Chapter III: Gold, Fools and Gambled Fortunes (continued)

Many of the more familiar names encountered earlier in this book reappear in connection with the Avalon Peninsula mines. Adolph Guzman leased a copper deposit in Harbour Main in 1879 from the deposit's discoverer, William Holden, and exported 50 tons of ore to Liverpool in that year. An early 1880s rumour of gold in Brigus prompted Robert Rendell, A.W. McNeily, Daniel Henderson and others to incorporate the Avalon Peninsula Gold Mining Company Limited in 1886. Someone - perhaps Henderson - tried to treat the ore with a water-wheel-powered crushing machine, but gave up the project. Robert Rendell later leased a barite deposit found in 1902 in Colliers Cove by prospector Mark Gibbons. In three years, 5075 tons of barite were removed from a shallow adit and sold to Canadian and American paint companies. Rendell closed the mine in 1905, partly because a severe spring storm toppled the mine wharf and partly because the miners had depleted the most accessible ore.

Another Rendell, a bicycle mechanic named James, tried to open a copper mine in the White Hills of Quidi Vidi beside St. John's. He formed the Quidi Vidi Copper Company Limited in 1909, but the vein's narrowness precluded economic development. In 1910, the company left the site with its shaft and adit, both of which may be reached by a half-hour hike from the village.

The Newfoundland and Labrador Provincial Archives contains a file entitled "Correspondence re. Manganese Mine at Brigus Head". The file's immense size bears no relation to the mine's importance, but rather to the unseemly squabbles over its possession.⁽²⁷⁾ Nathaniel Davis of Harbour Grace found the manganese deposits in 1914 and asked his American brother-in-law, J.B. Coates, to work the property. Coates, an opportunist, transferred it without Davis' permission to another man, causing Davis to demand an enquiry. Halfway through the enquiry the government repossessed the land, whereupon the sorely tried Davis sued the government. Some 930 tons of manganese ore left Brigus for the United States and Canada before the farcical entanglement between Davis and the government coupled with the post-war slump in metal prices caused the mine to fold.

The most productive of the Avalon Peninsula mines (apart from the Bell Island iron mines) was a pyrophyllite or 'talc' mine near Manuels. It was worked briefly during the copper boom years, at intervals in the 1930s and '40s, and is currently operated by Newfoundland Minerals Limited.*

The original developer of the mine, Frederick Andrews, was intimately connected with the Pilleys Island pyrite mine. It seems that he disposed of his interest in the pyrite mine specifically to obtain the pyrophyllite deposits: on 11 September 1902 he sold the pyrite mine; and on 22 September he bought claims covering the 'talc' mine, later transferring them to his North American Talc Company Limited.

Litigation problems over the Manuels property hampered Andrews from exploiting it until the summer of 1904.⁽²⁸⁾ Once the title was clear, he hired local men to install buildings on the claim site - "Talcville", it was called - an overhead tramway to the Newfoundland Railway and a pier at Seal Cove in Conception Bay. Nearly 7750 tons of ore left Seal Cove in 1904-05 for the company crushing plant in Portland, Maine. In 1906, however, the company went bankrupt as it lacked a cheap mechanical means of separating ore from waste rock. R.K. Bishop of St. John's secured the company assets in 1909 and, after exporting 1700 tons of ore, shut down the mine in 1910.

Talcville was one of several Newfoundland mine sites named after their related mineral deposits. Lead Cove and Chrome Point were two more examples; the Avalon Peninsula's Silver Cliff silver and lead mine was another.

J.W. Foran, one of many unlucky owners of the Silver Cliff lead mine. (III/4.) (18Kb)

The Silver Cliff mine was the only one outside of Notre Dame Bay to be explored by Francis Ellershausen. News that John Burke of Placentia had found lead deposits near Little Placentia (now called 'Argentia' from the French argent, meaning silver) first reached Ellershausen in 1880 just as he was about to sell the Betts Cove Mining Company holdings. He inspected Burke's showings and though them impressive, but left again for Little Bay without leasing the property.

Three years later, Ellershausen returned to Little Placentia. In the interim Burke, spurred by Ellershausen's assessment of the ore, had staked more lead veins in the area for himself, his brother and a Placentia telegraph operator, Charles Fowler. While trying to develop the most promising deposit, one located at Silver Cliff, the Burkes had exhausted their financial resources. They were obliged to sell their portion of the Silver Cliff claim to Ellershausen for £1500 or $7500; the more hardnosed Fowler sold his share for $12,000.

Ellershausen began working at Silver Cliff in the fall of 1883 under a London firm called the Cliff Silver Mines Company Limited.⁽²⁹⁾ Little Placentia residents, awed by the German baron, did their best to accommodate him, his business manager, Daniel J. Henderson, and the 50 miners that came from Little Bay and Betts Cove. However, the people's hospitality could not alleviate Ellershausen's disappointment with the property. The Burkes' unskilled mining attempts had left the underground workings dangerously unstable. Rubble obscured the best ore exposures, and the shaft flooded constantly. Because Ellershausen's longtime friend and associate Adolph Guzman had gone to the Unites States, Ellershausen was forced to hire a mine captain McVicar, whose inefficiency and apathy drove him to distraction. He expressed his feelings about McVicar's possible reappointment in a letter to Premier Whiteway:

"...So far as the other clause is concerned, that as part of considerations I should be found to give McVicar employment, I would never agree to it. My reasons are so manifold that it is useless to enumerate them...the fellow will sit on me for life..."⁽³⁰⁾