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THE ILLUMINATI GOING TO AMERICA
The ideas Lenin developed were directly from the Karl Marx Communist Manifesto, and the ideas founded in the Communist Manifesto were directly from the writings of Adam Weishaupt who was closely working with the House of Rothschild. And keep in mind that all of this was masterminded by the Lucifer Rebellion, going way back in time. Marxism tells them that if they would establish a dictatorship of the proletariat which would set up a flawless Communist society, everyone would love in peace, prosperity and freedom. There would be no more need for governments, police or armies, and all these would gradually wither away. Marx said that the ruling class would never willingly give up its power and that struggle and violence were therefore inevitable.
This would naturally sound terrific to some poor, struggling people or to the starving people in Latin America countries. But what the Communist leaders do not tell the people is that the leaders are exempt from sharing equally the material wealth of their nation. How many Russian leaders do you see among the poverty-stricken? The real motive behind Communism is not to distribute the world equally, but the Communist Party is just a front for the super-rich as an instrument for gaining and using power. It is not the Communists that run Communism. There is yet another controlling power behind Communism. Communism and socialism are just arms of the more devilish conspiracy working behind the public eye that is not being run from Moscow or Peking, but from New York, Paris and London.
These are very serious and dangerous times. The average gullible American has absolutely no thought as to what is about to come upon him. WAKE UP AMERICA! This is a very serious and dangerous movement that has been working politically and socially since the French Revolution to destroy the world. First in Europe during the French Revolution, and from there to Russia. George Washington, even though he was a deceived freemason, was nevertheless a loyal American and was very aware of this international revolutionary force to destroy all governments and religions in his own time-the Illuminati conspiracy.
Before the colonies were united, the Constitution adopted and our republic established, fifteen lodges of the Order of the lliuminati were formed in the thirteen colonies. The Columbia Lodge of the Order of the lliuminati was established in New York City in 1785 which members included Governor DeWitt Clinton and the late Clinton Roosevelt, Charles Dana and Horace Greeley. The following year, a lodge was established in Virginia with which was identified Thomas Jefferson. When Weishaupt's diabolical plans were exposed by the Bavarian government. Jefferson strongly defended him as an enthusiastic philanthropist. Many strong warnings were issued about the activities of the lliuminati in America. On July 19, 1798, David Papen, president of Harvard University, issued a strong warning to the graduating class and lectured them to the influence Illuminism was having on the American scene. President Timothy Dwight of Yale University issued a similar warning. George Washington sent a letter to G.W. Snyder in which he stated: "It is not my intention to doubt that the doctrine of the lliuminati and the principles of Jacobinism had not spread to the United States. On the contrary, no one is more satisfied of this fact than I am. The idea meant to convey was that I did believe the Lodges of Freemasonry in this county had, as societies, endeavored to propagate the diabolical tenets."
Russia is a perfect example today of what the lliuminati plans are for the world. There about one and a half billion people, or about a third of the world's population who now live under Communist rule. Most Communist countries are nothing less than open air concentration camps, and contrary to Marx's predictions, their conflicts, crime and prejudices have not vanished in these Communist countries. There is just as much centralization of the wealth of a nation or the gain of a few at the expense of the poor and middle class in Communist countries as there is in non-Communist countries. There can also be seen in Communist countries the same national and racial hatred they were supposed to be free of Who are really pulling the strings today behind the Communist world revolutionary movement?
It is the international bankers who are actually pulling the strings that control the affairs of Communism not the Communists Russia. China. Cuba, Poland, etc. The Communists are taking their orders indirectly from the controller of the international bankers who control commerce of this world. Even today, the international bankers are influenced by the powers of the Lucifer Rebellion, who promised this secret society world control of economies and governments for doing their bidding.
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Seventy years before Karl Marx came onto the scene, Weishaupt told his disciples that in order to achieve this one-world government, his conspirators would have to infiltrate every agency of the governmental affairs of the nations. They first used the Masonic lodges, this was learned earlier, to begin this task. By sitting in the top seats of all governments, the Illuminati agents could eventually guide the nations toward a Novou Ordo Seclorium which in Latin means a New World Order, and you will find this on the back of your dollar bills under the pyramid with the eye on top of it. They would accomplish this by the power of the vote which they would have while occupying positions as a legislator. However, before the people of the world would accept Weishaupt, there would have to be a cultural change within the societies of the people first, along with unrest and riots in the air. The people of the world would have to be reduced into a godless society. Atheism was just a tool to control Christianity in France during the revolution. Weishaupt and his inner circle did not believe in God. Communism is just an atheistic force to separate all people from the creator.
For the benefit of any skeptic or reader who has been brainwashed into believing that this conspiracy does not exist today, let us look into a warning from Winston Churchill when he wrote on February 8, 1920: "From the days of Sparticus, Weishaupt, to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, Bela-Kuhn, Rose Luxembourg and Emma Goldman, this worldwide conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy has played a definitely recognizable role in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century and now at last, this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."
Communism is not a movement to help the downtrodden people of the world, but Communism is actually being run today by capitalists, the very people who control the wealth of the world that Communism is supposedly fighting against. Very few Americans know that Karl Marx was a correspondent and political analyst for Horace Greeley who controlled and managed the New York Times newspaper. In 1849, both Horace Greeley and Clinton Roosevelt contributed financially to the Communist league in London to assist in the publication of the Communist Manifesto. Other contributors were the English millionaire, Cowell Stepney, and, of course, Fredrich Engels who was a wealthy German. And up until recently, two checks made out to Karl Marx by Nathan Rothschild could be seen on display at the British Museum. Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were financed by capitalists from America, England and Germany to help promote the Bolsheviks Revolution in Russia.
The one-world government plot to enslave the whole world under socialism is attacking the world by using physical force (Communism) and by subliminal (you don't see it, but your mind does) warfare coming in through all forms of media. This is nothing less than a mask for the super-rich who are really the ruling class and those who control the huge secret society of the Illuminati. The first Russian Marxist group was formed in 1883 in the very year of Marx's death by Lenin, who was a Russian revolutionary exiled in Switzerland. Between 1900 and
1903, Lenin called his revolutionaries the Bolsheviks, then later renamed themselves Communists after Marx's term in the Communist Manifesto. Lenin announced to the world before the overthrow of the Tsar of Russia the following: "After Russia we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands."
Since that statement, Russia. China. Mongolia. Tibet, Afghanistan, Algeria, Ethiopia, Libya, North Korea. North and South Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Cuba, Chile, etc., are under Communist rule, and now Central America and Mexico are threatened with Communist guerrillas. However, the Communist plan to overthrow the last bastion of capitalism (the United States) is to be attacked politically, socially and economically as Lenin planned. When Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States, he boasted that the Communists would bury us and that our grandchildren would live under Communist rule. He even outlined the exact manner in which they would accomplish this: "You Americans are so gullible. No. you won't accept Communism outright, but we'll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you'll finally wake up and find you already have Communism. We won't have to fight you. We'll so weaken your economy until you'll fall like overripe fruit into our hands."
There shall be wars and rumors of wars until Jesus returns. However, the world and man will not be destroyed by a world-wide nuclear holocaust. The Bible makes this very clear. The threat of a world-wide nuclear war is nothing less than another plot to frighten the inhabitants of the world into believing that a one-world government is the only solution for world peace. You must understand that everything is being controlled by a higher off
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world group, the Lucifer Rebellion. There are really no enemy countries on this planet, wars are for making money and economic control of the people to keep their focus out of focus. If you didn't have so much garbage coming at you from every angle all of the time you would start realizing what is really happening in this world and not what they want you to think is really going on. T.V. lies to you a l l of the time and takes control of your mind processes.
Why there will never be a nuclear holocaust is simple when you have an understanding of the earth's harmonics. The geometric nature of the atom bomb and it's method of it's detonation is in relation to the harmonic structure of physical mass. An atom bomb is an intricate geometric device which could only be detonated by placing it below, on, or above, a calculated geometric position in relation to the Earth's surface. The geometric trigger that caused the disruption of matter within the bomb was the special relationship between the Earth and the Sun at a given instant of time. So, all out atomic war would be impossible as each bomb would have to be detonated at a certain place at a certain time which would have to be precalculated years in advance by any proposed enemy.
The build-up of war machines is to keep the industrial defense complex contractor's busy and making money. They have to keep some kind of anguish going to be able to force you into participating in their game. You really have been had, you know.
There is also a plan to eliminate several billions of the people from the earth's population. They say this must be done before the year 2000 if the world is to survive. One of their plans to accomplish this is with chemical warfare, the deadly disease, AIDS. There is no cure for Aids because of the way the disease was created using a virus from cattle. It is a fast-mutating virus and it mutates into different forms dependent upon the chemical changes surrounding it. It is a crystalline virus, and the only thing that can destroy any form of the virus is high levels of electromagnetic frequencies, a higher vibration level than the body normally operates at. There is now medical products called the "Elixir of Life" that can cause this high vibration in the body and destroy the virus. Your government does not let it into this country easily because that cuts the profits of the medical community. They don't like healthy people it isn't conducive for business.
In the preparatory period for the new world order, there w i l l be a steady and regulated disarmament. It will not be optional. No nation w i l l be permitted to produce and organize any equipment for destructive purposes or to infringe the security of any nation. One of the first tasks of any future peace conference will be to regulate this matter and gradually see to the disarming of the nations. The nations of the world will eventually hand over their nuclear weapons to the United Nations. This is their intimate plan because, as the reader continues to follow the history of this one world government conspiracy, we will show with documenting evidence that the United Nations is the headquarters of the Illuminati. The United Nations is really a front for the llluminati. which goes directly back to the ones in control of world commerce now.
One art they have trained very well in is subliminal warfare. This takes in mind control, or mind science. On this point, researchers have discovered that subliminals are in a l l forms of media: the movies, television programming, music, writings and magazines. Have you seen the movie "They Live", if not you should. All forms of media have their own particular type of subliminals which can program you to think or act any way they want you to. You are being hypnotized, brainwashed and kept ignorant by your movies, televisions and radios. So turn them off and make your own music.
