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DEDICATED TO THE PROGRESS
OF CUMMING AND FORSYTH COUNTY
CUMMING, GEORGIA
Courthouse Destroyed By Fire;
Fate Of Vital Records In Doubt
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CLOCK IN TOWER FELL IN HEAP AS BLAZE DESTROYED COURTHOUSE
Fire Unknown Origin Began about 10 p.m. Monday
Poverty To Riches At Local Goldmine
By ROY E. BOTTOMS
Rome, Ga.
No substance has been more avidly
sought than gold. It has been a symbol of
value for ages and it has been a beacon
for explorers and adventurers and a lure
for conquerors. Today it is vital to
commerce and finance and it is popular
in ornamentals and increasingly im
portant in technology. For 100 years
prior to 1934, the United States had
valued gold at $20.67 per fine troy ounce.
In 1934 the price was increased to $35.00.
For many years gold was the basis for
our money but this country came off the
gold standard many years ago. Gold is
now being traded in the free markets at
well over SIOO.OO per fine troy ounce. In
the Paris and London Markets, it has
sold as high as $125.00 in recent weeks
and our dollar has been weak in the
market place.
The peculiar yellow color of gold and
its malleability and high specific gravity
must have attracted the attention of man
at an early date. These physical
properties, together with its rarity,
made it an object of great value among
the ancients who first use it in making
images of worship and in the decorating
the persons of their royal chiefs; and
later, as a medium of exchange.
Probably the oldest written account of
gold now extant appears in the second
chapter of Genesis, where it is spoke of
as occurring along the river Pison, a
stream which flowed from the Garden of
Eden. Many allusions to gold occur in the
Old Testament, from which it is learned
that it was extensively used by the Jews
in adorning the robes of their priests and
in the decorating of their places of
worship. The immense amount of gold
collected by his chosen people for
decorating Solomon’s Temple, seems
almost incredible. The precious metal,
thus used, has been valued at
$250,000,000. Such an accumulation of
gold indicates an acquaintance with rich
gold deposits and an extensive
knowledge of mining in the early days. It
is the belief that this gold came from the
TUP FORSYTH VlllfC
A fill COUNTY REIWV 9
LXVI
rich auriberous deposits of South Africa.
FRANKLIN GOLD MINE
This mine was located in Cherokee
County, near the Forsyth County Line. It
was just below the confluence of the Et
owah River and the Settendown Crrek.
Among the gold prospectors attracted, in
about the year 1833 to the Northeastern
part of the county, was an Englishman
named John Pascoe, who had been
unsuccessful in the mines of Lumpkin
County, and he arrived in Cherokee
almost penniless. He was fortunate
enough, however, to obtain a “stake”
from Major Wyley Petty, one of the first
settlers in that part of the county and by
then a well-to-do farmer.
Fitted out with means and provisions
by Major Petty, Pascoe leased ten acres
of land from the Leonard brothers who
lived near Ophir, and had them run a
ditch from a nearby creek to a little five
stamp mill which he erected. Pascoe
was successful this time, and from his
earnings of his little mill, he purchased
the ten acres and all the lots adjoining,
which he left as part of a snug fortune to
his brothers and sisters upon his death
some years later.
A few months before Pascoe came to
the county, a poor widow in the Southern
part of the state, Mrs. Mary G. Franklin,
drew a forty acre lot in the Gold Lottery
of 1832. Soon afterwards, she was sur
prised to received a dozen or so offers in
one week for her holding, and becoming
excited about the lot herself, mounted
her little gray mule and made a trip to
Cherokee County to look at her property.
When she arrived, she found a score of
men at work on the lot, shoveling dirt
and panning out gold. Mrs. Franklin
soon obtained a trusty man to drive
away the intruders and take charge of
the property until she could return with
her family. She then went back after her
children in South Georgia, and soon the
whole family was panning for gold.
