Lafayette County WI Archives History - Books .....Early History Of The Mines 1881
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 April 18, 2013, 6:18 pm

Book Title: History Of La Fayette County

The year 1828, while replete with trials and hardships, against which no soul
rebelled and no voice was raised, also shone with promises in rainbow tints,
that have long since attained the most complete fruition. Out of the darkness
there shone a light; out of the sorrow came an exceeding joy. Much was done this
year which resulted in untold benefits to generations yet unborn. The arable
land was prepared for farming; houses were erected and other improvements
projected; a school was established, and religious services became a portion of
the most defined character in the weekly lives of the inhabitants, and the
mines, which have long since become celebrated as sources of inexhaustible
wealth, were first brought into prominence. In this connection, a history of the
Irish and Elevator Diggings, from the pen of a ready writer, is appropriated:

EARLY HISTORY OF THE MINES.

About one mile north of Shullsburg is a large tract of mineral land, which, on
account of the nationality of the first discoverers of lead ore therein, was
called the "Irish Diggings," by which name it is still known. The "Irish
Diggings" includes all the land lying between Shullsburg Branch and South Ames
Branch, and embraces nearly four thousand acres of land, of various degrees of
richness.

In the year 1826, mineral or lead ore was first discovered on this tract, and
more or less mining done until 1832, when the Black Hawk war interrupted all
mining operations in this neighborhood, and work was not regularly resumed until
1834. when, by treaty made with the Indians, all the country lying south of
Winnebago Ridge was opened to the whites for mining purposes. During this year,
an Irishman by the name of Doyle discovered what is still known as the "Doyle
Range," from which, in the short space of two years, and with none but the
primitive means of mining, he raised about five million pounds of lead ore,
which, at a former price of lead, would net the snug sum of three hundred
thousand dollars.

During Jackson's administration, Doyle, who was the most successful, or rather
"fortunate," miner of his day, made a visit to Washington, and gave a public
dinner to the President and a number of the most distinguished men of the time,
who were then assembled, the President occupying the first position at the
table, and Doyle the second. A general good feeling pervaded the occasion, and
Doyle was highly complimented on his prosperity as a miner. After his return
from the capitol of the nation, Doyle became dissipated, and the good nature and
liberality which his good fortune engendered was the means of leading him into
excessive indulgence in liquor, and connected him with those who are ever ready
to share the fortune of the successful, so that, in a few years, his entire
wealth had been squandered, and, after a number of years of poverty and
suffering, Doyle, once the wealthiest man in this part of the country, died,
neglected and alone, in his cabin, situated on the same ground from which he had
dug his fortune.

When, in 1848, the land came into market, a large portion of the "Irish
Diggings" was purchased by John McNulty. No active mining operations have been
conducted on this tract for years, with the exception of the Mount Hope
Company's Works, which are located on what is called the "Hawthorne Range," and
the "McCoskee Cave Range."

This company has been in operation some time, though they have not worked
continuously. Their present operations were confined to the Cave range, where
they sunk a shaft to the depth of eighty feet, and removed the water by means of
a horse-pump. Their mineral was mostly under water, and the work done proved the
ground to contain very rich deposits of ore.

Some time after, they drilled a six-inch hole in the bottom of their pump-shaft,
and at the depth of about one hundred and twenty feet from the surface, bored
through one sheet of mineral about fourteen inches in thickness, and also one
about ten inches.

On striking the opening containing those sheets, the water rushed upward with
such force as to carry up the heavy borings of lead and rock at the bottom of
the pump-shaft to the surface.

The "cave" proper is situated about one hundred and fifty feet south of the
pump-shaft. Some years ago, about one hundred thousand pounds of mineral was
taken from this cave, mostly above water, and the company sank two shafts on the
old works, and, at the depth of about forty feet, struck heavy deposits of lead
ore, which, however, was mostly submerged in water.

Some splendid specimens have been taken from these works, some of which weigh in
the neighborhood of three hundred pounds, and the public was assured by Mr. J.
H. Wicker, Superintendent of the company's works, that, if the water was
removed, he could work twenty men on mineral at that time.

