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Show Wing Points In History of Silver Reef :!J By Mrs. Jessie K. Empey, WPA Writer BT JESSIE K. EMPEY ''l,ncl Records Survey WPA .Sh the Mormon pioneers ,;nstantly advised by their , '' agamst becoming involved ., .'"'"g industries, the open-, open-, n' Iver Reef came at a time , the people of Southern ; Wcr? more than glad to ti"e anything to take the Mi gnum and wine as ..;f1UnJ of exchange. The trad-.-. ,, 811 kinds of commodities l.e ,Use of scrip, often called 1?s". was so common , these people before the -.-vs of Silver Reef that ; ( o "MU by without a single silver coin in their pos-I; pos-I; is ,. . s " saici that Apostle Erastus Snow, father of the Southern Mission, at Sunday services in the St. George Tabernacle actually prayed God's blessings on the man who opened up these mines. The people of this mission had come to the point where they were willing to risk the evils that followed fol-lowed the mining camps in order to receive benefits they were so much in need of after 15 years of trying to make a living in such an isolated god-forsaken country.' i Quite a number of men had been I prosperous when they first came into this locality but constant ! trouble with the Indians, floods, ! drouths, insects of all kinds, and i the ever present problem of irrigation ir-rigation had caused I hem to ex-! ex-! haust all their means and some i of the less faithful had begun to i (Continued on page nine) Keresting Points In History of Silver j u Told By Mrs. Jessie K. Empey, WPA Writer .continued from first page) 5 if Erigham Young had j 'fbhirdored with this mission. S ',r" St0r5' . . ( , of our favorlte Pioneer "n connection with the dis- of Silver Reef is the grind- ' -tory that many claim to j :'t? reasons to believe. It hap- "' j, ,,at some people left. Leeds J to Pioche, then a thriving S ' L town, to work at wood j ,; Thev took with them a ' of sandstone from the lo-' lo-' ', later to become known as I Reef to use as a grindstone j ;; their axes. When their job I '. completed they threw away '7 badly worn stone which was 'ed UP bv a col,Ple of men wn0 'i making plans to test out an "er who was thought to be '. j.e niey pulverized the stone, I ;2the other miners wise and iited his returns. When he ".ted to have found 20 ounces f -jiver in the pulverized stone, '""miners were convinced that V, ; a rascal and ordered him '. of town, even though he in-ed in-ed that he must know where sandstone came from because r'ew they could send it to any ner in the United States and Cmuld find silver. ' 'ether or not this man was ? - first to discover silver in Intone, John Kemple is given "slit as being the first to dis-'t dis-'t "ver Silver Reef. He was a pros-"? pros-"? iior, understood minerals, and -i with him an assayer's outfit ? '.Jn he came to spend a winter 1" - the Elijah K. Fuller home in ."? Tisburg. After detecting silver I ."the sandstone of the White 'L 'sf, Kemple staged off a number ' claims for himself and others, --.jng whom were Orson B. kr&, William Harris, Samuel : "4 John Hamilton, William te: iey (Leany) Jr., William Robb r- 4 "Ed Dalton. According to rds at the county court house, t :se eight location notices along 1 Recourse of the Reef were filed : the spring of 1871 and located io' ; what was then known as the lf .-ion Mining District with j-muel Hamilton, recorder. itjaniie In 1874 Because he had no capital and ':ind it difficult to interest ex-. ex-. aenced mining men in silver iS ated in sandstone, Kemple was .'Me for several years to open 3 the silver whiCh he had locat-i locat-i On June 22, 1874, a group of ism met at the Harrisburg I pool house and organized the ; srisburg Mining District, which j i jvered an area of 142 square , ! ':les. At this meeting, John j ;mple, Orson B. Adams and j Ailson Dailey were elected a , mmittee to prepare a constitu-j constitu-j I : and by-laws which were ap-j ap-j :oved and adopted by the same ")p of men the following day. - in Kemple became the first "I 'border of the Harrisburg Mining ! .strict and recorded 27 locations f -ring the year 1874. j Mining developments grew vher slowly until a sample of ( " silver ore attracted the at-j at-j ilion of Walker Brothers, Salt J ;f City, who sent William j -flimseh Barbee and several j 'ers to make an investigation. S irbee brought with him a spiri-! spiri-! :'Jistic medium by the name of 'Mas (Tom) McNelly and J . med he aided him in making ;:ions. It is said that this Mc- j 'ity was a sort of wizzard and :e" amused crowds with his j Ay of adding long columns of s almost instantly. Hyrum Sr., of St. George, claims have actually written great i ns of figures to test this J ;'ge man's ability ony to be j with his rapid calculations ' always proved to be correct. J wbee did quite a little pros- ! and filed his first claim August 23, 1875. By October i .' d established a camp on Creek west of the White I ' and appeared to mean busi- j In November of the same ? 