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Allison, Frank H., Arthur W. Hoyt, et al.

[Arthur Hoyt Colorado Silver Mining Archive.]

Georgetown, Colorado, Templeton, Massachusetts, and other locales, 1867–1878. 105 manuscript letters (12mo–8vo) and miscellaneous documents and papers, 316 pp.; 6 manuscript plat maps (11 x 13 cm– 25.5 x 39 cm); Some letters collated and affixed to one another. Many of Hoyt’s retained copies bear the note “copy.”.

A rich archive of letters, manuscript plat maps, and papers documenting Arthur Hoyt’s financial management of the Blue Jacket Lode and Cashier mines during Colorado’s silver mining boom, featuring extensive correspondence between Hoyt and his on-site business partner Frank Allison, who worked and managed their Colorado mines first-hand.

This substantive archive relates to the silver mining ventures of the noted railroad engineer and Colorado mining businessman Arthur W. Hoyt (1811–1899) of Deerfield, Mass. Beginning his career as a surveyor and civil engineer for railroad construction projects across America, by the 1850s Hoyt owned a lumber business in Wisconsin and, starting in the late 1860s, was involved in two mining companies in Colorado—the Cashier Silver Mine and the Blue Jacket Mining Co. During the ‘60s, Hoyt’s activity in railroading ventures and westward extension via railway gave way to his Colorado mining pursuits, which occupied him for the next twenty years amid Colorado’s silver boom of the 1870s and ‘80s. Along with his partner Frank H. Allison (1846–1934) who ran their mining operations on-site, Hoyt established the Cashier Silver Co. and attempted to revitalize the Blue Jacket Mining lode on Red Elephant Mountain in Colorado. While Hoyt spent most his time on the East coast selling Cashier Silver Co. bonds to generate working capital, he also undertook several trips out west. Journals documenting three of his business visits are held at the Beinecke Library.

The present archive comprises some 105 letters, 6 manuscript plat maps and various documents, the majority relating to the management and finances of the “Cashier” and “Blue Jacket” mines in Georgetown, Colorado, primarily between 1877 and 1878. The largest group of letters are between Allison in Colorado and Hoyt in Templeton and Boston, Mass.; Allison’s letters outnumber those of Hoyt’s, which are retained copies. Hoyt financed the mining project from afar, while Allison acted as liaison for Hoyt and directly managed the affairs of the Colorado mines. The letters, taken as a whole, offer an illuminating window into the challenges—legal, financial, and practical—of running a silver mining operation in remote territory. The sheer volume of letters exchanged between the two men just in 1877 reveals the immense amount of work and attention demanded to operate these mines.

The six plat maps, drawn by Allison, delineate the Cashier and Blue Jacket claims in addition to numerous overlapping and/or competing claims, and include Allison’s various notations indicating mines, shafts, scales, directions, patents, mountains, etc. A note on the largest map states that it “includes all the prominent surveys near the Blue Jacket to date July 28th 1877.” A newspaper article attached to one map is entitled “A Big Strike in the Boulder Nest.”

Hoyt and Allison’s letters often feature tables and small diagrams, and part of Hoyt’s own correspondence documents his efforts to find investors as well as suppliers for his mining ventures. One letter from Frank Hartwell to Hoyt (excerpted below) addresses the ongoing “railroad war” between the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R.R. and the Denver & Rio Grande R.R. for passage through to the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas. Despite the rough-and-tumble frontier mining scene he was immersed in, Allison’s letters are very articulate and sharp.

Topics and matters covered in Allison and Hoyt’s correspondence are as follows: negotiating with stockholders and investment partners; competition with other mining companies that own parts of claims; the cost of mining operations; lawsuits brought against their company; navigating legal hurdles; leasing claims or parts of claims to other mining companies; by-laws for their company; affidavits; repairs to lodes; procuring patents; dealing with workers and paying them; payments made; expenses; deeds; leasings of shafts; managing mining property; blasting rock; tunnel projects; comparing mining in western America to eastern America; competing companies vying with them, and so on. To be sure, business matters predominate in their correspondence; however, at times there are more personal references. Hoyt apparently owned a home on an island, which he mentions in several letters: “I am now home at last from the sea shore where I had a delightful time fishing bathing and breathing the sea air in a lonely island some distance from the mainland and I feel like a new man.”

