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A HISTORY OF BLACKBALL: GOLD, GOLD, GOLD!
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DescriptionGold rushes were unthinkable before the eighteenth century. Gold fever began and grew with the beginnings and growth of capitalism – a new way of handling men and women and things that first took root in Europe and with the years drove more and more Europeans across the oceans and around the globe looking for more and more ways to make money.
The big rushes of the nineteenth century were in lands newly conquered by western states. Landowners, merchants, shipowners, factory owners and stockbrokers in those states were keen to pursue any new industry that might make a profit. Men and women who worked for them – labourers and clerks, shepherds and shop assistants, servants and seamstresses – often felt trapped and restless. Workers were on the move as never before, shifting from farm to factory, from town to town, from country to country.
The first rush of the century was in the United States. A short, sharp fit of fever in 1829 caused farmers and clerks in some of the southern slave states to behave ‘more like crazy men than anything else’ and invade the lands of the Cherokee. The next rush of the century was much bigger and drew hundreds of thousands of people from all around the world to California. One day early in 1848 a wheelwright called James Marshall was overlooking work on a millrace at a new settlement in the former Mexican province of Alta California. Flakes of gold were seen gleaming in shingle.
‘Boys, by God!’ cried Marshall. ‘I believe I’ve found a gold mine!’
Johann Suttter, the mill owning boss of James Marshall, was a businessman looking for ways to make more money. He ‘boosted’ the news about gold. Samuel Brannan, a noisy newspaperman, boosted it further by waving a glass bottle filled with Sutters Mill gold while riding up and down the straggling main street of a coastal township soon to be known as San Francisco.
‘Gold! Gold! This bottle is full of gold dust!’ he supposedly shouted. ‘Hurrah for California!’
Crews of ships plying the coast began to jump overboard. George Moonlight, sixteen-year-old son of a farming family in Scotland, was a seaman on a ship anchored in California. When word came of gold, he and the rest of the crew rushed to the diggings. Clippers meanwhile bore word to New Orleans and New York. President James Polk made up his mind to boost the diggings. He told congress that ‘the accounts of the abundance of gold are of such extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief.’ The cry was echoed by thousands of editors, lecturers and clergymen throughout the United States.
‘Paragraph after paragraph glitters with gold and groans with bullion,’ jeered The Times in London.
Westward swarmed thousands from the prairie and plains territories of the Midwest, the towns of New England and the backwoods farms of the slaveholding states that soon would form the Confederacy. Word swept through Europe. Germans, Scandinavians, Irish and British bought tickets for the Golden Gate. Word was borne by clipper and steamship to New Zealand. Young men and teenage boys bought tickets for California. A businessman in Auckland complained that ‘some hundreds’ from that raw wooden town were ‘rushing away to California.’ Word worked its way southwards. Captain John Howell, in Otago, was talked by his Māori crew into sailing his schooner to San Francisco. After dropping anchor and trekking overland to the diggings, the crew found themselves looking at gold in riverbeds very like those of southern New Zealand.
California, only a year after gold had been first seen gleaming in the millrace, teemed with what one observer called a ‘boiling mass of people’ of many nations. San Francisco was a boomtown. A traveller upon first landing at its wharves found it ‘mostly composed of rudely-built mud huts’ but on his next visit, more than a year later, could ‘hardly believe’ his eyes. The ramshackle port had become a City of Gold.
Sixteen years later the worldwide tide of the gold rushes would break on the shores of Te Tai Poutini.
And surge up the valley of the Māwheranui to Blackball.
Pic: California digger, 1851; most goldseekers were teenage boys or young menMap[1] ContributorStevan Eldred-Grigg
The big rushes of the nineteenth century were in lands newly conquered by western states. Landowners, merchants, shipowners, factory owners and stockbrokers in those states were keen to pursue any new industry that might make a profit. Men and women who worked for them – labourers and clerks, shepherds and shop assistants, servants and seamstresses – often felt trapped and restless. Workers were on the move as never before, shifting from farm to factory, from town to town, from country to country.
The first rush of the century was in the United States. A short, sharp fit of fever in 1829 caused farmers and clerks in some of the southern slave states to behave ‘more like crazy men than anything else’ and invade the lands of the Cherokee. The next rush of the century was much bigger and drew hundreds of thousands of people from all around the world to California. One day early in 1848 a wheelwright called James Marshall was overlooking work on a millrace at a new settlement in the former Mexican province of Alta California. Flakes of gold were seen gleaming in shingle.
‘Boys, by God!’ cried Marshall. ‘I believe I’ve found a gold mine!’
Johann Suttter, the mill owning boss of James Marshall, was a businessman looking for ways to make more money. He ‘boosted’ the news about gold. Samuel Brannan, a noisy newspaperman, boosted it further by waving a glass bottle filled with Sutters Mill gold while riding up and down the straggling main street of a coastal township soon to be known as San Francisco.
‘Gold! Gold! This bottle is full of gold dust!’ he supposedly shouted. ‘Hurrah for California!’
Crews of ships plying the coast began to jump overboard. George Moonlight, sixteen-year-old son of a farming family in Scotland, was a seaman on a ship anchored in California. When word came of gold, he and the rest of the crew rushed to the diggings. Clippers meanwhile bore word to New Orleans and New York. President James Polk made up his mind to boost the diggings. He told congress that ‘the accounts of the abundance of gold are of such extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief.’ The cry was echoed by thousands of editors, lecturers and clergymen throughout the United States.
‘Paragraph after paragraph glitters with gold and groans with bullion,’ jeered The Times in London.
Westward swarmed thousands from the prairie and plains territories of the Midwest, the towns of New England and the backwoods farms of the slaveholding states that soon would form the Confederacy. Word swept through Europe. Germans, Scandinavians, Irish and British bought tickets for the Golden Gate. Word was borne by clipper and steamship to New Zealand. Young men and teenage boys bought tickets for California. A businessman in Auckland complained that ‘some hundreds’ from that raw wooden town were ‘rushing away to California.’ Word worked its way southwards. Captain John Howell, in Otago, was talked by his Māori crew into sailing his schooner to San Francisco. After dropping anchor and trekking overland to the diggings, the crew found themselves looking at gold in riverbeds very like those of southern New Zealand.
California, only a year after gold had been first seen gleaming in the millrace, teemed with what one observer called a ‘boiling mass of people’ of many nations. San Francisco was a boomtown. A traveller upon first landing at its wharves found it ‘mostly composed of rudely-built mud huts’ but on his next visit, more than a year later, could ‘hardly believe’ his eyes. The ramshackle port had become a City of Gold.
Sixteen years later the worldwide tide of the gold rushes would break on the shores of Te Tai Poutini.
And surge up the valley of the Māwheranui to Blackball.
Pic: California digger, 1851; most goldseekers were teenage boys or young menMap[1] ContributorStevan Eldred-Grigg
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Location (city or town)BlackballEventA HISTORY OF BLACKBALL: GOLD, GOLD, GOLD!
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Category TagGoldmining
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Date Created7th March 2021
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West Coast New Zealand History (7th Mar 2021). A HISTORY OF BLACKBALL: GOLD, GOLD, GOLD!. In Website West Coast New Zealand History. Retrieved 11th Apr 2026 15:08, from https://westcoast.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/29073