We have been able to find subliminal programming as far back as "Gone With the Wind" and it could be further back. They have programmed the public to go along with every change in society they want to accomplish-right down to your elected officials.
In the late 1940's. maybe some of you who are old enough to remember the great Communist plot that was uncovered in Hollywood, where the FBI and the House Committee on Un-American Activities exposed over 300 of Hollywood's top stage and screen stars as card-carrying Communists.
Myron C. Fagan was a screen writer producer and director both in Hollywood and on Broadway. In 1945, at the urgent request of John Flynn, the author of "The Roosevelt Myth, While We Slept" and "The True Story of Pearl Harbor," Fagan attended a meeting in Washington. D.C. where he was shown a set of microfilm and recordings of a secret meeting at Yalta attended by Franklin Roosevelt, Alger Hiss, Harry Hopkins, Stalin, Molotev and Viskinsky, when they hatched the plot to deliver the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Berlin to Stalin. As a result of
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the meeting, Myron Fagan made open and avowed war on this Illuminati-Communistic-Socialistic conspiracy and formed an anti-Communist society called the "Cinema Educational Guild."
In 1947, as a result of the work to expose Communistic propaganda in Hollywood, radio and television, there was a congressional hearing held in Washington, D.C. which unmasked some of the most famous stars in Hollywood as card-carrying Communists. You may wonder why these so-called stars are allowed to continue to influence the movie screen with their presence. The answer to that is that they are working for the controlling group that control the banks and media. The same group of people control NBC, ABC, and CBS television networks, as well as many large newspapers and magazine companies and publishing companies. The modem Order of the Illuminati is still under the long-reaching arm of the Lucifer Rebellion which goes back centuries.
These subliminals are also being used in Hollywood, special interest groups, feminist movements, civil rights groups, congressmen, senators and even presidents to degrade and divide the people of the United States into different hate factions, as they did during the French Revolution to destroy the governments and the people's free will.
From Weishaupt's time to our time will lead us to the doors of a ring of international conspirators who control the world's wealth and who control a network of industrial scientists, military and political leaders, educationalists, economists and entertainers.
It is a well known fact that international bankers have financed nations to fight against each other. Where do you think the countries get their money to buy tanks, guns, uniforms, etc., to arm their nation for war? They borrow from international bankers. International bankers have financed both sides of countries at war with each other. They don't care who wins, because while the nations are borrowing huge amounts of money to kill each other, international bankers make huge amounts on money from the interest charges that they make each nation pay. They also have the power to control the outcome of the war by simply cutting off the flow of money they lend. So, under the threat of war, international bankers have used their power to gain or increase control over governments. By keeping a nation in debt they are in a position to demand a voice in the government affairs of the nation. Another goal which they have already achieved is to control all the world's monetary systems. Please refer back to the Federal Reserve and Elliot Springs chapter.
In the mid-1800's, another German llluminati was sent on a mission from the House of Rothschild to accomplish a goal of this New World Order. His name was Jacob Henry Schiff (1847-1920). He came to New York first for the sole purpose of getting control of the monetary system. He ran into a slight brick wall with the banking house owned by the Payseurs so he had to figure out another plan, to work from the inside out. He eventually became the head (manager) of the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Company. He became the director in many important corporations, including the New York City National Bank, the Equitable Life Assurance Society and the Union Pacific Railroad. Back to the railroad, again.
Using charity as a front to hide his llluminati one world government activities. Jacob Schiff became one of the most important successors of leading the U.S. towards anarchy. As stated by Lenin earlier, one of the first goals of the Communists is to get control of all monetary systems of the world, and this was to be Schiffs first achievement.
GEORGE WAHINGTON'S SURRENDER
"And many of the people of the land became Jews" (Esther 9:17). The confession of General Cornwallis to General Washington at Worktown has been well hidden by historians. History books and text books have taught for years that when Comwallis surrendered his army to General Washington that American independence came, and we lived happily ever after until the tribulations of the twentieth century.
Jonathan William's recorded in his LEGIONS OF SATAN, 1781, that Cornwallis revealed to Washington that "a holy war will now begin on America, and when it is ended America will be supposedly the citadel of freedom, but her millions will unknowingly be loyal subjects to the Crown of England." Cornwallis went on to explain what would seem to be a self contradiction: "Your churches will be used to teach the Jew's religion and in less than two hundred years the whole nation will be working for divine world government. That government that they believe to be divine will be the British Empire.
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"All religions will be permeated with Judaism without even being noticed by the masses, and they will all be under the invisible all-seeing eye of the Grand Architect of Freemasonry. "And indeed George Washington himself was a Mason, and he gave back through a false religion what he had won with his army.
Cornwallis well knew that his military defeat was only the beginning of world catastrophe that would be universal and that unrest would continue u n t i l mind control could be accomplished through a false religion. What he predicted has come to pass. A brief sketch of American religious history and we have seen Masonry infused into every church in America with their veiled Phallic religion.
Darby and the Plymouth Brethren brought a Jewish Christianity to America. Masons Rutherford and Russell started Jehovah Witnesses' Judaism which is now worldwide with their message of the divine kingdom. Mason Joseph Smith started Mormon Judaism with its Jewish teaching of millennialism. At the turn of the twentieth century there appeared the Scofield Bible with a Jewish interpretation of the prophecies. With the wide use of this "helpful" aid all the American churches have silently become synagogues. We now have Baptist Jews, Methodist Jews, Church of God Jews, Catholic Jews, and many Protestant Jews throughout America. We are aliens in our own country because of false religion. All are praying for divine deliverance into that "Divine Government" which Cornwallis knew to be the British Empire. A false religion has been used to deceive us into allegiance to our enemies of Yorktown and Bunker Hill.
No! Not a gun has been fired, but the invisible and malignant process of conquering America with the Jew's religion has gone unabated. The Union Jack has been planted in our hearts with religions deception. All this has happened "legally," "constitutionally," "freely" and completely within our most sacred trust our churches. Religious deception is painless inoculation against truth. It cannot be removed from the conscience with surgery, yet it is the motivator of our actions and directly controls our lives. Once man gives over to false religion, he is no longer rational because he originated no thought. His life is controlled by whomever controls his religion.
The veil of false religions the sword of Damacles and its power to control humanity defies even the imagination of tyrants who used it.
This is not to say that George Washington was a traitor willingly, or knowingly. He was beguiled into a satanic religious order that insidiously controls men's minds. So have American statesmen and military leaders down through the years given aid and allegiance to the enemies of the United States because they did not have knowledge of the invisible subterfuge that stalks this land.
THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS AND THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION
They established in 1921 what their earlier comrades had tried to establish to overthrow the governments of France and Russia. Called the Jacobin Clubs in France in the 18th century, this aristocratic revolutionary movement today in America is called the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc., is the political side of the Illuminati today. They have produced congressmen, senators and even presidents to pass laws that have, little by little, led America into becoming a socialist country.
The Trilateral Commission is an international organization founded by David Rockefeller who also had a part in the founding of the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc., and who is the chairman of the board. The Trilateral Commission is the llluminati's attempt to unite Western Europe's common market. Japan, Canada and the United States into an economic and political confederacy. What they couldn't do through the political side of the Illuminati (Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.) they are trying now through the economic approach.
The first attempt in the 20th century to unite the entire world into a one world slave unit was tried in history by these conspirators at the close of World War I. President Woodrow Wilson, on January, 1918, laid out a 14-point plan to Congress for lasting peace. Within this package of world peace was very neatly hidden a plan for these conspirators to get all nations of the world to give up their sovereignty. It was labeled The League of Nations.
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These modern money changers used World War I to make tons of money and as a tool to frighten the war torn people of the world at that time into believing if all of the governments of the world would unite into a one world government, this would stop a l l wars between nations and would achieve world peace and security.
The headquarters of the League of Nations was located in Geneva, Switzerland and it was at the time of World War I that President Wilson in 1918 began to draw American citizens, along with the rest of the world, into accepting this sham. Eventually, with the help of Edward House, 63 nations joined the League. The total membership at one time never exceeded 58. Wilson was shocked when he was unable to obtain the two-thirds vote in the Senate required for ratification of a treaty, and the U.S. never joined the League of Nations. When the bill didn't pass, the conspirators were surprised and had to dream up another plan to get the U.S. under their control.
When their one-world government couldn't be achieved using the name "League of Nations," House, under the direction of Jacob Schiff, formed a secret aristocratic organization called the Council on Foreign Relations. Inc. This private secret society is to produce enough congressmen, senators and statesmen, etc., so the next attempt to incorporate the U.S. into a one-world government will not fail due to the voting power they hope to have. Remember now, American Citizens, wake up. This not a U.S. government run establishment. On page 5 of the Council on Foreign relations, Annual Report, 1979-80, reads:
The twenty-one Americans, who, together with British counterparts, founded in Paris in 1919 "the Institute of International Affairs." were a diverse group that included Edward House. Herbert Hoover, Bliss. Christian Herter and many scholars as Charles Seymour, later president of Yale professors Archibald Cary Coolidge of Harvard and James T. Sholmuth of Columbia. In 1921 their American branch of the Institute merged with a larger, existing group of New York business and professional men to form "The Council on Foreign relations. Inc."
We are living today during their second attempt for their New World Order. The council on Foreign Relations, is only an Illuminati front working in the U.S. for world government. Their counterpart in England is "The Institute of International Affairs."
At this point I would like to interject one small point, in the railroad research and discovery you can easily see that all of the members of the C.F.R. are the companies that are owned by the Payseur family and that the control of them have been stolen. In essence you could say that the C.F.R. is a private club also for the heir trustees and manager of Mr. Payseurs companies. And they reach around the world. Think about that one for a minute.
Another group for internationalism called "The American Friends of Bilderbergers." The Bilderberger movement. like the Jacobin Clubs in France, chose their name from the name of the meeting place where they held their first meeting at the Bilderberg Hotel in Osterbeck, Holland, in May of 1954.
Like the Jacobin Clubs, Bolshevik's and Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers are a secret aristocratic society for the rich. It is made up from the world of international banking political circles and business and professional people. They hold Top Secret meetings annually to promote internationalism.
