Federal Union Mining Company

Gold mining company organized in 1865 and sold at auction in 1868.

The Federal Union Mining Company (F. U. M. C.) was organized by a group of Eastern investors including A.W. Hoyt, a civil engineer, Elisha Wells, a Massachusetts businessman, and General Napoleon Bonaparte Buford, at the end of the Civil War. In 1865, Hoyt sent Buford, a Union general who had been prominent in the Tennessee Campaigns, to visit the mining property of Jeb and Erskine McClellan in Clear Creek County, Colorado, seven miles from Black Hawk. Hoyt instructed Buford to check out the mines’ working value and get the McClellan brothers to sell their claims. Buford visited Colorado and returned East in late 1865 with bond to pay for the claim. In 1866 the company was formally organized. Arthur Field was elected President and Elisha Wells was to serve as Treasurer-Secretary. A sufficient number of Eastern investors were solicited to raise enough capital to send Buford back to Colorado in the spring of 1866 as superintendent of the mines. He took with him a group of men to work in the mines and a trainload of supplies in April 1866. In Clear Creek County, Buford served as superintendent until December 1866. Then he decided to return to his home in Rock Island, Illinois for the winter. In the spring of 1867, the Board of Directors, displeased with Buford’s management of the claim as they had no evidence of profits, dismissed Buford as superintendent. Buford later became a special commissioner to inspect the newly completed Union Pacific Railroad. He spent his last years in Chicago and died there in 1883.

In the meantime, the Board of Directors appointed Erskine McClellan, who had been serving as manager, the new superintendent of the mines. Elisha Wells visited Colorado in the summer of 1867 and did not discover anything amiss, but McClellan was not running the claim any more successfully than Buford had. In November 1867, McClellan hired a manager to take over the operations for the F.U. M. C. while he carried out mining at the Evans Company in Georgetown.

By 1868, the company was in dire financial straits and no longer paid McClellan his salary so McClellan brought suit against F. U. M. C. McClellan won a writ of attachment in the trial of McClellan versus the Federal Union Mining Company in April 1868. In that same month, the company appointed Elisha Wells superintendent of the mines and gave him the power to settle with McClellan and begin suit against Buford. Wells traveled to Colorado in May where he found that all of the company’s movable property had been sold to Thomas Evans of Georgetown and the real estate in Clear Creek County was to be sold at auction on June 6. The mining property was auctioned to Thomas Evans and the F. U. M. C. lost all of its original property. They were left with eighty acres of coal mining property in Jefferson County, Colorado, near Golden. For the summer Wells prospected for himself, staking claims in Summit County. He also began to question men who had had dealings with Buford and McClellan, beginning to gather evidence against the two former superintendents.

In January, 1869 at the company’s stockholders meeting, Wells was authorized to bring suit against McClellan. In 1871, the stockholders voted that Wells was also authorized to commence suit against Antoine Serriolle or others against whom the Company has demands or unsettled accounts and a suit against the firm of Royle and Butler of Central City for damages in conducting the suit of the Federal Union Mining Company versus McClellan begun in November, 1868. The company’s resolution to bring suit against the law firm is the only evidence in the collection that the F. U. M. C. lost their suit against McClellan. There is no indication that the company brought suit against any of the other individuals or the law firm.

There is no mention of the F. U. M. C. after 1875 when some company papers were filed with the Clear Creek County clerk in the F. U. M. C. versus McClellan case. It can be assumed that the Federal Union Mining Company was short-lived since no mention of the company’s existence can be found in any Colorado mining histories or histories of Clear Creek County. After the company’s demise, Wells must have returned to Massachusetts as he worked as town clerk in Greenfield in 1871. Erskine McClellan remained in Colorado where he had other mining interests in the Phoenix Mine and the Silver Cloud Mine in Clear Creek County. McClellan left his mark on Colorado for Colorado histories often refer to McClellan Mountain in Clear Creek County and mention McClellan’s Silver Queen Opera House in Georgetown.