Young Mather in Ishpeming: An Essay by Jane Piirto about the early history of my hometown, Ishpeming, Michigan

Young Mather In Ishpeming: An Essay

Jane Piirto, Ph.D.

Sisu Press

The Mining Journal, a newspaper still published, described an accident in an iron mine in Ishpeming, Michigan, in 1869: “A most painful accident occurred at the Cleveland mine, last Thursday evening, July 14, by which Samuel Mather, a son of S. L. Mather, Esq., of Cleveland, O., was severely injured.”

Back in Cleveland, his father, Samuel Livingston Mather, received this letter from his brother Henry Mather, who had moved to the area to look after the family’s mining interests.

My dear brother.

Yesterday afternoon, Sam had quite a severe fall, which may lay him up for some time.

It seems a shot had been made in one of the openings, and Sam being anxious to see the result, incautiously stept upon a small ledge —about 10 feet high, immediately under the loose rock. A large piece of this fell, striking Sam on the hip, and throwing him head foremost on the ore below.

His head is badly cut in several places, and in one place the skull is slightly fractured.

His left arm near the elbow, and his hip near the spinal column is quite badly bruised. Dr. Hewitt and myself went up this morning to see him, we hearing of it after having gone to bed last night. Dr. Bigelow was in attendance having been with him most of the night, and bestowed every attention possible upon him.

We found him in good spirits, bearing up bravely. He did not want us to telegraph you, fearing it would alarm you unnecessarily, but the Dr. & I upon consultation, thought that if anything serious should happen, you would blame us, and if not, no harm would be done, concluded to send you the message.

It is impossible to tell at present the extent of the damage. If inflamation can be prevented, he will be all right again in a few days, but otherwise, he may have a severe time.

A small bone connecting with the spinal column is thought to be broken. From that may come partial paralysis, or not. When the reaction sets in, we can tell better the extent of the hurt. Both Drs. Bigelow & Hewitt, at present think he will most probably get along with nothing more than a temporary confinement and some suffering, but still they feel a little doubtful. I think it would be as well that you should hasten your visit a little.

Mrs. Morse went up with us, and is kindly attending upon him today. If you could bring a nurse along, it would be as well, for we have searched Marquette, as well as the mines, & can find no one

I hope & trust that nothing serious may happen, it looks well today, but still, I would rather you should be here, & look personally after him. I shall take Mary up as often as possible & we will do all that can be done for his comfort & welfare. He is a noble fellow, and bears up wonderfully.

Your affectionate brother H. R. Mather

(My neck is stiff. Why am I sitting here in these libraries and historical societies reading these articles and letters? I have no book contract, no audience, no concrete goal, except that I must write about this.)

It began in September 19, 1844, when the Chippewa (“The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, or Chippewa are an Anishinaabeg group of Indigenous Peoples in North America”—Wikipedia) Indians John Taylor and Michael Doner guided a surveying party in the area. In the party were William Burt, deputy surveyor, the compassman William Ives, the barometerman, Jacob Houghton, two Mellon brothers, and James King. They were running the east line of Township 47 North, range 27 West, using the solar compass that Burt had invented. The compass began to fluctuate wildly, varying as much as 87 degrees. Prior to the invention of this compass, which took its bearings from forces of the universe far away from the local rocks, surveying had been a chancy business. Now the true meridian had been found despite the interference of woods and rocks. Burt went on to invent the Equatorial Sextant and the first typewriter before his death in Detroit in 1858. Ives did his job accurately and thoroughly. The surveyors were working men and the idea of profiting from what they had discovered seems not to have occurred to them.

The Indians, of course, knew about this dark gray and magenta rock but hadn’t known its value, and the word passed among them. The ancestors of the Indians had not used the rock as they had the float copper located farther west, at the copper mountains overlooking the Portage River, and at the island known as Michipocoten and now known as Isle Royale. A man named Louis Nolan, who was half Indian and half white, who lived 200 miles away at Sault Ste. Marie, told P.M. Everett of Jackson, Michigan. Everett wanted to explore for copper and gold farther west, at Copper Harbor, and with four men made his way to the Sault. Nolan told him of the iron deposits and Everett hired Nolan, a large and fit man, to guide him to the area.

Everett wrote of the journey in a letter. “I took four men from Jackson and hired a guide at the Sault, where I bought a boat and coasted up the lake to Copper Harbor, which is over 300 miles from Sault Ste. Marie. There are no white men on Lake Superior, except those who go there for mining purposes. We incurred many dangers and hardships.” When they got to Teal Lake, a lake about 200 miles west and 10 miles in from Lake Superior, they searched, but couldn’t find the deposits. Everett went on, heading for Copper Harbor, but on his way he met an Indian chief, Madjigig, who had his camp on the Dead River. Madjigig knew where the deposits were and took them to two mountains of the rock that made compasses go crazy.

The “mountains” were sacred to the Chippewa, and Madjigig wouldn’t take them there directly because he was afraid. Two members of Everett’s party, S. T. Carr and E. S. Rockwell, wandering afield, made the visual identification of the deposit of iron from chunks of the mineral hanging from the tendrils of an uprooted stump on what became known as Jackson Mountain, near what is now the town of Negaunee. Everett gave Madjigig a piece of paper that said, “River du Mort, May 30, 1845. This may certify that in consideration of the services rendered by Madjigig, a Chippeway Indian, in hunting ores of location No. 593 of the Jackson Mining Co., that he is entitled to twelve undivided one-hundredths part of the interest of said mining company in said location No.” The paper was signed, “A. V. Berry, Superintendent, and F.W. Kirtland, Secretary.”

Madjigig died in poverty and it took his daughter to sue the Company for her share of the mine that was to be. Robert Traver, author of Anatomy of a Murder, wrote about the case in his novel, Laughing Whitefish.

Everett and his party had seven mineral permits issued by the Secretary of War. On the rumors of mineral riches in the Upper Peninsula they had formed a company of thirteen investors from the Jackson area of which Everett was the treasurer and the agent. They used one of them, made out in the name of James Ganson, to secure the location. Everett described the mountain of iron thus: “It is a mountain of solid iron ore, 150 feet high. The ore looks as bright as a bar of iron just broken. Since coming home we have had some of it smelted and find it produced iron and something resembling gold–some say it is gold and copper.” The year was 1845. The peninsula’s sleepy winters were over.

(I am a granddaughter of the company.

My dad worked for the company.

I want to understand how devastation balances with preservation.)

That winter the wilderness that was the Upper Peninsula slept under five feet of snow as usual, but everything had changed. The following spring, 1846, four other men from the Jackson group returned. Kirtland, Rockwell, Munroe, and Berry were their names and they built a house on the Jackson location and packed out 300 pounds of the ore to the mouth of the Carp River near Marquette. Berry went on to Sault Ste. Marie where he met a Cleveland, Ohio minerologist, Dr. J. Lang Cassels, a professor at the Western Reserve Medical School in Cleveland. Cassels had been sent by a group of Cleveland investors, among them, young Samuel’s father, Samuel Livingston, who had a keen interest in developing the resources. Berry confided to Cassels that iron had indeed been found. Berry even lent Cassels his canoe and Cassels went to the location, paddling the 200 miles with anticipation. He staked a claim there. Meanwhile, Berry went back to Jackson with the raw material and after a local cupola furnace failed in smelting the ore, it finally yielded to a blacksmith’s fire and the first bar of iron from Lake Superior ore was forged.

