Nov 25, 2014 - Sale 2368

Sale 2368 - Lot 190

Unsold
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(MINING.) Family papers of General Edward A. Wild, mostly on his postwar silver mining career and his estate. More than 160 items (0.2 linear feet), various sizes, a few items worn but the condition generally strong. Vp, 1842-1913

Additional Details

Brookline, MA native Edward Augustus Wild (1825-1891) was a homeopathic doctor by trade, and attained the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War. After the war his career took another unlikely turn: he went to Austin, NV to serve as superintendent of the Diana Silver Mine. After that he was mining for copper in Port Arthur, Ontario (now Thunder Bay); he died in 1891 while visiting Medellin, Colombia.
This collection includes three letters written to Wild's mother from Nevada in 1866 and 1867: one from Edward (signed E.A.W.) and two from his wife. His 5 September 1866 letter reports that in his absence, other stockholders spent the mine's cash reserves and let the mine flood with water, but through dogged perseverance they had recovered to the point of bringing out ore to be milled. His wife "has gradually become more reconciled to her stay here; but it went dreadfully against her grain." This letter is followed by two from Ellen Wild dated 1867, describing Wild's desperate efforts to turn a profit. Bilked by the local mills, he tried to establish his own to disastrous results. Ellen asserts that his employment prospects were bleak on the east coast: "He had not one offer that he could have accepted without feeling humiliated. It was disappointment in his friends that drove him out here."
With these Nevada letters are a file on the Wild family's later mining interests in Canada and elsewhere, 33 letters and documents, several signed or initialed by Wild, 1884-1913; a thick file (almost a hundred letters and documents) relating to the settlement of his complex estate, 1891-97; 30 letters among Wild's family dated 1842-92--one of them an undated note signed by "E.A" and another being a copy of the letter announcing his death; and photographs of Wild's sister and mother.