GLACIER MOUNTAIN SILVER MINING CO. OF COLORADO, ACCOUNT BOOK, APRIL 1869-1884.

[Cincinnati, OH: 1869-84]. Contemporary calf bound account book, scuffed and worn, loss at head of spine. Two gilt stamped spine labels, one reading "cash" and the other the name of the mining company. 24 cm. Approx. 57 pp. of the lined paper ledger used to keep a record of the organization of the company and the stockholder subscriptions, remainder of the pages blank. Binding a bit shaken, some old soiling and staining to text but overall legible. An early record of a Colorado silver mining company during the boom.
The account book begins with a "memorandum," dated April 1869: "Augustus Guibor & his associates, Ed C. Guibor, E.P. Guibor, David Guthrie and Josiah Mayer, all of Clear Creek County Co. [Colorado], through Cyrus C. Marble, their accredited agent, who had come on to Cincinnati for that purpose, offered for sale, the following mining properties [in Colorado Territory] which they claimed to own by right of discovery or purchase" for $40,000. The properties included parts of the Apex Lode, Nil Desperandum, Income Lode, Occidental Lode, Grand Turk Lode, the George T. Clarke and the Wilmington Lode. Marble called for a meeting of interested parties at the Cincinnati offices of Messrs. Sadd & Root, William S. Merrell, chair, who agreed to purchase the properties: “Resolved that a new stock company be formed and that it assume the name of ‘The Glacier Mountain Silver Mining Company of Colorado.’ Resolved that the Capital Stock of sd. company be fixed for the present at 1000 shares of 50 dollars each….” In addition to William Merrell, the subscribers to the new company included Isaac Graveson, A.S. Merrell, Snowden & Otte, G.F. Sadd, Leonard S. Root, and C.C. Marble, who purchased a total of 800 shares at $50 each, for the asking price of $40,000 [presumably retaining 200 shares for future sale].
The new company had its principal office in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio and Leonard S. Root was to act as the new company's agent. Several of the capital and stockholders of the company were prominent businessmen in Cincinnati. William S. Merrell was a pharmaceutical manufacturer, Isaac Graveson was the proprietor of the Cincinnati Stone Works, Snowden & Otte were dealers in carpeting and oil cloths, Leonard Root was an assayer and chemist.
A copy of the deed of sale, April 9, 1869 is included further detailing the seven silver-bearing mining properties, "situate on the western slope of Glacier Mountain in Snake River Mining District, Summit County and Territory of Colorado." Other entries show the amounts and purchases of the individual stockholders, an accounting of expenses, including expenditures for Leonard Root's trip to Colorado in 1873, for recording the deed and charter, for printing and engraving stock certificates, and for survey work [etc.], assessments on stock issued, occasional forfeitures of stocks for non-payment. A sale of 191 shares to Stanley, Albert, George, and Herman Merrell was made in 1880. By 1883, some of the shares were valued at only 50 cents each, though by 1884, they were at $1. This may have been as a result of difficulties caused by a claim jumping case in 1883 which the company brought against J. Frank Willis, Charles Buckland and Donald Frothingham who had unlawfully taken over one to the Glacier Mountain Silver Mining Company's tunnels. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1888. Item #65633

The Colorado mining boom began with a gold rush in about 1859. According to the Colorado Encyclopedia online, miners in Clear Creek County had extracted nearly $2 million worth of gold between 1859 and 1865. By the 1860s, silver was also being mined in the area. Between 1866 and 1875, Clear Creek County mines yielded more than $8 million worth of silver. The Bland-Allison Act passed by Congress in 1878 authorized free coinage of silver and when silver was discovered at Leadville in 1879, it created a real silver boom in the newly formed state. This boom lasted until the Silver Panic of 1893 and the repeal of the Sherman Act which led to a collapse in silver prices.
Augustus Guibor arrived in Colorado with his family in about 1860, following a successful career in Peru, Illinois as a manufacturer of plows. He engaged in mining in Clear Creek, with considerable success and had a stake in the several mining properties in the Snake River Mining District which this ledger shows that he sold to the Glacier Mountain Silver Mining Company for $40,000 in 1869. [see: the brief biography of his son Dr. C.H. Guibor in the "History of Shawnee County, Kansas," edited by James Levi King (Chicago: 1905)].

Price: $1,375.00