Tag: etown

Prussian-Born Officer Becomes Etown Miner

On April 18, 1867, U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Edward Bergmann resigned from a promising military career to become a miner in Elizabethtown, New Mexico’s Baldy Peak mining district. But Bergmann wasn’t just any miner. He was the superintending partner in Lucien Maxwell’s Aztec Mine on the east slopes of Baldy, a venture that would haul out roughly $1.5 million in gold in the first five years of operation. Bergmann’s work there and in other operations was so successful that he was worth $60,000 in real estate by the summer of 1870.

Born in Prussia around 1833, Bergmann had been a 28 year old private in the U.S. Army when the Civil War broke out in 1861, a private who was granted an immediate discharge from his clerking duties at Departmental headquarters in Santa Fe so he could accept a 1st Lieutenant commission in the New Mexico Volunteers.

He rose quickly. By September 1862, Bergmann was a Captain and responsible for rebuilding and resupplying Fort Stanton. By early 1867, he was a Lt. Colonel leading scouting expeditions on the San Juan and Las Animas Rivers.

April 18 illustration.Edward H.Bergmann
Edward Bergmann in military uniform. Source: Louis Felsenthal, Citizen-Soldier by J. Meketa, UNM Press, 1982

But news of the gold on Baldy Mountain seems to have roused the mining fever in the Lt. Colonel, because he resigned his commission shortly thereafter and was soon on the ground in Etown and its surrounding mines.

He did well. By 1870, Bergmann owned $60,000 worth of real estate and was secure enough to attract the attention of local belle Augusta Sever, whom he married in December. Over the next fifteen years, he continued his activities in the area, participating in the Spanish Bar mine at the mouth of Grouse Gulch just east of Etown and taking on other roles, including acting as Etown Justice of the Peace during the Colfax County War.

Oddly, Bergmann’s real estate holdings seemed to have diminished to a mere $1,500 by April 1875, when the Territorial property tax assessment was made. However, he’d apparently made some powerful friends by that time, because when the New Mexico Territorial Penitentiary opened in Santa Fe in August 1885, Bergmann was named its first warden, a position he held until at least 1893. He must have gotten the mining fever once again, though, because he died in Colorado’s Bowl of Gold, near Cripple Creek, in 1910.

 

Sources:  Louis Felsenthal, Citizen-Soldier of Territorial New Mexico, Jacqueline Meketa, UNM Press, 1982; Lure, Lore, and Legends of the Moreno Valley, Moreno Valley Writers Guild, 1997, Columbine Books, Angel Fire, NM; Roadside History of Colorado, Candy Moulton, Mountain Press, Missoula, 2006; Philmont, A History of New Mexico’s Cimarron Country, Lawrence Murphy, UNM Press, Albuquerque, 2014; Red River City: A history of Northern New Mexico 1800-2000, J.R. Pierce, JRP Publications Press, Red River, 2006; The Eagle Nest, New Mexico Story, F. Stanley, Dumas, Texas, 1961; A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia; Jerry Thompson, UNM Press, Albuquerque, 2015; Myth of the Hanging Tree, Robert J. Torrez, UNM Press, 2008.

Troops Save Gold Miner From Etown Mob

On Thursday, April 9, 1868, gold prospector William “Wall” W. Henderson killed a man in Humbug Gulch east of Elizabethtown, New Mexico Territory. Being a law-abiding man, Henderson went to Etown to turn himself into the authorities. The authorities seem to have been fairly weak at the time, because a mob of about eighty men threatened to take matters into their own hands. Fortunately, a messenger was able to reach the Fort Union cavalry troops stationed thirty miles away at Maxwell’s Ranch (today’s Cimarron) in time to request assistance.

April 9 illustration.Humbug Gulch Map
Source: 1889 Sectional map of Colfax & Mora Counties, New Mexico Territory

A sergeant and ten men travelled up Cimarron canyon overnight to reach Elizabethtown early the next morning and disperse the mob. They took Henderson back to Maxwell’s, out of harm’s way, and the miners went back to work. In fact, things calmed so much that Henderson returned to Elizabethtown and went back to mining. He was still there the following year, when he served as a member of the petit jury during the Colfax County District Court’s 1869 Spring session. And he did well financially. By the summer of 1870, Henderson had amassed $5,000 in real estate.

That year, he also stood security for Charles Kennedy’s bond to appear before the Fall Court response to embezzlement and assault charges. Ironically, Kennedy himself would be lynched by an Etown mob later that fall, following accusations that he’d killed and robbed a series of men at his cabin about ten miles south of Humbug Gulch.

