Hiding the Gold, part three of four

A reproduction of Carson's treasure map, as it appears in the typewritten transcript of his testimony.


This is the third installment of James Carson's account of hiding the gold of the bank of North Carolina in a safe place at the close of the Civil War. He and three other men have successfully conveyed it to a secluded spot out of town. Here he describes the steps they took to conceal it.

The Camp

After leaving the place where we had halted for about an hour we were fortunate in meeting but few people; the road was firmer and our pace was faster than the night before. There was[sic] but few farm houses on the road, and few openings or cleared fields, and we were getting to a place where we thought we might find shelter and concealment. We had made some five or six miles when we reached what appeared to be a good hiding place, out of sight of any habitation, and no one being in sight, we left the road and struck for the thicket.

Our driver being an expert, managed to get through the undergrowth with but little difficulty, some of us going ahead and removing any obstructions that might be in the way, and it was not long before we were out of view of anyone passing the road. We continued our journey thus for a half a mile or more when fortunately we came to a branch, just the thing of all others that we were looking for. It was not very inviting it is true but it was water, and something we were obliged to have. We halted, and after a careful examination, we concluded it would do; so we went to work with the only shovel we had clearing out the bed of the stream, and also cleaning out the spring at its head. It was not long before we had it running nicely, and knew it would supply all the water we wanted for man and beast.

After this work was successfully accomplished we began making preparations for dinner, which was enjoyed by all. The next thing after our repast was to see what was to be done with our precious charge. To leave it in the wagon would never do. We had to make some disposition of it, and that quickly, as we did not know when the soldiers might come upon us, well concealed as we thought ourselves to be. So we made a careful survey of our surroundings, and found good hiding places for some of our plunder.

There had been a fire some years before in these woods which had burned some of the pines (the dead ones) entirely up, leaving round holes in the ground where the trees had stood. These holes were just the thing for the kegs, which contained the silver, and were much larger and harder to hide than the boxes containing the gold; but these holes made it much easier, and it took but little trouble or time in getting clear of them. After accomplishing this task we still had the gold to dispose of. This was a much more difficult job, as we found no ready made holes for them. At last we dicided that we must make holds for them, but where? was the question. Finally we concluded to dig a hold about six feet square and two feet deep, large enough and deep enough to hold all the boxes except two or three, which we thought could safely be buried in the branch. So, after coming to this conclusion, as night was coming on, we had supper, fed and watered the stock, and all hands got ready for the night work that was ahead of us.

We marked off the ground that was to be excavated, and with but one tool for us five, we went to work, digging by turns, and carrying away the excavated earth in the bucket for watering the stock, and dumping it in the bed of the branch some hundred yards below. The ground was not very hard, and we met with no rock or roots in digging, and by ten o'clock our pit was sunk, and ready for the boxes. We covered the bottom with them and then packed in the earth around them until nearly level with the surface, when we carefully replaced the turf which we had first removed, and gathered up all the loose earth that remained around the pit and dumped it in the branch, and this most difficult part of the work was done.

We still had two or three boxes to dispose of but we soon found a good hiding place in the bottom of the branch for them. About midnight our task, so far as burying the quarter of a million of treasure, was accomplished, but before retiring for the night we collected some old logs and trash and placed them over our pit and set them on fire, in order to obliterate as soon as possible, any marks that might exist to show that the surface had been disturbed.

After this the three that were not on guard found places rest, and the camp was quiet.

Next morning we had every tell-tale vestige of our work of the previous night removed, so that in the event of having a visit from anyone, nothing could be seen to indicate that anything had been buried by us.

We also made careful measurements from a given point giving the courses, as near as we could determine without a compass, and the distance, and made a chart or plot of the same, so that any one of us could locate the kegs and boxes in the future. The Chart was something like this. [See picture at beginning of entry]

On account of the number of grasshoppers, we gave the name of "Grasshopper Springs" to our Camp.

Hiding the Gold - part one of four

The following is the testimony of James H. Carson, 1829-1919, merchant and mineowner in Charlotte, NC, as recorded in the Cornelia Berry Fore papers. The Fore papers are archived in the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library.

