Meriwether mines were later owned by two Grantville men, T.M. Zellars and W.A. Post. Tom Andrews took over one of the mines “after everything else had quit,” according to Bill Lowry, 87, of Grantville. “I’ve been knowing about the gold mines all of my life,” he said. Mr. Bill, who has rambled in that area since his boyhood, tells stories about the Cross, Putnam and Good mines. He said Cross and his wife came from Illinois because of the mining operation. His wife “was a good friend of my grandmother” and gave her a Seth Thomas chiming clock that has been handed down in his family. Mr. Bill’s mother was born in 1886 and could remember seeing the mines in operation. “She’d tell me about seeing the little gold bricks,” he said. Mr. Bill’s uncle, Elmer Nall, worked at the Putnam mine while in his late teens. “It was his job to work at night to keep the pump working. They had to keep the water pumped out,” Mr. Bill said. Elmer Nall tended to complain about his job. One night, there was a cart loaded with ore that got loose and ended up going down the shaft. One mine worker, a black man named Hawkins, was injured, and Nall grabbed the bell rope that kept him from being seriously hurt. When Nall went home and said he had almost been killed, his family at first dismissed his complaint of the day. Hawkins “died about dinnertime the next day,” Mr. Bill said. The gold mines in and around Coweta are now memories. They have been swallowed up in woods and, in several cases, used for farming. As the “Chronicles” noted of the bogus 1831 mine: “Later the place was settled by a good farmer, who made it better than a gold mine.”
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