From Mineral News, January, 2009 - content copyrighted

Note: Figures have been omitted from this submission

The IRS and Pre-1900 Mining Documents

As an obsessive collector, I try to curb my appetite for accumulating “stuff” by establishing a few common boundaries across several fields. Like mineral specimens, collectibles such as stamps, tokens, paper ephemera, models, engravings etc. can pile up in a hurry if acquired without some underlying theme or list of specific parameters. Hence, many of my “collections” (more accurately: un-curated accumulations!) therefore have a mineral or mining-related subject matter. I enjoy researching the items in those accumulations, often with an eye toward discovering who the people were who designed, used, produced, or were commemorated by the objects. Like some of the thin-section preparers featured in earlier articles here, many of these individuals are virtually unknown today despite their often great notoriety in the past. Fame is, indeed, fleeting, and discovering these individuals anew is great fun.

A case in point: the bank check pictured in figure 2 was obtained recently for the princely sum of $6.00. (Yes, I have a small collection of checks payable to, or by, mining companies. Its not a serious collection, as some mining documents can become fairly expensive, but I have fun with it nonetheless.) Although the full mining company name is partially hidden by a revenue stamp in the upper left corner of the check (more about that later), a quick “hold it up to the light” test disclosed it was from the Consolidated California and Virginia Mining Company, noted as “Agency of The Bank of California” on the document, but drafted in Virginia (City), Nevada on September 5, 1899. I had never heard of the company, but the check looked interesting to me because of its tie to the mining industry.

The IRS Connection

Income tax, although briefly employed twice before the 16th amendment was ratified in 1913, was not a staple of government fund-raising. Instead, the U.S. government relied primarily upon various tariffs and fees to raise the money needed to keep it running, the Civil War being one of the early generators of necessary new taxation. Payment of various taxes was required by law for many legal documents such as checks, bonds, bills of lading, promissory notes, stock transfers, mortgages and numerous other instruments. The Internal Revenue Service sold revenue stamps to those that needed to execute such documents, much the way the Post Office sells postage stamps today. The first such stamps appeared in 1862. Such “proof of tax paid” stamps took the form of either actual stamps, embossed designs printed and applied to documents under government contract or supervision, or as lithographed designs in which the IRS provided the lithography stones used by local printers.

There are actually two revenue-type stamps applicable to this document. The first is the lithographed design in the direct center of the document itself, pictured more fully here in figure 1. In the case of this mining company check, the lithographed design, and the authority to levy the tax itself, was instigated by the Spanish-American War in 1898. The most common usage of the printed design was for a “parlor car tax”, and it appeared on special railroad tickets of the time in addition to many other documents. (The Scott Specialized Catalog of United States Stamps and Covers designates this as a type RN-X7 revenue stamped paper design.) The two cent tax due on the printed check would have been paid by the check writer, in this case, the Consolidated California and Virginia Mining Company.

On the upper left face of the check, an additional revenue stamp appears, this one a one cent documentary stamp (Scott vignette type R15), commonly called the Battleship stamp. It, too, was first issued in 1898, and the one cent tax had to be paid by the person who received or executed the document, in this case, the payee. Note the handwritten initials FEF appear across the face of the stamp in ink, the initials of one F.E. Fielding to whom the check was paid.


The Mines

Since I was unfamiliar with the mining company that drafted the check, the first bit of investigating entailed numerous searches of the company name. The internet has made such searches less arduous, but they are still, by no means, immediately rewarding! It took a few hours on several different days, but slowly a story unfolded.

On December 26, 1890, the Consolidated California and Virginia Mining Company filed as a corporation in the State of Nevada (Nevada State Library & Archives – Dept of Cultural Affairs). It was an apparent combination of two earlier mining powerhouses who had seen better days, the Consolidated Virginia Mining Company and the California Mining Company, both of Comstock Lode fame. Both companies had common major shareholders, and they had worked adjacent claims at the Comstock.

Predecessor company Consolidated Virginia Mining Co. was founded in 1867 from a number of small claims; later, the California Mining Co (operating adjacent to it) was formed in 1873. They were among this richest of all Comstock properties, turning huge profits both in bullion at one end and stock sales to investors at the other. A fire in 1882 closed down both of them (University of California, Bancroft Library, Comstock Lode). By the end of 1877, however, the Big Bonanza strike of 1873 had more or less finished production, and by 1881, much of the Comstock was operating in the red. By the summer of 1880, a year and a half before the mines closed, the California Mining Co. was extracting only about 1,000 tons a week of fair-grade ore between the 800 level and the 1,700 level. Even though its C&C Shaft had reached 2,450 feet, it ended up in a vein formation that included some quartz but no profitable ores. The saga of the California, like its companion Consolidated Virginia, was not unlike that of all Comstock bonanzas that eventually went bust. (insidemydesk.com). But it was these two adjacent properties that eventually formed the core of the Consolidated California and Virginia Mining Company nearly ten years later.

