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From 1799 until the early 1830s, North Carolina's Piedmont had rich surface and near-surface gold deposits. Land owning farmers were interested in improving their finances through gold mining in the slow seasons. Those unable to work their deposits leased them to neighbors or landless prospectors for additional income. Over this thirty year period, the surface placer deposits were exhausted and ended the casual off-season gold mining. Dabblers and fair-weather farmers turned miners became entrepreneurs who sought investors for the hard rock mining necessaries of labor, machinery and processing technology. State government stepped in to help them by liberalizing the terms of incorporation for mining companies. The government support of mining stock companies facilitated private profits and improved the state (and ultimately federal) money supply by adding specie and advancing industrialization in mining and, contagiously, other industries and services such as textiles and the railroads. North Carolina's early industrial leaders invested in mining stock companies. However, the heaviest investments came from Northeastern industrialists and European, especially English, mining firms that insisted upon skilled managers, labor and the best technology with which to develop their investment. Thus, a new breed of miner and mining and milling supervisor, usually immigrants from the northern states or abroad, came to dominate North Carolina's gold fields from 1825 to 1864.

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