The chairman of this secret society of the elite is Prince Bernard of the Netherlands, who is the royal consort to
Queen Juliana, reported to be the richest woman in the world. The Bilderbergers are also known as the " 500
Committee"
According to the CFR, Inc.'s annual report, 1979-80, Kissinger, Mathios, and a host of other political American figures are members of the council.
At this point 1 want to attempt to start putting this giant puzzle together in a gentle manner because if you have always been unaware of the "who's who" of the "what and where," this information thus far either has your head in a spin as to the possibility of it's validity or you'll say this person is nuts, this can't be so. It is your choice to accept or reject that these facts are true.
Now back to my giant puzzle and how to put it all together so that people can understand what has been going on. You know you are being programmed everyday to think and believe what they want you to accept. Okay, now to
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start bringing into view more detail. Do you remember throughout this paper I have occasionally referred to the term Lucifer Rebellion? Who are they? I will attempt to start showing you who they are and how they could have been involved in all of this .
I hope at this point in your life you realize that we are not alone in the cosmos. There are infinite numbers of human types everywhere, believe it. These people for the most part ride in ships of light and fire which, in the Biblical times, were referred to as "clouds," "chariots of fire," or "pillars of fire." You have to use some sense in reading the Bible and the encoded book of Revelations. Those people back then only had simple words in their language to work with to describe the events of the day and the visions they saw in the future. They knew nothing of the world of airplanes, helicopters, missiles, jeeps, rockets, tanks, guns, machine guns, space ships and . best of all, computers. These were a "no thing" to them, so they used the word "Beast" to describe a paper-eating, light-flashing, noisy machine that also ate little plastic cards or little books that fit in the hand, computers and the ATM machines. These particular bad group of space brothers have, for thousands of years, interfered with mankind and do not live in our dimension of time necessarily. They are evolved and you only need linear time if you are evolving. This is why an end of time is coming to earth, and not the destruction of the earth. The earth will become a garden of paradise again, and the humans that will survive what is coming will be evolved souls that have collapsed the need for time, distance and space, and all levels of dimensions will open up here on earth again as they did before when the people of earth had open interaction between themselves and what they called the gods from beyond the sun. (the good guys) another group of space brothers. It is on this note that I will bring you back to the Lucifer Rebellion and their involvement with the Catholic Church international bankers, international secret societies.
George Adamski, who was a world famous UFO contactee by a certain group of our space brothers. Before he died in 1965, he made some really outstanding pictures of UFO's here on earth and around the moon. Okay, now to start bringing into view more detail. Do you remember throughout this paper I have occasionally referred to the term "Lucifer Rebellion"? Who are they? I will attempt to start showing you who they are and how they could have been involved in all of this new phenomena. According to Desmond Leslie, George Adamski had an audience with Pope John just a few days before the Pope's death. Adamski stated that he had been instructed to go to the Vatican according to the space people's instructions which were given to him by a contact, and that the space brother had taken care of all the necessary arrangement. When he arrived, Adamski had been taken straight in, given a cassock and led to the Pope's bedside. It was said that Pope John's face had beamed when he received the package and said, "This is what I have been wailing for." The Pope then presented Adamski with a very special medal and the papal audience ended.
If all of this is true, this last little part of this chapter ties together very neatly the Catholic Church's covert operation and secrets it has been hiding for a very long time and who are the ones really pulling the strings. If the Illuminati is a front for the Catholic Church and is behind every world power that is on the brink of overthrowing the people of the world to put them into submission and subservience. To go farther and uncover the type of personality the Lucifer Rebellion is and coupled with the fact that they are technically advanced beyond our wildest dream. They do not live in time, and can also time travel you have a very interesting can of worms to take a look at but with a very expanded awareness now and not being narrow minded. This has been their designed plan for thousands of years, and they have been here programming mankind for thousands of years. You are now living in the last seconds of this big play, and the big curtain is getting ready to come crashing down on the poor unsuspecting people of the world. They have done an excellent job in deceiving you.
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THE EARLY ALABAMA RAILROADS
Alabama Railroad in 1832
In 1832, Alabamians dreamed of a railroad connecting the state's two primary sources of water transportation, the Alabama and Tennessee Rivers. This southnorth l i n k would facilitate the transportation of cotton and other farm products to broader markets, while allowing access to rich Alabma mineral deposits, bringing much- needed revenue to the state. At the same time, Selma citizens planned a rail l in e from Selma to Gunter's Landing now known as Guntersville.
Land Act of September 4, 1841
Under an Act of the Twenty-Seventh Congress Session 1. Chapter 16, September 4, 1841, "to the connection, by some means of internal improvement, of the navigable waters of the bay of Mobile with the Tennessee River, "...and to the construction of a continuous railroad lin e for interna! improvements from a point on the Chattahoochie River, opposite West Point, in Georgia, across the state of Alabama, in a direction to Jackson in the state of Mississippi. The United States provided to certain persons those families that were of the royal bloodline,) a monopoly in Alabama through the direction of the Legislature of Alabama to build.
Beatty family Line
The Issac Croom plantations which consisted of two homes one in Greensboro, Alabama and another in Lenoir. North Carolina were enormous. Each one consuming many counties in each state. Issac Croom's wife was the sister of the Beatty's, two generations past from North Carolina with their other family members such as Bartholomew F. Moore, through marriage into the Payseur family, who was the private attorney to President Abraham Lincoln in North Carolina and also involved with the railroad in North Carolina, with Bartholomew F. Moore was his cousin who was the Governor of Alabama, this tied a nice neat package of political control of the time period, again, as a "catalyst".
Grooms ownership and building of Railroads in the Carolinas'
Between 1820 and 1861 the family of Issac Croom had assisted in the building of the Georgetown and North Carolina Narrow Gauge Railroad Company. They were also a principal owner-operator of this line, the first railroad in the United States according to the old records. Issac Croom along with William H. Beatty and the Payseurs were all principal owner-operator's of the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad, the South Carolina Canal Railroad, The Wilmington, Charlotte and Rutherford Railroad. During this time period the iron for railroad, rails was being shipped over from England to Wilmington, North Carolina, and to Charles Town (now Charleston), construction, to keep the monopoly granted by congress to the English side of the family, William H. Beatty, as a "Federal Monopoly for the operation of a l l communications and transportation, throughout all of the state with ( ti e s into all points of the world) 'forever'.
Building the first Railroad in Alabama
The narrow gauge railroad, which did not require rock ballast under the cross ties because the train was real small and had a limited weight factor, was built from Cahaba on the Alabama River to the state capitol which was moved to Montgomery and were both on the Alabama River with a connecting route to Mobile Bay. Also by water from Mobile Bay to Cahaba. then by railroad from Cahaba to Marion, Newborn, Greensboro, to Sawyerville to Bee Branch on the Warrior River then up the Warrior River past Tuscaloosa and onto the head waters to Blount County area then back on land by railroad to the Tennessee River, this route also by passed the timber wolves that were protecting the Iron Ore in the Jefferson county, area of Alabama where Birmingham is located today.
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Nixon sealed a l l records from the Civil War time to date
President Richard Nixon sealed the records in the National Archives and the Library of congress for 50 years so that the good people of the United States might not know the truth of their ownership. If you are really good at digging out state and federal records, you can find them in a southern court house probated under the last will and testament of Lewis Cass Payseur, Estate number 12317.
The start of the Civil War
When the American Civil War came into view, iron was needed by the Confederate States of America for cannon and for iron clad gun-boats. The older iron railroad rails in areas where the Confederate government wanted to protect and seal off the invasion by the United States, they removed the railroad rails and carried them to Brierfield Iron Works and Furnaces just north of Selma, Alabama, where they were melted and formed into sheets on the rolling mill and then carried to Selma for iron clad gun-boats and for cannons. Therefore, most of the original railroad paths were removed and converted into war materials against the United Stales with the designs and assistance of then Colonel Issac Croom and other members of the Beatty family. The Payseur family were supporters of the United States Government.
Government confiscation of Beatty Property
As the war ended, and the railroad deployed by the Confederate States of America and their associated steamships which the Issac Croom and William H. Beatty families also held ownership in were confiscated, under Acts of Treason passed by the Thirty-Seventh Congress Session II. chapter 195 on July 17, 1862, and the United States cut off importation of iron and other materials from England because England had supported the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. The source of iron was not available in the quantity needed to even replace the iron railroad rails removed to be made into cannons and gun boats. The lesser of the evils then became the timber wolves in Jefferson county, Alabama. It was realized at this point by the families that to start their railroads over in the south that they had to excavate the rough materials in the south because the United States Government had stopped English importation to the south at that time.
Starting Over, and the Dec. 15, 1865 Deed of Trust
All railroads, steam ships, lands, monies and everything in Alabama and the other Confederate States of America were confiscated by the United States of America under Acts of Treason, and on December 15, 1865. all the ownership rules changed for the existing railroads and steamships and lands. With the Payseur family buying the Deed of Trust on December 15, 1865 to deed the United States Military Railroad operation
'forever'. This Deed of Trust was known as the Alabama and Tennessee Rivers Railroad Company or The
Kings Mountain Railroad Company. The government took into consideration the Payseur family background and assets as potential buyers of a l l the railroads that had been confiscated during the Civil War.
The Alabama and Tennessee Rivers Railroad Post War
As Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest said: "It's who gets there firstest with the mostest that counts!", speaks well for the Alabama Central Railroad and the Alabama and Tennessee Rivers Railroad Companies. General Forest was the President of the railroad and he also killed a lot of Yankees on a ridge just west of Cullman, Alabama at a place called "BattleGround", so the United States Army took a dim view of the business General Forest was in. The United States Government confiscated his businesses, and used them to set the example for others thereafter. Now these railroad predecessors go right through downtown Birmingham now where once were only trees and wolves.
The Payseurs and rich gold fields
The railroads' Deed of Trust to the Payseur family took into consideration many factor, including that the Payseur's gold fields in North Carolina were some of the richest in the nation and that the assets of their gold could pay for the reconstruction of the railroads destroyed during the American Civil War.