The rumors were spreading and the entrepreneurs and investors were gathering on Mackinac Island and at Sault Ste. Marie. Mackinac Island had been a spot for intrigue and rumors since early in the 1600s, as the trappers and the fur moguls, the French Jesuit priests, the British soldiers, the Americans, and of course the native owners, mingled and met and married while they waited out the severe winters and took the fresh breezes at this straits on an historic island in the confluence of the Great Lakes of Huron and Michigan. Benjamin Franklin had, during the latter part of the 18th century, made the Upper Peninsula and Mackinac Island a part of the United States, preempting it from Canada with a penciled line through Lake Superior in the very middle. This fortunate forming of the boundary, giving the minerals to the United States instead of to Canada, formed the key to the United States’ future world status, as the iron, copper, and gold of the area could be said to have made the United States as rich as it is.

That the Upper Peninsula was a part of Michigan and not Wisconsin was the result of Michigan losing a battle for the ten mile strip that included Toledo and the mouth of the Maumee River which empties into Lake Erie with the state of Ohio. In 1837, Ohio vowed to block the admission of Michigan to the union if Michigan did not cede the ten mile strip of territory to Ohio. Michigan had to succumb in order to join the union, and as a consolation prize, they gained the Upper Peninsula. Of course the mineral wealth of the area was to make Michigan the auto capitol of the world, but they didn’t know that in 1837.

I rent a plane to fly over the open pit mine, the Tilden,

to see the vast red tailing ponds,

the pit that is now beneath the level of Lake Superior,

over a thousand feet deep,

the piles of rock moved by behemoth trucks,

the plant where they pelletize the ore.

How can they say this doesn’t hurt the watershed?

Samuel L. Mather was the leading force for the business in its first 50 years. In 1847, one of the employees of the Cleveland Iron Company, Edmund Rogers, built a cabin and planted potatoes on Jasper Knob so that he could hold the land under the homestead act. Rogers went to Cleveland in October to talk with the company’s trustees. He paid Charles Johnson $90 to stay at the cabin. The next May, 1948, Johnson left the cabin to meet with and to guide several members of the board of directors of the Cleveland Iron Company to Jasper Knob. Future mine captain Samuel Moody, Robert Graveraet, and John Mann went onto the claim, thinking it had been abandoned. Johnson returned with trustees John Outhwaite and George Freeman and they found that the cabin had been burned.

A house had been built and Moody and Mann were living in it. Johnson ordered them to leave, and Moody and Mann refused. A few weeks later, Johnson, in the name of the Cleveland Iron Company, built a new house where the burned cabin had stood. As it was being finished, Moody and Mann pointed guns at the men and ordered them to leave right away. The Cleveland Iron Company men refused. While Johnson and Peters were away gathering moss to chink the logs, Moody lit the cabin on fire again. For the next two years, 1848 to 1850, Moody and Mann lived in the Cleveland Iron Company’s cabin, “squatting.” Natives of the area can imagine the cold, snow, and harshness.

Samuel Mather, the injured young man of our story, had been sent to Ishpeming after prep school to learn the family business as a time-keeper and payroll clerk for his father’s Cleveland Iron Mining Company in Ishpeming. That same year, 1869, to put the story into national context, the twenty-nine year old John D. Rockefeller of Cleveland had just concluded a secret deal with railroad moguls Commodore Vanderbilt and Jay Gould for rebates on the shipping of oil by rail from the oil fields of Western Pennsylvania. Cleveland was set to become the most important oil refining city in the U.S. and Rockefeller and his partners were about to charter the Standard Oil Company, one of the first and largest trusts in the country.

Years later, in the mid-1890s, Rockefeller would contract with Samuel, now also a shipbuilder, for three million dollars to build twelve ore-boats to ship Rockefeller’s ore from the Mesabi range, a range that was developed later in the nineteenth century. The Mesabi contained mostly surface ore, a fine dust, that is mined in huge open pits. The vast holes would not be part of the Upper Peninsula landscape until the mid twentieth century.

While Rockefeller was from rural Pennsylvania, a fundamentalist Baptist, the Samuel Livingston Mather family of Cleveland, Ohio, descends from Samuel Mather (1734-1809), a shareholder and member of the first board of directors of the Connecticut Land Company. Samuel Mather was descended from Richard Mather (1596-1669), the noted Puritan minister, who migrated from England to Boston, MA, in 1635. Samuel Mather’s son, also named Samuel Mather (1771-1854) was also a shareholder of the Connecticut Land Company. One of his sons, Samuel Livingston Mather (1817-1890) settled in Cleveland in 1843. Three years later, in 1 One of his sons, Samuel Livingston Mather (1817-1890) settled in Cleveland in 1843. Three years later, in 1846 he was one of the founders of the Cleveland Iron Mining Company (later the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company).

A springtime race to Sault Ste. Marie resulted. In 1848, the Marquette Iron Company was formed; after several iterations, this was to become the Cleveland Iron Mining Company. Capt. Moody started mining the ore in the fall of 1849, from outcroppings that they later mined in large open pits. Teams of horses and mules hauled the ore to the Jackson forge, located on the Carp River a few miles away, and later on the shore of Lake Superior. The journey down to the lake was treacherous, and runaway wagons overtaking mules were common.

Much legal wrangling went on among the entrepreneurs, but the Interior Department finally conferred ownership to Lorenzo Dow Burnell. The Dead River & Ohio Mining Company, later the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, purchased the rights from him and in 1853, Henry F. Brayton, Selah Chamberlain, E. M. Clark, George E. Freeman, Isaac L. Hewitt, Morgan Hewitt, John Outhwaite, M. L. Wright, and Samuel L. Mather signed the incorporation papers. The capital stock was $500,000, twenty thousand shares of $25 each.

When the mining began, in 1850, four log houses and a log barn marked the beginning of the settlement that was to be known as Ishpeming. A thick cedar swamp with a small trout stream filled what became the downtown; pine, birch, spruce, and maple covered the hillsides. A blazed trail led from Marquette to the fabled “mountain” of iron ore. To put it into context, gold was discovered two years earlier, in California in 1848, at Sutter’s Mill on the American River. The parallel development of the rich iron ore deposits in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is less renowned, even though the mines were far nearer to the eastern metropolitan banks and ultimately more important to the world. A court fight was waged for possession of this mountain, and accusations of claim jumping dogged the winners. The tradition of absentee owners was begun.