Lying easterly from the Mount Hope Company were the mines of Meloy, Kelly &
Pulis, the Dr. Lee Diggings and the Stump Grove or Bull Pump Diggings, and also
Henry's Diggings.

It is estimated that the entire tract of land known as the "Irish Diggings,"
including the subdivisions mentioned in this article, has, altogether, produced
since its first discovery the enormous amount of fifty million pounds of lead
ore, which would be worth about Three Million Dollars.

Almost the entire amount of mineral raised from this tract of ground was taken
from the upper opening, above water, and what united wealth lies yet hidden in
the openings beneath, where, experience teaches us, the richest and most
extensive deposits exist, is a problem which can only be solved by time, energy
and capital.

The east half of Section 9 and west half of Section 10, being on the west side
and con- contiguous to the corporation of the village of Shullsburg, is what is
known as the "Deep Clay Diggings." In all the lead-mining region the overlying
clay is from two to ten feet deep, except in this particular locality, where it
assumes a depth of forty feet, forming what might be termed a basin of clay.
Between the clay and rock was deposited the lead ore, and in some instances
running down a few feet into the rock where there were gash crevices. The
largest veins, or rather those that were the most profitable to the first
workers of these mines, with the primitive means then in use, were the
north-and-south sheets. These would often be thirty and forty feet in depth and
from one to six inches in thickness, yielding ore of surpassing richness and
purity in large quantities with but little labor.

The east-and-west veins were in junk form lying over crevices in the rock; and,
being from five to fifteen feet in width, and immediately under the clay, were
more difficult to work on account of the danger of caving and burying the miners
alive.

Accidents were frequent, though but few persons lost their lives, and those that
did, through gross carelessness. These mines were first discovered in 1828, by
two men named Height and Blenick. They took a compass, and getting the bearings
of the celebrated "Black Leg" range, followed the course some four miles, and
discovered what has since been known as the "Willow Range," so called from the
large amount of willows that grew up through the old workings. During the years
1828 and 1829, other parties coming in, new discoveries were made and a large
amount of lead ore was raised.

The "Black Hawk war," having caused a suspension of operations for several
years, and after its close the low price of lead not justifying the working of
these mines, nothing further was done until the summer of 1841.

The winter previous having been unusually dry, it enabled some Suckers, who at
this time were flocking to the mines in large numbers from Southern Illinois, to
sink deeper than ever had been done before, and resulted in the discovery of
large deposits of ore underneath the old working. This caused a general stampede
among the miners to the new discovery.

The village of Shullsburg, which the year before consisted of one "Bull Pump."
and some dozen miners' cabins, sprung up with the rapidity of Jonah's Gourd.
Balloon frame hotels, boarding houses, stores and those sure attendants upon all
excitements where men are supposed to become suddenly rich, the dram shop and
gaming table, were here with all their blandishments. Faro, seven-up, euchre and
poker were the order of the day and night too.

Many a poor Sucker that had just received his sovereign for a bunch worked out
in the clay, enough to have started him well in life, would come to the village
in the evening, and, going into the Slide, a famous resort, and getting excited
over the "faro bank," would pull out his purse, shake out a sovereign, get it
exchanged for checks and commence chubbing in. After a few chubs, finding it
gone, to retrieve his fortune, he would try another and another, until his last
cent would be gone, then thrusting his hands into his empty pockets, and
whistling "The Girl I Left Behind Me," turn and leave the house, ready to again
begin in the morning to seek for another bunch in the deep clay.

Men of nearly all the nationalities being thus suddenly gathered together, did
not tend to produce that feeling of brotherly love that should pervade in
communities of sober habits and strict Sunday piety. Strife and discord often
prevailed, ending in broken heads or bloody noses. Parties feeling themselves
aggrieved at the encroachments of others upon their claims, and not considering
themselves strong enough to drive away the other parties by force, would call in
the aid of some noted bully, giving him a fighting interest if he succeeded in
driving the other parties off. Often Mr. Bully got his match and fled the field.

