This plaque honors Johnson J. Hooper (1815–1861), author, editor, lawyer, creator of the fictional character Captain Simon Suggs of the Tallapoosa Volunteers. The plaque was donated by the Alabama Historical Association in 1953. Courtesy of Peggy Jackson Walls.
Although Johnson Jones Hooper was a lawyer, editor and secretary of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, he is best remembered for his creation of Simon Suggs, a frontier rascal whose fictional escapades were purported to have been based on the real life shenanigans of Bird Young, who was arrested in 1834 for gambling. In 1835, he was fined for gambling, and in 1836, he was arrested for “Betting at Faro.” Through his frequent brushes with the law, Young became well known and popular in the frontier culture, where taking chances was respected and disregard for any type of restriction was common. The sharper a person’s “mother wit,” the more he was admired and promoted in local offices. Bird Young was Tallapoosa County’s first tax collector, a justice of the peace, a constable and the guardian of several estates. The contrast between Young’s responsible and respectable offices to which he was elected or appointed and his scandalous reputation attracted Hooper’s attention, and his deeds could have been the basis for Captain Simon Suggs’s adventures in Tallapoosa County as the following example suggests.
On one occasion Bird Young is reputed to have stopped at Coosa Hill, a Wetumpka hotel, and, just prior to leaving, sneaked his saddlebag and blankets out and hid them nearby. He then returned and politely asked the proprietor to assemble his belongings and prepare his horse for departure. After searching in vain for his guest’s baggage, his innkeeper was forced to deduct twelve dollars from the bill, and Young, of course, promptly paid the reduced bill and as promptly retrieved his “lost” property.41
Both Bird Young and Simon Suggs were gamblers and speculators who were determined to make everything work to their advantage. The epitaph on Bird Young’s headstone in the Dark Cemetery in Alexander City reads simply, “Bird Young, Alias Simmon Suggs, married Ann Donaldson, Born about 1800, Died about 1870.”
Through shady land deals in which Indians were persuaded to forfeit their land, a number of crafty people became wealthy; however, the majority of settlers were hardworking farmers and gold diggers, eager to make their mark in the new frontier. They were often shrewd business people who managed to “get ahead honestly.” The satire of Johnson Jones Hooper, a lawyer and editor, portrays life on the old southwestern frontier, where shrewdness and dishonesty ruled many business transactions and supported the philosophy of the fictional Suggs that it’s “good to be shifty in a new country.”
MICHAEL TUOMEY, ALABAMA’S FIRST STATE GEOLOGIST (1805–1857)
While editor of the Lafayette paper, Johnson Jones Hooper described settlers and events in Tallapoosa County, such as Indian footraces and land speculation deals. But he wrote at least one editorial criticizing a well-respected state official, Alabama’s first state geologist, Michael Tuomey. He disagreed with Tuomey’s evaluation of a Coosa County silver mine. Tuomey replied in his own defense:
A friend has directed my attention to a communication, copied from the Montevallo Herald .…I hope you will allow me a little space, in which to say a word or two, in relation to my connection with this Mine.
I am not altogether unaccustomed to attacks of this sort, although they do not often so imprudently appear in print—the very substance of the communication in question, has been repeated, over and over, at places of public resort—nor should I notice an anonymous paragraph, had it not derived importance from its appearance in your paper; you yourself, Mr. Editor [Johnson Hooper] , in a kind and polite paragraph, in your paper of the same date, seem to intimate that it requires some attention.