The so-called mountain of iron that became known as Jasper Knob, wasn’t really mineable, as was the other mountain which became Jackson Mine, for it was made up of spectacular banded hematite with jasper. We children of what was known as Cleveland Location spent much of childhood climbing and playing in the old pits. The bluff still stands, a beacon as one of the largest gems in the world, visited by geology classes and rock hounds. The people in the neighborhood still feel the attraction of the magnetic ore and visit the bluff to meditate, to think, to view the sunset west and north over the small mining town of Ishpeming. The boys of the neighborhood used to burn it every spring, so its dome really stood out, but that stopped with stiffer laws against grass fires burning bluffs. The Company put barbed wire fence beside the old pits, but people break through and explore. A scant two miles to the south and east, the flat long pile of waste rock from the current open pit mines, the Tilden and the Empire, form a flat purple skyline on the horizon. The first ore mined was float ore from the bottom of Jasper Knob, large boulders of free ore broken from ledges that had been carried in the valley by glaciers.

After the building of the Soo Canal in 1855, the ore began to be shipped via Lake Superior to Cleveland and other lower-lake ports. Only 5,000 tons from the three active mines — the Cleveland, the Lake Superior, and the Jackson— were shipped that first year. It cost more to mine it and ship it than it was worth on the market. However, the ore was of very good quality, and the riddle of producing it was a problem that was to be solved. In 1856 they built a plank road from Jasper Knob to the mouth of the Carp River, east of Marquette. This road took three years to build. In 1857, they completed a railroad called the Iron Mountain Railroad, the 15 miles from Ishpeming to Marquette. Railroads from the mines to the Marquette docks on the shores of Lakes Superior and Michigan sprang up and in the year young Mather fell, 1869, the Company started its own fleet of ore carriers, which shipped 200,000 tons of ore annually by 1880. As surface mining depleted in the 1880s, the firm pioneered an underground mining system. The Company merged with one of its prime competitors, the Iron Cliffs Co., and became Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co. in 1891.

On Saturday, July 31, 1869, the Mining Journal noted: “We are happy to learn that young Mather, who was so severely hurt at the Cleveland mine a few days since, is now out of danger, although it will be some time before he will be able to be out again, owing to the extent of his injuries. His father, Samuel L. Mather, of Cleveland, arrived on Thursday last, and will remain until his son is well again.”

The early days presented arduous challenges for the miners in Ishpeming and in its neighboring settlement, Negaunee, three miles away. Snowfalls of upwards of 250 to 300 inches routinely fall, and even though these men thought they were prepared, they were not. The snow settled in the cracks of the roofs of the cabins, and drifted onto the sleeping miners. Summer was little better. Using tents for shelter, the miners endured the torture of black flies and mosquitoes swarming and biting. They hunted deer, and venison became their mainstay when the scarce salt pork and corned beef ran out.

Fish provided variety, as the nearby trout streams were rich with browns, brookies, and rainbows. Lake trout, whitefish, and other Great Lakes species also provided. The settlements grew up around the mine sites, and women and children began to arrive. Ample timber provided lumber and fuel. Potatoes and other root crops grew well in this latitude, and they pastured the cows in clearings. Miners worked for six days a week during the warm season, and their wages ranged from seventy-five cents to $1.25 per day. Staples such as flour cost twelve dollars per barrel, and sugar cost fifteen cents per pound.

(I ask the pilot to fly over the old Republic Mine,

now abandoned, to see whether the company has reclaimed it.

we swoop over the tiered walls and the pit of water.

“in a hundred years this’ll be a great place for condominiums,” he says.

The Company has just offered to trade reclamation of this mine

for destruction of the watershed,

the eight lakes of Cliff’s Drive in Ishpeming and Negaunee.)

Life for the women was hard, and wife desertion was not uncommon. A man named George Lathrop left his wife with a one-month old baby. Two months later, she was quite deranged, neglecting the child and wandering about in the woods. The other women of the settlement took her to Marquette for help. Another woman, widowed from the mines, took in washing for herself and her four children in order to support them. One family’s drunken domestic fights and child abuse led them to be put into the makeshift jail, or ”stone jug.” Later, the children were sent to the poor house.

By 1869, the time of Samuel, Jr.’s fall, Ishpeming had become a boomtown, with streets full of bars and a thousand miners, speculators, and related businesses vying for space on the swampy platted streets laid out in the valley between the rugged hills of iron. The Ishpeming High School alma mater song touts, “Surrounded by the hills so old, whose iron hearts are strong and bold.” Various denominations of Christianity arrived. Catholics and Methodists were first, and that year, the first Episcopal services were held at the Ishpeming Town Hall. Since the Mathers were pillars of the Trinity Episcopal church in Cleveland, one wonders whether these services were arranged by their minions in the mining towns. The directory of 1896 twenty years later listed the mine captains as the rectors of the new Episcopal church.

Ishpeming is located geographically at latitude 46 degrees, longitude 87 degrees, altitude 1,722 above sea level, and is high, 930 feet above Lake Superior. Ishpeming’s name means, in Chippewa, “Heaven,” and that year, 1869, the local Indians celebrated their heritage with a parade in the nearby port of Marquette, down on Lake Superior. Stereotyping was evident in the news entry: “The Chippewa Indians held their annual pow-wow Friday and paraded, carrying a brace of American flags. The chiefs and braves were dressed and painted in true aboriginal style, and their sudden appearance in our streets was rather startling to timid pale faces. They performed a variety of Indian dances, got gloriously drunk, and then retired to their ‘rural’ homes.” The Chippewa Indians, (preferred name, Anishinabe) today’s gambling casino scions, still lived in their lakeside villages and each summer they would pick blueberries and huckleberries and bring them into town to sell. “Poor Lo and Lovely his squaw, with as many paps as they can command, are now reaching a rich harvest by picking huckleberries which bring from eight to ten cents a quart in the market. There is a great abundance this season . . . many parties leave town every morning for a picnic or excursion to pick those berries.”

Just 25 years after the discovery of rich deposits of iron ore in this wilderness area, the mines in Ishpeming and Negaunee — owned by many companies both local and eastern— shipped much ore. Total product for the Jackson Mining Company was 695,131, and total product for the Cleveland Mining Company was 485,246 tons. This was an increase over 1866 of 41,737 tons. By 1886, 2,000 miners had come to town, working in the Barnum, the Cleveland, Detroit, Lake Angeline, Lake Superior, Salisbury, and Winthrop mines. The total ore shipped in 1886 was 727,798 tons; in many ways, the mineral wealth of the iron ranges of the Upper Peninsula built the town of Cleveland.

Shipping the ore was always a problem, as most shipping companies gave preference to grain and timber, but in 1870 over 30 schooners were available in the harbor at Escanaba, 90 miles to the south, on Lake Michigan. The cost per ton was $1.50 from Escanaba to Cleveland, $1.75 from Escanaba to Erie, and $2.50 from Marquette to Cleveland. The building of special vessels designed just to ship ore eased the competition for boats.

