A Short History of the Ely mine, page 2
To make the last payment, Barnard loaned the
company
$10,000.00. The profit that last quarter was
$340.64 (30).
During this time, however, nineteen thousand thirty shares, purchased
at a few
cents per share, sold for $50,000.00. The dividends stopped
in December
1863, and “unpleasant inquiries” began.
(31) Thomas Pollard
was scapegoated for the company’s woes
(32). “The Red Dust of
Vershire” states, somewhat mysteriously,
“The mine was at its peak in 1864...”(33).
In January 1865,
at the Eagle Hotel in West Fairlee, all of the officers were replaced
and Smith
Ely, a retired furniture manufacturer from New Jersey took control
(34).
According to his nephew, Smith Ely had come to the mine to examine its
financial status (he had first appeared as a stockholder in 1863), and
had been
treated “with a degree of insolence which aroused his most
bitter
resentment”. Upon his return to New York, he
proceeded to purchase a
controlling interest in the mine, and as his first official act as
president of
the corporation, summarily dismissed the man who had affronted him
(35).
Mr. Roswell Farnham was employed as counsel for the company from 1865
until,
according to an article written in 1896, “the
winding up of its business”
(36) except, presumably, during his term as Governor. Mr.
Henry Barnard,
the displaced president, brought suit for lost salary and other losses
and had
the property attached. He took possession and work stopped
(37). It
took Smith Ely four months to find parties willing to receipt the
property and
acceptable to Mr. William T. George, who apparently was unwilling to
release the
property to anyone not from the area. Pollard was rehired as
mining
engineer; he immediately redirected Glanville’s shaft and cut
through the west
foot wall (38), or floor (39) in four places, striking a rich vein in
each
place in January 1865.
That month, one
hundred four tons were produced; by 1880, it would be one hundred tons
per day
(40).
By 1867, smelting furnaces had been
built under the direction of William H. Long (41), and four hundred
tons of ore
had been mined with the labors of one hundred thirty-two workers. In
1869, a
dividend of $100,000.000 was declared. That year, mine superintendent
Capt.
Pollard was replaced by Captain Pascoe, the boss of the underground
crew. There
is a description of a visit to the bottom of the mine with Pascoe in
Child, p.
20. William Long enlisted the assistance of his brother Daniel and they
enlarged the smelters and erected new furnaces, improving the purity of
the matte
copper produced under Pollard from thirty to forty per cent to about
ninety-five per cent. (42) Between 1879 to 1882, production at the Ely
mine
reached its peak:
1870............ 943,465 lbs. of metallic Cu
1876.............1,646,850 lbs. of metallic Cu
1880............ 3,186,175 lbs. of metallic Cu (Child, p. 25, Weed, p. 194)
1890.............7,500,000 lbs. of metallic Cu (Jacob, p. , Weed, p. 194, Peters, p.68)
1918................350,000 lbs. of metallic Cu (Peters, p. 68) (43)
