Kellner, Ernest Frederich

Kellner and Company Store at Globe, Arizona. Part of the Ernest Frederich Kellner Pictorial Collection PICT 000-278.

Ernest Frederick Kellner, merchant and miner, was born on May 25th 1849, in New Braunfels, Texas. Kellner's mercantile career began in 1869 when he started a store in San Antonio, Texas. By 1874, Kellner was providing supplies to Fort Selden, the U.S. Army Fort near Silver City, New Mexico. In 1876, his business grew into a partnership with J.B. Morril in Silver City. Together, Kellner and Morril established stores in Silver City, N.M., and Globe, Arizona. This arrangement dissolved in 1878, at which time Kellner took over the Arizona half of the business and moved to central Arizona. He opened stores in McMillen and Richmond Basin, Arizona, and established a milling operation, lumber yard, and Miners' Bank in Globe. Kellner got sick in 1882 and, after a three month tour of Europe to recuperate, he returned to Globe to sell his stores in McMillen and Richmond Basin and to end his Miners' Bank. In their place, Kellner established a successful and well-known outfitting store called the New York Store in Globe. It became the exclusive outfitter to the Dominion Copper Mining and Smelting Company, a major Arizona copper company.

Kellner's businesses were founded on supplying the cattle and other mining operations that flourished in Arizona at the end of the nineteenth century. In Globe, Kellner operated under the business name of E.F. Kellner and Company, and outfitted miners, provided lumber, and delivered supplies to mining camps. Kellner's other area operations included the E.F. Kellner's Store, a grocery store, in Phoenix, Arizona. Kellner also had his hand in owning and running mining operations. He owned, for example, a stake in the Lost Gulch Gold Mines and Mills, near Globe. Kellner was a founding director of the Globe Bank and Savings Company, incorporated in 1907.

Kellner married Mary Walker Bennett in December 1857. Mary Bennett was the daughter of Nehemiah V. Bennett, a New Mexican and the principal of a girl's seminary in Jackson, Louisiana. Nehemiah's brother Joseph F. Bennett was a businessman and politician who owned the Bennett Mine in the Organ Mountains, northwest of Las Cruces, New Mexico. This mine later merged with a nearby mining operation and became known as the Stephenson-Bennett Consolidated Mine. Kellner and Mary Bennett had five children, including a son, E.F. Kellner, Jr., who became involved in his father's business enterprises after Kellner's long-time manager J.W. Ransom retired in 1900. Throughout his life, Kellner took several trips to Europe to recover from various illnesses. He died at his mansion in Venice, California, in 1915.