Ishpeming’s Cleveland Mine, where young Mather fell, was opened in 1854 and was located where the Cleveland-Cliffs shops were (and where my father worked for 30 years as a welder for the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company), near Division and Seventh Streets. Sub-locations were being mined at the “No. 2,” and “No. 3,” the “Incline” and the “Schoolhouse.” Geologically, one face was a form of chloritic schist, called greenstone. Another wall was very solid, dense, and granular, infused with oxide of iron with the look of ferriferous quartzite, a silicous conglomerate, containing bits of jasper, iron ore, white quartz, hornblended rock, highly charged with iron.. A seam of magnetic oxide suffused with chlorite ran through the mine. At “The Incline” dig, the ore was crystals of red oxide. Overlaying it toward the south was mixed red and brown hematite. Jasper-like ore was also present, and less valuable.

We walk in the woods on our old trails.

The road called Cliff’s Drive is blocked off near Cedar Lake. The sign says

“No trespassing. No hunting. No fishing. Danger: Blasting. Private Property.

By Order of Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company: Tilden Magnetic Ore Company.”

We duck beneath and walk a mile up the forest road to the mine.

Ogden Lake is filled in and we remember the pretty little island it had,

now only visible on one of my mother’s paintings.

The growling, clanking trucks, giant silhouettes on the anomalous horizon,

echo through the woods , their reverse gears

rhythmically peeping like weird mechanical birds.

Earth has been turned inside out.

We trespassers behold a garden of iron for bridges and girders,

The barren magenta mountain, a grave landfill without odor or gulls,

with pebbled bouldered cliffs so steep

mountain goats, llamas, could not get foot.

the gouged pit extends for twenty miles.

Nineteen-year-old Samuel, Jr. stayed in Ishpeming for another year. Samuel (1851-1931) was the first son of Samuel Livingston Mather and his first wife, Georgiana Pomeroy (Woolson) Mather. He was educated at the Cleveland High School and then, as was the custom in the Mather family, he attended an eastern prep school, Saint Mark’s School in Southboro, Massachusetts. Samuel’s half-brother, William Gwinn Mather, age 12, who became the president of the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company after Samuel Livingston’s death in 1890, and who was a founder of Republic Steel— later LTV— wrote in a childhood diary about the trip from Cleveland to Marquette and about visiting his brother. The trip from Cleveland was made by train via Chicago and Green Bay, and lasted three days.

The father’s letter of August 23, 1869, stated,

“I know your trials are hard & dont wonder at your getting impatient at times, but you have been wonderfully preserved . . . we shall hope to see you next Monday & will do all we can then to render you more comfortable—we don’t know what to take up to you or what you want but hope our company will be all that is needed—I hope Mrs. McKay has not left you—what can be done or who can be found to fill her place.”

He must have come up and then returned back the 600 miles to Cleveland for his second wife, Samuel’s sister Kate by his first wife, and for young William Gwinn.
William Gwinn Mather, with the innocent eagerness of a younger brother, wrote on Monday August 30, 1869,

”Went up to the mines in the morning.  I was the first one to see Sam.  He is a little better.  We laid in bed all day.  Walked around the mines with Pa.”
A couple of days later, on September 1, they went back up to Ishpeming:
“Went up to mines and staid there all day.  Walked around the mines with Pa saw a tremendous big beast.”   On September 4,  the family returned by schooner to Cleveland, going through Sault Ste. Marie.
“Traveled all night got to the Sault at 4 in the afternoon.  Staid at Churches all night.  Started early in the morning and night in Lake Huron and the Sault rivers.”And on September 6, he wrote, “Got to Lake St. Claire about 12.  Arrived at Detroit about 4.  Changed boats and took the Northwest Start early in the morning.  Traveled all day & night in Lake Huron and the Sault rivers.”

The Civil War, as is any war, was good for the iron business, and, like many other businessmen, the senior Samuel Livingston Mather did not participate, but paid others to fight in his stead. It was Samuel Livingston Sr.’s custom to write to young Sam almost every day while they were apart. Many of the father’s letters warned him not to take chances and to guard his fragile health. The letters were handwritten, and on stationery with this as the header:

Cleveland Iron Mining Co.

(Office) / Dealers in Lake Superior Iron Ore

from their Iron Mountains near Marquette Lake Superior

W. L. Gordon, Pres. / S. L. Mather, Sec. & Treasurer.

When Samuel was 9, Samuel Livingston wrote to him on the 4^thof July while he was recovering from an illness at a farm south of Cleveland.

S.L. Mather, to son, from Cleveland, 4^thof July, 1862
My dear son:
We were very glad to receive your letter. . . today is the glorious 4^thof July, but there is nothing doing in town except firing pistols and fire crackers— no military or parades—we all feel too sad over the terrible Civil war that is raging over our country, and we are too anxious about our brave army before Richmond to rejoice much today—it may be our last 4^thof July for the whole country — our army under Genl. McClellan has been fighting 6 days and we have lost nearly 20,000 men—only think of that & think how many little children have lost their fathers & brothers —
I bought two bundles of torpedoes for Willy today— but would not buy any for Kate because she . . . had your torpedoes all together you know. Don’t eat any green fruit or apples, as I am afraid they will make you sick — your stomach is not as strong as Tommy & you can’t always eat what he can. Get strong as you can, drink plenty of milk & play in the fields & make up the hay & follow the plough—
Your affectionate father
S.L. Mather

After junior high school, Samuel went away to St. Mark’s Episcopal School in Massachusetts, back east, and his father’s letters to him were filled with concerns over his health, probably because of his mother Georgianna’s early death from respiratory problems. “We are so sorry to hear that your cough still holds on—you must stop at once & take some remedies.” He told young Sam to put flannel around his neck, to put on thick socks, to soak his feet in hot water so he would get into a sweat. “There is nothing I dread more than bad colds & cough.” Samuel Livingston also warned the junior Samuel about playing what would become the national pastime: “ I abominate Base ball.” This loving father feared his son taking risks, though this personality attribute of young Samuel would help him add millions to the family fortune .
Samuel, Jr. was bright in school work, and Samuel Livingston wrote to him, “We were all so glad to hear from you & to hear that you stood so well in your studies—there is nothing more gratifying to a parent than to hear good accounts of a child, & to know that all their efforts for his good are being appreciated & fulfilled.” This letter, in October, 1868, noted that the Union veterans were coming to town for a rally. “Tomorrow is to be a great day here—an immense gathering of the Boys in Blue from the Northern part of Ohio meet here & we expect 50000 or more strangers in town. There are to be the usual demonstrations—parades—speeches—torch lights. In the eve there is to be a grand illumination.”

(I join the e-mail list of people concerned about Michigan’s environment.

My sister, a journalist, has called up the head of Michigan’s

environmental protection agency in Lansing

and he says that the mine’s rubble is now

the biggest footprint in the state of Michigan.

I write this on the list but there are so many concerns in Michigan —

illegal dumping, clear-cutting, toxic waste, Indian fishing rights, mercury—

list members are so concerned about their own area’s violations that no one can care about the mine

which is, after all, back in the woods,

and the watershed it is slowly overtaking is invisible, and it is being despoiled

with the permission of the Department of Natural Resources in Michigan.