2' Joe and Alex McCleave of J were hauling a load of s( from the foothills near " Barbee was camped and . r agon skidded, unearthing -erals rich in silver chlorides i ': "omsilver. Judge Barbee J by an(l when de discovered I ,r'as there immediately lo- claim and named it Te- .h- The vein was small but j r'cn and easily worked. Thus ! 51,1 a real boom, i Vv Claims Located 1 :M'ng the next year over 275 ! Were filed and Silver 1 i city W almost over night into allon Sa!d to have at one time 1 Ved St- George for the I :i orseat- 11 furnished a mar- aU agricultural products, ) :-ac Wth which t0 tne 'un, et' i?r rock salt hauled i Vi furni "u- mas- Nev- as well ! ivZ work fr many men J toTen m the county. Hay is ! 5-50-OO a t S0M at one time for 1 'r gal0 D'xie wine for $2- ' small11' ant tnere was not stamn'tu'16"1 excePt a Pst" :KtS at cou,d be bought V nnn ? a quarter. I '" been ation of Silver Reef I sblv estlmated at 3,000 but i, -Us city "eVer exceeded 1500. its brightly lighted dncl dance halls, its con stant hustle and bustle of peddlers ped-dlers and freighters going to and fro along the streets, its mysteri-our mysteri-our lore of Chinatown with all the omental coloring, hundreds of working men dressed gaily after their 10 hours labor in the mines and almost wildly in search of a Place to take the monotony out of life, had its share of saloon brawls, murders, and gun play but the Carbis-Forrest tradgedy stirred the whole county. An agitator by the name of Tom Forrest had been fired by Carbis, a foreman of one of the mills. The next morning Carbis was stabbed by Forrest while on his way to work and died during the day. Open threats of lynching ran riot throughout the camp. On the day of the funeral, Forrest For-rest was taken to the county jail in St. George. Killer Lynched By Crowd During the night an armed group of men suddenly overpowered over-powered Sheriff A. P. Hardy and took possession of Forrest. They placed a rope around his neck, dragged him out of the southeast front basement window and hung him to a limb of a large cotton-wood cotton-wood tree in front of George Cottam's home, a block east of the court house. This incident occured on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 1880, and is still vivid in the memories of many men who stood silently gazing at the body of this man swinging from a tree that "for the first time had borne fruit". Father Scanlan was beloved by all and especially was he held in high esteem by the Mormons as was shown by the memorial Catholic meeting held in the St. George stake Tabernacle. Through the expert leadership of John M. Macfarlane, his choir learned a mass in honor of the occasion. "They committed the Latin to memory, and studied the music, executing it with great credit to themselves, rendering the 'Gloria' and 'Hosanna' in clear sweet tones". Hyrum Leany Sr. helped put out the disastrous fire of the spring of 1879 but not before it had almost destroyed about one-third one-third of the business section of town. He remembers the line of men standing from the creek to a point near the fire where men went dashing to the fire as each bucket arrived full of water. Then down another long row back to the ditch went the empty buckets making a continual flow of water which aided at last in putting out the fire before the town was completely destroyed. Horse Races Staged With mild sunny winters at Silver Reef, many exciting horse races and shooting matches were staged. "The race track, now an alfalfa field, was the scene of many animated events. During the mild winters race horse owners from Sevier and other valleys to the north, from the Kanab region and St. George brought their horses to sunny Silver Reef. Here were seen the typical cowboys, Indians in paint and feathers, old prospectors the flotsam of many western camp, professional and "Tinhorn" gamblers ... In fact, it was a colorful and animated gathering of westerners and men from many climes. On the race track were to be seen wimam and Henry Gurr of Parowan, Marshal Mar-shal of Sevier Valley, whose slit