The Saturday Evening Post has an article this month about "the new" gold rush. It mentions the first one in North Carolina, notably when in 1799 Conrad Reed stumbled upon a 17 pound 'shiny rock', that his father later offered to a jeweler who when asked what he wanted for it said $3.50. I guess that is what you call being "hood-winked", when a knowledgable buyer gets something of great value for 1/1000th of true value... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Gold_Rush Their edition is not online.
I don't believe Reid sold the nugget to the jeweler. The story I heard was that he used the nugget as a door stop for many years until someone else "discovered" gold and he realized what he had.
The US Mint reported gold production from North Carolina in 1793, but gave no further details.[1] In 1799 young Conrad Reed found a 17-pound shiny rock while playing at a creek on his family farm in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. He and his family kept it as a doorstop until 1802. His father John Reed took the rock to a jeweler who recognized it as gold and bought it from the unaware Reed for $3.50 (a week's wages for farm labor.) A year later Peter, one of the slaves held by the Reed family, found a 28-pound nugget of gold on the property. John Reed started placer mining, and later underground mining, on his property and became a wealthy man. The Reed Gold Mine was designated a National Historic Landmark. Visitors can explore reconstructed underground mining tunnels
The Gold Rush in NC was centered around and in present day Charlotte which isn't that far from Reid's mine where that nugget was found. There were numerous gold mines all through the downtown Charlotte area where coincidently, (and maybe ironically) the current Bank of America and former First Union/Wachovia headquarters skyscrapers are located. Some of the tunnels for the mines are still there but are sealed up due to the danger of going into them. The Charlotte and Georgia gold rush era lasted for several decades but was eventually overshadowed by the one in California in 1849. There was a great deal of gold mined in Charlotte, enough where the US Mint opened a branch where gold coins were minted until the beginning of the Civil War. When NC seceded from the USA, the Mint facilities were taken over by the Confederates who used the gold to fund the war effort. After the war, the Mint did not re-open and was eventually turned into a museum that is still open today.