I quit the list.)

Young Samuel had intended to enter Harvard College in 1869, but his injury prevented this. Samuel Livingston Mather wrote him many letters in Ishpeming. These letters give a look at the iron mining industry of the time. Mining exploration continued feverishly, and fierce competition raged between the company owners as to who bought the land where ore was found. Samuel served as a good eye for his family interests.

Ishpeming at the time was experiencing a shortage of housing, and most miners boarded out, as did Samuel. Though his uncle lived only 15 miles away, the journey down to the lake made for dangerous travel. Constant construction enveloped Ishpeming during this time of transition. The carpenters could not fill their orders, and several companies employed from ten to fifteen men. Buildings seemed to grow out of the ground. One of the building companies, Meldon and Co., had a lumber and shingle yard and about twenty men working on new buildings. One of the Swedish immigrant clerks left to visit his “Jirl” and left Meldon alone to take care of the yard. Meldon had so many calls to attend to customers in the store and at the yard, that “he hardly knew what he was about half of the time.” Meldon’s kept a team constantly delivering goods, lumber, lath, shingles, brick and lime, but they still could not fill their orders fast enough. This boom continued and by 1886, the town of Ishpeming by 1886 reached a population of 10,000 (today it has diminished to about 6,000). In 1869 and 1870, the tension between the coming of the civilizers and the rough and tumble world of miners and speculators was evident. Hustle and bustle abounded.

Civil engineers advertised for work: “Louis Williams, Civil and Mechanical engineer is now prepared to do land surveying and to furnish drawings and specifications and superintend the construction of dwellings, public buildings, hoisting machinery for mines, blowing engines, blast furnaces, locating and building dams, and measuring water powers.”

Ishpeming was the end of the line for the Chicago Northwestern Railway, and during prohibition times 60 years later, would play a role in Al Capone’s work, but even in 1870, citizens were being warned that “There is good reason for believing that a number of Chicago professionals are hanging about town,” as two robberies of houses in Negaunee took place.

Other wealthy investors visited the area. “The Ogden House is visited by Hon. And Mrs. Wm. H. Barnum, Miss Lillie, Miss Lucy, Master A and Master C W Barnum of Lime Rock, Conn.” Barnum was a well-known member of Congress for the fourth congressional district of Connecticut, and related to P.T., the impressario. Barnum had a large interest in the mines, and the Negaunee Plaindealer(name of the newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, a newspaper still publishing) stated that he was “ more closely and extensively allied with the iron mining and iron manufacturing interests of the country than any other man in the United States.” Another wealthy entrepreneur was Samuel Tilden, the governor of New York and presidential candidate in 1876, who, like Al Gore, lost the presidency in the electoral college while winning the popular vote, to Ohio’s Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden founded the rival Iron Cliffs Company, which was bought out by the Cleveland Cliffs Company in 1891. Thus the name Cleveland-Cliffs.

The county commissioners approve the expansion of the mine.

It will now dump its rock into eight lakes,

with permission of all the authorities.

The local environmental society, with the Wilderness Society, sues.)

Absentee owners don’t love or know the land like natives do. The land is abstract, a repository of mineable and exploitable minerals and not an organic mother. While the Mathers are known in Cleveland for the Holden Arboretum, botanical gardens, and nature preserves they funded, an ironic paradox exists, for they obtained the wherewithal for doing so from the destruction of water and land 600 miles away.

Some investors and entrepreneurs were no match for the wilderness they found. Here is an amusing story. Three men named Peck, Randall, and Bronson took an Indian guide, who was later called “worthless,” up the railroad and onto a river about twenty miles from Ishpeming. They left their canoe and began to explore for iron ore outcroppings near a location called Three Lakes. Bronson decided to go back to the canoe, about a mile away, to wait for the others. He followed the stream back, which was a mistake, as the stream spread into a swamp. He was a greenhorn, unaware of the danger he was in. Crossing the cedar swamp, he lost the river and got lost himself. He carried a carpet bag with a little food, some clothing, and a few matches. He spread his overcoat out, lit a fire, and went to sleep. The next morning he tried to find the river, stumbling through the rough country over twisted cedar and wet spongy grass-covered mud.

He walked hard all day, losing his overcoat while crossing another swamp. He saw a stream and thought it was the one he had been searching for, so he began to follow it. The uneven, rocky, rough country tired him out, and he felt weak. He sat down and pulled out a letter from a friend, a newspaper, and a sermon of his father’s. Desperate and frightened, he comforted himself by reading these over and over. Cold, wet, tired, and coatless, he cut boughs and made a bed for the night. He somewhat improbably stated that deer came near his fire, but no bears. He slept so near the fire that his pants caught, and his leg got a severe burn.

On the third day, Bronson followed the stream again until it emptied into a strange lake. He had been following the wrong stream. Desolated and despondent, he played over in his mind where he had gone, and what he had done wrong. He spent the third night near where he had spent his first night in the wilderness. Thirsty, frightened, and depressed, he ate his last few figs and moistened some of the bread crumbs in the bottom of his bag and ate them. He followed another stream to a group of lakes. Again he lost his bearings, and wandered all day.

He sat down to rest, and when he got up, he left his bag there, and threw his razor into the lake, because he might be tempted to harm himself out of desperation. He tied the rest of his belongings into a handkerchief. Finally he did what he should have done earlier. He climbed one of the steep rocky bluffs ringing the lakes and saw in the distance a pine belt. This must be the state road.

Then he said heard a distant mine whistle from the Champion mine, about twenty miles away (this seems improbable). He cheered. People were searching for him! He limped toward the whistle, trying to find the state road, retracing the trail. He muddled through the dense country and made camp, such as it was, but was unable to sleep because of the bloodthirsty black flies. He set out again in the morning and heard a gun.

Then he came upon a lake that looked familiar. It was the first of the Three Lakes. In a few minutes he met Capt. Kidder, the superintendent of the Champion Mine, and Mr. Peck. Peck went to tell the search party, and within a half hour, a telegraph operator using a pocket instrument sent the news that he was found. Bronson caught an ore train, and when he arrived, the whole town turned out as the engine entered the town with its whistles blasting.

The dangers of life in the region extended to drownings. In mid-June, 1870, two young men, Alfred Dray and Edward Webb, paddling a canoe on Teal Lake, tipped the canoe and fell in. Dray could not swim at all. He shouted, “O Ned, Ned!” as he struggled. When he rose a second time to the surface, Webb grabbed his wrist, but Dray struggled too violently and Webb had to save himself.

The local people tried to find the body, but could not, so the next day, the authorities placed a charge of glycerine in an old tub near the place where Dray drowned, and exploded it. Everyone was surprised at the immense concussion. It was heard a mile and a half away, shaking the town’s windows and doors.

Nitroglycerine was coming into use in mining. However, it was slow to be accepted. Dray’s body floated to shore a week later. That summer, August, 1870, the Barnum Mine had begun to construct containers for safely holding the glycerine, and regular use of the product began. We grew up with noontime blasts, and they still shake the area at 12:15 p.m., the blasting occurring during the traditional lunch hour—from the woods and the big hole of the Tilden and Empire Mines.