Before long, Mrs. Franklin was able to
build a rude stamp mill, utilizing the
waters of the Etowah which flowed
through her lot. She proved to be a good
business woman, and under her
supervision, the mill was so productive
ByPAULBEEMAN
Editor
The Forsyth County Courthouse was
destroyed by fire late Monday night.
Arson was being considered Tuesday
as the cause of the blaze but the old
wiring in the 69-year-old structure was
also regarded as suspect.
County officials Tuesday were busy
discussing plans for temporary and
permanent replacement. Officials
waited for Fire Marshalls to complete
SHERIFF SEEKS HELP
Forsyth County Sheriff Donald
Pirkle said he called Gov. Jimmy
Carter early Tuesday to ask for help.
Sheriff Pirkle said he called the
governor at the mansion in Atlanta
about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday and talked
to an aide.
Pirkle, who suspects arson as the
cause of the fire which destroyed the
Forsyth County Courthouse, said the
governor’s spokesman promised to
get word to Carter.
“We’re having too much of this
and we’re not able to get to the
bottom of it,” Pirkle said.
Asked what he meant by “this”,
Pirkle said “serious crime” and
alluded to the nightriding incidents a
month ago in which two business
were burned and two occupied
homes were shot up.
“We have a pretty good county
here but we’re probably growing too
fast for our own good,” the sheriff
said.
When asked what he meant by
“help” the sheriff said he was
hoping for assistance from tne
Georgia Division of Investigation.
their investigation before determining
what county records were destroyed.
The blaze was spotted at 10:10 p.m.
Monday night by Sheriff’s Deputy Keith
Sewell. Sewell told Sheriff Donald Pirkle
that he smelled a strong odor of gasoline.
Sheriff Pirkle said Arson is a possible
cause because “one minute it was not
burning and the next minute it was
burning all over.”
FORSYTH COUNTY’S HISTORY
that she was able to eventually buy the
adjoining lots, build a large and
beautiful home, own slaves, and give all
her children a good education.
Another fortunate drawer in the Gold
Lottery had been a young man named
McDonald. He married one of Mrs.
Franklin’s daughters, and proceeded to
take a fortune in gold from his own lot.
At sometime prior to the Civil War, one
of these mines, probably that of Mrs.
Franklin, is said to have caved in upon
some slaves and to have killed them.
All of these gold properties, and
possibly others, amounting in all to some
1,280 acres were brought together in 1882
under the management of a group of
Northern capitalists, who incorporated
themselves as Franklin and McDonald
Mining and Manufacturing Company,
with a capitalization of $250,000. Colonel
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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1973
But Pirkle added, “I can’t think of a
motive. I don’t know why in the world
someone would want to burn a cour
thouse down.
When the blaze broke out the Forsyth
County Volunteer Fire Department
was a mile away fighting a house fire.
Volunteer Chief John Moore said the
unoccupied house owned by Dr. Marcus
Mashburn Sr. caught fire 30 minutes
before the courthouse.
Chief Moore said if arson is involved in
the courthouse fire the house may have
been set ablaze as a diversionary
measure.
Chief Moore said the Forsyth volun
teers had 75 men, three pumpers and two
tankers on the scene.
In addition assistance came from Hall
County, Fulton County, Dawsonville,
Sugar Hill, Canton and Alpharetta.
Moore said Mrs. Harold Glover, an of
ficial fireman, was responsible for
calling the volunteers. “She did a great
job,” he said. “We never expected we
could get 75 volunteers out for a fire.”
The chief said there was not enough
water to try and extinguish the fire after
it was well underway. He said firemen
concentrated their water on records
sections of the courthouse and buildings
across the street.
Sparks flying in stiff winds started
small fires atop Goddson’s Drug Store
and behind Fambros variety store.
“Without the effort that was made,”
Moore said, “the whole town could have
caught fire. We were especially worried
about the nursing home (on the north
side of the square).”
Firemen were standing by all day
'i :t_ • lay as smoulder th: efVed-in
root Drought about occasional flare ups.
When the fire cooled, officials were
expecting to open the vaults and
determine damages.
