To Orion Clemens
2 June 1862 • Aurora, Calif./Nev. Terr.
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00050)

Esmeralda, June 2d, 1862.

My Dear Bro:

The “Monitor” suit was decided to-day. We, (plffs.) retain 700 feet, and restore the other 100 to defts. It was agreed to set the value of the lode at $200, so as to bring the title within jurisdiction of a justice’s court. Therefore, this decision gives us title. They may appeal it to the Co. Court. If so, we will “stay with them.”

[I Mr.] Clayton seems inclined to help us all he can. I saw him yesterday, and he said that in the course of 5 or [s 6] weeks he expected to commence teaching me the process, and [the when] I have learned it, he wants Raish and [I t me] to go out to Humboldt, get it used by Humboldt Mills, and stay there and work it. As soon as I commence learning it, I shall write to Billy C.1 to begin puffing it up out there.

We haven’t money enough to work the “Flyaway;” so, we shall hold on and see if we can financier it out without cash. I

It costs me $8 or $10 per week to “batch” in this d—d place.

Send me all the money you can spare every week or so, without further orders. I have only $25 left.

I own 50 feet in the “Monitor Co.” (same ledge), and we are taking pretty good rock out of it. Assessments have cost me $12—the ground nothing.

Yr. Bro.

Sam.

[remainder in pencil:]

If I do not forget it, I will send you, per next mail, a pinch of decom, which I pinched with thumb and finger, from Wide West ledge a while ago.2 Raish and I have secured 200 out of a company with 400 ft. in it ‸—a ‸ which is [ab perhaps] (the ledge, I mean,) a spur from the W. W.—our shaft is about 100 ft from the W. W shaft.3 In order to get in, we agreed to sink 30 ft. We have [sublet] to another man for 50 ft, & we pay for powder & [sharping] tools. It is all right, if the latter can get somebody to go in with him for 25 ft. We are only taking desperate chances, this time, but it will not cost much.

Col. Vibbard wishes Gov. Nye to come down with Stark.4 Tell him so.

Yrs,

Sam.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 William H. Clagett.

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2 The Wide West claim on Last Chance Hill, Aurora, was located in 1860 by Alec Gamble and his brother, who in 1863 received well in excess of $200,000 for their stock. The Wide West Mining Company was incorporated on 17 January 1861 with a capital stock of 2,400 shares valued at $600,000. Throughout 1861 it was known as a source of relatively rich ore, its rock bringing as much as $140 per ton (McGrath, 3; Colcord, 116–17; “Mining and Other Corporations Formed in 1861,” Sacramento Union, 1 Jan 62, 2; Nevada City [Calif.] Transcript: “Letter from Esmeralda,” 14 May 61, 2; “From Esmeralda,” 4 Dec 61, 3). Around the time of the present letter a “remarkably rich” strike in the Wide West was reported: “The ledge is more than four feet wide, and the specimens are about as thickly spangled with gold, to say nothing of silver, as a turkey’s egg is with specks” (“The Esmeralda Mines,” San Francisco Herald and Mirror, 12 June 62, 1). Clemens later described ore from this ledge as “not hard rock, but black, decomposed stuff which could be crumbled in the hand like a baked potato, and when spread out on paper exhibited a thick sprinkling of gold and particles of ‘native’ silver” (Roughing It, chapter 40). Ultimately it was discovered that this “decom,” a sample of which Clemens “pinched,” did not come from the Wide West ledge. Its source actually was the Dimes blind lead (a blind lead was an ore vein that did not show at the earth’s surface and hence was discoverable only by accident), which cut diagonally through the Wide West ledge (see 22 June 62 and 23 July 62, both to OC).

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3 The spur from the Wide West was the Annapolitan lead mentioned in the next few letters. No evidence has been found to confirm Clemens’s later statement that he “purchased largely in the ‘Wide West’” itself (SLC 1869, 2).

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4 James Stark (b. 1818) was an actor well known on the East Coast since the late 1840s and in California since 1850. Following the completion of his company’s tour of Nevada Territory, Stark had gone to Aurora in late December 1861, when Governor Nye was also there. The two men reportedly had plans to establish a mill. Before the end of the year, Nye purchased $25,000 in mining property in the region from Phillip G. Vibbard, an early settler of Aurora, one of its wealthiest landowners, and, along with Nye’s brother John, an incorporator of the Aurora and Walker River Railroad. Stark also acquired mining interests in Esmeralda and in January 1863 became owner of the Aurora Mill—in partnership with wealthy San Francisco jeweler and mine investor John W. Tucker, not Governor Nye. Probably in response to the Vibbard request that Clemens here transmits, Nye came to Aurora on 22 June 1862. He, Vibbard, and Stark were soon partners in the Vibbard Gold and Silver Mining Company, incorporated on 12 September and operating on Last Chance Hill, eighty feet below and parallel to the Wide West ledge (Andrew J. Marsh, 693 n. 283; Marsh, Clemens, and Bowman, 470 n. 42; Angel, 274; Kelly 1862, 244, 252; Kelly 1863, 415; “Mining Enterprises in Esmeralda,” Marysville [Calif.] Appeal, 28 Dec 61, 3; “The San Francisco Spirit of the Times . . . ,” Nevada City [Calif.] Transcript, 18 Jan 62, 2; Veni, Vidi 1862, 1; “Mining and Other Corporations Formed in 1862,” Sacramento Union, 1 Jan 63, 1; Pioneer, 2; Keseph, 1; Langley 1862, 383; Briton, 1).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).

Previous publication: L1, 216–217; MTB, 1:201, excerpt; MTL, 1:79, same excerpt.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 459–61.

Emendations and textual notes:

I Mr. • [‘M’ over ‘I’]

s 6 • [‘6’ over ‘s’]

the when • [‘whe’ over ‘the’]

I t me • [‘me’ over ‘I t’]

ab perhaps • [‘pe’ over ‘ab’]

sublet • sub-|let

sharping • [sic]