nose gave him a sinister appearance, appear-ance, the virile Capt. James Andrus of St. George, Kitchin of Kanab, tall and slender and dressed dress-ed like a southern gentleman, Ketchum of Long Valley, the dashing Moroni (Rone) Spilsbury of ToquerviUe; Shoemaker, chewing chew-ing tobacco and nervously stroking strok-ing his beard, and John H. Cas-sidy, Cas-sidy, "Honest John" attracted attention anywhere for he had a fine form and a noble head and a voice that would have commanded com-manded attention in the Hall of Congress". "Pole" Roundy and Col. E. A. Wall had some shooting shoot-ing matches that will be talked about for years to come. Col. Wall had been undefeated in marksmanship until he tackled "Pole" Roundy. Even though it was thought he hired a man by the name of St. Clair to walk out in front of Pole's gun at one of their shooting matches, Col. Wall never defeated this young sure-shot sure-shot from Kanarra. By 1878 there were five large producing mills going full blast; the Stormont and the Leeds mills both with 10 stamps, the Christy and the Barbee and Walker with five stamps and the Pioneer or Little Mill with three stamps. These mills stamped out a maximum maxi-mum capacity of about 230 -tons per day, all of which used the analgam process. According to Mark A. Pendleton in his "Memories "Mem-ories of Silver Reef", about nine million ounces of silver were produced pro-duced during the years 1877-1903, with an average price of $1.15 per ounce. From April to June, 1877 a 1000 ounce brick was delivered de-livered each day by the Pioneer mill to Wells-Fargo & Co. with an average fineness of 990. The record of the Christy mill for the year 1878 shows 10.249 tons that produced silver bullion to the value of $302,597 with an average recovery of $29.10 per ton. Prosperous Camp Silver Reef was one of the most prosperous mining camps of the west as long as silver was worth about $1.20 per ounce and the ore of good quality but silver soon drogped in price and mining and milling became much more difficult and costly. When Colonel Allen, an eastern superintendent of the Stormont Company attempted at-tempted to lower the wages of the miners from $4.00 to $2.50 per day it finally resulted in the miner's strike of 1881, an event of wide interest in Silver Reef history. The Miner's Union refused re-fused to work for such wages and Allen, after a month, was ordered to leave. After an appeal to the Federal District Court at Beaver, Col. Allen was allowed indictments against about 30 miners who had taken part in the strike against him. After deputizing a number of local men, U. S. Marshal Pratt, assisted by Sheriff Hardy at the lead, succeeded in arresting about 28 of the offenders. They were then taken to Beaver and the miners and operators had lost the strike. Col. E. A. Wall was well liked by all the miners but he had bad luck at Silver Reef. Becoming involved in-volved in financial difficulties he was not able to pay off his workmen work-men and creditors. But, being an honest man at heart, he established estab-lished himself with D. C. Jacklin at Bingham and according to Mayor Albert E. Miller, he became be-came a very wealthy man and eventually came back and paid back all that he owed. He built a beautiful home on the corner of South Temple and D street in Salt Lake City and it is now the club rooms of the Knights of Columbus. John Kemple, as was also the case of many others, left Silver Reef a poor man. There were many characters who played important im-portant parts during Silver Reef days that will never be forgotten, such men as Tom and Dick Gillespie, property owners and employers; Captain Lubbock, mine superintendent: David T u r 1, Scotch superintendent of the Stormont Mill; Mr. Williams, superintendent sup-erintendent of the Leeds Mining Co.; Sam Wing, Chinese merchant; merch-ant; M. G. Shoemaker (Shoe-make), (Shoe-make), managed the horse races; Nigger Johnson, a nurse and a real white black man; John OI-phin, OI-phin, musician and fiddler; Michael Mi-chael and Timothy "Quirk from Ireland; James N. Louder, .editor of the Silver Reef Miner, and many others. The last mill run was made in 1903 by the Brundage Company Com-pany of Cleveland. Ohio, who purchased pur-chased most of the patented : claims and intended to operate on a large scale but silver continued j to drop in price and except for the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Colbath whose home is in the , John H. Rice bank building, the once famous mining camp, is a ghost city. |