Michigan Exchange, E. & F. Lyon, Detroit

Saturday, June 25^th, 1870

My Dear Son—

I arrived here last night at 12 o’clock, had a delightful trip on the St. Paul—it was hot ashore, but cool & pleasant on the boat—the boat did not go to Cleveland, so I remain here until tonight. I shall take the Detroit boat. It is so hot here, that I have kept indoors all day, doing nothing, but trying to keep cool. I telegraphed to Mother, so she will expect me early in the morning—I have thought of you a good deal since we left, & hope you are at the mines, all right, & gaining strength—I hope you will write often, every day if you can, if only a few lines, to let me know how you are doing, & what the mines are producing, & all that is going on—I will also write you after I arrive at home—Remember me kindly to all at the mines.

Cleveland, June 27 1870

Dear Sam

I enclose the prescription you wanted from Gaylord & Co. I shall also send you by steamer a package containing your colored shirts. I will send them in the care of Mr. Spear on our dock & request him to send them up to you. You had better write him a line to forward them as soon as received so that they wont be delayed.

-With love I remain your affectionate father

The boomtown of Ishpeming grew and grew. Capt. Nelson began the exodus from the hills around the platted town and moved his meat market, preparing to transfer all his business to the lower part of the swamp. A new furniture store, H. Kretchmer and Company, came to town. Furniture makers were also undertakers and coffin makers. The town already had a Catholic church, and a large Methodist Episcopal church began construction. During the building, precious and fragile stained glass window panes got vandalized. They suspected small boys in the neighborhood.

People planned to stay. Stores and buildings that had been built on the ground now were being raised so that stone foundations could be placed underneath them. The Dan Wynne store was one of these, and the basement, with walls seven feet high, was to be used as a storeroom. John Samson’s saloon also underwent propping up so that a cellar could be built. A local poet named Joe Dalton intoned the virtues of basements, which were “in winter cold, in summer hot / Holy Moses what a spot.” Joe subsequently lost his youngest child to scarlet fever, which was beginning to show up. One would hope it wasn’t in revenge for his poetic talent.

The Marquette railroad got a new switch engine named the Wendigo, Chippewa for the dark presence in the woods— very small and powerful, used to transfer cars from one track to another. A man named Emery built and opened a new photograph gallery. They raised a new water tank right where the City Hall now stands in the town, next to Brockington & Coms billiard saloon. The water tank filled so fast with water that the town’s steam fire engine could not keep it dry while the men were at work on it. The river at the lower end of town guaranteed that the town had sufficient water in case of a fire. The volunteer fire company practiced constantly. New stores owned by Mark Dunn and John Marbbey went up near the billiard parlor and water tank. Harry Coles started a livery stable in the same vicinity. Mr. Girzikowsky opened a jewelry store, the first business on Main Street. They later changed their name to Girzi.

A new company called the Lake Superior Peat Works, with J. B. Andrews as superintendent, set up on the Lake Superior Iron Company’s grounds. The peat bed lay about 250 feet west, and the peat seemed almost inexhaustible. A tramway conveyed the raw peat into the mill where it was ground and mixed, and then fed to racks, four per minute, conveyed over a rackway to different parts of the yard. Placed in sun to dry for 4 to 6 days, put into storing sheds, the peat cured from 7 to 12 days. The peat business continued for many years.

(I am in Toronto at a conference, Finnfest, in the summer of 2000. I am giving my friend, the head of the Marquette County environmental group, a ride to his train. I find myself shouting. “You need to see what the company has done back there with that mine! It’s like the worst earthquake, volcano, hurricane, tornado you’ve ever seen. The tailing ponds run red as blood. The local environmentalists are not seeing what will happen in fifty years if this mine is not contained, if it is allowed to dump in that chain of lakes on cliff’s drive back there! It ’s high ground. Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, both will be affected!” I have been weaving all over the freeway in my harangue. “I think he got the point,” another companion said as he went into the train station. I feel drained and spent as we drive away. Why do I get so emotional and upset every time I think about what they are doing back there in the woods behind Ishpeming and Negaunee? It is as if I myself am wounded like this land and water in the region of my birth. All I can do is shake my head with downcast eyes whenever it’s brought up. “Why do I care so much? I don’t live there anymore. I don’t live there anymore,” I repeat to myself.)
·

In Negaunee, the Fourth of July celebrations in 1870 lasted all day, beginning with shots by artillery companies at dawn. Then the townspeople gathered to hear the reading of the Declaration of Independence. An orator, a clergyman, then spoke to the crowds. In the afternoon, games such as sack races with a prize of $10; climbing a greased pole with a first prize of $10 and a second prize of $6; holding tight onto a shaved pig, with the pig the prize; entertained the townspeople. Foot races for men gave prizes of $10, and foot races for boys gave first prizes of $3.

The Fourth also saw horse races with two classes of trotting horses and a first prize of $65, and races with two classes of running horses with first prizes of $30. The culmination of the races was a joke race, called a grand scrub race, where each rider rode his neighbor’s horse, the last one winning a prize of $25. The fireworks began at 9 p.m. after a concert by the city band. Ishpeming’s Fourth was more low key, with a miner as orator and fire hoses spurting instead of fireworks. No games were played, and the townspeople did not decide to even have a Fourth of July celebration until a week before the event.

Entertainers also made weekly appearances in halls in nearby Negaunee. Weekly events that summer included a minstrel show, a circus run by immigrant Swedes, and a magician named Professor Anderson, “Wizard of the North,” who tried to flee without paying the $50.00 rent for the hall.

(I go to a local stockbroker in my town in Ohio and ask for the cost of Cleveland-cliffs stocks— in the mid-30 $s— before the 2001 chapter 11 bankruptcies of Ohio steel companies caused by competition from cheap imports— by then the stock was $18 — as I think I want to buy a few shares and go to the stockholders’ meeting to talk about what they are doing to the woods and water with the open pit mine. But I don’t. I could never afford enough stock to be heard. Others already tried that in their group’s fight against the Company’s Presque Isle power plant at Marquette in the 1970s.)

♦

Cleveland, July 4, 1870

I have received your two letters of 30^thJune, the latter from Marquette, & they were very good, & gave me just the information I wanted, as I have no particulars from any other source since Morse left—continue to give me all such news from the mines, & all else that you can hear of—The day is beautiful & streets crowded with people, & noisy as usual—Willie was up at 5 this morning & commenced firing—He will keep it up pretty generally all day. Kate is to have all her young friends at the house for dinner & spend the day—they anticipate a fine time.

July 5, 1870

. . . the mining news you give is just what I want to receive. I never had it before so free & satisfactory. You are worth a salary to us just for that purpose if nothing more; but I have no doubt you are making yourself useful in many other ways, & that Capt. Mills will want you to remain after Johnny returns.

I meet a high school friend in the parking lot of one of the two supermarkets in Ishpeming. He tells me about how The Company left all the machinery down in the undergrounds when they closed them up and rumors of poisonous PCB’s abound.

