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This year's Gold Rush Festival will see the crowning of Leon and Doris Moss.
This year’s Gold Rush King and Queen title goes to Leon and Doris Lingerfelt Moss.
The Mosses were shocked when they learned they had been chosen to join the ranks of Gold Rush royalty.
“It was surprising,” Leon said. “We weren’t expecting it.”
“I felt like there were other people that deserved it more,” Doris said.
But they are honored, and especially especially excited to spend the day with family.
That family connection in Lumpkin County is deeply rooted. In fact, they’re not exactly sure how deep the roots go.
“My great-great-granddaddy, maybe…I don’t know,” Leon said.
Their roots and their closeness and dedication to family, said Missy Cain, is why she nominated the couple.
“That’s what the king and queen used to be—someone who was a Lumpkin County native and who was devoted to family, even extended family,” she said.
Leon is Cain’s great uncle. She can remember him being at all the family gatherings, and he and Doris visiting with the sick and taking food when the occasion called for it.
“They didn’t just say I love you. They showed it. They showed up,” she said.
FUN IN THE FIFTIES
The only son of Major and Floye Rider Moss, Leon was raised with 10 sisters. Doris was the oldest of Claud and Annie Seabolt Lingerfelt’s eight—five sisters; there are also three brothers.
While not all their immediate family still live, there have been some additions. Leon and Doris have three children—Vicki Moss Dowdy, Ginger Moss Gentry and a son, Jacky; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Leon and Doris met in high school. There wasn’t much to do in Dahlonega in those days, Leon said.
“When we were dating we’d go to Dahlonega. The road around the square wasn’t paved and there wasn’t no parking. We’d just drive around. Some of the boys would try to spin out and get the police to chase after them,” he recalled.
The two were married in January 1956 by Clerk of Court Charlie Smith. Smith was also a reverend, and preformed many wedding ceremonies from his home on Turner Road.
“He had the TV on and was watching wrestling, and he never turned it off when he was marrying us,” Leon said.
Regardless of the lack of ceremony at their wedding, they will celebrate 67 years together next year.
“He was really, really, kind,” Doris said when asked what made her choose Leon as her life partner. His best quality, she said, is his patience.
Leon said, “She was the prettiest girl I ever seen—she still is. She’s patient with me—and she makes good biscuits and she’s a good cook.”
Leon was raised on a farm where his dad “grew his corn and made his corn whisky,” like many people in Lumpkin County in the ‘50s and ‘60s. He said he “helped some” when he got older. “We were lucky. We never got caught.”
IN BUSINESS
Doris went to work at Pine Tree/Burlington, a bit before she was old enough, she said.
“I didn’t have my license, but Sheriff [Alvin] Christian just gave mine to me,” she said.
Leon took jobs at Camp Wahsega and Mincey’s Sawmill before going into chicken farming for Folgers. The Mosses grew broilers.
“Us girls helped. Nothing was automated back then,” Ginger said. “We had to wash all the jugs, and hand feed and water.”
“We had to make her [Ginger] mad to go up there and gather the eggs, but when she was mad she could really work,” Doris said of her youngest daughter.
The family got rid of the chickens when Leon went to work for the city of Dahlonega in 1979. He retired as Road Supervisor in 2001.
Doris took a job at North Georgia College before it was a university, and retired in 2000.
After retirement and before COVID the two were in the habit of going to McDonald’s for breakfast and coffee and meeting up with some of their friends.
“They loved catching up and reminiscing about old times,” said Vicki. They hosted a “pickin’ and grinnin’” event for family and friends at Oak Grove Event Hall, complete with a pot luck dinner.
Doris loved going to yard sales and checking out the local thrift stores with her sister, Joyce; exercising together at the Senior Center then heading to Chic-fil-A “to get caught up on all the gossip,” according to Vicki.
‘NEVER WANTED TO LEAVE’
Now Leon spends his time gardening, giving away much of what he grows to family and friends; watching Nascar; tending to his pride and joy, a 1930 Model A that will be their chariot in the Gold Rush parade this year; and enjoying family.
Doris loves cooking for the family and working in her yard and flowers, though she says she isn’t able to do that as much as she used to.
Vicki said her mother has “some of the most beautiful flowers around.”
“I have some from my mamma,” Doris said, “and everywhere I went if I saw something I liked I’d take a root.”
“And she gave many away, too,” Ginger said.
“The family is blessed to be able to share all the holidays together, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas at Nana and Pa’s home—that’s what we all call them, Nana and Pa,” Vicki said. “Pa always said he wished we all lived in the same house together.”
The entire family—recently took a trip to Pigeon Forge Tenn. Nothing makes them happier than all being together, Vicki said.
Leon agrees. “I like being around my family. That’s why I just never wanted to leave Dahlonega.”
It’s the same for her, Doris said. “All my friends and kids are here. I get to see them every day. It’s about love. That’s what it’s all about—and trust in the Lord. I hope that’s what I’v passed on to my children.”
For Leon, he hopes he has handed down the lessons of “…being honest with everybody and treating everybody right. That’s what I have tried to do all my life.”
Some of the time-honored values of those who settled Lumpkin County back in the days of the Gold Rush, now brought forward to 2022 by this year’s King and Queen, Leon and Doris Moss.
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The couple will be crowned as King and Queen of Gold Rush Days Saturday, Oct. 15, at 2 p.m. on the main stage in front of the Welcome Center.