The letters of Ethan Allen and Hosea Ballou Grosh, [ca. 1999] / As transcribed and compiled by Charles Thomas Wegman and George C. Harvilla.

1 v. (211 p. in 2 folders) ; 28 cm.

English

Full title: The Letters of Ethan Allen and Hosea Ballou Grosh, 1849-1857.

Gift of Charles Thomas Wegman, 1999.

Ethan Allen and Hosea Ballou Grosh were sons of Rev. A. B. Grosh of Pennsylvania. They went to California in 1849, and mined near "Mud Springs" in El Dorado County, and visited Carson Valley in 1851 and 1853, in which they discovered what they thought was silver. They returned in 1857, organizing the Frank Mining Company, and worked to make reliable assays, supporting themselves by gold mining. Hosea died September 2, 1857 after a pick accident. Allen died December 19, 1857 of exposure after getting trapped in the mountains. Their family attempted to prove that Henry Comstock took their maps and papers and discovered the Comstock Lode with their help.

Setting typescript transcriptions of letters from Allen and Hosea Grosh to their father, two letters to Allen from his father, letters of others concerning the Grosh brothers, and a typescript of a newspaper article written by A.B. Grosh. The letters from the brothers describe their trip to California via Tampico and Mazatlan, conditions in San Francisco, where they lived for the first year and a half, mining in El Dorado County, California, and ideas for silver mining in Carson Valley, with technical details relating to mineralogy and assaying learnedfrom Mexican silver miners. The other letters concern the validity of the claim that the Grosh brothers actually first discovered the silver deposits later discovered by Comstock. Accompanied by photographs of the original letters and copy photograph portraits of principals involved.

June 01, 2002

Charles Thomas Wegman and George C. Harvilla, eds. The Letters of Ethan Allen and Hosea Ballou Grosh. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Charles Thomas Wegman and George C. Harvilla, eds. The Letters of Ethan Allen and Hosea Ballou Grosh. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Silver miners Nevada.