Read Online The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark by Meryl Gordon - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Meryl Gordon
Ads: Link
gold pans and set off for a sixty-day trip through the wilds. Shoshone Indians had recently attacked settlers in Wyoming. “Quite a number of emigrants had been killed,” he later recalled in a speech to the Society of Montana Pioneers in 1917, “and afterwards, passing through that country we saw the newly-made graves of a number.”
In Bannack, Montana, Clark and his partner, Lloyd Selby, ran into a saloon keeper who offered to pay them to trek alcohol to a new camp where gold had just been discovered. This request had profound repercussions for William Andrews Clark. As he watched the thirsty miners grab the marked-up booze, he realized just how much money could be made by selling supplies to men living miles from what passed as civilization. He filed away that observation as he and Selby purchased a claim in a small gulch and began prospecting, excavating dirt and hauling it to the Colorado Creek to wash in sluice boxes for the gold residue.
Clark later painted a romantic picture of that gritty time, highlighting the virtuous Sundays when he would contemplate nature and read poetry. “My partner, who was very fond of cards, usually passed the day and sometimes the night at the Dorsett camp, a mile below,” he told the Montana Pioneers. “I usually spent Sunday mornings sauntering in the hills or mountains, looking for gold-bearing quartz ledges… frequently taking a book to amuse myself while reposing on some grassy plot under the shade of the majestic pine trees.” His reading matter, or so he claimed, was the
Elements of Geology
plus a book on contract law and
The Poems of Robert Burns
. In telling the story of his life, William Andrews Clark always stressed that he was never a common workingman and had an educated sensibility.
Prospecting was backbreaking labor, and once the snows came, Clark took his stake of $2,000 in gold dust and began his career as a merchant. He went to Salt Lake City to buy supplies and spent twelve days on the road hauling those groceries back to the mining camp inBannack. As he told the Pioneers, “I had taken the risk of shipping quite a lot of eggs, well knowing they would freeze, yet they were admirably adapted for the making of ‘Tom and Jerry,’ which was a favorite beverage in Bannack, and I disposed of them at a price of $3.00 per dozen.” (The British eggnog and brandy drink had been popularized in America by the noted bartender Jerry Thomas.) Clark’s price was quite a markup, since eggs then cost roughly twenty-five cents per dozen.
He found moneymaking opportunities everywhere. Clark and a friend opened a store in a mining area near Helena, selling everything from New York butter to California lemons. Clark and his brother Joseph landed a contract to bring the U.S. mail from Missoula, Montana, to Walla Walla, Washington, making the nearly four-hundred-mile trip themselves by horseback and even snowshoe. He continued delivering marked-up goods to remote mining camps. His price gouging was resented by the miners, but Clark could set his own rates given the minimal competition. With profits rolling in, he came up with another gambit: making loans at the rate of 2 percent a month.
By 1869, at the age of thirty, Clark was a well-to-do man in search of a bride. Taking a trip with his mother to his childhood home in Pennsylvania, he courted a former classmate, Kate Stauffer. She came from a prominent local family; her father owned a manufacturing company. Her sister had married a man who would become the chief clerk of the U.S. Senate.
Clark and his bride took a meandering honeymoon train and stagecoach journey, stopping off in Chicago and St. Louis, eventually settling in the small Montana town of Deer Lodge. Their first child, Mary, was born in 1870, and Charles would follow a year later. Clark was known as ruthless, but his wife softened his image; she was appreciated for her “generous hospitality and sunny sociability,” according to a newspaper account.
Clark
In Bannack, Montana, Clark and his partner, Lloyd Selby, ran into a saloon keeper who offered to pay them to trek alcohol to a new camp where gold had just been discovered. This request had profound repercussions for William Andrews Clark. As he watched the thirsty miners grab the marked-up booze, he realized just how much money could be made by selling supplies to men living miles from what passed as civilization. He filed away that observation as he and Selby purchased a claim in a small gulch and began prospecting, excavating dirt and hauling it to the Colorado Creek to wash in sluice boxes for the gold residue.
Clark later painted a romantic picture of that gritty time, highlighting the virtuous Sundays when he would contemplate nature and read poetry. “My partner, who was very fond of cards, usually passed the day and sometimes the night at the Dorsett camp, a mile below,” he told the Montana Pioneers. “I usually spent Sunday mornings sauntering in the hills or mountains, looking for gold-bearing quartz ledges… frequently taking a book to amuse myself while reposing on some grassy plot under the shade of the majestic pine trees.” His reading matter, or so he claimed, was the
Elements of Geology
plus a book on contract law and
The Poems of Robert Burns
. In telling the story of his life, William Andrews Clark always stressed that he was never a common workingman and had an educated sensibility.
Prospecting was backbreaking labor, and once the snows came, Clark took his stake of $2,000 in gold dust and began his career as a merchant. He went to Salt Lake City to buy supplies and spent twelve days on the road hauling those groceries back to the mining camp inBannack. As he told the Pioneers, “I had taken the risk of shipping quite a lot of eggs, well knowing they would freeze, yet they were admirably adapted for the making of ‘Tom and Jerry,’ which was a favorite beverage in Bannack, and I disposed of them at a price of $3.00 per dozen.” (The British eggnog and brandy drink had been popularized in America by the noted bartender Jerry Thomas.) Clark’s price was quite a markup, since eggs then cost roughly twenty-five cents per dozen.
He found moneymaking opportunities everywhere. Clark and a friend opened a store in a mining area near Helena, selling everything from New York butter to California lemons. Clark and his brother Joseph landed a contract to bring the U.S. mail from Missoula, Montana, to Walla Walla, Washington, making the nearly four-hundred-mile trip themselves by horseback and even snowshoe. He continued delivering marked-up goods to remote mining camps. His price gouging was resented by the miners, but Clark could set his own rates given the minimal competition. With profits rolling in, he came up with another gambit: making loans at the rate of 2 percent a month.
By 1869, at the age of thirty, Clark was a well-to-do man in search of a bride. Taking a trip with his mother to his childhood home in Pennsylvania, he courted a former classmate, Kate Stauffer. She came from a prominent local family; her father owned a manufacturing company. Her sister had married a man who would become the chief clerk of the U.S. Senate.
Clark and his bride took a meandering honeymoon train and stagecoach journey, stopping off in Chicago and St. Louis, eventually settling in the small Montana town of Deer Lodge. Their first child, Mary, was born in 1870, and Charles would follow a year later. Clark was known as ruthless, but his wife softened his image; she was appreciated for her “generous hospitality and sunny sociability,” according to a newspaper account.
Clark
Similar Books