In his response, Tuomey defends his evaluation and his qualifications. His experience included an appointment as state geological surveyor in South Carolina in 1844, prior to moving to Alabama and accepting a faculty position in geology, mineralogy and agricultural chemistry at the University of Alabama when offered the position in 1848. One of his obligations was to create an annual geological survey of the state’s mineral resources. He filled the position of Alabama’s first state geologist for four years without pay and was forthright in his theories and criticisms of methodology and evaluation of Alabama gold and other minerals. His estimation of the gold mines in Alabama were capsuled in a report in the Montgomery Advertiser and State Gazette of January 3, 1855:
The interest excited by the gold mines of the Southern States is very much dependent on the fluctuations in the price of the all-absorbing staple, cotton. During depressions in the cotton market, ordinary labor is frequently driven to seek more profitable employment in the gold mines and particularly in those mines known as branch or deposit mines, where the nature of the work requires but little capital, and no great exertion of skill. The deposits are generally run over in the most careless manner, and without reference to economy in the working, or regard to the future value of the mine.…This has been the brief history of all the attempts made to explore the gold mines of the State.42
In the Cahawba Valley newspaper of November 10, 1847, Michael Tuomey expressed his impatience with the gold hunters of his day:
Give me a genuine hunter for a guide. It is true he may know nothing of your metamorphic, your Silurian, or your Carboniferous rocks; but he knows grindstone grit, and lime rock…He knows where the precipice overtops the pine, and where the shelving rocks form the lair of the wolf; and although these localities may be ten miles distant, you are as certain to go to them in a “bee line” as his rifle would be to bring down a deer at 80 paces. But above all save me from your searchers after the precious metals, your gold hunters—knowing, mysterious men, that will waste you a whole blessed day to show you where they picked up something strange (ten to one a scale of mica or bit of pyrites) and then will be unable to find the place.43
While acknowledging the presence of gold in Alabama, Tuomey makes his case for investing resources in mining “the homely products of coal, iron, and stone.”
The truth is, when we read of the vast amount of precious metals yearly raised from any given mine, we are too apt to think that all this dazzling product is so much clear gain. It is forgotten that gold can no more be separated from the soil without labor, than coal or iron; and that the purification of the precious metals involves vast outlay for materials and machinery. Hundreds of the seekers for the glittering treasure, have involved themselves in irrecoverable ruin; while the humble smelter of iron has rarely failed steadily to advance in prosperity and wealth. There are many who are proud that Alabama is a gold-producing State; but, for our own part, we would rather that the gold were given to our neighbors; and that, in its place, our iron, already so abundant, were everywhere diffused. There are many who will receive this opinion with a smile; who will yet live to make it their own.44
Michael Tuomey’s death in 1857, due to pneumonia and heart problems, ended the career of Alabama’s first state geologist, whose studies and recommendations laid the foundation for future studies of geology in Alabama. His insight and careful analysis of the state’s mineral resources led to a greater understanding of Alabama’s mineral resources.
4
Cotton Boom and Bust, Lost Confederate Gold, New Interest in Gold Mining
Following the exodus of gold miners to California in 1849, interest in gold mining in the Southeast waned. Prospecting was left to farmers, who were more interested in “white gold” (cotton) than digging for the “yellow stuff.” “In the decade before the Civil War cotton prices rose more than 50 percent, to 11.5 cents a pound” and “the US cotton crop nearly doubled, from 2.1 million bales in 1850 to 3.8 million bales ten years later.”45 In Alabama’s Black Belt counties, such as Lowndes and Montgomery, cotton plants flourished in the rich, fertile soil of the region. Slave labor was used to plant, tend and pick the cotton for shipping to northern textile mills and to European manufacturers. The rocky terrain and poor soil in Tallapoosa and surr
ounding counties offered little incentive for large-scale cotton farming.
TRADING THE PICK AND THE PLOW FOR THE MUSKET
The heart of Dixie did not beat so strongly for secession as people might imagine. When debate about state secession arose, many Tallapoosa citizens viewed the “Battle between the States” as “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” and were opposed to the state’s seceding from the Union. The Old Southwest humorist, lawyer and politician Johnson Jones Hooper, however, was a strong advocate for immediate secession.