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Payseur history of operating railroads
The Payseur family had constructed and operated many railroads in the past (railroads were introduced in Paris
France in 1769).
The Payseur family Purchase and Leasing of Railroads
The facts are that the United States government confiscated the railroads throughout the former Confederate States of America and Deeded them to the family of Lewis Cass Payseur, and the Payseur family has not sold them, but they are now leased out to various operating companies; the leases specify among other things that the railroads shall remain operational forever as passenger service and for freight and communications for the United States of America and for hire to the general public, and s h a l l be returned in tenantable condition back to the landlord upon the end of the leases; all trackages and rolling stock must be in good condition upon the end of such leases.
Family Trustee buys the Covenant
Lewis Cass Payseur's mother's maiden name was Smith and it was her father that acted as an agent and trustee that actually bought the confiscated southern railroads from the government for $490, in gold.
Southerners to do the Reconstruction
Recognizing that a southerner would not have anything to do with a Union (Yankee) supporter, the Payseur family selected certain Confederate officers and Confederate government employees to head up certain businesses for the Payseur family knowing that the southerners would work for the "old Colonels" that they followed in the Civil War. Two such former Confederates who had been tried for treason and lost everything under the Acts of the United States Congress included Colonel Sloss and Colonel DeBardeleben.
The Railroad Construction Companies
A person must understand that the railroad construction companies were not the railroad operating companies, and consisted of two principal parties. The railroad construction companies received the congressional grants as monopolies, and they built the railroads then they leased the railroads to operating companies, such as Southern Railway Company (east-west line) and the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railway Company (north-south line) under the tenant name of South and North Alabama Railroad Company which operated between the Alabama River at Montgomery to the Tennessee River at Decatur.
Starting over in Railroad Building: Post Civil War
New Rules, New Land
Congress granted the railroad construction companies owned by the Payseur family, the right to build railroads, on half of the state of Alabama consisting of every other section of land, all the odd numbered sections, at the rate of for every mile the railroad was built forward, land at the rate of 15 miles each side of the center line of the original road bed was granted to the railroad, so the family built the railroads in such a manner to capture all the odd sections of many states; then placed all lands and the railroads under various leases, mostly 99-years or 999-year, and many were consolidated into the 99-year lease forming Southern Railway Company in the United States Circuit Court, June 18, 1894.
Anti-Trust Acts
When the various anti-Trust Acts were passed and while all the Payseur owned railroads were "grandfathered" the operating companies, in an attempt to hide the records, altered the facts to their benefit, forgetting that the Deed of trust was issued first by the United States Government. Refer to chapter on Anti-Trust Acts for more details.
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The Charleston Cincinnati & Chicago Railroad
Mr. Payseur's railroad, the Charleston, Cincinnati and Chicago Railroad Company organized and deployed Western Union, Western Electric and American Telephone and Telegraph Company, (the Public Service Commission) as lessees for $1.00 per pole and $4.00 per tower or supporting structure per year in rent to go along or across his railroad lands from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and from the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico to Canada, and Mr. Payseur supplied the poles from the h i s vast timber fields that he owned from coast to coast.
The Formation of Birmingham
The Payseur family 'got there firstest with the mostest', and everyone else can give you their history after Birmingham got started, but the Payseur's started it, then went on to other things: because it is all under various leases for 99 years from 1865, but Birmingham was not organized u n t i l a l l the "insiders" had their rental shares for their lifetimes and for their children's lifetimes, through such 99 year leases being extended into a final group of 99 year leases from 1894 through a number of years.
Industry Organizing
An ex-Colonel Sloss was selected to be the President and Trustee and Life Estate tenant for the owner of the railroad operation company known as the South and North Railroad. Mr. Sloss also had the same titles for another company that became known as Sloss Furnace in Birmingham where the iron railroad rails were being manufactured from the necessary raw materials that were plentiful and located in the same area of Alabama.
Likewise an ex-Colonel DeBardeleben adopted an area in Jefferson county and named it Pratt City and started operating a coal and iron ore recovery operation for the Payseur family, to supply the coal, coke and iron ore for the manufacture of iron for the railroads. Mr. Payseur named this company, The DeBardeleben Coal and Iron Company.
Ensley
Mr. Ensley, a resident of Memphis, Tennessee was brought into this area by the Payseur family to be the "front man" of the new developments now called Birmingham, and the town of Ensley was organized around Mr. Ensley's desires.
lngall Locomotives and Ship Building
A cousin by the name of lngall was set up to manufactured locomotives, in fact they are identified as having built the first diesel-electric locomotive in the world as the prototype for Mr. Payseurs' General Electric Company, lngall would later evolve into lngall Ship Building and later become known as the Electric Boat Company (Nikola Teslas brain child) and General Dynamics.
Sloss and DeBardeleben Iron Companies
Became the initial industries in the present metro Birmingham area, along with the newly organized Elyton Land Company and it set aside 51,000 areas more or less to be the metropolitan area of greater Birmingham, this established the three principal parties as Life Estate Tenants and Trustees for the real owners who desired to remain "unknown" to the general public. Elyton Land company was organized and operated by Confederate colonel Beatty, for the owners residing in North and South Carolina and in London. England as approved by the United States under Acts of Treason (Civil War). The England group is now referred to as "Lords of London".
The Pullman Company 1870
September 1870, Colonel Hudson was transferred to Birmingham where he was to organize and build the
Pullman railroad car manufacturing business for the Payseur family.
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Companies Come together
All persons come together for a short span of time in the records of the court of probate of Jefferson county, under the consolidated name of Alabama Fuel and Iron Company of New York, where Lewis Cass Payseur's son-in-law was set up to be the secretary-treasurer of the Alabama Fuel and Iron company of New York to protect the interest of its owner. Lewis Cass Payseur. This consolidation was operated by Mr. DeBardeleben's son and then his grandson as Trustees for Mr. Payseur. Mr. Payseur and Mr. DeBardeleben organized Tennessee Coal Iron and Railroad company, under the signatures of Mr. DeBardeleben. Mr. Gilmore. and Mr. Washington, and for Tennessee Coal and Iron railroad by Mr. Frank H. Peatt and Mr. J. Brown, in the State of New York in the City of Brooklyn. Kings county, on June I, 1892, under the 99 year lease recorded in the United States Circuit Court in Equity, Richmond, Virginia dated June 18, 1894. This formed Southern Railway company as the tenant for 99 years for most of the lands in Alabama and about one-half the land in Jefferson county. Alabama. In later years the company of Alabama Fuel and Iron Company of New York went through many mergers and name changes such as Mead Paper. Southern Bell and other's but s t i l l controlled by the DeBardeleben family and in the mid 1920s it was tracked in the old records and found that through embezzlement and stock fraud all the companies were stolen and they fell under the control of some other Trustees of the Pavseurs known as the Lehman Brothers.
Building Birmingham
The Payseur family organized all of the street railway system, the water works company, the road builders, and office building builders. The electrical power company, telegraph and telephone company, the gas company for the street lamps and heating buildings with coal, and with the gas which was common in the coal mines, all of these companies were the railroad. All the records of the properties were hidden from the public as were the company records of that time period.
New Banks In Birmingham
Confederate colonel Hudson was selected to organize the Birmingham Trust Savings bank, later known as SouthTrust Bank; Colonel Hudson's niece was Mrs. Lewis Cass Payseur (Mary Alice Hudson Payseur) and their daughter married the son of the Union Soldier Fulghum, the railroad construction company's general manager that built the railroad from New Orleans through Mobile to Montgomery to Birmingham to Decatur (where Confederate Colonel Sloss was President of this operating railroad tenant company) and on to Nashville, Louisville and Chicago. Upon completion of the railroad construction.
The Tulsa Pipe Line
Mr. Payseur formed Tulsa Pipe Line Company and unincorporated association to lay cast iron pipe from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and from the Gulf and Mexico to Canada, for petroleum under the leases recorded in North Carolina at the rate of $100. per month for that area of the United States, plus $.01 per gallon over 120.000 gallons per year, and that was just before the automobile went into mass production in his automobile manufacturing plant at Charlotte, North Carolina as the first mass production plant in the world according to the old records.
The Hidden Records
You will not find "Payseur" in the history of Jefferson County or Birmingham, because the name was well hidden from the public because the "covenant" is to supply the communications for the President of the United States forever as the United States Military Railroad systems and for hire to the general Public for profit.
The Wolves
Now you know something about why the wolves were pushed back so the railroads could be manufactured to span the United States from Birmingham, Alabama. Others w ill bring you forward with the history of Jefferson County as to other areas of development.
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THE AMERICAN INDIAN INDUSTRIAL AMERICA AND THE RAILROAD
In 1827 the Cherokee and Choctaw Indians, occupied extensive lands in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee and the Carolinas.
They set up a government and declared themselves an independent nation. Even though the Indians had been granted land treaties in perpetuity earlier in Americas history the white man started annulling all laws, usage's and customs of the Indians.
In the early 1800's the Payseur family had a group of people that did nothing but go all over the country side looking for first of all gold deposits then silver, copper, t i n and any other natural resource that was of value. In the states of North and South Carolina are even to this date some of the riches gold mines that this country ever had. Next came Georgia with the Dahlonega Gold mines and then on into Alabama there were vast deposits everywhere. With the discovery of gold in these areas the Payseur family would start buying up land to build railroads on for easy excess to the goldfields and for transporting it out. They had one little problem though, the land was all ready owned by the Cherokees, Choctaw and other Indian tribes. There were many Cherokees killed fighting for their lands in the south but you won't hear very much about that even today because the gold mines are still there and remember Horse Greally said, "Go west young man." This was to divert the public attention away from the gold in the south. Remember that when the railroads were being granted and also buying up land for their railroads they also bought the mineral rights to all the lands. So these railroads owned mineral land companies and wanted to get the Indians off the lands so they could mine it for mineral deposits that were under the surface of the lands.