The following incidents are related by an old settler: "Passing a grocery one
evening, we heard loud voices and very strong language denouncing some person in
peculiar set phrases not very complimentary. We soon discovered that a party of
men, headed by a noted bully, were freely imbibing forty-rod whisky, and
arranging a plan for driving a man off a certain piece of ground, supposed to
contain a rich deposit of lead ore. Bully was demonstrating in strong and
forcible language, if not eloquent, that he felt himself competent to send all
or any person to the regions of Pluto, who should oppose his entering in and
quietly enjoying peaceable possession of the premises. It having been whispered
about that said bully was more of a man of bluster than of deeds, and knowing
that the other party was no coward and possessed of a good deal of mettle, the
meeting promised some rich sport, and we made up our minds to be there. Next
morning, repairing to the place, we found about fifty men on the ground, to
witness the affray, and the possessor of the ground taking the sod off
preparatory to sinking a hole down to the supposed mineral wealth beneath. In a
few minutes, bully put in his appearance, followed by his backers. It was
apparent that he had not forgotten to fortify himself with his morning dram, and
in doing so had 'taken a long pull, a strong pull and a pull all together,
boys,' of a large amount of fighting whisky. Upon coming on the ground, his
first salutation was, 'What are you doing there? You get out of that!' The other
replied, 'Sinking a hole on my range.' Bully answered, 'You git off of our
range; we don't want any hole sunk there, and if we did we can sink it ourselves.'

"The other party now laid down his spade, and stepping out of the hole and going
toward bully, said, 'You have come out here to take a fighting interest with
these men who have no right here, and drive me off my diggings. Now, as this is
not the first time you have tried your hand at this game with other men, I am
willing, if you can whip me, to give you full possession of the ground, so shuck
yourself and wade in.'

"This was rather a poser to bully, the thing looked fight, and that, too, with a
determined man. Bully looked to one backer and another, and finding all his
party on the back-out, after a few hurried whispers, turned and left the field,
followed by the hoots and jeers of the crowd. Next morning there was one bully
less in town than the day before.

"Going out to work one day after dinner, we saw a crowd of men gathered about a
shaft, and, hearing angry voices, went up to ascertain the cause. We found two
men in an angry dispute about the right to a certain piece of ground, which both
claimed with equal pertinacity. Angry words soon brought on more active
demonstrations. One party drew an old pepper-box pistol and commenced firing on
the other. He replied with a volley of rocks, so they had it turn about, first
pistol and then rock, until the pistol was emptied of its contents, when the
holder threw it down and turned and fled, in the full belief that he had riddled
his antagonist. He rushed to town, and, finding a horse ready saddled and
bridled hitched to a post, without stopping to ask the owner's leave, unloosed
it, and, mounting, made the best possible speed for ten miles to Frink &
Walker's barn, on the stage route between Galena and Chicago, left the horse by
the side of the road, and, taking passage East, left the country. The last that
was heard of him, he was following at the tail of a plow near Rome, N. Y.,
pondering on the mutability of all earthly things, and sinking sucker holes on
the deep clay, in particular. The man of rocks got one ball hole through the rim
of his hat, the old pistol as the spoils of war and full possession of the
diggings.

"Collisions over the rights to ranges were of frequent occurrence, and did not
always assume such ridiculous phases. Broken heads and ugly wounds from knife or
pistol would be the consequence.

"In the years of 1846 and 1847, there were over five hundred men working on the
one mile square that constituted the deep clay diggings. The Mexican war drew
off many of the wild and restless spirits that were mining here; and when the
California fever broke out in 1849, it became nearly deserted, and there has
been but little work done here since.

"All the ore raised here was above water, being only float, or surface mineral,
as it is called. There have been over forty million pounds of lead ore raised on
this piece of ground; and if the same principle holds good here that has proved
true in other parts of the lead mines, that the largest deposits of ore are
beneath the water level, there is untold wealth in this piece of ground."

