OldManOfTheRiver
Full Member
Wayne has been digitizing the Bark Notes and I really haven't reviewed them in years but did a few days ago. Something struck me and I was wondering what the community here thought specifically about the Two Soldiers portion of the notes. You can find the link here.
"Mason told them to go up to the King and report to the foreman, Bob Bowen, and he would put them to work. One of them put his hand in his coat pocket, pulled out a handfull of nuggets and asked Mason what that was. He told them it was gold, and they said, "Oh, you are fooling." Mason told them that they could trade it in at the company store up at the King for sixty dollars and ounce for anything in the store."
So upon reflection we were on the gold standard then. Gold was roughly 20 dollars an ounce so why did Aaron Mason offer to pay them 60/ounce of gold in their ore? It makes absolutely no sense to me and I've spent the better part of 24 hours on and off thinking and researching gold prices during the 1870's and it was remarkably stable except in sort of, kind of trading in the Gold Room in New York where the infamous Black Friday of '69 was promulgated.
So why would Mason offer the two soldiers three times the going value for their ore? This casts new doubts on the veracity of the story to me even if the supposed one soldier was exhumed and reburied.
Can someone tell me with some level of confidence that gold was trading at that price because an almost one ounce 20 twenty dollar gold piece in 1875 was 20.00! I also have new questions into just how many ounces one can fit in a mason jar and whether it was refined ore from the assay they did?!, or did they crush and seperate it or not or was it just cobbed ore? If it was just ore then why offer even 20.00/ounce for the samples?
This is driving me crazy and is such a glaring affront to common sense that I can't believe no one has brought it up before.
"Mason told them to go up to the King and report to the foreman, Bob Bowen, and he would put them to work. One of them put his hand in his coat pocket, pulled out a handfull of nuggets and asked Mason what that was. He told them it was gold, and they said, "Oh, you are fooling." Mason told them that they could trade it in at the company store up at the King for sixty dollars and ounce for anything in the store."
So upon reflection we were on the gold standard then. Gold was roughly 20 dollars an ounce so why did Aaron Mason offer to pay them 60/ounce of gold in their ore? It makes absolutely no sense to me and I've spent the better part of 24 hours on and off thinking and researching gold prices during the 1870's and it was remarkably stable except in sort of, kind of trading in the Gold Room in New York where the infamous Black Friday of '69 was promulgated.
So why would Mason offer the two soldiers three times the going value for their ore? This casts new doubts on the veracity of the story to me even if the supposed one soldier was exhumed and reburied.
Can someone tell me with some level of confidence that gold was trading at that price because an almost one ounce 20 twenty dollar gold piece in 1875 was 20.00! I also have new questions into just how many ounces one can fit in a mason jar and whether it was refined ore from the assay they did?!, or did they crush and seperate it or not or was it just cobbed ore? If it was just ore then why offer even 20.00/ounce for the samples?
This is driving me crazy and is such a glaring affront to common sense that I can't believe no one has brought it up before.
