Golden Parlour Mine, Meriden, New Haven County, Connecticut, USAi

Regional Level Types
Golden Parlour Mine	Mine
Meriden	Town
New Haven County	County
Connecticut	State
USA	Country

On the hill in the western part of Walnut Grove cemetery are the remains of an ancient working known as Golden Parlor Mine. There are two adjoining shafts still to be seen which were extended to a depth of twelve or fifteen feet. From the shafts, galleries or drifts led to the west a good many feet. The farms of Dr. William Hough and Timothy Roys were adjoining and ran from the Country road to the river on the west. That of Timothy’s was wholly west of Dr. Hough’s and the common boundary was somewhere on the hill or crest where the mines were dug. The Hough farm and quite a portion of the Roys holdings were during the greater part of the last century in the possession of the Wood family, and the writer has been told by Norman S. Wood and his nephew, Charles H., that when they lived on the farm it was possible to penetrate quite a distance into the old drifts. In one of the shafts the present superintendent of the cemetery, Fred F. Bowen, found quite a nugget of copper and also the remains of one of the ancient iron hammers, probably used by the workmen in the olden days. It is not positive that the present shafts were those of the Golden Parlor mine on the Roys lease or were made by those who were digging for copper on the Hough farm. The mines were not far apart....

There is a tradition that a cargo of ore was shipped to England and the vessel was lost at sea and the owners were so discouraged by this misfortune that the mines were abandoned...

But Dr. Hough was at work at the mines on his side of the hill 18 years later. At this time he was living in Haddam and the farm was the homestead of his son, William Hough, Jr., the blacksmith. On March 21, 1755, the son mortgaged the farm to his father and this clause occurs in the deed: “The condition of the above obligation is such that if the above William Hough shall allow his said father free liberty at the mines on the west end of his home lot to dig for ore as he shall see fit, and shall have liberty to cut timber for the use of the mines or digging drains or whatever shall be needful for carrying on the work, and shall have liberty to pass to said mines, on the south side of his home lot, from the highway, to the mines for carting,” etc., etc...

On Nov. 29th, 17547 Katharine [Whittlesey] bought of the heirs of Timothy Roys all right to the mines and minerals that had formerly been leased to the Golden Parlor Mining Co., and on December 4th following she bought of Timothy, Jr., 18 acres, which contained the mines in question. What she did with the property there is no record left to tell us.

It would seem from the mine that the company was in search of gold, rather than copper; no record was found of anything they may have obtained; but a very sketchy newspaper account wound up with the statement that the failure of the mine was due to the fact that the “foreigners” employed “made off with most of the gold mined.”