Harris Franklin Biography


	This biography appears on pages 1184-1186 in "History of South 
	Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. II (1904) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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	HARRIS FRANKLIN.—The qualities which command the largest measure 
of material success in human affairs are a clearness of understanding 
that brings into definite view from the beginning the end desired and 
the most available means of reaching it; a force of will tireless in its 
persistency; and a quickness of decision that instantly utilizes the 
commanding points in any case. In the ratio in which they possess these 
qualities men are great according to their bent, and are the leaders of 
their fellows from the rightful sovereignty innate in their individual 
nature. There may be oratorical power — depth of thought and grace of 
diction — in the conjunction. Subtlety in dialectics and copiousness of 
technical learning may not be wanting. Social culture and masterful 
grace in all the bland amenities of life may be present in abundant 
measure. If so they are only added powers — helpful, but not necessary. 
For it is the men of action who move the world forward in its destined 
course, especially in this intensely practical age. Where such men hail 
from, and the circumstances of their birth and breeding, are usually 
matters of little moment. Nature has no favored spots for the creation 
of her choice products. According to her needs and occasions she is all 
Athens, all Stratford-on-Avon, all Wall street. When a man is required 
for any specific purpose, she produces him apparently without regard to 
circumstances and fearlessly flings him into the crisis. She knows her 
brood, and those she singles out for great events never disappoint her. 
Sometimes she even proves them in the alembic of stern adversity, and 
then they come forth from the trial only purified and strengthened for 
the work before them. 

	Harris Franklin, of Deadwood, is essentially and notably a man of 
this character—clear in perception, resolute in pursuit, quick and firm 
in decision. These qualities have given him force and leadership among 
men, and wrought out for him a record in commercial and industrial life 
creditable alike to himself and to the people in whose service it has 
been made. He was born in Russian Poland on March 18, 1849, the son of 
Z. and Ellen Franklin also natives of that country. His ancestors had 
resided there for countless generations, had flourished and thriven 
there with the flight of time, had borne their part in the honorable 
history of their native land in peace and war, and had been content to 
be numbered among its useful citizens who faithfully performed every 
public and private duty. It was reserved for him to carry the family 
name and the qualities that gave it distinction into a distant country 
and the service of another people. And for this duty his preparation, 
while neither extensive nor showy, was consistent and sufficient. His 
mother died in his infancy and he was reared to the age of fifteen by 
his father, a busy exporter of seeds, principally flax. He received a 
slender education in the common schools, and was thrown much on his own 
resources from boyhood. In 1864 his father came to the United States and 
located at Syracuse, New York. Four years later he died at Des Moines, 
Iowa. In the meantime the son, in 1866, came to this country alone, and 
also settled at Syracuse. He began his career in his new home by 
carrying for two years through western New York a peddler's pack, 
weighing 100 pounds, and conducting the small traffic it made possible. 
In 1868 he located at Burlington, Iowa, and opened a small store which 
he kept with profit until 1871. He then sold out and moved to Nebraska 
City, Nebraska, here he engaged in a wholesale and retail liquor 
business, and became one of its traveling representatives and salesmen. 
He built up an extensive trade, but owing to extraordinary conditions in 
1873 he lost all he had. He then went on the road in the interest of a 
Council Bluffs (Iowa) cigar company, in whose employ he remained two 
years. At the end of that period he gave up the job and going to 
Laramie, Wyoming, he again embarked in the wholesale liquor trade. His 
success in this venture was such that in 1877 he opened a branch store 
at Cheyenne. The year before this he spent a month in the Black Hills 
inspecting the business conditions and outlook, with the result that in 
1878 he started another branch at Deadwood. The next year he sold all 
his interests in Wyoming and took up his residence at Deadwood 
permanently, having passed the greater portion of the time in the Hills 
after his first visit in 1876. The big fire of September 26, 1879, swept 
away all his possessions and left him twenty thousand dollars in debt. 
In this disaster he even lost all his extra clothing except one shirt 
that happened to be at a Chinese laundry in a portion of the town not 
visited by the fire. In the following November he again started his 
liquor business, which he carried on with increasing magnitude until 
1890 when the prohibitory law went into effect. Before this, however, in 
1881, having been taught by experience that it was unwise to have all 
his eggs in one basket, he started a cattle industry on a small scale 
which he gradually enlarged and promoted. In this he was on the highway 
to big success when the severe winter of 1886-7 caused him considerable 
loss. But he did not abandon the industry and is still extensively 
engaged in it. In 1886 he became interested in mining and the next year 
organized the Golden Reward Mining Company, of which he served as 
president until 1896. He then sold the greater part of his interest in 
the company to New York capitalists, gave up the presidency to E. H. 
Harriman and became vice-president, a position he still holds. In 1895, 
turning his attention to finance, for which he has peculiar fitness, he 
organized the American National Bank of Deadwood, with a capital stock 
of fifty thousand dollars. That this bank has flourished vigorously 
under his management is shown by the fact that it now has a surplus and 
undivided profits amounting to two hundred and twenty-five thousand 
dollars. He was its president until 1902, when he bought a controlling 
interest in the First National Bank of Deadwood, and since then he has 
been president of that institution. It has a capital of one hundred 
thousand dollars, with a surplus of ninety thousand dollars. But he is 
still one of the directors and the active manager of the American 
National. When Mr. Franklin organized the Golden Reward Mining Company 
the Ruby basin district was almost valueless because there was no way of 
extracting the precious metals from the ore at a profit. He then passed 
four years in efforts to overcome this difficulty, and was finally 
rewarded with the discovery of a chlorination process which greatly 
cheapened the work and made it pay. In 1890 his process was put in 
operation with complete machinery, and his became the first successful 
chlorination plant in the world in practical use. Previous to this some 
such process had been used in Grass Valley, California, but it was never 
able to bring the cost of treating ores below twenty-five dollars a ton, 
whereas, during the last two years his plant worked it treated them at a 
cost of but three dollars and fifty-one cents a ton. This enterprise was 
the making of the Black Hills as a permanently profitable mining center, 
but the plant was destroyed by fire in 1899. Since then the company has 
owned and operated an extensive smelter, and also built a well equipped 
cyanide plant on the site of the burnt property. In addition to his 
interest in this company Mr. Franklin has extensive holdings in other 
mining properties, among them the Deadwood & Delaware smelter, of which 
he is the head and controlling spirit, and which has recently largely 
increased its capacity. He is devoted to his various business interests, 
and has no time or taste for public life. He is therefore independent of 
party control in politics, and has never sought or desired public 
office. He is, however, earnestly and intelligently interested in the 
advancement and general welfare of his city, county and state, and 
withholds no effort needed on his part to promote them. 

