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Placerville,CA - 1907-1913 - Fairchild Family Letter Collection :

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Western Americana Start Price:2,500.00 USD Estimated At:5,000.00 - 7,500.00 USD
Placerville,CA - 1907-1913 - Fairchild Family Letter Collection :
Lot of 38 letters from Mahlon D. Fairchild to daughter-in-law Francis Fairchild regarding California history. Mahlon Fairchild was a California pioneer, publisher and historian who loved to write letters to his daughter-in-law containing stories of the old times in Placerville. Fairchild had come to California on the same steamer with Leland Stanford in 1849. He mined at Auburn and Placerville. In 1882 he went to Oroville, bought the Weekly Mercury and turned it into a daily newspaper. He came from a newspaper family in New York, and he and/or his brothers owned other papers in Nevada and California, including at Treasure Hill and Austin, in the heat of those mining rushes. Mahlon also owned a paper in Belmont, Nevada and worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad as a right-of-way agent. Fairchild died in 1913 and some of the family papers were given to the Society of California Pioneers. This group of letters discusses much about Coloma, Placerville, his friend Daggett, Snowshoe Thompson, Sutter's Mill and much more. They are all in his handwriting and signed.