On December 7, 1835 Andrew Jackson. President refused to sustain the Supreme court in its interpretation of the rights of the Indians, led to the plan of removing the remaining Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaw and Seminole and Chickasaw, (known as the Five Civilized Tribes). Indian tribes of the South to a reservation west of the Mississippi. This policy had been outlined by Jackson in his first message to congress, and in 1830 Congress had appropriated half a million dollars for the removal of the Indians to the west. In 1834 Congress created a special Indian Territory, and by a treaty of December 29. 1835, the Indians surrendered their lands east of the Mississippi in return for five m i l l i o n dollars, the expenses of removal- and land. The reason that Andrew Jackson turned his back on the Indians of America was because he was a very close friend and associate of the Payseur family and if the truth was known with all the wealth they had they probably owned the man. The Payseurs wanted the gold and natural resources of all the land in America and Jackson gave it to them for a price and it was probably the Indians that paid the most dearly.
At one lime about one m i l l i o n Indians, native Americans, lived on the north American continent at the beginning of European colonization in the early 1600's. By 1900, the Native American population had dwindled to about 300,000, reduced by disease, hunger, abuse, betrayal, wars of survival, and the contempt of white European civilization.
The Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho. Crow, Blackfeet, Kiowa, Pawnee, and other great Indian nations watched with growing alarm and anger as the 19th century wagon trains rolled west to spread the white man's civilization over their ancestral hunting grounds.
From time to time they attacked the wagons in an effort to turn back the tide. The U.S. government set up army posts along the Oregon and Santa Fe trails and elsewhere to protect the westward migration. President Abraham Lincoln, owned properties in Council Bluffs that he had acquired in payment for a debt and for his military service in the Black Hawk War. That war was fought in 1832 between white settlers and the Sauk and Fox Indians over possession of Rock Island, I l l i n o i s , then an Indian village. The Indians lost Rock Island. In a larger sense, these Native Americans were fighting to stop further westward expansion of white civilization.
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In 1847, essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson noted in his journal that "the timeless locomotive must be conceded. To us Americans, it seems to have fallen as a political aid. We could not else have held the vast North America together, which now we engage to do." The American nation had to be one nation "from sea to shining sea," as Katherine Lee Bates would say in 1893 in her anthem "America the Beautiful."
Between 1825 and I860, the railroad spread from the Atlantic shoreline to the Mississippi and across the Missouri into Indian tribal lands. These tribal lands, deeded to the Indians by solemn treaty, looked very promising to the entrepreneurs of Eastern civilization. Therefore, the white man rewrote the treaties he had previously negotiated whenever convenient. The government squeezed Native Americans into even smaller pockets of undesirable land or "reservations".
In California and Nevada, Paiute and Shoshoni tribes, who were hostile to the oncoming Central Pacific, were bought off by Collins Huntington, one of the Big Four, in a remarkable treaty. First, he lived up to a promise to pay them man and woman alike to work on the railroad alongside his army of Chinese laborers. Then, as Huntington himself tells it:
"We gave the old chiefs a pass each, good on the passenger cars, and we told our men to let the common
Indians ride on the freight cars, whenever they saw fit".
The railroad civilization clanked on. More and more, Plains Indians in the path of the Union Pacific's tracks and. later, several northern railroads were unable to cope with their changing world. The iron horse was an invasion of land that they had always lived on and an intrusion that they were unwilling to accept.
In 1865 United States troops tried to build a road from Cheyenne across Wyoming to newly discovered Montana goldfields. The goldflelds were in Sioux and Crow territory at Powder river and Big Horn. Sioux chief Red Cloud and his braves drove the troopers off. Another military expedition was sent with orders to tell Red Cloud that the United States would build the railroad l i n e peacefully or by force, if necessary, and that Red Cloud should consider the consequences if he resisted. White speculators with influence in Washington were after the gold that belonged to the Sioux and Crow nation.
The government called for negotiation it never meant to honor. Red Cloud met at Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory' with the army commander, Colonel Henry B. Carrington. Red Cloud listened to U.S. threats delivered by Carrington. "I will talk with you no more. I will go now," Red Cloud replied. " and I will fight you for the last hunting grounds of my people." He stormed out of the meeting.
The Sioux as well as other nations had only to look at what happened to the Cherokee, not a generation before, to know what was in store for them if they did not try to resist the white man's takeover of their ancestral hunting grounds. In 1829, gold was discovered in northern Georgia on land deeded by the U.S. government to the Cherokee nation "in perpetuity." The discovery brought thousands of white prospectors swarming illegally over the region, demanding that the government declare the treaty canceled. President Andrew Jackson responded n i n e years later. During the winter of 1838-1839, U.S. troops cruelly forced from 13.000 to 17,000 Cherokee to move to the Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma. Thousands of Cherokee died on the way. Their forced march became known as the Trail of Tears. About 1.000 Cherokee escaped removal and remained in the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern North Carolina. The white man's word meant little where his greed and ambitions conflicted with Native American rights.
The U.S. government did almost nothing to protect the interests of the Indians. It perceived them as "savages" who stood in the way of progressive civilization, and a culture totally alien to American "interests". The angry Indians attacked the railroad as it coursed it way west. There were too few federal troops in these areas to protect the railroad builders. For their part, the rail workers were armed and fought back. The Indians carried off many scalps and gave up their own lives in what they considered a just war for survival.
The uprooted Indian tribes were given the "right" to all of present-day Oklahoma except the Panhandle. Each of the five tribes formed a nation. By treaties, the United States promised to protect the Indian nations. The government guaranteed that the Indians would own their lands "as long as grass shall grow and rivers run." Each Indian nation established its own legislature, courts, and written laws, and built its own capital. Most settlements were in the eastern part of the region, but the Indians made trips to the west to hunt buffalo.
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After the first hard years, the Indians began to build schools and churches, clear land, and operate farms and ranches. They were protected from white settlement by their treaties, so the general westward movement of the pioneers passed them by.
The Civil War Years (1861-1865) destroyed the prosperity and protection the Indians enjoyed. The Five Civilized Tribes had come from the South, and many of the Indians owned slaves. Delegations from Texas and Arkansas urged the Indians to join the Confederacy. In 1861, a Confederate military leader, Albert Pike, (the founder of the Illuminati in the United States), made treaties of alliance with some of the tribes. These tribes included some Plains Indians who had moved into the area. At first the Cherokee leader. Chief John Ross, tried to avoid taking sides. But the Confederates won a battle near the Cherokee border, at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, and Ross pledged the Cherokee to the South. Pike then recruited and led a brigade of Indians to fight for the South. One Cherokee, Stand Watie, became a Confederate brigadier general. Other Indians, however, fought for the Union.
After the Civil War, Congress seized the land of the Five Civilized Tribes because they had "committed acts of Treason against the United States of America by supporting the South during the Civil War". Refer to the chapter on Acts of Treason. You may recall all supporters of the South lost everything.
The one thing that you might want to think about for a moment is the fact that the Civil War was not a war over slavery, it was a war for railroad company control. There had to be a device created by which just about all land could be seized legally and cheaply if you consider war cheap and on a blanket effect. The Industrialist's wanted to own most of the land and the minerals, such as oil which Oklahoma was rich with, to control everything and the Acts of Treason and the Civil War gave it to them. The case of the Native American Indian is just another example of the greed and power-hungry monsters we now call the "international bankers".
In the 1890's, more and more Indian tribes accepted individual "allotment" of their lands. This meant that individual Indians, not the tribe, owned the land. Because not all Indians supported the south some supported the North so they got to keep a land t i t l e . Land not allotted to tribe members was opened for settlement. In some areas, settlers got their land by run, or land rush. Other land was distributed by lottery.
The greatest opening occurred on Sept. 16, 1893. That day, the Cherokee Outlet, in north-central Oklahoma, and the Tonkawa and Pawnee reservations were opened. Over 50,000 persons claimed land in the 6 1/2 million acre area the first day.
During the 1870's, promoters of rail travel, railroad owners, railroad building contractors, and land developers were pressuring President Ulysses S. Grant and Congress to get the Indians out of the way. They argued that Native Americans threatened the safety of travelers. The Indian obstructed the laying of track. Indians did not use the land as it was meant to be used for farming and cattle ranching.
The truth of the matter was the Indians lived on land developers wanted to turn into money. Some of the land was bought cheaply and directly from the Indians. Some of it was just stolen. Native Americans, these business interests argued, generally blocked the progress of civilization that had been marching westward ever since ancient Greece and Rome. The Civil War, which had divided the nation, disrupted its progress, and fractured its unity, was over. Civilization was on the move west!
The fast growing population in the East and Midwest, thickened by European immigrants, had to have a steady supply of meat, among other staple foods, for their tables. Meat was a body-building food for those who stoked the furnaces of the mills, refineries, and factories on whose steady production the country had become more dependent. America was no longer just a farming community. Large segments of the population used the railroads to leave the farms to work in the mills, refineries, and factories of the cities. Meat had become an essential part of their diet. Railroads could bring western cattle to the Chicago stockyards and slaughter houses more cheaply and quickly than any other means of transportation. From Chicago, the butchered and dressed meat would find its way by rail again to the shops, stoves and dining tables of the American working family.
In the late 1860s, a Kansas meat contractor, supplying dwindling food ration to the railroad workers, hired a sharp shooter, ex-Pony Express rider to shoot some buffalo and replenish the meat supply. He was William F.
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Cody, soon to be known as buffalo bill. Cody was so good and so fast a hunter that he could drop a dozen buffalo with almost as many shots on the gallop before an average hunter could take aim. Nearly single handily, Cody fed the army of railroad workers with his skills. Few people sensed the possibility that the buffalo was now an endangered species and could disappear from the American continent.
The worse thing was that few knew or cared that the starvation of the Plains Indians over the cold winter was directly linked to the killing of the buffalo to feed hungry railroad builders. For generations. Plains Indians had selectively killed buffalo. They used the meat over the winter for food and the skins for clothing. They never threatened the herds, since they only killed as much as they needed. White entrepreneurs, on the other hand, had an insatiable hunger to k i l l buffalo for food and sport. Not only was buffalo meat used to feed thousands of railroad workers the year round, buffalo hide was sent east be made into clothing, rugs, and other products like footwear and handbags. The killing went on indiscriminately. If the buffalo were to disappear from the Great Plains, the Indians would have no food supply. That would mean death to their culture, but no one thought much about the future of the Native American Indian.
