M. F. Stephenson

Matthew Fleming Stephenson was born in Virginia in 1802 and made his career as a geologist, mineralogist, and tireless promoter of southern mineral wealth. In the 1840s he served as assayer of the United States branch mint at Dahlonega, Georgia, the institution established in 1838 to coin the output of the Georgia Gold Rush.

Stephenson owes his lasting fame to a single speech. In 1849, as news from California drained the Georgia diggings of miners, he addressed a crowd of about two hundred from the Lumpkin County courthouse square, pointing toward Findley Ridge and declaring, "Why go to California? In that ridge lies more gold than man ever dreamt of." The miners left anyway, carrying a mocking paraphrase west with them, and the line evolved into the proverbial "there's gold in them thar hills" — a phrase later popularized through Mark Twain's fiction, whose gold-obsessed character Mulberry Sellers is thought to echo Stephenson.

Stephenson remained a devoted student of Georgia's resources, publishing his major work, Geology and Mineralogy of Georgia, in 1871, along with Smithsonian-published articles on ancient mounds and a pamphlet on Georgia gemstones. He died in 1882 and is buried in Alta Vista Cemetery in Gainesville, Georgia — remembered less for his science than for the most famous boast in gold rush folklore.