Superior Court Clerk Cecil McClure
said he doesn’t believe any of his records
were destroyed. He said some of the
records may be wet but he has hopes that
all will remain intact.
Damages to records in the tax com
missioners office may prove heavy but
duplicates are in Atlanta being
A.H. Moore, the resident manager and a
southern engineer of note, began to
develop the mines in an up-to-date
fasion, installing new machinery,
throwing up a dam across the Etowah
River, putting in a tramway system
between shafts and mills. Several shafts
were put down, one of them 500 feet,
being the deepest in Georgia. When
completed in about 1890, these im
provements had cost about $200,000, and
had won the Franklin Mine wide note as
a model plant of its kind.
Colonel Moore found that the Franklin
properties contained almost every
known kind of gold ore, including free
deposits, quartz veins, and gold
sulphurites. He helped to invent a new
cholrination process for the reduction of
the gold from its sulphurites, and also
used quicksilver or amalgam process as
STAMP-MILL AND DAM ACROSS THE ETOWAH RIVER NEAR FORSYTH-CHEROKEE COUNTY LINE
Franklin Gold Mine As It Appeared In Operation Back In 1896
processed for a tax mailing.
Damages to records may also be
extensive in the ordinary’s office.
County Ordinary Broughton B. Wallace
said many of the older records dating
back to 1832 are in his vault area and
presumed to be safe.
He said records which may have been
destroyed include some lunacy papers
and probated wills.
The latest voter registration list is also
probably destroyed. Wallace said that
the only list available may be the
November 1972 list filed with the office of
Georgia Secretary of State Ben Fortson.
Sheriff Pirkle said he expects the
building to be torn down before the
weekend.
He said it’s a safety hazard now and
needs to be leveled. According to the
sheriff, telephone company workers got
an aerial view of the ruins from a cherry
picker extended above the courthouse.
COURT CLERK’S RECORDS MAY NOT BE SEVERELY DAMAGED
They Were stored In Vault In Foreground Of Photo
well as the more modern cyanide
process. The employment of these
methods at the Franklin Mine marked
the only scientific approach on a large
scale mining that had ever been in
Cherokee County.
In 1883 the vice-president, J. Me.
Creighton, a wealthy railroad official
from Philadelphia, bought out the other
stockholders, and the property was
thereafter called the Creighton Mine.
Mr. Creighton died in 1887, and the
Manager Moore resigned, and the
management fell into several different
hands before operations were halted
sometime around the year 1909.
Concerning the yield of the Franklin
Mine, nothing definite can be
established. It was believed to have been
producing about SI,OOO per day by the
year 1893, and estimates of its total
ISSUE 45
The workers reported some of the walls
were beginning to separate. “The walls
are very dangerous,” he added.
Sightseers who come to view the ruins
should keep well away from the building,
officials stressed.
Traffic Court was scheduled for
Thursday in the Superior Courtroom.
Officials were going to check records for
damages before deciding whether court
will be held.
Meanwhile the search was on for
temporary headquarters. At presstime
several community rooms in the Forsyth
County Bank were being considered for
use.
There was also talk of using the
gymnasium at the old Cumming Upper
Elementary School for civil and criminal
court his month.
Civil court had been scheduled for next
week and criminal court for the week
Continued on Page 3
production after 1880 run as high as
$1,000,000. In addition, several hundred
thousand dollars worth of gold is said to
have been taken out during the early
days of the county. There is no way to
arrive at any definite figure. It is
estimated that the Franklin Family may
have mined some $50,000.00 in gold
during the time in which they owned the
mine.
The Creighton Mine, by the year 1896,
had an office, assay laboratory, com
missary, blacksmith shop, stables,
miner’s cottages, etc., all substantially
constructed and well arranged and this
made up the remainder of the Creighton
plant. Near the above year, the firm
employed some eighty-five hands,
working in two shifts of twelve hours
each. The wages received varied from 75
Continued on Page 3
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