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Eaton, Joe.

[A pair of autograph letters, signed, from a Tombstone, Arizona settler to his father.]

Tombstone, Arizona Territory, 30 April 1880 and 30 September 1880. 6.5 pp. manuscript in ink on two bifolia, 10” x 7.75” and 8” x 5”. CONDITION: Overall very good, a few separations along old folds, several small tears and punctures to second letter, affecting some letters but without affecting sense.

A pair of letters from a young man in the new silver-mining boomtown of Tombstone, Arizona to his father, reporting on recent experiences in Tuscon as well as in his new home, including getting married, getting “swindled” (twice), and running a store on a tight margin.

The first of these letters, written from Tombstone, concludes with Joe Eaton’s request for his father’s advice—and no wonder: although tempted to follow his father’s mining leads in Socorro, he finds himself hemmed in by debt after being “swindled in a mine here,” which promised to sell for $25,000, but which, he and his partners unhappily discovered,

did not belong to the parties that sold it to us but to some body else. The parties that sold us the mine had taken the original location notices out of the mouments[?] and put his own notices instead when we went to turn the mine over to the buyers, the original owners came forward and put in a claim. Well, we had to go and hunt up the records and it proved that the parties we bought from did not own anything, and they skipped the country and we were sold. I was left $600 in debt…

To complicate matters, he reports that while

I manage to make a living here…I must make more than a living now, for I am married now…I was married last week in Tuscon. I married a young lady from California Miss Abbie Bowman. You will ask how it is about miss Gillett well she quit writing me over two months ago, and in her last letter she tells me she cares more for somebody else than she does for me. Well I don’t care for that I am satisfied with my wife…

The second letter, dated five months after the first, finds Eaton still worse off, and planning to leave Tombstone “in about 10 days” to meet his father “on the road,” presumably to Socorro. He writes:

I am so situated that I have been getting in debt for the last 3 months in the first place a fellow robbed me of over $400.00 of the stage companys money while I was in Tuscon so I had to borrow money to pay that at a big interest. I had a house and lot that cost $240.00 the land was in dispute and I lost that as I bought from the wrong man as did many others. We all lost, and before that I had lost some two or three hundred dollars in a mine so that since then I have been down…I can never pay what I owe and the expenses of the store…I have kept the store clear of mortgage. If I can sell out for what the stock is worth I will just about pay my debts[,] I have owing to me here about $400…My sales this month have been four dollars a day my store rent is $3.33 1/3 per day and house rent 80 cents per day so you see I have not made enough to pay the rent…

Two letters from Tombstone, Arizona, detailing the young writer’s tarnished prospects in silver-mining and other ventures.

Item #9446

Price: $575.00

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