At the Secession Convention, county delegates voted fifty-four for secession and forty-six against. Although Tallapoosa County voted against passage of the “Ordinance of Secession” on January 7, 1861, when the ordinance was passed, Tallapoosa County began to prepare for war with the other counties. The Hillabee Blues unit was organized in northeast Tallapoosa County and held muster in the fields near Hackneyville. When the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America convened in Montgomery, Hooper was elected secretary of the Congress. In 1862, he left the position and served as editor of the Congress and the Confederate States of America.46 Although Tallapoosa County citizens had voted “No” to the state’s secession, once the war began, the native sons joined the ranks of the Confederate army and fought with Lee until he and his tattered troop surrendered to Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.
Divided loyalties, secret societies and underground peace society movements were so widespread in Alabama that on May 8, 1864, Assistant Adjutant General H.W. Walker reported to General Braxton Bragg, “General, I returned yesterday from my tour of investigation as to the secret treasonable society alleged to exist in this State…I am satisfied that the society embraces more than half the adult males of Randolph, Coosa, and Tallapoosa Counties, a large number in Calhoun and Talladega County, and a considerable membership in some of the other counties.”47
At the end of the war, Reconstruction dealt a heavy blow to Tallapoosa County. The county lost $125,000 on railroad bonds alone between 1868 and 1873. Cotton production dropped so severely, Tallapoosa County was ranked as one of the “strangulated counties” because of its massive debt. But better days were ahead in the mineral exploration of copper and gold mines, and Tallapoosa County had the lead in the Alabama gold belt counties.
THE LOST CONFEDERATE GOLD
What happened to the mints during the Civil War and to the Confederate gold?
On March 3, 1835, Congress established branch mints at New Orleans, Louisiana; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Dahlonega, Georgia. “Gold fever” was raging in Alabama, especially at Arbacoochee, where gold mining was at its peak. Thousands of miners were feverishly digging in Alabama dirt, busting rocks and hauling ore to streams, where they sorted gold from rock. The tragic Trail of Tears lay ahead in the year 1838, followed by the discovery of gold at Hog Mountain in 1839 and at Goldville in 1842. In 1835, in the midst of skirmishes between the pioneers and the remaining Native Americans, few people could have imagined the war ahead in 1861 that would divide the North and the South, separate families, take the lives of an estimated 620,000 Americans and leave hundreds of thousands of others wounded and maimed. At the onset of fighting, the mints were closed to keep southern gold from falling into the hands of the Union army. The gold went into the treasury of the Confederate States to fund the troops and was moved to several locations to keep Union troops from finding and seizing the treasure. After the war, unsuccessful searches for the “lost” Confederate gold fueled the imagination of gold seekers. A story emerged that George Trenholm, a shipping and banking magnate, stole the gold while serving as the treasurer of the Confederacy. If the legend is true, Trenholm may have been the inspiration for the character Rhett Butler in Margaret Mitchell’s book and the classic movie Gone with the Wind.48 Myths and legends abound as to where the Confederate gold was hidden. Although its location remains a mystery, a number of stories emerged surrounding the loss of the gold.
In May 1861, Jefferson Davis moved the capital of the Confederacy from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, to promote support in the area. In April 1865, Davis and his supporters evacuated Richmond to avoid capture by the Union army. The Confederate officials boarded the first of two trains; the second was loaded with “special cargo,” gold and silver. The trains stopped at Danville. Davis and his men traveled south on horseback. Captain Parker, who was in charge of transporting the Confederate treasure, stored it in coffee cans and sugar and flour sacks. Eventually, Brigadier General Basil Duke relieved Captain Parker and, with around one thousand men and a caravan of six wagons, headed south. Reportedly, “bushwhackers” robbed the wagons and took as much gold as they could load into saddlebags and sacks. The legend is that they buried the rest in different places in Wilkes, Georgia.
