Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 042-4 - October 1988 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 8 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-02-19 07:38:16 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:05:58 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:05:58

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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The French hired the, then unknown, Niles Searls to defend them in a case that “was fiercely contested and excited a great deal of interest.” (The jury ruled in favor of the Frenchmen.) Justin Michel was a miner who built the French Mill at Canada Hill with Léopold Charonnat and Sons in 1861. Michel had been part owner of Nevada City’s Hotel de France in 1852 and took Isoard as partner in the same hostelry in 1853, forming the firm of Isoard and company. Michel also invented an amalgamator in the 1860’s, and was the wholesale agent of the California Vichy Water Company for Nevada County, long before the yuppies of the 1980's discovered Perrier. Ed Muller was born in Friedberg, Duchy Hesse, Germany on 22 October 1823; he died in Nevada City on 22 October 1906. He was a musician and teacher. In 1895 he became superintendent and secretary of the Buckeye Extension of the Fountain Head Mine. He owned, together with Judge Julius Walling, the Muller and Walling Mining Claims. The activities of these entrepeneurs is welldocumented in the pages of the Daily Transcript. On April 7, 1869, the newspaper reported that Isoard and Muller had succeeded in raising ‘‘excellent cocoons which have been favorably mentioned where exhibited.” Isoard had just completed a plantation of 5,000 white mulberry trees on Indian Flat, and “‘a gentleman who is familiar with the silk business” and who had seen Isoard and Muller’s experiments, was leaving for Germany ‘“‘to induce his friends [there] to come to this State for the purpose of embarking in the [silk] business.” The following day, Michel was reported ‘to be looking about Grass Valley to secure food for worms,” hoping to acquire “all the mulberry trees. . .in order that Isoard may have leaves enough to feed the large number of silk worms he proposes to raise.” In that same issue, the Transcript quoted the Sacramento Union as stating that “the foothills afford quite as good, if not a better climate for the health of the worms, as this. The only question in doubt,” the Union proposed, “is whether the mulberry trees can be as cheaply grown there as here... We should predict that sericulture will some day become the leading pursuit of the eastern mountain region... At all events, the Nevada [County] people are wise in thus early giving it a fair trial.” Another lengthy article, calling for the continued efforts of Isoard and Muller, appeared in the April Il, edition. Their experiments for which “they have premiums from the State and local fairs’’ had been warmly supported by Prévost who stated that “the cocoons produced in this locality are larger and of better form than any raised in the State.’ Their experiments “have demonstrated that in this county the Chinese silk worm can be raised without losing an egg,”’ the Transcript stated, whereas in France and Italy, fungoid growth attacked and destroyed the Chinese worm. “The eggs raised here bring higher prices in France than any other, because they are healthier. The cocoons are also larger and consequently the yield of silk greater.’ the Transcript noted. Furthermore, “In texture and lustre, the silk raised in this county is superior.” 32 Augustin Isoard the newspaper commented, and predicted that “California will yet produce the finest silks in the markets of the world, and the mountain silk will be the finest produced in the State.” On April 18, the Transcript published statistics on the number of mulberry trees planted throughout the state, estimating that in 1868, Nevada County had some 50,000 and “between 20,000 to 30,000 trees have been planted this season.” The increase in production was expected to continue “notwithstanding the great difficulty in procuring food for the worms.” The sale of the eggs to European silk-producing countries “will be a great source of profit to Californians engaged in this business,’ as the California eggs were preferred to all others, “‘as they are free from disease.’”’ In 1868, for example, the amount paid for eggs to Japan alone, “was four million [dollars],”’ the newspaper declared. The editor further predicted that : ~ Californian silk factories would eventually “‘be turning out silk that will rival any produced in the world, and that the ambition of every fashionable lady will be to have a robe of