Running along the south part of the southeast quarter of Section 10, and being
within the incorporated limits of the village of Shullsburg, is a range or lode
of lead ore, known as the "Elevator Range." This has been one of the
best-defined lodes that has yet been discovered in the lead region, and the most
extensively worked. Assuming different names along its course, according to the
whims of the discoverers, it stretches along in one continuous course north 72°
west, for three-fourths of a mile in length, in one continuous vein. The first
of these was the Elevator Range. Two men, father and son, by the name of
Olmsted, in the spring of 1826, being out on a prospecting tour, discovered this
very valuable range of mineral. In passing over the then almost unbroken surface
of the prairie, they noticed a very remarkable growth of vegetation running in
one direction, and this induced them to sink a hole in it, and the result was
the discovery of the range. In some parts of the vein worked by them, the ore
lay almost at the surface of the earth, and they took out masses of ore from the
soil, or black earth, that would weigh from 300 to 500 pounds. Large quantities
were thrown out upon the surface by hand, not being sufficiently deep to require
the use of a windlass and tub, as in ordinary cases. In working down to the
rock, it proved to be a gash vein, or, in mining parlance, an open clay crevice,
filled with clay and ore to the width of four feet, and sometimes even more than
that. There were parts of the crevice worked by them where there would be
vertical sheets of ore eighteen inches in thickness, and filled in by side junks
that had to be broken to raise them to the surface of the earth. The range runs
along near the summit of a wide and flat ridge, and consequently it was no great
depth to water, not more than twenty-five or thirty feet, and very strong at
that. Here was a difficulty that no miner had as yet attempted to contend with,
and it was supposed that there was no way of successfully mining in this country
below the water level. They therefore contented themselves by working along the
surface of the water, and avoiding any hard rock, as that was an equal barrier
to any further progress to them as the water. They were not very enterprising
men, and, after working for two or three years, spending their money as fast as
it was taken from the mines, for whisky, or at the gaming table, they found
themselves as poor as they were at the beginning. The only title to land here at
that time was a permit granted from the War Department of the United States
Government to those who should discover mines, upon their agreeing to pay the
Government one-sixteenth of all ores raised and sold. Under promises from a
designing man to put on a pump that would drain the ground, they suffered him to
get the permit. After promising and delaying for a year or two, without
affecting anything, the Black Hawk war drove all parties from the field—the
Olmsteds to return no more.

After the close of the Black Hawk war, and when the miners again returned, a man
by the name of Sam Bateman, in 1836, got possession of this range, and after
taking out some ore at the sides and along the top of the water, concluded to
try a horse pump. This was a very primitive affair. The horse had to walk a
circle of twenty-four feet in diameter, to make one stroke of four feet in a
six-inch working-pump. It would be difficult to calculate the number of gallons
it would throw to the minute, as the motion would be too slow for calculation.
But the man persevered and raised some ore, though not enough in the two years
he worked it to pay his expenses. Finding it unprofitable business, he abandoned
it. But he proved one thing—that mineral went into the water, and was better
there than above it.

In 1836, Beon Gratiot, Dean & Wyley, of Galena, Ill., took possession of the
mine and put on a steam engine for the purpose of raising the water. This also
proved a failure in a pecuniary point of view. There were no persons here at
this time who thoroughly understood mining below water; and none especially
understood working a steam engine for mining purposes. Fuel was scarce and dear;
and the engine was of near twice the capacity for the work it had to perform,
consequently, it took double the amount of fuel to raise the power that was
needed for working the barrel pump. After working about eighteen months, a
dispute arising about the rents belonging to the ground, they abandoned the
working and took off the engine.