People continued to arrive as word of the rich mines spread. Agents recruited; miners sent messages back to the old country— “Hard as it is there, it’s hard here but better than there. Come.” Rates in steerage from England or Ireland were about $46. Swedes, Norwegians, Italians, Finns (including my grandparents), Poles, and others came. Most of the first miners were Cornish and Irish. Soon most people would live in Company houses on Company land. Others would own their houses but when they wanted to buy the land, mineral rights were always the Company’s. “Is it real estate?” was local code that meant that the Company didn’t own either the land or the mineral rights. My family didn’t buy our real estate until the mid-1980s, even though we had lived in our house since 1938. But in 1869 and ‘70, the air rang with the hammers building homes, businesses, and mine headers.

The Cornish were skilled miners. Besides introducing the tasty pasty (rhymes with nasty), the meat pie they took into the mines, their physical prowess was legend. Among their amusements was the monthly wrestling match. That summer of 1870, 64 young, strapping Cornishmen with “not an ounce of superfluous flesh, every muscle fully developed,” competed for prizes. “Back strap’m!” “Catch’em by the ‘eet,” “Fall,” “No, fall!” “He warn’t thrawed!”

A man had to throw two others to become a competitor for the prizes. The contestants consumed a lot of beer and the winners competed the next week. When evening came, a drunken tug of war ended the day. Beer and liquor fueled the town. By 1886 forty-one taverns lined the streets of town and beer arrived by the railroad carload. One Irishman would bite a beer tumbler and chew it up to “bits as fine as bird shot” for more beer.

July 13, 1870 from the senior Samuel to the junior Samuel:

. . . your letters are excellent & keep me posted better than I ever was. I am delighted at the new discovery & wish it was on the Marquette land—hope it will prove a big thing—wish you would ask Capt. Mills to send me a fair sample of the new ore by express, unless Morse can send it by boat. It will be a great thing for us, if it proves a big mine & of good. You are now 19 years old, & I pray you may not have another such a sad year as the last. . . I pray that no accident may befall any of you so as to interfere with the general happiness . . . I will not probably go to Marquette until wife & Willie returns, & then I will take Willie up with me—

Perhaps the elder Mather was reluctant to come because the mines had failed to pay their men. Business came to a standstill, except for building and railroads. Money became scarce. The Company began to have a paternalistic attitude toward the miners, and even issued “iron money,” money printed by the companies and distributed by the company, good for trade in the Company store in Negaunee. “Money is scarce, more so than ever known here before, but the reason why is a mystery.”

But meanwhile, the ore explorations continued, and a new deposit of ore discovered on Cleveland Mining Company lands delighted the mine owners. The explorers sunk test pits and found, almost on the surface, a large boulder with good iron. Some townspeople had mixed emotions about this, for if a mine was sunk there, no residences could be built there, and the location was pleasant and high above the swampy town land. The chunk was displayed outside Capt. Mills’ house, and all who could, came to admire it.

The townspeople were sanguine, for new ore deposits meant new wealth for the growing town. The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company always tried to be first to incorporate new mining machinery. It was the first to discard horses for steam power, perhaps the first to substitute the nitroglycerine that blasted for black powder, and first to substitute air drills for those struck by hand. Their innovations were honored in the 1950s, when William Gwinn Mather (WGM), Samuel’s diary-keeping little brother at the time of this story, was inducted into the Mining Hall of Fame in Lead, Colorado. His story is just as interesting as Samuel’s.

Cleveland, July 15, 1870, Senior Samuel Mather to Junior Samuel Mather:

Your letter of the 12^thwas received this morning. Mr. Morse need not worry about what you write me—I shall not make known generally what you write, & I want you to write me everything that is going on, & all about the new discoveries—perhaps you had better not tell Morse what you write me—your letters give me more & better news than I ever got before & it is just what I wanted. . . . You see I am economical on paper—France & Prussia are going to war at last—

July 18

. . . . your letters to me are excellent & just what I want—I want to keep posted about the new discovery & I shall rely on you—also for the daily mining & shipping—I have also the copy of Nelson Contract.

Building and surveying continued, with a new bank, a new drug store, a new schoolhouse, and more taverns being raised. Captain Nelson, who had been one of the first to begin to build on the platted streets in the swamp, was also first to build a sidewalk outside his establishment. Promenaders began to walk along the sidewalk, the city’s first. Ishpeming suffered streets of dust and mud before this construction. One can picture the slim, young, bespectacled Mather, limping from his severe injuries, taking the arm of one of the new schoolteachers or mine captains’ daughters walking back and forth of an evening, from the Nelson grocery store to the tracks. July in the Upper Peninsula is most pleasant.

July 20^th

Don’t feel discouraged about yourself—as you get stronger you will be less nervous, & I think the society of those young men at the mine will help you very much. If you were to be alone, & have no society about you, you would become more gloomy—as it is, it is better for you will soon catch the infection & your spirits will rise with theirs—you have everything in the world to encourage you, & as you gain in health & strength & knowledge of our business, you will soon be able to take an important position & be a useful man—you are now learning all the while, & I am glad to note the interest you take in all our matters. . . . I am sorry the new discovery is not likely to be much of a mine—still I believe you will find more before the summer is over—

The stationery Samuel Livingston is using changes headings, indicating that the Company has taken its shipping problems seriously, and is building its own iron ships:

Cleveland Boiler Plate Co.

Our boiler plate mill burned down last Saturday night & is a total loss—- but we are covered by insurance—& our loss will be mainly in lost time & we may perhaps loose some customers. We shall rebuild, better than before—I don’t hear from Mother & don’t know where she is now—your mining news is all right & very acceptable—keep on with it—

July 26^th, 1870

I am very busy just now with burnt up mill & can’t write very long letters — You must be more careful with your glasses—you seem to break a great many. Appraisers are now at the mill, inspecting the loss. I know yet now how much we shall get from the insurance co—but we shall probably rebuild at once & try it again.

I am a writer. Maybe I can use these quiet skills. I can write about how The Company occupies our shadow lives, how it is always behind us, how we can never escape it, how no matter where we go, whether we retire on our good union company pensions to Florida or whether we join the sun seekers in Arizona. I receive a letter from an old woman who’s read my book, A Location in the Upper Peninsula, about Cleveland Location in Ishpeming, and though she lives in California and says she always hated the cold in Ishpeming, she feels a need to write me, many pages, in crabbed and quaky longhand, about this neighborhood where she grew up. We can never escape the land and the company and what we all have done together to the water and the earth.

Samuel, Sr. to Samuel Jr.:

July 27, 1870

—no fighting yet—if the war lasts any time & becomes at all general in Europe, it will of course have a good effect on our Iron Market & put up prices—it has already stiffened them somewhat, but nothing positive yet. I do not believe it will last long or become general—but I am no prophet. . ..

