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The Federal Union Gold Mining Company

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Mining Start Price:100.00 USD Estimated At:200.00 - 400.00 USD
The Federal Union Gold Mining Company
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By-laws of the Federal Union Mining Company, Clear Creek County, Colorado, organized March 27, 1866. Capital stock $1000,000. Franklin Job Printing, Greenfield, 1866. Stitched in original printed deep blue wrappers, with wrapper title, 'The Federal Union Gold Mining Company,' lettered in gilt. (6.25" x 4.25") 11 pp. Near Fine. The President of this Massachusetts corporation, Alfred R. Field, was from Greenfield. Other officers were from Massachusetts and Rock Island, Illinois. One Director was from Colorado. The property was located "on both sides of South Clear Creek, at Colona Bar, in the Territory of Colorado." The corporation was organized "for the purpose of mining gold and other ores," during the enthusiasms of the Colorado Gold Rush. The bylaws prescribe a form stock certificate. The Federal Union Mining Company (F. U. M. C.) was organized by a group of Eastern investors including A.W. Hoyt, a civil engineer, Elisha Wells, a Massachusetts businessman, and General Napoleon Bonaparte Buford, at the end of the Civil War. In 1865, Hoyt sent Buford, a Union general who had been prominent in the Tennessee Campaigns, to visit the mining property of Jeb and Erskine McClellan in Clear Creek County, Colorado, seven miles from Black Hawk. Hoyt instructed Buford to check out the mines’ "working value" and get the McClellan brothers to sell their claims. Buford visited Colorado and returned East in late 1865 with bond to pay for the claim. In 1866 the company was formally organized. Arthur Field was elected President and Elisha Wells was to serve as Treasurer-Secretary. A sufficient number of Eastern investors were solicited to raise enough capital to send Buford back to Colorado in the spring of 1866 as superintendent of the mines. He took with him a group of men to work in the mines and a trainload of supplies in April 1866. In Clear Creek County, Buford served as superintendent until December 1866. Then he decided to return to his home in Rock Island, Illinois for the winter. In the spring of 1867, the Board of Directors, displeased with Buford’s management of the claim as they had no evidence of profits, dismissed Buford as superintendent. Buford later became a special commissioner to inspect the newly completed Union Pacific Railroad. He spent his last years in Chicago and died there in 1883.



By 1868, the company was in dire financial straits and no longer paid McClellan his salary so McClellan brought suit against F. U. M. C. McClellan won a writ of attachment in the trial of McClellan versus the Federal Union Mining Company in April 1868. In that same month, the company appointed Elisha Wells superintendent of the mines and gave him the power to settle with McClellan and begin suit against Buford. Wells traveled to Colorado in May where he found that all of the company’s movable property had been sold to Thomas Evans of Georgetown and the real estate in Clear Creek County was to be sold at auction on June 6. The mining property was auctioned to Thomas Evans and the F. U. M. C. lost all of its original property. They were left with eighty acres of coal mining property in Jefferson County, Colorado, near Golden. For the summer Wells prospected for himself, staking claims in Summit County. He also began to question men who had had dealings with Buford and McClellan, beginning to gather evidence against the two former superintendents.



In January, 1869 at the company’s stockholders meeting, Wells was authorized to bring suit against McClellan. In 1871, the stockholders voted that Wells was also authorized to commence suit against Antoine Serriolle "or others against whom the Company has demands or unsettled accounts" and a suit against the firm of Royle and Butler of Central City for damages in conducting the suit of the Federal Union Mining Company versus McClellan begun in November, 1868. The company’s resolution to bring suit against the law firm is the only evidence in the collection that the F. U. M. C. lost their suit against McClellan. There is no indication that the company brought suit against any of the other individuals or the law firm.

City: Cripple Creek
State: Colorado,
Date: 1866

FHWAC#: 27044