Another group of correspondence from 1867 is between Hoyt and the investor F. M. Van Sicklen (1855–1934) of Sicklen, Walker & Co. of Burlington, Vermont. Van Sicklen was a Vermont businessman who sold building supplies as well as groceries. The letters detail their interest in the “New Boston” mine, the “Indigo” mine, and other Colorado mines. A number of Van Sicklen’s letters are on State of Vermont stationery, as he was a representative in the legislature at the time. Other correspondents here include Frank Hartwell, George E. Marsh, and George Aitken.

Born in Cromwell, Connecticut, Frank Allison began his business career in 1868 when he and one Elisha Stevens bought out a shear-factory in Rocky Hill, Connecticut—continuing the business as Stevens & Allison. In 1869, they consolidated with a Forestville, Connecticut business, creating a stock company under the name Stevens & Brown Manufacturing Co. Serving as Superintendent and Treasurer, Allison worked for the company until 1873, at which point he dissolved his connection with the business and joined the firm Hubbard & Curtis Manufacturing Co. In 1875, due to his asthmatic condition, Allison left this company and moved to Colorado. In 1876, he removed to Georgetown, where he engaged in mining until 1878. Allison assumed the editorship of the Georgetown Courier in 1878, which enjoyed an extensive circulation and was considered among the best weeklies in Colorado—its success being largely due to Allison’s participation. In 1880, Allison served as a stockholder and Director for the Blue Jacket Mining Co. and also worked as a treasurer in 1880 for the Fiat Silver Mining Co. in Georgetown.

ARCHIVE CONTENTS

41 letters, Allison to Hoyt, 154 pp.; 19 letters, Hoyt to Allison, 39 pp.; 9 letters, Hoyt to F. M. Van Sicklen, 24 pp.; 12 letters, Van Sicklen to Hoyt, 21 pp.; 2 letters, J. G. Mudly to Hoyt, 6 pp.; 1 letter, Hoyt to F. S. Bailey, 2 pp.; 2 letters, Hoyt to E.D. Chapin Esq., 3 pp.; 1 letter, George Harvey to E.D. Chapin Esq., 2 pp.; 1 letter, Gorham Williams to Hoyt, 1 p.; 4 letters, George Aitken to Hoyt, 7 pp.; 3 letter, Hoyt to Aitken, 12 pp.; 1 letter, John Hannibel to Col. Harney, 1 p.; 1 letter, Bailey to Hoyt, 1 p.; 1 letter, E.E. Lamson to Hoyt, 1 p.; 1 letter, Hoyt to Hartwell, 6 pp.; 1 letter, Francis Hartwell to Hoyt, 3 pp.; 1 letter, J. Henry to Hoyt, 3 pp.; 1 letter, Hoyt to E. W. Peck Esq., 1 p.

[with]

14 receipts for expenses, Allison to Hoyt (9 x 21.5 cm to 25 x 19 cm), 14 pp., with original envelope.

[with]

1 postcard, George E. Marsh Civil Engineer.

[with]

1 Western Union Telegram, Van Sicklen to Hoyt.

[with]

Copy of Lode Location Certificate of Samuel P. Bishop, Clear Creed County, Colorado, 26 Feb. 1877. 8vo, 2 pp.

[with]

5 pp. miscellany.

SOME REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGES

Hoyt to Allison; 3 Aug. ‘77 “Your motto to act as if the Blue Jacket belonged to yourself, and you was to foot the bills is a good one, only don’t let any report, such as I find in the Georgetown Courier of July 26th of the ‘Big stake on the Bolder Nest lode’ interfere with your cool judgment […] you are on the spot, and can act better than anyone can advise from a distance.”

Hoyt to Allison; 17 Nov. ‘67 “No one can have at heart stronger than myself the needs of our company. I do not know that I was ever thought of as a Director. I now think it better for our company that the full control of it should be vested in a Board of Directors, chosen from the stockholders of Burlington & vicinity, & therefore, I should decline the offer of being a Director, if made me, thinking it best for the company.”

