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Conrad Reed, The Young Boy Who Found A 17-Pound Nugget To Start America’s 1st Gold Craze
In 1799, a child fishing in a North Carolina creek found an enormous piece of gold that eventually sparked a big hunt for more
Few things have captured the passions of people throughout history more than the search for gold. The ultimate denomination of wealth has broken many in the scramble for the yellow precious metal. Popular history tells us that the first real gold craze in the United States was the rush of 1849 in California. However, a half-century before that a young boy started a gold craze of his own after he found a 17-pound nugget that was used for several years as a door stop before being discovered for what it really was and sparked pandemonium with treasure hunters.
The most commonly known American gold craze was the California Gold Rush, when people started racing west to mine after a rich streak was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in Columa. From 1848–1855, approximately 300,000 people came to California to look for gold. Some found what they were looking for. Many more did not. However, it served to quickly build up the population and infrastructure of what became the 31st State in the union in 1850.
The California Gold Rush may be what most people think of when discussing gold in the United States, but it was actually decades after the first real boom, which occurred on the other side of the country.
In 1799, Conrad Reed, the 12-year-old son of a former Hessian soldier named John Reed, (he Americanized his name from Johannes Reidt) who deserted from the British army during the American Revolution, lived on the family farm in Little Meadow Creek, North Carolina. One day, while fishing in the creek, he found a large and unusually colored rock. Weighing in at 17 pounds, the child lugged it home as a new bauble. For the next three years, it served as a door prop at the home.
In 1802, John, who had finally gotten curious about what his son found, brought the rock to a local jeweler. He determined that it was in fact an enormous gold nugget. Asking permission to hold on to it temporarily so he could refine the gold, when the farmer returned he was presented with an eight-inch long…