Comstock stories are numerous and fascinating, but far beyond the scope of this short article. True tales of the inundated mint in San Francisco that was choking on Comstock bullion, of scandalous law suits and counter-claims of skullduggery, of shrewd business dealings where separate companies, all commonly owned, handled timbering, stamping, milling, refining and other ore-related functions, all abound in the Comstock literature and elsewhere. (For a taste of the lawsuits involving the Consolidated California and Virginia Mining Company and its owners, see the New York Times, Aug. 24, 1895). The famous Sutro tunnel is worthy of a book in itself, but all of this is beyond the story of this lowly check!

The Players

One of the principal stockholders of the Consolidated California and Virginia Mining Company was none other than John W. Mackay, one of the “Irish Big Four” who had earlier developed and largely controlled the Comstock Lode. In the 1860’s, MacKay had formed a partnership commonly known as the Bonanza Firm with James G. Fair, James C. Flood, and William S. O'Brien, and they ultimately became the developers of the famous Comstock Lode. In 1873, Mackay struck one of the richest veins in history, the Big Bonanza, which produced more than $180 million in ore in just over four years.

John W. Mackay was well known in mining circles, having been a miner, developer and financier of considerable prowess. The Mackay School of Mines in Reno, Nevada was named for him as result of a major endowment from the Mackay family in 1906, four years after his death. The statue of Mackay that adorns the entrance to the school was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum of Mount Rushmore fame (University of Nevada website). In 1944, the mineral mackayite was named for him by Clifford Frondel (frondelite) and Fred Pough (poughite) on material from Goldfield, Nevada, supplied by C. D. Woodhouse (woodhouseite) and Hatfield Goudey (goudeyite); see American Mineralogist, Vol. 29, pgs 211-225. (One might suggest that the mineral naming club was an incestuous bunch, no?)

Much of what follows has been gleaned from several sources, the most significant being Thomas Wren’s History of Nevada, that was published in 1904 and now made available via Google Books. F.E. Fielding, to whom the check was written, was a well known metallurgist and chemist. He was principally the major assayer of Comstock ores for MacKay for more than thirty (30) years. (His signature on the back of the check confirms that he cashed the $237 check, an amount equivalent to about $6000 today, and assumingly in exchange for on-going assay work on MacKay’s behalf. His initials across the face of the “Battleship” revenue stamp indicate he paid his one cent fee to the IRS as well.)

Frank E. Fielding was born on April 3, 1851. His family was related to George Washington by marriage, and Fielding was first educated in Lancaster, Ohio, subsequently receiving degrees from Oakland College (now the University of California @ Berkeley) and later Columbia College (now Columbia University) in New York. In 1873, he returned west and was employed by MacKay and Fair, a firm later to become part of the Consolidated California and Virginia Mining Company. Fielding’s reputation as mineralogist and assayer was apparently held in very high esteem, and when the University of Nevada relocated to Reno in 1886, it offered courses at its mining school in assaying, mineralogy and metallurgy, all under Frank Fielding (University of Nevada website). In Walter Brown’s Manual of Assaying Gold, Silver, Copper and Lead Ores (1886), Fielding is noted in the acknowledgements “for valuable notes on the assay of gold bullion and volumetric analysis of copper ores”, attesting to his prowess as an assayer. The details of Fielding’s demise are unknown to me, but he certainly sounds like a candidate as a mineral namee for some new gold or silver ore mineral of the future. (IMA: take note!)

The signor of the check, one Joseph R. Ryan, was an astute mining man, the superintendent of the Consolidated California and Virginia Mining Company at the time. He held numerous other positions in other mining concerns, typifying the interrelationship among the many companies operating within the Comstock. He was also affiliated with Hale & Norcross and Andes (a mining and consulting company), was superintendant of the Ophir Mining Company, and he was also manager of the Comstock Pumping Association, among other positions. His father, James T. Ryan, was a well-known California businessman and legislator who was one of the first white men to enter Humboldt Bay in California in 1850. Although several detailed mining reports involving Comstock properties bore the younger Ryan’s name up through 1904, little more was uncovered about him or his later activities.

Hence, this one hundred and ten year old document provided me with a brief glimpse into the histories of a few prominent men of the Comstock mining days. Perhaps Fielding or Ryan were mineral collectors, and might there be dusty old specimens from one or both sitting in a Nevada museum or college collection drawer somewhere? Perhaps some reader out there has more information about these or other mining men involved in this simple paycheck. What other forgotten luminaries paid the IRS their penny or two this way, ultimately to help finance the Spanish-American war? Who knows what might be rediscovered with a little fresh digging?


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