Sources: Fort Union and the Frontier Army in the Southwest, Leo E. Oliva, Southwest Cultural Resources Center, National Park Service, 1993; 1870 Colfax County Census, Etown precinct; New Mexico Territory District 1 Court Records, 1869 through 1870.

Save

Future St. James Hotel Owner Marries Virginia Belle

On March 28, 1868, former Fifth Army Corps cook Frenchman Henri Lambert married Anna E. “Molly” Stepp of Petersburg, Virginia, where Henri had been operating a restaurant following his service in the Union Army. Shortly after their marriage, Henry and Mary made their way to Denver by train and then south by wagon to Elizabethtown, where they arrived in May, 1868. Here, Henry worked as a placer miner until Fall set in, when he opened the first of the two hotels he would own in Colfax County. In the fall of 1871, the Lamberts moved to Cimarron, where Henri opened the saloon which would form the first story and basis of today’s St. James Hotel. Although Henri and Mary never had children, they did share their Elizabethtown home with her younger brother Nathan and in the mid 1870’s adopted a New Mexican boy named Jacob. Another brother, William, died September 1, 1881, less than two months before Mary’s death on October 28.

lambert-census-1870
1870 Elizabethtown, NM Census Record for the Lambert hotel and its occupants

Sources: http://genealogytrails.com/newmex/colfax/biographies.htm#lambert March 2015; Ralph E. Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexico History, Torch Press, Cedar Rapid, Iowa, 1911. p. 212; 1870 and 1880 Colfax County Census data; George B. Anderson, History of New Mexico, Its Resources and People, Pacific State Publishing Co., New York, 1907.  p. 696-697; https://www.findagrave.com/.

Why “Colfax” County?

On January 25, 1869, eighteen months after Elizabethtown, New Mexico was founded in Mora County, New Mexico’s Territorial Legislature cut the County into two pieces and renamed the northern section Colfax County, in honor of the new U.S. Vice President Schuyler Colfax. Elizabethtown became the county seat. Schuyler Colfax had visited northern New Mexico Territory in late 1868, shortly before being sworn in as Ulysses S. Grant’s Vice President. Colfax was a journalist and politician from Indiana and was expected to one day be President.

schuyler-colfax

Unfortunately, the Grant administration scandals ruined those hopes, as well as the hopes of those who thought naming the County after him would be a smart move. When it was created, Colfax County included the entire Maxwell Land Grant, except for 265,000 acres in southern Colorado, and extended to the Texas/Oklahoma border, encompassing what is now Harding and Union County.

Sources: Lure, Lore, and Legends of the Moreno Valley. Angel Fire, NM: Moreno Valley Writers Guild, 1997: 5.  Daniel, Clifton. Chronicle of America. Mount Kisco, NY: Chronicle Publications, 1988: 408.

Misnomer

“Who you callin’ squirt?” The tall young man with the long sun bleached hair moved toward him down the bar, broad shoulders tense under his heavy flannel shirt.

“I didn’t mean anything,” the man said apologetically. The premature wrinkles in his face were creased with dirt.  Clearly a local pit miner. He gestured toward the tables. “I heard them callin’ you that. Thought it was your name.”

“Only my oldest friends call me that,” the young man said.

“Sorry ’bout that,” the other man said. He stuck out his hand. “Name’s Pete. They call me Gold Dust Pete, ’cuz that’s all I’ve come up with so far.”

They shook. “I’m Alfred,” the younger man said. “My grandfather called me Squirt. It kinda got passed down as a joke when I started getting my growth on.”

Pete chuckled. “I can see why it was funny,” he agreed. “Have a drink?”

from Moreno Valley Sketches

Virginia City, New Mexico is Born. And Dies.

On January 6, 1868 Lucien Bonaparte Maxwell, co-owner of the Maxwell land grant, announced a public auction of 400 lots in Virginia City, a new town six miles east of today’s Elizabethtown. The new town was located along Willow Creek on Baldy Mountain’s southern slopes and  named after Maxwell’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Virginia.

lucien-maxwell

Unfortunately, the town got off to a slow start. Only fifteen houses were in the next two months. Due to poor sales, the town had collapsed by the time Virginia married U.S. Army officer A.S.B Keyes two years later without Maxwell’s permission. What little remains of Virginia City is now on private property.

Sources: Urban, Jack. C.. Lure, Lore, and Legends of the Moreno Valley. Angel Fire, NM: Moreno Valley Writers Guild, 1997: 32.  Murphy, Larry R. Philmont. A History of New Mexico’s Cimarron Country. Albuquerque: UNM Press, 1972: 90. Freiberger, Lucille. Lucien Maxwell: Villain or Visionary. Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1999: 103.