[Ads-l] Gold in them thar hills

Thu Apr 13 18:39:49 UTC 2017

The Adventures of Mark Twain as Indirect Quote Magnet:

Garson doesn’t have “There’s (or That’s) Gold in Them Thar Hills” on the QI site, so I needed to do some digging when I came across a passage in a novel (Lisa Gardner’s _Say Goodbye_) that has a scene set in Dahlonega, GA, home of the pre-49ers gold rush and of the Dahlonega Gold Museum State Historical Site (4.5 stars on TripAdvisor!).  A local sheriff is telling the detectives (in town to track down a mass murderer who apparently visits the area from time to time) about how the state geologist Matthew Fleming Stephenson tried to convince the gold miners to stick around rather than wander off to the Sierras to become the 49ers (conveniently rhyming with “miners”, not to mention providing a good name for a football team down the road a piece).  So, we and the detectives learn, Stephenson pointed to the Blue Ridge Mountains just outside of town and announced “There’s gold in them thar hills”.  But did he?  Some say so, but they seem to be the usual impeachable sources...
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From its steps in 1849, Dahlonega Mint assayor Dr. M. F. Stephenson tried to persuade miners to stay in Dahlonega instead of joining the California Gold Rush, saying, "There's gold in them thar hills.”
https://www.mapquest.com/us/ga/dahlonega-282036956?zoom=3

When gold was found in California in 1849, standing atop the steps of the Lumpkin County Courthouse in Dahlonega, mint assayer M.F. Stephenson begged miners to stay in Dahlonega instead of heading west, saying “There’s millions in it!” But with time, as is often the way with words, that famous plea morphed into, “There’s gold in them thar hills!”
http://kayharms.com/2013/08/theres-gold-in-them-thar-pages/

[and many other such]
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Other sources, apparently more careful, lay the line at Mark Twain’s mountain cabin door, even citing the fictional character who speaks it and the book in which he appears.  

Legend has it that it was on the steps of the county courthouse there in 1849 that Dahlonega Mint assayer, Dr. M.F. Stephenson, tried to dissuade miners from moving on to the California Gold Rush by saying, “Why go to California? In that ridge lies more gold than man ever dreamt of. There’s millions in it.” Another story tells of Mark Twain hearing this second-hand and coming up with the more famous version for his fictional character, Mulberry Sellers*: “There’s gold in them thar hills.”
https://customerthink.com/there_s_gold_in_them_thar_databases/

When the gold rush in Georgia was believed to be over, many miners headed west to join the 1849 California Gold Rush. Stephenson thought differently and in the town square proclaimed to over 200 men, “Why go to California? In that ridge lies more gold than man ever dreamt of. There’s millions in it.” This excerpt was retold to Mark Twain by the miners who moved to California from Georgia and may have inspired his character Mulberry Sellers. Sellers was famous for his lines “There’s gold in them thar hills” and “there’s millions in it.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._F._Stephenson
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Still other authorities simply assert that Stephenson did utter the less eloquent “There’s millions in it” and treat “There’s gold in them thar hills” as a curiously unlikely “corruption” of that line.  (“Sparrow grass” as a corruption of “asparagus” maybe, but I can’t imagine proving the derivation of “There’s gold in them thar hills” from “There’s millions in it” as a case of corruption even in a jurisdiction with a hanging judge.). Here are some examples:  

From _Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachian Mountains_
by Donald Edward Davis (2011)
In 1849 Georgia state geologist Matthew Stephenson publicly pleaded with the men [the future 49ers who were setting out to the California Gold Rush] to stay in Georgia, saying “there’s millions in it”—a phrase that was reportedly corrupted into “there’s gold in them thar hills"
https://books.google.com/books?id=rEP2G08cLTkC&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=%22there%27s+gold+in+them+thar+hills%22+%22Stephenson%22&source=bl&ots=8-gCZyHEib&sig=HpXx2yc6c9bEpCiNmuCrtdLCtBI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDp8CRnqDTAhXD4iYKHdb-Ce84FBDoAQgfMAE#v=onepage&q=%22there%27s%20gold%20in%20them%20thar%20hills%22%20%22Stephenson%22&f=false

[The answer in A below is courtesy of Arizona’s official historian Marshall Trimble]

Q: What’s the story behind the phrase “There’s gold in them thar hills?”
A: That comes from Mark Twain’s 1892 novel _The American Claimant_. He supposedly got it indirectly from a Georgia assayer, Dr. Matthew Fleming Stephenson, who said, “there’s millions in it,” to keep locals from heading to California for the Gold Rush in 1849. The phrase later became corrupted to the above.
http://www.truewestmagazine.com/whats-the-story-behind-the-phrase-theres-gold-in-them-thar-hills/
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Another version of the story combines theory #1 and theory #2:

I suppose most investors in North America would be familiar with the term, “There’s gold in them thar hills, boys,” not knowing that it was a quote from a Mark Twain book set in California. But Mark Twain didn’t invent the phrase, he stole it. Or borrowed it depending on how you view it…It was in early 1849 that the director of the Mint at Dahlonega, Dr. M. F. Stephenson spoke from the steps of the mint building in a futile attempt to convince the miners to remain in Georgia to mine rather than to flock to California to chase what might be an impossible dream. “There’s gold in them thar hills, boys,” he shouted as he pointed at the hills surrounding Dahlonega.
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/moriarty/moriarty051311.html
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On the basis of these accounts, I was somewhat inclined to believe that this time Mark Twain really did come up with the quote himself, especially given the apparent specific source of the line and the character who utters it.  But then I found Barry Popik’s entry (http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/thars_gold_in_them_thar_hills):

"Thar’s gold in them thar hills” (or “There’s gold in them thar hills") is a clichéd saying, supposedly originating in American gold mining of the 19th century. There is no evidence that M. F. Stephenson and the Dahlonega, Georgia, gold rush inspired the phrase. Mark Twain’s character of Mulberry Sellers is often given credit for saying this in the novel The American Claimant (1892), but the saying does not appear there. 
“There’s gold in them hills” has been cited in print since at least 1906; “There’s gold in them thar hills” was called an old-time line in 1922. The line is still used, especially in the gold industry.
[…]
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"…but the saying does not appear there”. So back to square one, but with the new mystery of how it is that so many “historians” ended up being so sure that Mulberry Sellers announced “there’s gold in them thar hills” in _The American Claimant_ (an actual novel he really did publish in 1892) when he didn’t.  Without tracking down the book in the Yale Library, no doubt to confirm Barry’s observation that the line doesn’t occur therein, I wanted to ask whether anyone might have any theories on either why Mulberry Sellers said what he didn’t say or who (in real life or fiction) was the first to point out that there was gold in them thar hills, whether pointing out to the Blue Ridge or the Sierras.

LH

*note that Mulberry Sellers and Matthew Stephenson do share their initials

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