What Do Hillary Clinton And Potato Creek Johnny Have In Common Apart From A Ferocious Appetite For Gold?

Now, while the watching world and its despondent dog may be familiar with the name Hillary Clinton, the man they call Potato Creek Johnny may have many of you scratching your head in abject confusion.

Who is he? What is he? Where does he come from? And what does he have in common with Hillary?

Well, Potato Creek Johnny, aka John Perrett, is something of an American legend down South Dakota way. He’s one of Deadwood’s most flamboyant characters and is renowned for discovering one of the world’s largest gold nuggets.

The impish prospector traveled from over the pond in Wales to seek his fame and fortune in America. He hailed from a sleepy little market town called Abergavenny – the exact same town where Hillary Clinton’s paternal great grandmother Mary Griffiths was born and bred.

It’s a rare coincidence indeed. A rooting, tooting genuine character from the Wild West who shares the same roots as the odds-on favorite for the next president of the White House.

Potato Creek Johnny died aged 77, on February, 1943, and was buried at the Mt. Moriah Cemetery amongst other Wild West royalty such as Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Seth Bullock.

Although he stood just over four feet in his boots, Johnny was a larger than life sort of guy and after leaving Abergavenny, and making his was across the Atlantic to America when he was but a mere lad of 17, he headed straight to the hills of South Dakota in search of gold.

For years Johnny trawled the streams of Potato Creek in vein, but like any good pioneer worth his weight in gold knows, all good things come to those who wait.

In 1929 perseverance and patience paid off for the prospector in a big way when he hit the ultimate payday and stumbled across one of the world’s largest gold nuggets.

The leg-shaped nugget weighed in at seven and three-quarter troy ounces but almost immediately this massive lump of the good stuff attracted controversy.

Locals accused Johnny of stealing the nugget from a neighboring miner and that it was actually a mass of gold created by melting three nuggets together.

What’s a man to do? Haters gonna hate! But Johnny remained unperturbed and unruffled by the claims which were never proven and sold the nugget to E. Adams for $250, which was a lot of folding stuff in those days.

The chunk of gold was put on display at Adams Museum in Deadwood and went on to become a tourist attraction, alongside its finder.

Subsequent visitors to Deadwood would watch a long-haired and grizzly-bearded Potato Creek Johnny pan for gold as the diminutive fella would regale the tourists with tales of prospecting and other legends of the Wild West.

Just like Potato Creek Johnny, Hillary Clinton remains tenacious in her pursuit of great wealth, and just like the plucky prospector she has her roots in the sleepy Welsh market town which 1960s songbird Marty Wilde once wrote a song about.

The U.S. presidential candidate has talked many times about her Welsh ancestry, and Hilary explained in her autobiography Hard Choices that her father got his looks from a “long line of black-haired coalminers, and that “Wales has a special place in her heart.”

Hillary’s great grandmother, Mary Griffiths, married Llangynidr coal miner John Jones and the two moved to Pennsylvania where Hillary’s grandmother Hannah Jones was born in 1883.

Hillary’s mother’s family were also from Wales. Pembrokeshire, to be exact, and if Trump is “trumped” by Hillary and she becomes the first female to rule the roost in the White House, Clinton will be carrying on a rich tradition which has seen many a President of Welsh descent take the throne in Washington.

Five of the first six Presidents of the USA had the blood of Cymru running through their veins, and to date, a total of ten American Presidents had Welsh connections, including John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Morrison, James Monroe, William Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Harrison, James A Garfield, and Calvin Coolidge.

Could Clinton be the 11th President from the “land of song” who brings the Welsh connection back to Washington?

[Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]