Hoyt to Chapin; 19 Nov. ‘77 “We are doing all that we can to protect our interest in Blue Jacket lode, and expect to save part if not all our interest there. If I had a few hundred dollars to work with, think all could be saved but I have drained myself in trying to defend the Cashier interests, & cannot get further, but will, if I can get money enough to pay my expenses.”

Allison to Hoyt; 22 Aug. ‘77 “The point I am agoing to suggest to you is that we put the whole lode into one company with a communal capital as may be agreed upon. But to consider the cash value of the lode at $20,000 and to issue one half of the stock to pay for the lode leaving the other half to be disposed of for cash as the investors may think necessary. This is a common way of handling mines here as it provides a way to carry a company over a pinch. Without borrowing. But generally the stock is put into the hands of a broker who get a pretty good commission […] The property could understandably be leased.”

Frank Hartwell (Canon City, Colorado County treasurer) to Hoyt; 12 May ‘78 “People in Boston & New York who try to mine in Colorado hardly ever make a success of it. The thing has turned out about as I predicted only a little worse. I did not think or anticipate that you would go to work & mortgage the property to beat the original prospectors out of their rights—it looks very much to me like beating the devil round the stump.”

Allison to Hoyt; 22 Aug. ‘77 “With the railroad finished to Denver we can probably make a handsome profit from the lead from the new northern lode […] The parties from France who went last week across the plains with Mr. Whitney to Colorado who has recently returned from Paris […] [they] represent a large amount of capital […] Get ready to go next spring with me to Colorado I am bound to get hold of one of these $1,000 per hr. Lodes even if I have to go with pick & shovel & discover it myself.”

Allison to Hoyt; 8 Dec. ‘77 “The Purchase [shaft] was discovered on the 14th of November 1876. At the depth of the 20 to 39 ft the mineral ran from 7 to 20 oz of silver per ton but with depth the quality improved and below 100 ft the average value has been about $200 per ton. The shaft is 220 ft deep the last 25 or 30 ft being in ‘cap’ which they have passed through and the bottom of the shaft is now in as good pay […] since the discovery this lose has yielded about 150,000 at an estimated expense of about $30,000 not including the steam engine and hoisting works.”

Allison to Hoyt; 1 Oct. ‘77 “Last spring a person by the name of Atwood pretending to be a lawyer made a number of surveys on Red Elephant Nest and I heard from one of our mineral surveyors that he had made many errors, and knowing that he made the survey of the Bishop I thought I would examine it.”

Hoyt to Allison; 12 Sept. ‘67 “I think you acted right in advising Duchell[?] to unionize […] It is however a dangerous procedure for a superintendent to establish that he will increase the price of contract work. On public works I always defended an honest & faithful contracter when he was doing all he could.”

Hartwell to Hoyt; 12 May ‘78 “We are having quite exciting times here over a R.R. war between the D.G. & R. [the Denver & Rio Grande R.R.] & A.T.S. R.R. [Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R.R.] Companies over the right of way through the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas […] they have been at it about three weeks with about 1400 men on both sides. The A.T Santa Fe want to go through to the Pacific coast the D.G. & R. working for the interest of the Union Pacific are trying to hold the right of way & prevent them from passing […] the thing has got into the courts & the lawyers are having a nice time over it.”

Allison to Hoyt; 6 Aug. ‘77 “The work I have done on the Blue Jacket has been in view of putting it into shape either to lease or to work yourself as you may see fit. The cribbing at the upper part of the shaft was very much decayed and a number of the timbers broken and probably another year the whole upper part would have caved in.”

Allison to Hoyt; 17 Sept. ‘77 “You asked in one of your letters, about capital here in the east to invest in mining business. There is a plenty of idle capital here […] the value of good mines are not doubted here in the east.”

All in all, a substantive Colorado silver mining archive with considerable research value.

REFERENCES: Bosse, David. Hoyt Family Documents Return to Deerfield at historic-deerfield.org; Arthur W. Hoyt Family Papers (1839–1899) (Historic Deerfield PDF online); History of Clear Creek and Boulder Valleys, Colorado (Chicago: O. L. Baskin & Co., Historical Publishers, 1880), pp. 494, 535.

CONDITION: Generally good, a few letters with minor punctures.

Item #5396

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