In the 20 year period between 1865 and 1885. an estimated 12 million buffalo were slaughtered. What the hunters did not kill, and what the Indians themselves did not k ill, the people on the onrushing trains finished off by shooting at the great beasts from train windows.
By the 1880's, there were four other transcontinental railroads chugging across the west in addition to the Central Pacific-Union Pacific lines: the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe; the Northern Pacific; the Great Northern; and the Southern Pacific. The building of all these lines met strong challenges from Sioux, Crow. Blackfeet, Arapaho, and Cheyenne, among others. But it was the Sioux' opposition to white settlement and the laying of Northern Pacific tracks in the Dakota and Montana territories that provided on of the most celebrated defeats in U.S. military history, the annihilation of George Armstrong Custer.
During the 1870's, Indian attacks on western settlers and railroad builders had become more frequent. Eastern (now midwestern) business interests were growing impatient with territorial settlement. There were vast quantities of rich, gold and silver, raw materials to be brought out of the West by the railroad. Lumber, minerals, ore, and grain, meat, and other foodstuffs were becoming more essential to the economy of the rapidly growing nation, which was moving swiftly toward full industrialization.
President Grant reacted to the pressure of business interests and the nation's eagerness to have complete control of all its territories from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He wanted to ensure completion of the railroads to accomplish this, so he called in the army. He ordered General Alfred H. Terry to squeeze the troublesome Sioux and Cheyenne onto confining reservations. No further obstacles to the building of the Northern Pacific Railroad, the Kansas Pacific, or the Union Pacific would be tolerated. Included in the military expedition was the U.S. Army's crack 650 man Seventh Cavalry Regiment Seventh Cavalry Regiment, commanded by a noted vain and pompous Civil War hero, Lieutenant colonel George Armstrong Custer.
George Custer was often referred to by his rivals as the Boy General or Glory Seeker, since he was a 21 year old general during the Civil War. He was known as "Long Hair" to the Indians, who despised him. He was despised by the men under his command as well, after he ordered soldiers caught absent without leave, shot without investigation or trial.
Indian hatred of Custer also stemmed from his fierce attacks on the Sioux, Arapaho. and Cheyenne encampments in western Kansas and Oklahoma. Indian attacks on the railroad track men had become more intense and violent. One telegraph repairman, William Thompson, was scalped alive.
Custer had originally been sent to Fort Dodge in western Kansas to drive away and finally kill off the Indians who were then trying to stop the westward advance of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. His orders from General William Tecumseh Sherman were to "destroy their villages and ponies; to k ill or hang all warriors and bring back all women and children." Custer went on a rampage. He and his cavalry wantonly killed Indian men. women, and children in western Kansas and leveled their villages.
Earlier, in 1864, Black Kettle, chief of the southern Cheyenne, signed a treaty of peace with the government and brought his tribe to live at Sand Creek in eastern Colorado. He even raised an American flag over his tent
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to indicate his loyalty to the United States. On November 29, 1864, troops under the command of Colonel J. M. Chivington stormed the unarmed Sand Creek settlement at dawn and slaughtered the sleeping Indians. The entire country was appalled by the betrayal and the murderous, unprovoked attack. Black Kettle's wife died in the assault. He survived to sign two more treaties with the government, which allowed him, and what remained of his people, to liv e in peace.
The second of these arrangements was the 1867 Treaty of Medicine Lodge. The treaty placed Black Kettle and his people on a desolated reservation. In return, Black Kettle was promised supplies and arms to hunt buffalo, which the government failed to hand over. Black Kettle and his people slowly starved. When Black Kettle turned up at Fort Larned, Kansas, in July 1868 to ask for the promised arms and supplies, he was turned away.
"We hope the Great White Father w ill take pity on us," Black Kettle pleaded, "and let us have the guns and ammunition he promised us so we can go hunt buffalo to keep our families from going hungry."
The government relented and turned over the promised weapons and supplies. Black Kettle hunted buffalo and settled in western Oklahoma on the Washita River. On November 27, 1868, in the mist of a snow covered winter dawn. George Custer and his Seventh Cavalry, which included Osage Indian scouts, slashed through Black Kettle's village, k i l l i n g him and nearly everyone else. The southern Cheyenne were never again a force in anyone's way. Other Indian nations, in particular their allies, the Arapaho and Kiowa, the northern Cheyenne, and the Sioux, would never again trust a white man's document or promise. They waged war against the railroad more furiously than ever before and their hatred for George Custer smoldered for eight years.
On Sunday. June 25. 1876, ten days before the United States would have celebrated its 100th birthday, Custer, riding into the Montana Territory on General Terry's orders, sighted an Indian encampment reported earlier by army scouts. Seemingly small, it was quietly nestled in the valley of the Little Big Horn River. Estimating that he was outnumbered only a l i t t l e less than two to one perhaps a thousand Indians to his 650 troopers and seeking the advantage of surprise, Custer quickly divided his regiment into three columns. He sent the first column under Captain Frederick W. Benteen to the h ills on his left to protect his flank. He sent Major Marcus A. Reno with the second column charging directly into the camp. He himself led the third column of some
225 men into the hills on his right, aimed at attacking the encampment from the side.
There, in those hills to his right. Custer met his doom with stunning finality. Five thousand Indians, meeting in a great war council called by Sioux chief Sitting Bull, rose up out of the Little Big Horn and wiped out the column to the last man. The fight "did not last long enough to light a pipe," according to Indian veterans of the massacre.
For the Sioux chief, Sitting bull, his lieutenant, Chief Crazy Horse, and others, the battle, commonly known as Custer's Last Stand, was the most momentous victory ever won against the white man. But the results of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, which were not known for some 10 days, proved to be without strategic merit in the Indian war against the railroad. The white man went on pursuing the red man with more vigor, overwhelming him with the iron horse.
It was not only the army, the Indian fighters, and the powerful westward pressure of the eastern population that weakened the Indian will to resist. Hunger, disease, and disillusionment also sapped the Indians fighting spirit and allowed the railroad to creep across the plains as it spread the white man's culture from east to west, from ocean to ocean.
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SOUTHERN GOLD RUSH
The history of the Carolina gold rush is written in red clay, where after a rain a Cherokee Indian could find a gold nugget in the sunlight. But now the nuggets are gone and with each rain a little of the history, little of the red clay filters down further filling the old shafts and pits of American's first gold field.
In North Carolina there were gold fields from Cherokee county east to the Piedmont and in the Piedmont from the Virginia line to South Carolina, where gold was found in at least seventeen counties. Across the Piedmont section of both Carolinas there are places where the ground has the appearance of an old battlefield pitted with holes and scarred with trenches. But no armies fought here, only hordes of men armed with shovels, picks and gold pans each fighting his personal battle with the rock and red clay.
At best, history is an imperfect account, and so we will never really know some of the fascinating details or exactly where it was that an Indian, a Spaniard or an Englishman first plucked a gold nugget from a Carolina streamed.
The Spaniards, the English and the French made strenuous efforts to find gold in the Carolinas. But the reports that DeSoto and Laudonniere sent back to Europe seem to have reflected more hope than actual discovery. The Indians, knowing the white man's obsession with gold, apparently discovered the quickest way to rid themselves of unwelcome visitors was to tell of the vast amounts of the precious metal in the mountains to the north and in rivers to the west, rivers so rich with gold that the sand was colored yellow!
Whether white men mined gold in any quantity before the Revolutionary War w ill probably remain an unanswered question. There are fleeting references l i k e fragments of shard that seem to say some gold may have been found near the Oliver Mine in Gaston County, the Dun Mine in Mecklenburg County, and placer pits in Cherokee County, North Carolina, as well as the Brewer Mine in south Carolina.
The mystery deepens because other metals such as copper and iron occur in these areas, particularly at the Brewer Mine in South Carolina. A miner named Fudge dug copper out of the Brewer Mine location before the Revolutionary War, but if he found any gold he didn't say so.
The Indians probably dug for mica and copper. In their society copper, which could be made into cooking utensils as well as jewelry, was much coveted.
But the first substantiated record of a gold find, which touched off the first gold rush in America, was the discovery of a 17-pound gold nugget by a farmer's son in Cabarrus County in 1799.
Conrad Reed didn't go to church that Sunday because his father had only one horse, so he was left to baby-sit while his mother and father rode off double to attend services. Conrad and the two younger Reed children were playing in Little Meadow Creek, which ran across the Reed farm, when they saw a shining yellow rock in the shallow waters. It was about the size of a shoe and when Conrad reached to pick it up he found that it was surprisingly heavy.
Naturally, he showed his find to his father who took it to the silversmith in Concord the following week to see if the rock had any value. The silversmith must have had a one-metal mind, for he told John Reed the rock was of no value. Reed took it home and for three years he used the rock as a doorstop.
Among all the superlatives which North Carolina claims, it has so far overlooked the claim to the world's most expensive doorstop because t h i s rock was 17 pounds of almost pure gold. It was one of the largest nuggets ever found in the eastern United States.
The year 1800 dawning on North Carolina found it a frontier state of small farms. The War for Independence won. most people barely eked out a living, yet in a Cabarrus farmhouse rested a golden doorstop that was to change the course of many lives and the destinies of towns and cities. By 1800 DeSoto's expedition had been
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all but forgotten. References to gold were regarded as legendary and were certainly unheeded by men like
John Reed who were trying earnestly to make small farms provide for the needs of their families.
