There was no such position in Nevada Territory; this was a playful reference to Mollie Clemens. She and seven-year-old Jennie Clemens had arrived in San Francisco on the steamer Constitution on 5 October. Orion met them there and the three left for Carson City on 10 October, arriving on the twelfth (MEC, 14).

Joseph T. Goodman (1838–1917) emigrated from New York to California in 1854. He worked as a compositor and writer on San Francisco newspapers before he and Denis E. McCarthy (1841–85), a fellow typesetter on the San Francisco Mirror and the San Francisco Golden Era, bought into Jonathan Williams’s Virginia City Territorial Enterprise on 2 March 1861. Later that year Dennis Driscoll (1823–76), the Enterprise bookkeeper, replaced Williams in the partnership. He withdrew in October 1863, leaving Goodman and McCarthy in control, the former having editorial charge of the Enterprise and the latter running its print shop. McCarthy left the paper in September 1865 and Goodman was sole proprietor until he sold out in February 1874 and moved to San Francisco. Quick to recognize Clemens’s gift for humorous journalism, Goodman gave him encouragement and support and became a lifelong friend (Emrich, 263–64; Angel, 317, 322, 326; Goodman to Alfred B. Nye, 6 Nov 1905 and 17 Nov 1905, Alfred B. Nye Papers, CU-BANC; Weisenburger, 53, 60, 61, 62–63; Lingenfelter and Gash, 253–54).

X

Virginia City Territorial Enterprise building, 1864. Detail of original lithograph at the Mackay School of Mines, University of Nevada, Reno.

The first decision in the “remarkable case of the Chollar [Silver] Mining Company vs. the Potosi [Gold and Silver] Mining Company.” This suit was “the immediate cause of the resignation of the whole territorial bench and a contention without a parallel in the history of the litigation of mining claims in its duration, fierceness, and cost” (Lord, 151). The proceedings had begun in January 1862 when the Chollar Company brought an action for ejectment against the Potosi Company, which had been extracting ore from a well-defined underground ledge, on the Comstock lode, which it had located and followed underneath the Chollar Company’s surface claim, also on the Comstock. The Chollar Company asserted that its surface claim included rights to “all the dips, angles, spurs, and variations thereof, together with all the quartz, leads, and ledges and earths containing the precious metals,” however deep such ore bodies might lie. The Potosi Company “denied the infringement of any rights . . . as they were not working in surface ground, but in a well-defined ledge located by them in accordance with the district laws” (Lord, 151, 152). In fact the existing laws were ambiguous in regard to such disputes. On 20 October 1862 a jury, with Judge Gordon N. Mott concurring, decided in favor of the Chollar Company. The Potosi Company was forced to relinquish its ledge, “and their rival possessed the fruit of their labors” (Lord, 154). The decision of Mott’s court was upheld by the territorial supreme court in March 1863. Nevertheless, the litigation, fed by political and judicial corruption, continued into 1865, and the mining laws remained in dispute. The principals in the suit resolved their conflict without a final judicial decision by merging as the Chollar-Potosi Mining Company in April 1865 (see Lord, 151–73).

Gordon N. Mott (1812–87)—a native of Ohio who had practiced law in California before moving to Nevada in 1861—was judge of the first district of Nevada Territory, associate justice of the territorial supreme court, and, by election on 2 September 1862, territorial representative to the United States Congress. In September 1863, the managers of the Potosi Company, believing that Mott was biased in favor of the Chollar Company, paid him $25,000 to relinquish his judicial posts in favor of a lawyer more sympathetic to their claims (Andrew J. Marsh, 669 n. 35; Kelly 1862, 10; Angel, 80; BDAC , 1367; Lord, 154–55). Another erstwhile Californian involved in the Chollar-Potosi suit was the attorney for the former company, William M. Stewart (1827–1909). Originally from New York, Stewart migrated to Nevada in 1860 after ten years in California, where he was acting attorney general in 1854. He later (1864–75, 1887–1905) served as Republican senator from the state of Nevada (Mack 1964, passim; Andrew J. Marsh, 665 n. 8, 675 n. 84).

Virginia City “roosted royally midway up the steep side of Mount Davidson” (Roughing It, chapter 43). By October 1862 the Ophir Company, owner of the first claim located on the Comstock lode, on Mount Davidson, had already acquired title to adjoining properties and was preparing an ejectment suit against the Burning Moscow Company, which was extracting ore directly to the west of Ophir ground. William Stewart, counsel for the Ophir, was the region’s leading advocate of the “one-ledge theory,” which held that all bodies of ore-bearing quartz on Mount Davidson, even though separated by large strata of barren rock and earth, were really only parts of one ledge. “If, then, there was only one ledge, and the croppings on each side of it were adjudged to be spurs and angles instead of distinct bodies, the locators along the line of that one ledge were the lawful possessors of the ore deposits throughout the whole basin and eastern hill slope” (Lord, 99). Judge Mott’s reasoning in his decision favoring the Chollar Company gave legal support to one-ledge arguments; and as Clemens seems to have guessed, the Ophir’s coming suit against the Burning Moscow also was to be based on such arguments. Joseph T. Goodman of the Territorial Enterprise was not alone in opposing the one-ledge theory. The rival Virginia City Union strenuously opposed that concept and considered the Ophir to be a “great Grab All Company” that sought to “steal the silver of other people” (“The Virginia (N.T.,) Daily Union . . .,” San Francisco Alta California, 1 Nov 63, 1, reprinting the Union of unknown date; see also A Subscriber, 1).

Clemens’s report of the discovery of an ancient “Petrified Man,” a hoax aimed primarily at Judge G. T. Sewall of Humboldt County (see 8 and 9 Mar 62 to Clagett, n. 5click to open link), appeared in the Territorial Enterprise of 4 October 1862. Since the bogus report was widely reprinted in California papers, Clemens might well have sent Sewall daily clippings. It is less likely, however, that he was able to produce the fraudulent letters from “scientific men” (see ET&S1 , 155–59).