Rare Promotional Photo Album of Georgia Gold Mining Operation

(Georgia – Gold Mining) Views On the Martin Gold Mining Properties in White County, Georgia, U. S. A.

[Atlanta: The Franklin Printing & Publishing Co.] 1897, oblong quarto, 45 original photographs, mounted on canvas, printed list identifying the photographs, bound in full contemporary leather, title stamped in gilt on front board. Some rubbing to binding, re-backed with recent leather spine, dyed to match, corners repaired, some chipping to original endpapers, else a very good clean copy.

Rare promotional photographic album, presumably produced for agents to use in soliciting investment, which documents the operations of this gold mining property located in the Nacoochee Valley, White County, Georgia. The photographs depict the buildings, proposed townsite, placer mining and hydraulic operations, Reynolds Vein, tunnels, and surroundings, Duke’s Creek, Chattahoochee River, Mount Yonah, farms, etc., of this company’s works.

Gold was discovered in White and Lumpkin Counties in northeast Georgia. This prompted a gold rush, known by the Cherokee inhabitants as “The Great Intrusion.” Gold rush towns sprang up in both counties quickly. The U. S. Congress established a branch mint at Dahlonega in 1838, the Cherokees were driven out in 1838-39. The gold began to play out in the 1840’s, the California Gold Rush saw the miners of Georgia leave in droves. There was a brief resurgence in activity in the 1850’s when returning miners from California brought back the hydraulic mining techniques employed there. The mining industry again fell into a slump with the advent of the Civil War and the Dahlonega Mint closed.

Mining continued on a limited scale until the turn of the twentieth century, when the advent of new mining technologies gave rise to a flurry of new activity. Several companies set up gold-processing plants, one of which, erected by the Dahlonega Consolidated Gold Mining Company on Yahoola Creek, was the largest ever built east of the Mississippi River. None of the operations, including that of the present company, were able to turn a profit though and soon went out of business.

This appears to be the only surviving copy of this promotional album it is unlocated on OCLC.                                                                                                                                   $ 10,000.00

Apianus, Petrus, Gemma Frisius, Cosmographicus Liber Petri Apiani Mathematici, iam denuo integritati restitutes per Gemmam Phrysium. Item eiusdem Gemmae Phrysii Libellus de Locorum describendorum ratione, & de eorum distantis inuendis, nunq’ ante hac visus.

[Antwerp: Joannes Grapheus for Arnold Birckman, 1533] quarto, sixty six leaves, 132 pp., 3 (of 4) volvelles, lacking revolving portion of woodcut on leaf LIII, two separately printed woodcut elements pasted to leaf LV, as issued. Illustrated with woodcuts on forty-two pages, many full page. Bound in modern full calf, red morocco spine label.

Folio 34 contains a chapter on America, and folios 51-52 also partly relate to America. Peter Bienevitz (1495-c. 1551, better known under his Latinized name Petrus Apianus), was Professor of Astronomy at the University of Ingolstadt, for more than thirty years. He was an inventor of astronomical instruments and designed one of the earliest maps to contain the name America, which appeared in the 1520 edition of Solinus. On the revolving diagram of the world in the present work, on leaf XXXII, the Western Hemisphere is identified as “America.” His mathematical and astronomical works must always take a prominent rank among those relating to the discoveries in the Western Hemisphere. “Apian was an astronomer and mathematician; in his Cosmographicus Liber (Landshut, 1524; subsequently edited by the great Flemish mathematician, Gemma Phrysius, under the simpler title of Cosmographia) he based the whole science on mathematics and measurement, following Ptolemy in making a distinction between geography (the study of the earth as a whole) and chorography (the study of specific areas). His work may best be described as a theoretical textbook; for a hundred years it was a standard source.” – Penrose, Boies, Travel and Discovery in the Rennaissance 1420-1620, p. 309.  The work is also of importance because it contains the first appearance of Frisius’s important treatise on topographical triangulation, Libellus de Locurum Desribendorum Ratione, a landmark in the history of topography. This short but extremely important treatise by Gemma Frisius (1508-55) had an enormous influence on cartography. Frisius’ personal influence upon Mercator also had a significant impact upon the history of cartography. (cf. Mosselmans & Schnaerts, p. xiv). 

Harrisse, Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, 179; Sabin 1742; JCB I, p. 106; European Americana, 533/5; Ortroy 27                                                                                                                          $ 6500.00

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