Grasshopper Springs in 1865

It was near the close of the Civil War. Sherman had made his celebrated march from Atlanta, through Georgia to the sea, and was continuing his march across South Carolina - had reached Columbia, and that city had been burnt either by his order, or by the Confederate troops who are said to have set fire to some cotton in the streets. Be that as it may, the city was destroyed, and Sherman continued on his triumphant march towards North Carolina, coming as far as Winnsboro in the direction of Charlotte, when this little event never chronicled in print, had its inception.

The Bank of the state of North Carolina before the war was one of the largest in the South, having a capital of four million dollars - equal to any fifteen banks now in the state. It was located at Raleigh, but had branches in Charlotte, New Bern, Tarboro, and several other places in the state.

As the war progressed, the eastern portion of the state was soon invaded by federal troops, and the branches of the Bank located in that section had to pack up and remove to the interior, some of them coming to Raleigh and others to Charlotte. At last however all the specie the bank owned, amounting to about two hundred fifty thousand dollars, was sent to [the] branch Bank at Charlotte, as it was thought it would be safer here and less liable to capture than at any other point where a branch of the bank was located.

For some time no apprehension was felt in regard to its safety, but when Sherman's troops got to Winnsboro and Stoneman's raiders were getting uncomfortably close to us, some doubt was felt about the safety of the specie in the vault of the branch at Charlotte.

Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had been here and had his headquarters at the Bank, but soon left, going east to attempt to intercept Sherman's forces, and some of his troops had passed through going in the same direction.

As this move left Charlotte uncovered and without protection, some of us who were the most interested in saving that specie had a conference and after mature deliberation decided that the money would be safer in the woods somewhere than in the bank's vault.

The next thing to consider was how to do it. Teams of any sort were hard to obtain, as they had been taken for the use of the army, and the Rail Roads did not run in a direction that we thought safe. the weight of the specie was between three and four thousand pounds, which would require a good team to haul over such roads as we then had leading out from Charlotte. We were fortunate however in finding the man for the occasion.

A. A. Kennedy was his name. He lived about one mile north of Biddle Institute, had been a wagoner all his life, and always had good teams. Fortunately too, he owned ten thousand dollars worth of stock in the Bank, and this fact relieved us of any embarassment in applying to him for his aid. It was soon granted and it took us but a short time to arrange the program for our flight.

The specie was all in strongboxes and kegs, ready for shipment.

To be continued in the next blog post.

Digging for gold

"It was gold, the selection of Charlotte as a railroad junction, and the building of a network of converging highways which made Charlotte great." (Charles Brockman, Hornet's Nest, Charlotte, 1961, p.267.)

"What accounts for Charlotte?" an out-of-town visitor to the library asked me recently. Why did a city arise here at all, I supposed he meant, so I cited the Indian crossroads which presaged the later crossing of wagon roads, railroads, highways, and air routes in the same location. This transaction has stayed with me because I felt the inadequacy of my answer. Considering Charlotte as a crossroads explains why there is any kind of conglomeration here at all, but does not explain why it is such a large urban center. Any number of other Piedmont towns were the peers of Charlotte in the first half of the nineteenth century. In Sorting out the New South City (Chapel Hill, 1998), Thomas Hanchett explains the importance of the railroad, which came to Charlotte in 1852. It gave farmers a reason to take their produce to Charlotte rather than other market towns. But what made Charlotte a good spot for a railroad depot in the first place? The difference was gold.

Before the coming of the railroad, gold-mining and (after 1835) the minting of gold drew people to Charlotte and diversified the local economy, freeing it from entire dependence on cotton. (The next post to this blog will reprint a story of gold in Charlotte's past from the Civil War era.) The gold deposits discovered in the western states later in the nineteenth century would overshadow the Carolinas' gold rush but not before Charlotte had built on the initial prosperity it brought.

Charlotte's gold-mining days still attract researchers. The Depression of the 1930s sparked renewed local interest in mining, but the veins were exhausted by then. The current specter of hard times returning has brought more people into the library to ask about the location of old mines. Others study it for its historical importance rather than to strike it rich themselves. These latter researchers have a new lode of information to consider now thanks to librarian Jane Johnson of the Carolina Room. She recently travelled to the office of the National Archives in Atlanta, Georgia. There she spent the better part of a week photocopying nineteenth-century records pertaining to the Assay Office and the Mint in Charlotte. She's organizing them now, and they will soon be available to researchers.