Matthew Miller takes followers on the crime and Punishment Historical Walking Tour in Dahlonega. The tour is offered twice a week when festivals are not in town.
“It’s morbid, but fun,” the dark-bearded uniformed storyteller told tourists gathered outside the legendary old justice building in the middle of a former gold rush town. “That’s why we’re here!” hooted an onlooker ready for tales of woe, corruption, thievery and murder.
With that, guide Matthew Miller, began the tales that seemed to seep like an eerie mist from that very edifice, The Dahlonega Gold Mine Museum, and other structures nearby where blood was spilt on concrete floors and gunshots boomed from shadows in upper floor windows.
Miller, assistant manager at the Georgia historic site in the center of the Dahlonega Downtown Square, developed the on-going “Crime and Punishment Historical Walking Tour” from a former manager’s notes, museum archives, and an on-line database of historic newspapers. As he researched, characters leapt from the pages chronicling hog thefts, store robberies, and town uprisings from the 1830s when gold miners reveled in taverns through the 1970s with a mayor’s mystery shooting. He even uncovered a judge’s surprising decree for the accused after the theft of five silk napkins from a hotel and restaurant. Or was it a brothel?
“Some of the crimes and punishments don’t make sense,” said Miller, as he led seven tourists on a half-mile walking tour starting just outside the 1836-built Lumpkin County Courthouse, where the balcony overlooked the town’s gossip alcove. He took his troupe through “different time periods with different standards” promenading from the 1830s-1840s gold mining era and through a mini-gold boom in the 1850s. The walk proceeded into the “Bonnie and Clyde” style robbery sprees of the early 1900s to the bloody death just 50 years ago. Miller paused his discourse on a corner when a police car drowned out his voice. “There’s always a siren when I do this tour,” he quipped.
Miller walked the narrative around the square, stopping at century-plus old buildings bustling with shoppers and diners. Two buildings that once hosted brawls and drawn pistols now pose as a popular Cajun restaurant serving beignets on a balcony and a mini-mall of shops and eateries in an old Chevrolet dealership. Bizarre and occasionally funny anecdotes offer a glimpse of an evolution from a rough and rowdy mining town with a nearby suburb called “Knucklesville” (or Nuckollsville also known as Auraria) to a charming modern-day tourist mecca in the Georgia mountains. “Nuckolls was a family name,” Miller revealed. “There was also a lot of fighting.”
Originally from New York, the tour guide delved into the lore of the small southern mountain town when he started work at the museum in 2023. He found more sagas than he could fit into a one-hour nearby stroll, so he picked a few that he deemed especially intriguing or humorous to go on tour. “All are based on historical accounts,” he said. “I have a Generalist Degree … I love everything, but especially things that are lesser known, little secrets.”
That is what two longtime Lumpkin County residents came to hear. “It’s informative … you wouldn’t get this information anywhere else,” said Bob Kendall. “I would like to go through it a couple more times,” Margret Kendall added. Both were relieved not to hear the names of any of their ancestors among the perpetrators or corrupt lawmen. Some of the family names still grace local mailboxes.
A couple visiting from Flowery Branch decided not to give their names to a reporter but said they were very entertained and enlightened. “That was so much to learn about … so much stuff wasn’t recorded” in mainstream history, they said.
Miller is still picking Dahlonega’s rich history to choose which stories to tell on the Thursday and Sunday outings, offered year-round except when there is a festival in town to crowd the route. He has hosted between five and 30 tourists and expects the largest groups to come this summer. Tours cost $5. Show up at 1:45 p.m. at the Gold Mine Museum. Tours start at 2 p.m.
Photos: by Jane Harrison