Martha Mizell Puckett’s Snow White Sands suggests Jefferson Davis divided the gold among everyone present at the last meeting at Washington, Georgia, and left its use to them. Another account maintains Jefferson Davis placed the entire Confederate treasury into the care of Sylvester Mumford, whose family donated scholarships to the children of Brantley County with the remainder used to establish the Thornwell Orphanage in Clinton, South Carolina.49
During the Civil War, private mint coins made by the Bechtler family of North Carolina (1830–1852) were endorsed by the Confederate government and circulated for use. The Bechtler mint started in North Carolina after the first major discovery of gold in the antebellum South. Circulation of gold coins continued after the Legal Tender Act of 1862 outlawed private minting of coins and after the Civil War ended.50
COPPER EXCITEMENT
Beginning as early as 1853–54, Cornish miners began to drift into Alabama from the Ducktown copper mines in Tennessee. The prospectors dug shafts one fathom square to a depth of ten fathoms, after which, if no copper was found, they abandoned the shaft. The Cornish miners prospected principally iron gossans, which were considered to be surface indications of copper. While they did much useless work looking for copper between 1859 and 1861, some of them found small amounts of gold deposits. However, they became fearful of being drafted into the Civil War, abandoned their search for copper and went back to Europe.51
Long before prospectors searched for copper in the southern Appalachian Mountains, Native Americans highly valued copper and used it to create religious symbols, such as the “Rogan Plate” found by John P. Rogan at the Etowah Site in Alabama in 1883.52 Due to copper’s malleable and durable qualities, Native Americans used the metal for practical and ornamental purposes. Evidence of the Creeks’ use of copper in crafting tools and jewelry can be observed in the Indian artifacts uncovered in east-central Alabama. In this region, no Native American artifacts crafted from gold were found to support the persistent myth that Indians had great stores of gold they hid from early explorers and settlers.
In studies of rocks and minerals, state geologist Lewis Dean recorded the following locations of copper deposits in Alabama:
Copper occurs in Alabama as chalcopyrite (copper iron sulfide) and is found in association with massive sulfide deposits in Clay and Cleburne counties. Exploration for copper began in the northern Alabama Piedmont in the 1850s near the towns of Pyriton and Millerville in Clay County and the Stone Hill mine (also known as “Wood’s Copper Mine”) in Cleburne County. Copper ore was mined at Stone Hill from 1874 to 1879 and shipped out of state for smelting.53
In the search for copper in the 1880s, prospectors made a few discoveries of gold, creating a revival of interest in gold mining. Shafts were sunk in some of the well-known gold veins; machinery was brought in for equipping mills, and systematic mining was attempted, but the gold below the level of weathering was found impractical of recovery by amalgamation. The height of the gold veins and abundance of hard quartz ore at Hog Mountain attracted miners to the mountain. A boom in production occurred when cyaniding was introduced in Alabama in 1903 by the Hillabee Gold Mine Company. Hog Mountain was the only mine in the state where cyanide was used ex
tensively. The result was a sudden increase in Alabama’s total gold production in 1904.54
IRON AND STEEL
The year 1874 also was important to the Tallapoosa County residents for a reason other than the revival of interest in mining copper and gold. The town of Youngsville now was officially Alexander City, named for the president of the railroad Edward Porter Alexander. On the appointed day, a large crowd of townspeople gathered at the Alexander City Depot anticipating the arrival of the steam engine named Captain Simon Suggs. The name honored Johnson Jones Hooper’s Old Southwest frontier character and Bird Young, who was said to have inspired the character and was a descendant of the Youngsville founding family. Most of the townspeople had never seen a train, so they came prepared to relax and enjoy the festive occasion with friends and family.
The local ladies in long dresses and hats and the men in their best attire were laden with umbrellas, tablecloths and picnic baskets, chatting with neighbors as they watched and listened for the first sound of the train. They heard in the distance the loud sound of wheels clacking against the tracks and, soon after, saw smoke bellowing out of the approaching engine. When the conductor blew the horn to warn people and animals to clear the track, the startled crowd ran in alarm, scattering chairs and picnic items behind them as they retreated to a safe distance. Despite the townspeople’s initial fright, “meeting the train” became a regular event for them. In their leisure, they gathered to observe the trains’ arrival with cargo and passengers and see who might be embarking on an excursion outside the small town, now known to locals as Alex City.
Alabama Gold Page 5