Georgia Gold Rush

Legacy of Leadership

Back in the 1820s, when white farmers and their black slaves moved to this county from South Carolina and east Georgia, the land was owned by the Cherokee Nation.

The question of illegal trespass did not stop the migrants from digging for gold in the 1829 gold rush or from claiming the land as their own, changing its future completely, as outlined in “Our Georgia History” (ourgeorgiahistory.com) and in the Auburn University doctoral dissertation of University of West Georgia history professor Keith Hebert, who grew up in Kingston.

Early white families who helped shape the future of Bartow County included Tumlin, Stiles, Barnsley, Taylor and other names well known today.

One was Warren Akin, born in 1811 in Elbert County, in eastern Georgia. His father, Thomas Akin, had moved from Virginia to South Carolina to Elberton. This historic family has remained active here to the present day.

Warren Akin worked in the gold mines in Dahlonega as a young man, said his great-grandson, Morgan Akin. In 1836 he moved to Cassville and established a law practice. He argued some of the Georgia Supreme Court’s first cases when that body was established in 1846; the court rode circuit around the state, and one of its stops was Cassville.

He was a Methodist preacher and a trustee of Emory College, Morgan Akin said. In 1864, he was elected to the second Confederate Congress.

The family escaped the Union Army by returning to Elberton. His law office and house were burned, but Akin returned and resumed law practice in several locations, eventually in Cartersville, where he died in 1877.

Earlier that year his 13th child was born — Paul Francis Akin — Morgan Akin’s grandfather.

“My grandfather had two older brothers who were also lawyers,” said Morgan Akin, who practices law today in the same 11 S. Public Square office they did. One, Thomas Warren Akin, moved to Washington, D.C., after losing his hearing.

The other, John Wesley Akin, was president of the State Bar of Georgia and president of the Georgia State Senate but made his living in mining, Akin said. The John W. Akin Masonic Lodge in Taylorsville is named for him.

Paul Francis Akin graduated from law school in 1896, Morgan Akin said, and practiced law with his brother. Paul Akin served on the city school board and was vice president of the Georgia Bar Association, a charter member of the Cartersville Rotary Club and a very active Mason.

Thar’s Gold in Them Thar Hills ‹ Tonia's Roots

I made an interesting discovery while working on census records for some of the Pattersons/Chapmans.  I was looking at the 1840 record for my fourth great-grand uncle, Joseph Chapman (born 1790/1794).  The 1840 census is two pages wide, so make sure you always look at that second page.  I almost missed this find, myself, and I’m not sure I would have caught it if I weren’t referring to the index, as well as the actual document.

The index indicated that one member of the household was employed as a miner. At first, I assumed it was a transcription error (I had found one on Joseph’s 1830 census index), so I flipped over to the original and sure enough, mining was checked.  I’m so used to my ancestors having been farmers, that I hadn’t noticed that the check was not in the agriculture column, but was mining.

Then it dawned on me.  Joseph lived in Lumpkin County, Georgia.   The Gold Rush.  Joseph must have been a gold-miner.  I looked back at the census and almost every household on the page had at least one person who was employed in mining.

The Georgia Gold Rush was the second in the United States, after the Gold Rush in Cabarrus County, North Carolina.  Gold was discovered in Georgia in 1828, near Dahlonega in what is now Lumpkin County, although Native Americans had told the European explorers that there was gold in the North Georgia mountains centuries earlier.  Word spread quickly and the Gold Rush began in earnest in 1829.  Gold was found in numerous North Georgia counties, and in fact, the Georgia Gold Belt begins in Alabama and extends to Rabun County, which is the northeastern-most county in the state.  Georgia’s gold was almost 24 karat and was easy to collect.   Congress established a branch of the United States Mint in Dahlonega, which operated from 1838 until it was closed by the Confederate government in 1861.

Various pieces of evidence indicate that Joseph, his mother, and most of his siblings came to Georgia in or before 1828. I never knew why they left South Carolina, but gold could be the reason.

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