	On January 1, 1870, Mr. Franklin was married to Miss Anna Steiner, 
a native of Hanover, Germany, who came to the United States with her 
parents when she was one year old, and was reared and educated in New 
York state. She died on January 10, 1902, leaving one child, a son, 
Nathan E. Franklin, who received his scholastic education in the public 
schools of Deadwood and was afterward graduated from the department of 
pharmacy in the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana. He is now cashier 
of the American National Bank, of Deadwood. 

	In 1893 a movement was started by the business men of Deadwood to 
build a first-class modern hotel in the city. Mr. Franklin took a great 
interest and a leading part in the project, and the result is the 
splendid hostelry known as the Hotel Franklin, which was named in his 
honor. The sum of forty thousand dollars was expended in purchasing the 
site and laying the foundation, then on account of the general 
depression of business the enterprise lay dormant for about nine years. 
But two or three years ago, mainly through Mr. Franklin's influence, it 
was revived and the building was completed. In addition to the expense 
already incurred, the sum of one hundred and ten thousand dollars more 
was invested in it, and of this Mr. Franklin put in fifty thousand 
dollars. The hotel was opened for business in July, 1903, and is one of 
the most elegant and complete in the Northwest. Mr. Franklin has 
contributed liberally to other enterprises for the improvement of the 
town and the advantage of its people, and has probably done more than 
any other person for the development and progress of the whole Black 
Hills region. In 1881 he was the promoter and carried to successful 
completion the first flour mill of Deadwood, with a capacity of two 
hundred barrels of flour per day. The mill burned, however, in 1897 and 
was not rebuilt. An electric light plant had been installed and operated 
a couple of years, when it was abandoned as an unsuccessful enterprise. 
In 1887 Mr. Franklin came forward with others and bought the plant and 
put it upon a permanent and successful basis with modern methods. In all 
the relations of life and in every field of labor in which he has 
engaged he has exemplified in a signal degree the best attributes of 
American citizenship, and he has the satisfaction of not only seeing the 
results of his energy and public spirit blooming and fructifying around 
him but of being securely established in the lasting regard and good 
will of his fellow men wherever he is known.