In the summer of 1841, James Irvin & Co., put into the mine what they called an
Elevator Pump, which gave the range its name. This was a contrivance to raise
water by means of buckets similar to those used in mills to elevate grain, the
power being supplied by horses. This was a profitable venture to the parties
interested, some of whom were well-skilled miners from Cornwall, England. But at
the end of that summer, they had worked as low as their pump would exhaust the
water. In all this time, with all the parties that had worked the mine, they had
succeeded in getting only about twenty feet under the level of the water, where
it was first discovered. William Hempsted, previous to this, in 1836, had
erected an inclined wheel on some ranges that run parallel to this, about one
thousand feet north of it, and was successfully raising the water from his mines
with the pump attached to this wheel, which was known as the Bull Pump. These
mines being about sixty feet deeper than the workings of the Elevator, Curry &
Co., successors to James Irvin & Co., conceived the idea of going into the Bull
Pump range and driving a drift into their range so that the Bull Pump could
raise the water for them. They commenced operations accordingly, in the summer
of 1844. This was a hard undertaking; one thousand feet, and, for anything they
knew, through a hard rock, with water pouring in on them through the rock
overhead, and every foot to be blasted out with powder; but they persevered
until the spring of 1849, and, although they were more than half way through,
they abandoned the work and went to California. In the fall of 1849, Edward
Weatherby & Co. took possession of the mine, and the next spring started the
first multiplying horse-power pump that had ever been erected in the mines. This
pump would make four four-and-a-half-feet strokes to one round of the horses,
discharging through a ten-inch working barrel, an immense amount of water. This
enabled them to sink deeper than any one supposed it possible to drain the
ground by means of horsepower pumps. It opened up rich deposits of ore of great
purity. This pump drained the ground for seven years, making the enterprising
owners very wealthy. In 1857, the diggings being worked out as deep as it was
possible to drain them with the pump then in use, they were abandoned by a part
of the company, Mr. Weatherby, retaining his interest. Capt. E. H. Beebe, of
Galena, became a partner with him, and they commenced the continuation of the
drift begun by Curry & Co., in 1844. This work took six men about two years to
complete, again opening the ground still deeper for working, the water running
off through the level, saving the immense expense of pumping, giving the owners
a rich reward for their perseverance and enterprise, and proving conclusively
that the only successful way of mining is by running adits into the ridges that
indicate they contain deposits of lead ore.

Farther west, the range is known as the "Miller Diggings," and subsequently
owned by Dr. George W. Lee and partners. There has been a large amount of ore
raised here, but, as all the ore dips deeper going west, this part of the range
is now under water.

The west end of the range known as the "Nick Walsh," or Sand range, has, on
account of the water, been abandoned for many years. Being situated where the
range dips into the deep clay basin, the mineral lies deeper and the water is
very strong. There was a large quantity of mineral taken out of this range above
water, and was left going down into it, indicating that there are large deposits
deeper down, awaiting the working of some active company to bring in an adit
that will unwater the range.

The east part of the range known as "Davenport's North Range" has been worked
since the year 1852, and has yielded large amounts of ore, paying a large per
cent on the capital invested, and making several parties very wealthy. It is
estimated that over fifteen million pounds of lead ore has been raised on this
range since its first discovery; and it is not at all probable that the largest
deposits of ore have been reached yet.

There is ore going down all along the range into water. Mr. Weatherby has said
that in one place, by the aid of a hand-pump, he sunk a hole four feet by eight,
and fourteen feet deep, and took out one hundred thousand pounds of ore, leaving
it going down better than at the top.

Upon the land being brought into market by the United States Government, upon
which this range is located, it was purchased by William Hempstead, of Galena,
Ill., and is now owned by his heirs.

The geological chapter of the lead region contains detailed mention of mines now
in operation. Reference is made thereto for a statement of the present condition
of the interest in this and the other counties in the district.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

HISTORY OF LA FAYETTE COUNTY, WISCONSIN,

CONTAINING
AN ACCOUNT OF ITS SETTLEMENT, GROWTH, DEVELOPMENT AND RESOURCES; AN EXTENSIVE
AND MINUTE SKETCH OF ITS CITIES, TOWNS AND VILLAGES—THEIR IMPROVEMENTS,
INDUSTRIES, MANUFACTORIES, CHURCHES, SCHOOLS AND SOCIETIES; ITS WAR RECORD,
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, PORTRAITS OF PROMINENT MEN AND EARLY SETTLERS; THE WHOLE
PRECEDED BY A HISTORY OF WISCONSIN, STATISTICS OF THE STATE, AND AN ABSTRACT OF
ITS LAWS AND CONSTITUTION AND OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

ILLUSTRATED

CHICAGO: WESTERN HISTORICAL COMPANY.
MDCCCLXXXI. [1881]


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