The Saga of Henry Plummer Book 1 by Sven Skaar (PH 3-1) (1959) (97 pages)

4 Moses Vindley Beatty, nicknamed Iin, was only 23, but so fine and solid was his reputation that the contract for half a million dollars was awarded to hiny on December 4, °74. As his chief engineer of construction, he hired John Flint Kidder, C.E., the master builder who had accomplished the almost impossible task of constructing the Central Pacific through the rugged mountains west of Truck-. ee: With Kidder came his exper: ienced road builders, his’ gangs] tof Joyal, . hard-working Chinese. ) They drove’ into the task with zest. Snaking steadily toward Grass Valley, mile alter mile was cleared, graded and bedded ‘with ties and rails. Girder after girder went up and soon a lofty bridge spanned the chasm of the Bear River. The continuous flow of pay-roll checks from Findley’s Bank: brought new prosperity to Colfax, ; Grass Valley and Nevada City. [Business houses spruced up their} Stores and replenished Stocks, even to importing fanciful, ‘impracticable gadgets ‘and notions that nevertheless sold readily to a prosperous public. . . Undertaker Pope acquired al hearse with owl-eyed plate glass! windows and topped by swaying ostrich plumes -white ones for a child’s funeral and black ones! for adults. Champagne Breakfasts ; A wedding was no longer a wedding unless solemnized in a church and followed by a champagne breakfast to which engraved invitations were issued. Even solemn, frugal, pale-faced. (Cornish miners who spent the main part of their lives underground, let loose with paint for their cottages. During long sabbath hours, they would sit on their white porches with blue painted ceilings, in proprietary splendor, talking shop and banfering one another across porch railings and garden spots that lay in flaming colors against the austere, green pines. Their Wives Sat in taffeta. stiffness and Well. . . eae rs earned smugness in the smalll} ‘parlors underneath framed chromos of Queen Victoria. And sons and daughters of the twin cities 4 were sent off to seminaries and colleges to get: the education their parents had only dared toj dream about in far off Cornwall. Bank Closes The railroad was laid as far as Greenhorn Creek, and the chuggy little locomotive, ‘Grass Valley” was pushing rails by Storm’s Station, once the location of Findley’s Emigrant Trail store, when an explosion hit the county with as shattering an effect as that of a full six-hole round tearing into the heading of a mine tunnel -the Thomas Findley Bank closed _ its. doors. When the. first excitement, the shoutings of ‘thief, scoundrel, and -swindler’’ had died down, the shouters shamefacedly real-}, ized that the railroad accounts were secure, No one but Findley himself was hurt in’ the crash. He had closed his doors to prevent his depositors from going under with him. It was his heavy involvement in Ralston’s reckless Comstock manipulations that had ruined him. In Findley’s hour of need, no one came forward to help him. No one came to the rescue of the man who had done so much for Nevada county. are He packed up the little he could salvage and ioved to San Francisco -with his family. Even his nephew, Fin Beatty, who had done a brilliant job, had his contract scrapped through some legal maneuvering by the railroad company directorate. Lost in Politics Findley, who had barnstormed the state for the gubernatorial nomination, with the best prospects of getting it, lost heart and went into seclusion in his flat on 1117 Pine Street in San Francisco, ) As a result of that and his bank failure, he lost the political con-. : test to his rival, William Irwin}, on the seventh ballot; Irwin served as California’s povernor from 1875-80,

4 Moses Vindley Beatty, nicknamed Iin, was only 23, but so fine and solid was his reputation that the contract for half a million dollars was awarded to hiny on December 4, °74. As his chief engineer of construction, he hired John Flint Kidder, C.E., the master builder who had accomplished the almost impossible task of constructing the Central Pacific through the rugged mountains west of Truck-. ee: With Kidder came his exper: ienced road builders, his’ gangs] tof Joyal, . hard-working Chinese. ) They drove’ into the task with zest. Snaking steadily toward Grass Valley, mile alter mile was cleared, graded and bedded ‘with ties and rails. Girder after girder went up and soon a lofty bridge spanned the chasm of the Bear River. The continuous flow of pay-roll checks from Findley’s Bank: brought new prosperity to Colfax, ; Grass Valley and Nevada City. [Business houses spruced up their} Stores and replenished Stocks, even to importing fanciful, ‘impracticable gadgets ‘and notions that nevertheless sold readily to a prosperous public. . . Undertaker Pope acquired al hearse with owl-eyed plate glass! windows and topped by swaying ostrich plumes -white ones for a child’s funeral and black ones! for adults. Champagne Breakfasts ; A wedding was no longer a wedding unless solemnized in a church and followed by a champagne breakfast to which engraved invitations were issued. Even solemn, frugal, pale-faced. (Cornish miners who spent the main part of their lives underground, let loose with paint for their cottages. During long sabbath hours, they would sit on their white porches with blue painted ceilings, in proprietary splendor, talking shop and banfering one another across porch railings and garden spots that lay in flaming colors against the austere, green pines. Their Wives Sat in taffeta. stiffness and Well. . . eae rs

earned smugness in the smalll} ‘parlors underneath framed chromos of Queen Victoria. And sons and daughters of the twin cities 4 were sent off to seminaries and colleges to get: the education their parents had only dared toj dream about in far off Cornwall. Bank Closes The railroad was laid as far as Greenhorn Creek, and the chuggy little locomotive, ‘Grass Valley” was pushing rails by Storm’s Station, once the location of Findley’s Emigrant Trail store, when an explosion hit the county with as shattering an effect as that of a full six-hole round tearing into the heading of a mine tunnel -the Thomas Findley Bank closed _ its. doors. When the. first excitement, the shoutings of ‘thief, scoundrel, and -swindler’’ had died down, the shouters shamefacedly real-}, ized that the railroad accounts were secure, No one but Findley himself was hurt in’ the crash. He had closed his doors to prevent his depositors from going under with him. It was his heavy involvement in Ralston’s reckless Comstock manipulations that had ruined him. In Findley’s hour of need, no one came forward to help him. No one came to the rescue of the man who had done so much for Nevada county. are He packed up the little he could salvage and ioved to San Francisco -with his family. Even his nephew, Fin Beatty, who had done a brilliant job, had his contract scrapped through some legal maneuvering by the railroad company directorate. Lost in Politics Findley, who had barnstormed the state for the gubernatorial nomination, with the best prospects of getting it, lost heart and went into seclusion in his flat on 1117 Pine Street in San Francisco, ) As a result of that and his bank failure, he lost the political con-. : test to his rival, William Irwin}, on the seventh ballot; Irwin served as California’s povernor from 1875-80,