The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1896-06-24
A FAMOUS GOLD MINE.
Unwritten History Of Riches, Poverty,
Pathos and Tragedy.
AtEd.ltG Jon1'nGL.

atlanta Journal.
McCoRM1cK, S. c., June lin
Edge6eld County, South Carolina, not
over a mile from this place, is the old
Dorm mine, the richest gold producing
property in it's palmy days ever found
in the South. Practically abandoned
now, the last find of Importance made
years ago, the glamour that once over.
hung it has been long ~dispelled and
the fame it once enjoyed has been long
forgotten. A wayfarer, possessing no
knowledge of its past, CHANGING to
pass that way, sees only two common
place pits sunk in a red, sterile soil.
Time has destroyed all outward tokens
Of the romance Of its history, and
eradicated from memory it's unwritten
chronicle Of youth, power and wealth
sacrificed in the pursuit of a seeming
ohimera, superseded by degradation,
in turn by "wealth beyond
the dreams of avarice," insanity and
death, with a faith whose depth and
constancy would be thrilling were it
not for the pathos insistent through it
all.
Hundreds of people who each year
in the cars of the Port Royal and
Western Carolina railway pass between
it's shafts close enough to toss a pea
nut down them, have seen their yawn
ing mouths and vaguely wondered at
their meaning with never an idea that
the story Of their being is intensely
dramatic.
Few in the immediate neighborhood
even, know in more than a legendary
way the story that surrounds them.
Yet, it is one to which none of the
precious metal producing States Of the
West, for all the intense though alb
stract interest with which the invaria-
bly, accompanying element Of tragedy
and the glamour Of a land Of gold
invest their mines, can offer a parallel,
and the fact that today, when the
prospects for gold production were
never better in the South, a lone toll
er is digging and delving there in ne
enactment of what seems to be the
closing chapter of the history Of that
mine, whose wealth was the main
spring of a splendor that for a time
dazzled the South, lends it a touch of
pathos that heightens the effect of the
tale. No other mine in all this Sec
tion ever gave so richly or in giving,
proved so fatal.
Its history began with a light pro-
logue in 1910, that rapidly assumed a
heavier aspect. A young man, Will
liam Dorm, a true type Of the old South,
returned to his ancestral home after a
four years course in a Northern COL
lege, where he had been an enthusiast
tic student of mineralogy, and found
in one corner of a broad cotton field, q
rocky, sterile spot given over to briars
and brambles, a peculiar black sand
that his training told him infallibly
indicated the presence Of gold.
He was rich, and more to verify the
fact for his own satisfaction than with
a hope of gain, he called laborersfrom
the fields and put them to work sink
ing a shaft. With it's progression, he
was caught in the clutch Of the gold
fever, and interest in other things
fading, he devoted all his time and
energy to prosecuting the work.
To his enthusiastic spirit it pro-
ceedeo TOO slowly and more men were
put at work. In a short while the
force wal doubled, then %quadrupled,
and then another shaft was started
with an equal number Of men digging
there. At first the young planter
scarcely appreciated the expense and
gloried in the attention and comment
it excited in the surrounding section,
the people of which awaited with
treathless interest the find they at
first considered inevitable.
But days heightened into weeks and
weeks into months and months into
years without its being made. Dorm
had begun to feel the effects Of the
constant drain, and the dimunitiou in
his income because of the neglect to
the crops. A few horses were sold to
meet a temporary embarrassment, and
some people who had long ago begun
to doubt, expressed their skepticism
openly. This sacrifice was Don fol-
lowed by another, a few slaves this
time. Then a few acres of the prince
ly old plantation were converted into
cash and poured into the ever deepen
ing holes. The thing once started,
kept on interminably, and more stock,
more slaves, and more lands went, In
til finally the home itself was sacri-
feed and one by one the negroes dis
posed of until but a few remained.
Dorn began to deny himself and in a
few brief weeks the quondam planter
found himself penniless, living ina
hut once occupied by slaves, his only
earthly possession a yoke of oxen:
He, once the owner in fee simple of
over half a hundred human beings,
the erstwhile absolute monarch of a
domain as large as q German princi-
pality, in whose veins blood of only
the purest patrician strain flowed,
found himself at manual labor. swing
ing a pick, and in squalor, ostracised
and despised.
But in the face of it all, Of the tor
ture his sensitive nature must have
suffered, he kept as placid as of yore,
determined to fight to the last ditch
with a smiling face and brave exterior,
and vindicate himself or perish.
Family and friends had renowned
him. the poor whites laughed and
gibed him, ribald songs and jokes on
"Dorn the miner grew current, and
absolute starvation stared him in the
face. Arrangements had been made
TO let the oxen go, and with one Of
the "buckra," who condescended to
talk with him, negotiations were
opened, Dorm standing at the bottom
Of the shaft, ragged, pinched and pa
tnetic, the would be purchaser on the
brink, ar liant and contemptuous.
1t was ,um pitiful enough that
was askeu Ior them, but the man dis
painfully declined to consider it. A
spark of the old independence and
loneliness flashed up in the owners
breast, and he told him to 'take them
at that figure or CO. The fellow
pulled petulantly at a sassafras bush