) and new Zealand (Moreno et al 2005), while extensive mercury pollution also resulted from silver mining and processing in both north america and South america during this period (nriagu 1993de Lacerda & Salomons 1998;Strode et al 2009;Robins 2011). By the 1890s, nine-tenths of the gold produced around the world was recovered by the mercury amalgamation process (Birrell 2004).…”

“…as mercury absorbed the gold and impurities it lost fluidity and effectiveness until it became crusty (Lock 1882). When the mercury developed a frosty appearance, miners knew that it was almost saturated with gold (hines & Smith 2006).…”

Use of Metallic Mercury in Artisanal Gold Mining by Amalgamation: A Review of Temporal and Spatial Trends and Environmental Pollution

“…The total volume of Hg lost in Victoria ranged between 121 and 585 tons of reported imports [92], resulting in elevated Hg levels in water, sediments, and biota downstream of old gold workings [17,18]. Other studies have reported a significant Hg contamination from the major centers of the 19th century gold mining sites in California [139][140][141], North Carolina [142,143], Nevada [144], and New Zealand [145]. For instance, sedimentary and historic records from the San Francisco Bay region describe a trend of anthropogenic contamination as a direct result of gold-rush-era mining activities during the 19th century [146].…”

‘A talented young German’: exploration of the early career of Jacob Braché

“…North Carolina was significant because the first gold in the United States of America had been discovered there in 1799. Until the Californian gold rush, it supplied the nation's gold and introduced innovative mining practices (Hines & Smith 2006). 34 Braché's visits to these mining regions were presumably during his tenure as a draftsman with the Orange and Alexander Railway Company, for which construction commenced in 1850.…”