July 28^th, 1870

It was indeed a fortunate escape for you when thrown from the horse & you must be more careful & not ride such a vicious animal—it makes me tremble, when I think of the probability of your meeting another accident. I am sorry to hear about so much water in the mines, but such things are unavoidable —your letters are very interesting & just what I like.

Accidents happened everywhere. Mining was and is a dangerous business. Not only blasts and slippery rocks, death and injuries from chunks falling—as happened thirty years later to my great-uncle Isaac Vähäkorpi on his third day after arrival from Finland—but even dangerous horses had to be considered. Ed Hogan lost the thumb of his right hand, driving a team for the Barnum Mine. He went to check the harness and one of the horses bit his thumb off. The horse subsequently wore a heavy leather muzzle. Five drunk men drowned in Mud Lake, and a search began for their heirs.

My back is sore. Today, I have been here for six hours cranking faded microfilm. I have lots of notes from my journeys to the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, and from the libraries in Ishpeming and Marquette. The facts are confusing. All the histories give slightly different accounts. History is, as they say, constructed. It is becoming the stuff of myth, this beginning of the iron mining industry in the U.S. Who cares about the history of a mining town in the Upper Peninsula which sent its wealth to Cleveland, to absentee owners who donated their money to Cleveland’s museums and institutions, who built lavish homes in Bretenahl and on Euclid Avenue? William Gwinn Mather and Samuel endowed the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Flora Stone Mather College, now part of Case Western Reserve University, University Circle, were among the largest original donors to Kenyon College, etc., etc. etc. WGM’s heir, his wife’s son by her first marriage’s grandson, Ireland, is a co-owner of Bank One.

August 1^st, 1870

Dear Son: I have your letter of 28^th. . . I dont doubt but that some persons may think our frequent correspondence is a little suspicious, & they think you communicate too much to me—you might, part of the time, write in your own room & not let them know about it. Get your own desk, paper, pen & keep them there—Mr. Keith, the lawyer, has a long paper prepared for you & Kate to sign & make affidavit to before some attorney, & will send it up to you today to some one to have them read it to you & then swear your. It is in relation to your grandfather’s estate & these things must be done in order to enable them to settle up the estate. . . .

August 15^th, 1870

Dear Sam: I don’t believe I shall visit Marquette until fall . . . I can go up via Chicago, & it will be cooler than now—don’t you think that will be the best plan? . . . the Prussians are carrying everything before them, :& will soon be in Paris.

August 16, 1870

Dear Son: glad to hear from you . . shall look now for mining news again by tomorrow. . . we are about rebuilding our mill, & I ought to remain here & attend to the money matters; I don’t suppose there is anything for me to do at Marquette or at the mines—there is a great demand for our ore & I could sell 10 to 15000 tons more if it could be mined. But I shall be perfectly satisfied with what Capt. Mills does for us—I have great confidence in him & know he will do all he can; if we could only find a good mine on the Marquette Co. Lands, it would be a great thing—

These new explorations fizzled, but others succeeded. The township had outgrown its tolerance of frontier rowdiness and sought to incorporate to become a village. Every Sunday the fights erupted out of the taverns and the citizens witnessed brawls lasting all day long and into the wee hours. Every night drunken squabbles broke out with noise so loud it kept people awake. The township acquired a seedy reputation. Since it was not incorporated as a village, no law prevailed, and so the fighters and drinkers could fight and drink with license. The Town Board was helpless in regulating the turmoil.

Violence was common. Even dog violence. The miners bet on dog fights and cleared the bars when dogs took after each other. One Sunday afternoon at the end of August, two fights erupted. Four men got their faces cut. The other fight took out a whole tavern. A stranger in town started this fight after he was cheated at cards. After the fight ended, he left town, saying that the town was getting too moral. One day, Patrick O’Brien complained about an assault by John Mahoney who had struck him in the forehead with a mine sledge. People walking in the woods near Lake Angeline came upon a dead body, a miner who had been on a binge for three weeks without eating, who had collapsed and died.

Sept. 19^th, 1870

I am very sorry that your pleasant plan of going to Toronto & Montreal with your friends was broken up, by your not receiving the money on time—but it was your own fault—in all money matters, you must take plenty of time. . . I am very sorry indeed that it so happened—if you had only have telegraphed me for the money, it would have been sent & reached you in time.

Slowly, civilization began to prevail in Ishpeming, as exemplified by the building of a new school to go along with the completion of the new Methodist church with its new 1,000 pound bell, donated by Mr. Ely, another mine owner who lived in more genteel Marquette. The school building, right downtown near the water tower, could hold two hundred students. When churches and schools and sidewalks and incorporation arrive, a town can begin to be respectable, and its reputation as a wild and woolly, lawless haven for scalawags and ruffians begins to die. During the year Samuel Mather spent in Ishpeming, he witnessed a transition from rowdy and rough frontier town to the beginnings of the Company town that existed and still exists under the paternalistic gaze of the owners.

[ I am walking up on Jasper Knob when i meet a young man. We stop to talk. He works for the Michigan Environmental Protection Agency as a geologist. He has come to see the fabled banded hematite and jaspillite. I ask him about the water and whether the mine will affect it. “You can never get back the land like it was when you mine,” he says. “The water will always be affected. all those abandoned and collapsed mine shafts thousands of feet down, with machinery left in them. not to mention that big hole back there in the woods. It’ll never be healed.”]

The Rest of the Story:

Young Samuel returned home to Cleveland, and from 1871 to 1873, he traveled in Europe to recover his health. He was the innocent abroad, and wrote many letters back and forth with his father. He returned to Cleveland in 1873 and rejoined the Cleveland Iron Mining Company. Ten years later in 1883, Samuel Mather, Colonel James Pickands, and Jay C. Morse organized Pickands, Mather and Company to sell iron ore, coal, and pig iron. This company became one of the largest shippers of iron ore from the Lake Superior ranges, operating a large fleet of freight carriers on the Great Lakes. They were sometimes partners and sometimes rivals of John D. Rockefeller in the development of this carrier fleet.

Pickands, Mather and Company also operated coal mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia and blast furnaces in Chicago, Toledo, Duluth, and Erie and invested heavily in the stocks of such buyers of iron ore and coal as Lackawanna Steel, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, and the United States Steel Corporation.

Young Samuel Mather married Flora Stone, daughter of banker Amasa Stone, in 1881, and fathered four children: S. Livingston, Phillip, Constance, and Amasa Stone Mather.

When Samuel, Jr. died in 1931, he was the richest man in Ohio.

The Mather name graces many monumental parks, edifices, donor boards, and streets in Cleveland, while Ishpeming and the Upper Peninsula has Cleveland Avenue and also many Mather-named spots.

Author’s note: Since I wrote this, I have been contacted by various Cleveland, Ohio people, who are interested in William G. Mather. Most of them have little interest in his vast holdings in Upper Michigan, and of the aftermath of the underground and open pit mining, and are mostly interested in his society connections in the Cleveland area.



Grateful acknowledgment to the Carnegie Library in Ishpeming, Peter White Public Library and the Marquette County Historical Society in Marquette, Michigan, and the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio.