Chapter 3

May 21

Today, the men showed me their cache of nuggets. All I could do was groan, thinking about trying once again to sell more than a hundred pounds of nuggets--in addition to the nuggets I had not been able to sell yet. I was surprised to learn that all the gold had been collected by only three men, but they had worked at it steadily for eight weeks. Everyone else had been busy clearing, plowing, planting, hunting, and building.

The one advantage that having the raw gold gave us was that the men had been able to use it to buy food, tools, and livestock and had not needed to touch the coins I left behind. I realized that different sized nuggets could now be traded for goods instead of paper scrip receipts for crops or land.

Much of the today’s effort was directed towards completing a brick works. The bricks Benjamin sent were being used to build my Manor House but wouldn’t be enough to finish even the first floor. A mixing pit was dug close to a nearby clay deposit and the process of mixing clay, sand, and water was undertaken, all while brick molds were made from beechwood. Another group was leveling and covering an area to lay the wet bricks on so the first batches could begin drying.

The prepared clay was given to the molder who took clay “loaves” and rolled them in sand before pressing them into a wet mold that had also been coated with sand. He then scraped off the excess clay, which was returned to the pile for use in another loaf.

Another man would take the mold, which held six bricks, carry it over to the drying field, and empty it before taking it back to the table where the molder was already filling a different mold.

The bricks dried for two days before being turned over to keep them from warping. The entire area was protected by sloped canvas covers to keep both hot sun and rain off the bricks. After a week, the bricks would be stored until it was determined that they were dry enough for the kiln.

While I understood the process for making bricks, as well as every other industry we had at Reynolds Estate, understanding was as far as it went unless it involved surviving in the wilderness or hunting or gathering. I had gained little practical experience and had developed no expertise. All I knew was what tools and supplies the men needed for each job. I had no idea how to tell if bricks were dry enough for the kiln.

May 26

Mid-morning, Daniel from Salisbury, the member of the North Carolina Militia we had fought alongside in at Great Bridge, rode up with two other men. “James, I heard in town that you had returned,” he exclaimed. “These two men are Hezekiah Alexander and William Sharpe, our District’s two members to the state’s Council of Safety. They want to talk about you and your men joining one of the two regiments of the Salisbury District Militia,” he explained after the three of them dismounted.

“Gentlemen,” I greeted them, shaking hands with each.

“Daniel tells us that you and your men were instrumental in defeating the British at Norfolk and even sank four warships using nothing more than canoes,” Hezekiah commented.

“Canoes filled with kegs of gunpowder,” I corrected.

“But it was your idea. Then you came here and helped rout the Loyalist force at Moore’s Creek Bridge,” Mr. Sharp insisted.

“You had more than enough of your own men at Moore’s Creek Bridge. All we did was help a little,” I replied.

“Regardless, I understand that you have now moved here from Virginia, and we hope to convince you and your men to join our District’s Militia,” Hezekiah continued.

“Is it a standing Militia or are they just called up when necessary?” I asked.

“It is a standing militia,” Daniel explained.

“I do not mind helping if threatened, but we are just starting to get organized here. We still have a lot of plowing, planting, and building to do just to survive this coming winter. Making sure we have enough food and shelter to get more than four hundred people through the winter will not be easy.

“Can I trust these men to keep a secret if I’m willing to help them?” I asked Daniel.

“Absolutely,” he replied as the two men nodded their agreement.

“Gentlemen, I would like to buy more land and I’m sure you can use the money to help support your Militia,” I offered.

“What would happen if I bought all the unowned land in this county south of the Yadkin River and east of the Upper Falls Road. Perhaps add in a mile on the north side of the river,” I suggested.

“Do you have any idea how much that would cost?”

“Obviously, more than I paid for this land,” I replied. “Once I have paid for the land, I could purchase some of those North Carolina Notes I hear that you are issuing to raise money.”

“I understand that the Reynolds Estate in Virginia makes a lot of money, but you have just started here,” Hezekiah commented questioningly.

“This is where your discretion becomes necessary,” I commented as I led the men to the large tent that had been set up for Penelope and me. First, I opened the chest with the coins Father gave me, as well as what I made selling gold in Virginia. “More than ten thousand Pounds in mostly Spanish silver,” I explained while they gawked.

Then I stood one of the four buckskin bags filled with gold nuggets on end. There were three gasps when I opened it and showed the men what was inside.

“As you can see, I have four bags, each holding about fifty pounds. I’m sure I could purchase a large quantity of the North Carolina Notes that the colony is now issuing. Of course, if you had someone available with the expertise necessary to mint coins, you could use the gold to mint your own coins,” I suggested.

All three men stared at the bags of nuggets. “‘Tis a good idea, but I do not think two hundred pounds of gold would make it worthwhile to start minting coins, even if it would make things easier,” Philip commented.

“I agree, but I was thinking of a quantity far in excess of this,” I said, causing all three men’s heads to jerk up so they could stare at me.

“My original land purchase is home to huge amounts of gold in the two streams. My men have even located the source of the gold for one stream, and I intend to begin mining operations once we have everything else ready. Three men pulled this gold from the streams in two months. Imagine how much more they could find with more men working.”

“I thought you got the gold from a British officer,” Daniel protested.

I shrugged. “I could hardly tell people that I found it in the streams here. If I had, I would have never been able to buy the land, and my men would be busy chasing people off our property instead of plowing, planting, and building ... and searching for more gold.”

“If you use coins to buy the rest of the land you want, the secret of the gold discovery should remain secret for longer. I will need to speak with the rest of the state’s Safety Committee about your offer,” Philip said.

With my saddlebags loaded down with gold, I rode into town with four guards and the three men. Once there, I bought the land I wanted, contingent upon a survey which would note all existing farms and homesteads and would deduct that acreage from what I had to pay for. We made it back home, such as it was, by dark.

May 27

This morning, I assigned ten more men to pan for gold in the stream closest to where the deposit was. First, however, I wanted a two-foot-high earthen berm around the hill containing the gold deposit, so no more gold made it into the stream. That way, we could clear the stream from the mine to the river and not need to search again each time it rained heavily. There were no traces of gold in the stream above the deposit, which is how the men had located the source.

Four more men were assigned to locate the source of the gold in the second creek so we could do the same thing there.

July 23

It took just over eight weeks before I heard back from Hezekiah Alexander and William Sharpe. When they showed up this morning, they had a dozen extra men with them. “Is there a place we may speak privately?” Hezekiah asked.

Looking around at all men and women working everywhere, I finally guided the guests to the fire ring where we usually cooked dinner.

“Would you repeat to these men the offer you made to us two months ago,” William requested.

“Sure, I offered to purchase a substantial amount of North Carolina’s new paper currency, using gold nuggets to pay for it. At the time, I had just over two hundred pounds of gold. Currently, I have more than eight hundred pounds available,” I explained, getting gasps of surprise.

“May I look at a sample?” one of the men asked.

“Of course,” I replied, and led him to my new log cabin. Two of my men were standing guard outside the door.

“Do you have gold flakes, too?” he asked.

“No, it is almost impossible to capture the flakes, so we ignore them,” I replied.

“I should be able to show your men an easier way to work the stream, one where they can also collect the flakes. You will be surprised how quickly those flakes add up,” he chuckled.

When we returned to the rest of the men, he explained, “It is all nuggets. They have been ignoring gold flakes. Since they are working their way downstream from the ore deposit, the number and size of the nuggets should be decreasing while the volume of gold flakes should only diminish slightly. What he has in there is worth nearly a hundred thousand Pounds, depending on the purity. We need to acquire the necessary equipment to smelt the gold and then mint coins.”

Hezekiah looked from man to man and each of them nodded. “What we propose is to have Asa set up shop here and work for you minting coins. When you have enough, come to New Bern and use them to buy paper currency,” he proposed.

“Is that okay with you? We will not be able to offer much in the way of amenities this winter,” I warned Asa.

“If you can build a log cabin large enough for me, my wife, and our three sons, we will be fine. We will need a nearby workspace about ten feet by thirty with a forge at the far end to use for smelting the gold.”

“Something like the blacksmiths use?” I asked.

“Yes, if they can forge iron, they can melt gold, although we will have to flux the gold, too,” he agreed.

“I would wager that, once word gets out, people will be searching for gold in the surrounding areas. If they find any, they will probably need to smelt it and maybe even have coins made. We could charge to do that, too,” I mused aloud.

“An excellent idea. We should charge two percent for assaying gold, four percent for fluxing gold, and six percent for fluxing and then minting coins from their gold,” Asa suggested.

“Deal,” I replied. Whatever it cost me, it would be less than I was losing now selling the gold at a reduced price. It would also save me LOTS of time, not having to travel extensively to sell the gold.

