A gold coin, a tasty delicacy and a prince of France

Climb to the top of Glassy Mountain and look toward the west, the opposite side of the mountain from where Roger Richardson Hill’s stone mausoleum has stood now since 1927.

If you find someone up there with a mattock (or perhaps you call it a pickaxe) digging into the rocky soil, he may not be anxious to tell you why he’s doing it. He’ll finally let on, though, that he’s hoping to find some napoleons.

You’re noticeably surprised if you, like most of us, are familiar with the toothsome dessert by that name, and you know good and well you don’t dig for that. Then it occurs to you that you’ve read about those French princes who kept the name of their great countryman Napoleon prominent throughout former centuries. You might wonder if some careless scribe just failed to capitalize the “n” when writing about those princes.

The napoleon I’m referring to doesn’t qualify for capitalization due to the particular way in which it’s involved with a person. According to my unabridged dictionary, a little “n” napoleon “is a former gold coin of France equal to 20 francs and bearing a portrait of either Napoleon I or III.”

But if the diggers should find any of those coins on Glassy, how in the world did they get there? And anyone who wonders why Napoleon II doesn’t appear on any of the coins must bear in mind that he, the son of Napoleon I and father of Napoleon III, came into prominence after the Battle of Waterloo, but only for a brief time, for he died of tuberculosis when still a young man.

We know from the history books that back in the 1500s, Hernando De Soto passed near what is now Hendersonville. France and Spain had already come close to waging war when both countries wanted access to, and were willing to fight for, the sassafras plants growing abundantly in the Blue Ridge Mountains and providing highly valued medications for a variety of ailments. Could De Soto have brought the napoleons?

We read that gold was dug from our foothills a long time before its true value was known. As cheap and readily available as the metal was, one family even found a large lump of it highly satisfactory for a doorstop before the owner had a chance to sell the lump for $3.50, which was said to be a good price at the time.

While it’s doubtful anyone digging on Glassy Mountain nowadays expects to find gold, the efforts might still be rewarding, for we know there were a few isolated families living at the top of the mountain when the War Between the States was going on, and a handful remained until present times. Some of them, fearing being robbed, dug into the clay to bury valuable items on our mountains. Not many years ago I was shown where a short trench had been dug several feet into a clay bank bordering a seldom traveled road. Silver and gold pieces had been put into the trench, then the opening was filled back up with the clay, keeping the items safe until the war was history.

Could the diggers recently seen on Glassy be a later generation of people who had heard it told their forebears brought napoleons with them for financial support when they came nearby with De Soto? Were the diggers looking for napoleons?

It does seem odd, though, that a gold coin, a tasty delicacy and a prince of France, none having anything in common with the others, should bear the same name.

Louise Bailey is a native of Henderson County and lives in Flat Rock. She is the author of several historical books on the people of Henderson County and writes from a lifelong interest in the history of the area.