No one had ever heard of John Reed in 1800 and there was really no reason they should have. He had been born in Germany, conscripted into the army and then loaned to the king of England to fight the rebellious colonists. The regiment of Germans landed on Long Island and were then reassigned to the southern theater of war where the British were preparing to launch an attack on Charleston. Some reports say Reed took part in the battle of Charleston and then deserted. Other historians say he stuck it out with the British until the battle of Camden, in any case Reed's heart was not in the fight. His sympathies were more with the small farmer and back country men who opposed the oppression of the king, be he German or English- So, over the hill Reed went, along with some of his like-minded German friends. They headed into the less populated portion of North Carolina to a place in the northern part of then Mecklenburg County, now a part of Cabarrus County. There were German-speaking people to be found there and to the north was another group of German settlers, the Moravians at Salem. John Reed had never learned to read or write English and so it was natural that he was attracted to an area where he could understand the people and be understood himself.
After Reed had settled on land which he was able to purchase from the State of North Carolina, he married a local girl named Sarah Kiser (Kisor) and they began to raise a family. Sarahs' sister Susannah Kiser married Daniel Payseur in about 1814 and this made Daniel and John Reed brothers-in-laws. Just another back country settler, another immigrant born to live and die plowing the red clay country of Piedmont Carolina except for one event. His son had found a yellow rock and in 1802 on a trip to Fayetteville, that was recognized as pure gold. The jeweler there purchased it for $3.50.
When he finished buying his farm supplies John saw some coffee beans. "Imported from South America," said the store clerk. He took them home to his wife, Sarah, and she cooked the coffee beans with pork the next night for supper. When he tasted them Reed knew he had been swindled! But the real swindle was the purchase of a 17-pound gold nugget for $3.50. Even though word traveled slowly in those days. Reed eventually heard that the jeweler had sold the gold from the nugget for several thousand dollars, perhaps more.
Back to Fayetteville went an angry German. History does not record the conversation between Reed and the jeweler but when Reed left Fayetteville for the second time he had apparently been more fairly compensated. More important than that was John Reed's going back to Little Meadow Creek to look for other golden rocks.
An there they were! The rocks shone yellow in the morning sun beneath the surface of the swiftly running stream. Most of them were small but he could have filled a quart jar with them in half an hour. He saw in the sunlight on his own farm what Hernando DeSoto had seen only in his dreams.
At that moment, John Reed, small farmer, German immigrant, former British private, was the richest man in
North Carolina!
Not only in the stream, but in the gravel beside it, were gold nuggets weighing up to 28 pounds. Although Reed did not know it at the time, the very hills on his farm carried quartz veins filled with gold ore. Until this time, in Europe, any gold discovered belonged to the king. In fact gold found by expeditions of Spaniards or Frenchmen was automatically the property of their kings. Thus, there had never been a gold rush. What sense was there in rushing in to get something the king's men would appropriate?
But on this morning in 1802 John Reed was an American and when he looked at the gold, it was the first time a man knew that the golden riches he had found belonged not to the king, as decreed in European countries, but to him. America's gold rush had begun!
Reed associated himself with partners and they began to pan the steam gravel with the help of slaves. Meadow
Creek and the surface diggings near the stream were probably the richest "placer" fields in North Carolina. In
1803 a nugget weighing twenty-eight pounds was found just under the surface of the ground by a gray headed old slave named Peter. At that time that was the largest gold nugget found in the united states.
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The early mining was of the "placer" or "deposit" type. The miners never dug deep holes but worked the rich gravel of stream beds and adjacent areas. In the east this was called "deposit" or "branch" mining while in the west the term "placer" was used. It was not for several decades that shafts were sunk and the miners went underground.
Elias Boudinot. Director of the United States Mint, writing to President Thomas Jefferson in 1805, said that "very considerable" quantities of gold had been brought to the mint from the North Carolina gold fields since the first "virgin gold" had been deposited at the mint in 1804.
The first person of national fame to reach the gold area of North Carolina was probably William Thornton. M.D., designer, architect and friend of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Thornton had won the competition to design the nation's capitol.
Thornton arrived in Concord. North Carolina in 1806. just four years after Reed's discovery of gold in Meadow Creek. He found the local inhabitants knowledgeable in matters of gold ore and discovered increasing mining activities. After examining the diggings and gold nuggets and talking with prospectors he went back to Washington to form the North Carolina Gold Mine company.
On the board of directors were Thomas Tudor Tucker. Treasurer of the United States, and John P. Van Ness, President of the Bank of the United States. Thornton traveled in important circles but he was ahead of his time. It would be several decades before large mining companies would really begin to move into Carolina. However. Thornton's foresight was so extraordinary that he was the first to realize that the real wealth of gold was in the lodes under the ground rather than the placer diggings by the streams.
Before he could follow up his gold mine development (he wanted the North Carolina State Legislature to charter the company), he was swept up by other duties. George Washington asked for his help in supervising construction of buildings in the capital and President Jefferson appointed him to head the new patent office. When the British burned Washington, Thornton saved the patent records from the holocaust, comparing their destruction to the burning of the library in Alexandria.
Unfortunately, he never found time to further pursue his interest in gold mining, but back in North Carolina along the streams of the Piedmont other men were panning, planning and dreaming.
From 1804 to 1828 all domestic gold coined by the united states mint came from North Carolina. Thousands of foreigners. Welsh, Cornish, German, Austrian, Polish and Italian poured into the Piedmont area of the state, each one dreaming of becoming another John Reed. Northern Carolina was becoming known as the "Golden State."
In 1828 Sam Martin, tired and broke, passed through Rutherfordton on his way north up Cane Creek Road. Martin had left his native Connecticut years before to hunt gold in South and Central America. He never found much. Stopping at Brindletown, he spent the night with a shoemaker and his family. That night Martin's thoughts may have been on the frustrating years of failure. But the next morning in the sunlight he saw flecks of gold in the clay between the logs of the shoemaker's home. Borrowing a dishpan from the shoemaker's wife, he panned more gold from the nearby stream than he had seen in all his travels.
This is one of several legends about the discovery of gold at Brindletown. The Burke County gold rush was off and running. Brindletown became a bustling gold boom town and there were others like Bissell, Brackettown, Huntsville and Vein Mountain. Sam Martin and the Shoemaker became partners. Martin taught Anderson how to pan for gold and in return for the knowledge, the Shoemaker provided the land containing the gold.
Sam Martin was one of those elusive men who appear only for a moment on the pages of history books. He stayed a brief six months in Brindletown but it was long enough. One day Sam Martin loaded saddlebags heavy with gold, climbed into a handsome carriage with black hat atop his head, clothes no longer patched but tailored of the finest broadcloth and taking reins in hand rode out of Brindletown up the Morganton turnpike and make his historical e x i t . Brindletown flourished and then it, too, disappeared even from the maps.
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Burke County was not the only place gold was discovered in 1828. He washed the mud and gravel out of his pan with infinite patience until there was nothing left but sand and fine gravel swishing around the edge. And then he saw small gold flecks mixed with the sand! His discovery was to produce one of the great gold mines of eastern America. The following year, 1829, the first shipment of gold from Benjamin Haile's land reached the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. This was the first domestic gold to be sent from South Carolina.
Gold was discovered in 1818 at the Brewer property over the lin e in Chesterfield County, but these were not the only two discoveries in South Carolina. The miners in North Carolina followed the gold-bearing streams of the South Mountain area into Cherokee, Spartanburg and York counties as well. The miners went up and down the stream of the Piedmont area with the speed of boll weevils crossing a cotton field, and multiplying just as fast. In the Smyrna area of York County and part of adjoining Cherokee County there were at least fifty different places where miners were digging and prospecting.
The Haile Mine was to South Carolina what Gold H i l l was to North Carolina, the state's greatest gold producing area. The gold-bearing ore extended up the hillsides and the mining of this ore led to the discovery of the veins or lodes. For twenty years the lodes were mined by leasers, each leasehold being an area fifty feet square. The deepest of the holes at this time was about twenty-five feet.
Ore was separated in rockers and in 1837 a five stamp mill was erected. Benjamin Haile would have been pleased to learn that his discovery led to the production of over six and a half million dollars in gold. This mine was the most profitable and consistent producer in the state.
At the Brewer Mine in Chesterfield County, placer deposits were distributed for nearly a mile along the ridge between Little Fork Creek and Lynch's River. By 1843 as many as 200 miners in groups of three to six were mining leases twelve feet square. Some of the "pay dirt" must have been extremely rich because even the miners in the California gold rush would have considered this a very small claim.
At one time, the Brewer Mine was operated by the DeSoto Mining Company, Incorporated, an apt name and one that would have pleased Hernando DeSoto who was also looking for gold at one time in South Carolina.
The Civil War played havoc with the gold mines. Some mines like the Haile were converted to mining copper by Confederate authorities and others were abandoned for lack of manpower. Sherman made a special point of sending a detachment of troops to burn and destroy the buildings and equipment at the Haile Mine on his march through South Carolina.
Before the War there were twenty-one working mines in Chesterfield and Lancaster counties, nineteen mines in operation in Spartanburg. Union and York counties, while Greenville and Pickens counties had eight working placer mines. Abbeville and Edgefield counties had ten working mines. This made a total of fifty- eight operating mines before energies and manpower were devoted to the Confederate cause.
During the Reconstruction period total gold production in South Carolina remained less than ten thousand dollars a vear, a fraction of what it had been before the war.
It was as if the gold had gone with the wind that blew across South Carolina after Sherman's march.
The gold rush started by a German farmer attracted another German who was to become perhaps the most famous name attached to the Carolina gold Rush. He was Chiristopher Bechtler, Sr.
Bechtler's skilled hands minted the first gold dollar ever made in America. Born in Pfortsheim, Germany in
1782, he was a s k i l l e d gunsmith with a knowledge of metallurgy, perhaps because the area in which he lived in Germany was a gold mining region. By the 1820's there was an abundance of skilled artisans in his area and reports of rich gold fields in North Carolina had reached Europe. Unlike Reed, this second German whose name would always be associated with the Carolina gold Rush, came to America willingly and made his way to Rutherfordton. confident his knowledge of metallurgy was needed in the booming mining state of North Carolina.
