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Title: 1852 letter about John Fremont's California gold mines Author: Place: Philadelphia Publisher: Date: 1852 Description: Charles Schaffer. Autograph Letter Signed. Philadelphia. Oct. 11, 1852. 2pp. To J.[ohn] L.Newbold, Piccadilly, London. Investors in John C. Fremont's California gold mines. Schaffer, a physician, and Newbold, a Philadelphia lawyer, were among the investors in the newly-incorporated “Philadelphia & California Mining Company”, one of the first Eastern ventures in California Gold Rush mining, having contracted to lease 600 square feet of quartz gold mining land from the Mariposa estate of legendary explorer John C. Fremont. The enterprise was the brain-child of 49-er George W. Wright a Massachusetts Yankee and San Francisco banker who was who the first US Congressman elected from California, at the same time that Fremont, his life-long friend and business partner became one of the new state’s first US Senators. The Company had ties to British finance and Schaffer wrote Newbold, then in London (as were Wright and Fremont) that he had been advised of “the necessity of exercising our right under the lease from Col. Fremont at an early period. I will press the matter before the Directors and see that a letter is written to Mr. Wright…Will you confer with Mr. [H.S.] Parke” – whom the investors had sent to California to examine the Fremont mine. Parke has assured Schaffer, ‘If we make much headway within the next 2 months, I am satisfied, but I think we shall succeed…” He had also pleaded for $500, beyond the paltry amount the Company directors had given him for California expenses, as “my expenses here are very great.” Schaffer was “in favor of being liberal with our agents and if we are going to succeed that sum of $500 is no consideration.” But the Company did not succeed. The enterprise, in which Fremont himself “confidently” invested, was closely linked to his entire mining holdings in Mariposa, that estate’s fate hamstrung by twelve years of legal entanglements after a near-disaster when Fremont’s father-in-law, Senator Thomas Hart Benton sold off the entire 70 square-mile Mariposas estate (including the mine leased to the Philadelphians) without Fremont’s knowledge. While frantically working from London to annul the sale, Fremont had to make a hurried exit to Paris before he was arrested for alleged financial improprieties while proclaiming himself the first Territorial Governor of California during the Mexican-American War. In the end, the Company dissolved without ever engaging in California mining, the steam engines it sent to Mariposa being put into storage while hapless investors were given worthless assurances of future riches that never materialized whom the investors had sent to California to examine the Fremont mine. Parke has assured Schaffer, ‘If we make much headway within the next 2 months, I am satisfied, but I think we shall succeed…” He had also pleaded for $500, beyond the paltry amount the Company directors had given him for California expenses, as “my expenses here are very great.” Schaffer was “in favor of being liberal with our agents and if we are going to succeed that sum of $500 is no consideration.” But the Company did not succeed. The enterprise, in which Fremont himself “confidently” invested, was closely linked to his entire mining holdings in Mariposa, that estate’s fate hamstrung by twelve years of legal entanglements after a near-disaster when Fremont’s father-in-law, Senator Thomas Hart Benton sold off the entire 70 square-mile Mariposas estate (including the mine leased to the Philadelphians) without Fremont’s knowledge. While frantically working from London to annul the sale, Fremont had to make a hurried exit to Paris before he was arrested for alleged financial improprieties while proclaiming himself the first Territorial Governor of California during the Mexican-American War. In the end, the Company dissolved without ever engaging in Calif