From the Covington Enterprise [Georgia Enterprise 1865-1909]

Twenty-two years ago, as the story runs, Mr. Pendley was living at Sugar Hill, Georgia, and was then engaged in gold mining with Moses Lott. Lott had heard of a very rich Silver mine from John Lumpkin. Lumpkin had heard of it from a Baptist preacher, who lived near Carnesville; the preacher had heard it from a man who had died near him, and who on his death-bed had given the preacher a minute description of the mine and its surroundings. Lott told Pendley that the stranger on his death-bed said that he and other South Carolinians had come out among the Indians hunting gold and silver ore; that they crossed the Oconee at Hurricane Shoals, proceeded along a well-known Indian trail to the Chattahoochee, went down it to the mouth of a large creek, and in hunting a place to cross, went up the creek some distance, where two of the Carolinians - the stranger being one - were captured by a company of Spaniards, were carried at night some four or five miles south of the head of the creek, and were put to work in a silver mine during each night, and just before day they took the silver ore upon their backs, went due south from the mine five miles to an island covered with an immense swamp growth, and in the middle of this island, in a rude shop, they worked ore and moulded the metal into silver dollars; that when the Indians found them out they filled up the mine with timber and dirt, buried as much as

in the middle of the shop, burned down the shop, released the two South Carolinians and left; that one of the South Carolinians was lost, and that the dying man was on his way with the great secret, which he revealed to the preacher on his death-bed. With this account Mr. Pendley set out in 1863 to find the mine answering to the description. It is situated two miles due north of Suwanee Creek, in Gwinnett county, and the island is on Beaver Ruin Creek, five miles due south of the mine. On the island Mr. P. found cinders, Indian vessels and implements, and the hole in the ground which had been filled up by old Billy Chamblee, who cleared up the island, and who testified to having found the hole open. Mr. Pendley went to work on the old mine, and continued until his small capital was spent, and he suspended. When again his means enabled him to renew his labors, the war came on and forced him to defer it. In 1871 he resumed work again alone, followed the old tunnel by sinking shafts nearly two hundred feet, without finding anything but unmistakable evidence of the old tunnel, which was filled with leaves, brush, oak-post and timber. A few weeks ago be reached the end of the old tunnel, and found a vein of mineral ore one and a-half feet thick and fifteen feet wide. Above it there is a layer of white clay; beneath it there is a hard, yellow rock, and on each side there is a wall of very hard, blue sandstone. The ore consists of two layers, one bluish, the other reddish brown; is very soft - somewhat cohesive - and very heavy.