August 11

Asa expected to be back in late October. Since I expected to be gone on a long hunt, I made sure his cabin and workshop would be finished before I left.

We were constantly receiving loads of bricks and other supplies from Benjamin. As soon as the wagons returned to the estate, they were reloaded. I sent back gold nuggets to pay for the bricks, lumber, and nails they were sending us so they could keep the coins for contingencies. With their help, the exterior of the Manor House was nearly finished, although there was still a lot of work left to do on the interior.

The last load had carried a surprise. Father sent five of the Brown Bess muskets reworked with new .62 caliber rifled barrels with a sight at the end, like our other long rifles. I kept one and gave the other four to my four best hunters to practice with.

By now, the population of Catawba Indians living here had grown to four villages totaling more than two hundred people.

Today, the wagons from Virginia arrived with the next load. They also brought a surprise. I recognized the Cherokee hunters who came with the wagons. “Greetings, friend James,” the leader greeted me.

“We were sent to assure you that your men are welcome in Cherokee lands again this winter. We have heard that there have been attacks by the Cherokee against colonists to the south of here, but your people have always dealt honestly and fairly with us. You have helped our villages to thrive, and we have been able to help other villages. You and your people are always welcome as friends of the Cherokee,” he said.

“Thank you, Spotted Wolf,” I replied, and invited his men to eat supper with us.

I had only recently heard about the attacks in South Carolina and had been worried about what it meant for our long hunt this winter.

August 13

Spotted Wolf and his men left, along with the empty wagons this morning. I left him with a parting thought. “While the British are encouraging your people to attack colonists, they are cowering offshore aboard their ships, letting the Cherokee do their fighting. I know of no British troops in Virginia, North Carolina, or South Carolina. Even their supporters remain quiet.”

September 30

Our crops are gathered and stored. Our storerooms are full. Shelters have been built for everyone, although some of them are large barracks.

Without adding more men to the work details, we found the second gold deposit and surrounded it with an earthen berm. We have recovered just over eighteen hundred pounds of gold to date. A surprising amount of it is the flakes we had previously ignored. Using Asa’s design, our blacksmiths have made special pans like a dinner plate but with an angled, four-inch raised edge like a bowl. The line between the “plate” and where the edges begin angling up from the bottom is sharply delineated, not rounded. He also showed them how to build and use a sluice.

The exterior of the Manor house and the interior of the ground floor of the Manor house are complete and Penelope and I now live there. Work on the second story continues. Our old cabin is ready for Asa and his family.

We could not have completed so much without the help brother Benjamin and Grandfather Philip sent us, especially all the building material they sold us. One of Benjamin’s letters teased me that he would rather sell it to me for gold than to their usual customers who bartered or used some sort of paper scrip.

Benjamin sent us another one hundred head of cattle that he purchased for us. Those, along with another two dozen my men found for sale, helped increase our herd. We would still need to buy more next year before we had enough to provide beef for everyone living here. Benjamin also sent wagons filled with fodder for the cattle this winter.

This morning we left for our long hunt. Aside from thirty of the men who fought alongside me against the British, we had twenty Tutelo hunters and forty-four hunters from among our steadily increasing population of Catawba Indians.

We also had thirty Indian women accompanying us. Each of the women rode a horse and led a horse pulling a travois loaded with dried food, pre-made smoking racks and smokehouses (more smoke tents than houses) for drying or smoking meat. There were also cooking pots, tripods, and whatever else the women needed to feed the men and deal with all the meat and skins we brought back to camp.

They brought along dozens of Hessian bags, or as some folks were starting to call them, burlap bags, to hold any nuts they collected, as well as meat they dried. Several packhorses carried two empty baskets that the women could fill with nuts they found each day. Walnuts and chestnuts were collected in separate baskets during the day. In the evening, the women would peel skins off the black walnuts to use later for tanning deer skins. The chestnuts were carefully removed from the spiny cover protecting them. Once the walnuts and chestnuts were “skinned,” they were mixed in the bags with the other nuts.

Rather than suffer through stepping on the chestnut’s spiny husks, the women had thick, boiled leather inserts for the moccasins that they wore during the first part of the long hunt. Once the weather got cold enough, they changed to leather soled boots with deerskin uppers that went up to their knees to keep feet and legs warm. The boots were lined with rabbit fur.

Father sent word that the estate planned to send one group of hunters, too. They planned to meet us at our first camp in six days.