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Shortly after Christopher Bechtlers' arrival in the area, altho the facts are not know precisely whether he really just happened up in Rutherfordton or if he was know by Daniel Payseur. but at any rate the two became acquainted and according to the old family record Bechtler went to work for the family minting gold coins. Per this family's way of doing business Bechtler was the front man. not the owner. Many of the mines in this area and other part of the Carolinas were owned by the Payseur family such as Kings Mountain Gold Mining Company and many others but they were always in the name of someone else not the real owner of the land. This chapter is to basically give you an idea of the enormous wealth in the south and another good reason why it was so important in later years for the government to seize control of the lands and was part of the cause of the Civil War.
Money was in scant supply. The nearest mint was in Philadelphia, the roads were bad and the highwaymen were good. It was safer to ship gold to Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, and from there to England.
The Bechtlers settled on a knoll some three and a half miles north of Rutherfordton on what is today Highway
221 and Christopher Bechtler prepared the dies from which he could coin two denominations-fifty and five dollar gold pieces. It is strange that there were no laws then against the private coining of gold although there were laws regulating the coining of copper. Bechtler opened his shop in Rutherfordton in 1831 directly opposite William Twitty's Tavern, according to advertisements in the local paper. The small ads which Bechtler ran in the paper along with word of mouth references exchanged most likely at the tavern convinced the local miners that Bechtler was not only skilled but honest.
In 1832, because of the demand, he added a one-dollar gold piece to the other two coins and thus it happened that it was not the United States Mint but a German immigrant from Rutherfordton who made America's first gold dollar. Dragging its golden feathers a bit, the United States Mint did not begin coining gold dollars until
1849. Bechtler was apparently more in touch with the needs of miners and shopkeepers. Until Bechtler's dollar commonly called a "piece of eight" which was the standard monetary unit throughout the entire colonial period. Even after the Revolutionary War ended, the Spanish dollar and its fractional parts continued to circulate in the country with official sanction until 1857. A quarter of a dollar thus became known as "two bits," continuing the old Spanish term.
It is incredible but in the little shop in Rutherfordton during the first nine years that Bechtler operated it, Christopher Bechtler's books show that from January 1831 to February of 1840 he coined $2,241,850.50 in gold coins. When the Bechtler coins reached the U.S. Mint officials there immediately tested them and to their surprise found the coins to be absolutely correct in gold content. Some people thought Bechtler was putting an extra pinch or two of gold in his coins to insure their acceptance. Actually, the reason some Bechtler coins were heavier than others was that some of them contained foreign metals and Bechtler had enough skill to compensate for this by adding the extra weight of gold so the measure of gold would be accurate.
In the 1830's the American monetary system was in a chaotic state, caused in part by President Andrew Jackson's dispute with the United States bank, whose autonomy he resented. The U.S. Mint at Philadelphia had produced silver dollars as early as 1794 and gold ten dollar coins as early as 1795. But many of these had been melted down for their metal content which was higher than the European coins circulating in this country. The silver half-dollars were being hoarded by state and private banks to back their own paper money. Banks municipalities and even merchants issued paper money and tokens but through the "hardtimes" the Bechtler gold pieces were a bright spot. Merchants in the Southeast gladly accepted them.
Christopher Bechtler's son. August, carried on the family tradition, identifying his coins with the initial "A". All of the Bechtler coins are extremely rare and prized by collectors.
Finally, in 1835. because of the increasing pressure of southern congressmen. Congress passed an act establishing branch mints in Charlotte. Dahlonega, Georgia and New Orleans. Louisiana.
The establishment of these government mints were to accommodate the large amounts of gold being mined all over the south that you just won't hear very much about. There were not only the large discoveries of gold in the Carolinas' but also in the area of Dahlonega, Georgia and on down into the area of Heflin, Alabama. The engineer that researched the gold deposits for the Payseurs found what he called the largest and riches gold deposit that had ever been located in that area of Alabama and then he disappeared without a trace, his name
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was Hudson. Many other gold deposits were mined in this general area that is why the mint was put in New
Orleans, Louisiana.
The really rich gold mines were kept secret and only a few trusted people were allowed to work at them and in those days usually there were vast cotton fields all around the gold mine and in order to outsmart the robbers in the south at that time that were hot on the trail of gold, the gold was packed inside large bales of cotton and shipped in plain view of everyone on the railroads which conveniently went right through the cotton fields and close to the gold mines. And then on to a cotton mill close to the mint for off-loading.
Gold Hill Mining Company
No one can really talk long about the Carolina Gold rush before mentioning Gold Hill. The very name sounds like that of a western mining camp.
In March of 1843 eastern Rowan County began to boom, particularly the area surrounding the mine, and a name had to be selected for the post office. One cold, windy night miners and laborers crowded inside a small store to deliberate and when Colonel Barnhardt suggested "Gold H ill" region was made in 1823 by Dennis Olmstead who had just been appointed state geologist. The region was located north of the Reed Mine just over the line in Rowan County.
Because Gold Hill came along later and most of the gold was not placer or streamed gold but in veins deep under the ground, the Gold Hill mines were usually incorporated and operated by a company rather than by individuals or small groups of miners in partnership.
What was happening at Gold H i l l was typical of the new direction gold mining was to take. Before the Civil War Gold Hill had been developed and operated but not owned by Colonel Barnhardt who had made it into the most famous gold-producing area in the state. The war came and gold mining virtually ceased. To the north of Gold Hill and not far from Lexington was Silver Hill and it was there that silver and lead were mined. From 1861 to 1865 lead was in such great demand for bullets that the miners were exempted from military service.
Soon the comment became general. "The Rebs are k i l l i n g Yankees with silver bullets!" This was partially true for the lead and silver occurred together and there was no time to extract the silver.
About 1880, a distinguished gentleman arrived from Wall Street in New York, his name was George Newman. At about the same time from New Jersey came another man named Thomas A. Edison, both men wanted gold Hill, but for different reasons. Edison, who lived in a rooming house in Charlotte for several months while making an attempt to buy the Gold H ill holdings, thought he could devise a flotation method using electricity to recover gold as a by-product while also separating the copper and silver. He set up a small laboratory in the basement of the old Charlotte Mint where he conducted his experiments.
George Newman was particularly interested in the Gold Hill area because of the copper (which was later mined there as well as gold).
Newman purchased as a trustee for the Payseurs the Gold Hill interest and it was incorporated as " The Gold Hill Consolidated Company" with its offices at 30 Broad Street which if you start checking was the offices that the Trustees for Payseur operated out of and also the railroads. There was much activity at Gold Hill about the turn of the century as George imported special trainloads of well-heeled investors from New York to look over the fabulous properties of L. C. Payseurs*.
Gold Mine Use in later Years
One of the elements commonly found in old gold mines is Uranium. This, of course is required for the production of atomic energy.
At Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is the Center for the American Museum of Atomic Energy, and what is believed to be the world headquarters of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
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The federal highway from the gold fields of Dallas, North Carolina, dead ends inside Oak Ridge Tenn, in the
Federal Facility, where the Center for the American Museum of Atomic Energy now stands.
The Manhattan Project which b u i l t the first two atomic bombs. "Fat Man" and "Little Boy", was directed by Major General Leslie R. Groves, from both Oak Ridge Tennessee, and Los Alamos. New Mexico (where the design and the building of the bombs took place between 1943 and 1945 under the leadership of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer). The Oak Ridge, Tennessee uranium processing facilities supplied the uranium. Guess where the Uranium came from?
The processing facilities have since been shut down and the building, for want of a better use, has been turned into the American Museum of Atomic Energy, in order to perpetuate the land title.
On the original Payseur Lands, on the banks of the Catawba River, near Lincolnton, North Carolina, now sit two nuclear power plants, run by Duke Power Company, of Charlotte, North Carolina. Mc Guire 1&2, at Cowens Ford Dam, which became operational in September, 1981, and May of 1983 respectively. Incidentally, both of them utilize the "Pressure Water Reactor" system of generation, and all the reactor and generation equipment was supplied by Westinghouse. Of course, these facilities arc right next to the old gold mines in the region.
Duke Power Company is the tenant on these lands, of Lancaster and Chester Railway Company and the
Lancaster Cotton Mills.
According to the Springs family, the Lancaster and Chester Railway Company, letter dated December 4, 1939, specifies "Mr. Payseur held Certificate Number I...", this letter signed by A.P. Mc Lure. Vice President and General Manager of Lancaster Railway Company.
The same family and company in a letter dated October 6. 1981, says "for the record. L.C. Payseur did not own Certificate number 1 of this corporation" this signed by R. Carl Hubbard. Secretary and general counsel.
Carl Hubbard is the attorney and Secretary of the one time Bank of Lancaster, and numerous other entities for which the Springs family managed for L.C. Payseur and others.
In 1909, The Southern Power Company of New Jersey leased L.C. Payseur land and constructed the original feed lines for electric power for North and South Carolina. These power feed lines are sub-leased to Duke Power Company. According to Duke Power Company, these lines are leased by Duke Power Company from the Lancaster Cotton Mills. The Supreme Court of South Carolina, September 22, 1925, case number 11835, Lancaster Cotton Mills v. South Carolina Tax Commission Et al.
"The petition of the Lancaster Cotton Mills, as made on behalf of itself and Fort Mill Manufacturing Company and Lancaster Light and Power Company, a l l of which are affiliated, shows: that the returns made under the requirement of Acts of Congress under the Regulations of the Treasury Department were made by it in its behalf and in behalf of the other companies mentioned and are consolidated returns. That, since the year
1917, income tax returns have been mad by it to the Treasury Department of the federal government on a fiscal year basis; this fiscal year commencing on the first day of July, and ending on the third day of June of each year, and that it continuously made such returns up to and including the fiscal year 1923-24, alleging that it has a right to make such...". They are a l l one and the same.
The lease referenced by Duke Power Company specifies "Lancaster and Chester Railway Company to the Springs Cotton Mills, dated "This tenth day of June, 1940:, executed by Lancaster and Chester Railway Company, by Elliott Springs. President.
Conclusion: The power lines leased to Southern Power Company of New Jersey, by L.C. Payseur. later appeared, after L.C. Payseurs' death, in the name of the Lancaster and Chester Railway Company, being leased to (the Springs Cotton Mills, (Formerly Lancaster Cotton Mills through the name change by Elliott Springs) and to Duke Power Company.
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