October 5

The group from the estate was waiting for us when we arrived at the first camp. There were also fifty Cherokee hunters and thirty Cherokee women, which was double their usual number. Spotted Wolf approached and greeted me. “The villages are worried about having enough food for everyone this winter. There are many new widows to care for,” he explained solemnly.

“I told Father what you said about the British troops hiding on their ships while we fought and died for them. Father sent messengers to tell the other Chiefs. Before we left to join you for this hunt, we heard back from most of the other Chiefs saying that they would no longer help the British.”

“If your people have too many widows, escort them to either Father’s estate or to my estate and I will provide jobs and food for them,” I assured him.

This was by far the largest group we had ever had so we split up into four groups with four base camps. I took five of my men and joined the Cherokee hunters. They chose a north-facing cave for our base camp. My men and I quickly had a pile of dead wood chopped up and split for the women to use for starting fires. Then we made piles of green wood to add once the fires were started.

The third day after reaching the camp site, most of us set out to hunt. Since the weather was still well above freezing, we did not range too far as our kills had to be dealt with quickly.

March 11, 1777

The hunt this year was incredible. Once again, the Cherokee sent a group back after two months and another two months after that. Both groups carried much needed nuts, dried meat, and salt back to their villages.

Today, we are breaking camp and heading home. Our poor horses cannot carry anything more on their travois unless we walk.

Spotted wolf warned me that there were thirty widows waiting for me at our first camp, as well as thirty survivors from a village that had been attacked by white settlers in retaliation for earlier raids.

March 25

We made it home! We would have been home several days ago, but we had so many people walking. I sent half of our group ahead and they returned with wagons and extra horses, so the sixty new people didn’t have to walk all the way back.

When Penelope finally let go of me, Asa was the first person to greet me, handing me six gold coins. The front of the first one said, “REYNOLDS” in an arc across the top and “£5” below that. The back simply said, “ROWAN COUNTY,” and “N. CAROLINA.”

“So much for keeping the discovery of gold here a secret,” I thought to myself.

The second coin was nearly identical except that it had been hand stamped instead of pressed, so the design was not quite perfect. Still, the edges had narrow ridges running all the way around the coin, which I learned was called reeding. The reeding made it obvious if some dishonest person shaved the edges of the coin to keep some of the gold.

“The weight of the two coins is the same. We cannot hope to keep up with the men you have finding the gold, so we use several of them to hand stamp more of the coins,” Asa explained.

The next two coins were one Pound coins, one pressed and one hand stamped. The small coins were ten Shillings, or half a Pound.

“Your men have worked the two creeks almost every day except when it rained too hard. If others had nothing else to do, they helped in the creeks. The creeks never got close to cold enough to freeze solid. My boys and I have been working every day trying to keep up with them, but we are failing miserably. That is why we have twelve of your men helping us. We have already sent one batch of coins to New Bern to buy two thousand Pounds’ worth of paper notes,” he explained, stunning me.

Inside his workroom were three screw presses, each mounted securely on top of a heavy, three-foot square wooden table. I could immediately see why the coin-making process took so long. They only had two molds for each type of coin and the entire process was complicated, everything from smelting and refining the ore to weighing and individually pouring the correct amount and then pressing each coin while the metal was still hot. Each press had the mold for a different coin. Two open doors near the forge end of the workroom let in cool air or the room would have been like an oven. Asa’s three boys were busy smelting gold and making coins.

Four more men were busy hand stamping coins, using wide sections of tree trunks as worktables. They all grinned at me when I entered the room but kept working. Evidently, there was a limited window of time between when the gold lump hardened enough to be handled with tongs and when it cooled too much to be pressed or stamped. The other men were pouring molten gold into molds or taking those molded lumps of gold and carefully trimming them so they were the correct weight. Then, the lumps were reheated slightly and pressed or hand stamped. Once done, they were tossed into a bucket of cold water.

I also learned that Asa’s wife had done the artwork and made the ceramic molds the steel molds were created from.

The first of the minted or hand stamped coins in each denomination had been kept for me, and Penelope had them wrapped up in cotton and then linen and stored inside a small, decorative wooden box. Asa had kept the second copy of each.

We found homes for the Cherokee refugees. The winter had been mild enough that building continued during the winter and the barracks were finally empty.

Somewhere, they had even found time to dig two wells, one near the cluster of dwellings, and one near the barns.