Southwest Jewish History

 

Volume 2, Number 3, Spring 1994

MESHPOCHA: The Stories of A Great Pioneer Family of the Frontier: The Lesinsky Family of Southeastern Arizona

by Jane Eppinga

Although Koppel Freudenthal never saw the United States, his descendants were among the most enterprising southeastern Arizona's Jewish families. His son, Julius arrived in the Silver City area of New Mexico around 1856, and about three years later he was joined by a nephew, Henry Lesinsky.

Henry, born in 1836 in a small European village, was sent to England at the age of 14 after his father died to learn stone and wood carving. He saved enough money to book passage to Australia where he worked on road crews and in the gold fields of Bendigo, Central Victoria. With $600 in savings, he decided to join Uncle Julius, who was somewhere in America.

An arduous sea voyage brought him to San Francisco. For a while he panned for gold in Northern California but was washed out by floods. Then a letter arrived asking him to join his uncle in New Mexico. Julius and Henry prospered by buying local grain and selling it to the government. Prosperity ground to a halt with the advent of the Civil War when military troops were pulled out of the Southwest leaving the country to outlaws and marauding Apaches. After the war business returned to normal and Henry was able save enough money to send for his brothers, Charles and Morris.

The firm of Lesinsky and Freudenthal grew and contacts for buying and selling in the East were initiated by Morris, Charles and Julius. Henry remained at Las Cruces where he went into business with a Col. Bennett. They served as government mail carriers, running mail and passengers through six hundred miles of hostile Indian Country.

In 1870 silver was discovered about a hundred miles from Las Cruces, New Mexico and a new tent town, to be called Silver City, grew to about 5,000 residents. About this time some New Mexico ranchers including Joe Yankie, Jim Bullard, and John Swisshelm, while looking for gold and silver, discovered a rich copper ore body in a remote Arizona locality, now known as Clifton-Morenci. They also found gold about a mile west of Morenci in Gold Gulch. With samples the men returned to Silver City to look for investors. Isaac Stevens, and the Metcalf brothers, Robert and James, were interested and in July of 1870, a party of 48 men, including the original locators, set out for Gold Gulch. The prospectors found the water too "coppery" and returned to Silver City when they ran short of food.

In June of 1872 Col. William Ryerson, Bullard and Yankie returned to Morenci where they staked out three claims. In August Edwin M. Pearce a Silver City mining expert, secured a bond on the claims and took ore samples to Detroit where the claims were sold for $8,000 to Eban B. Ward a wealthy steamship owner. Ward sent retired ship captain, Miles Joy, who was appointed U.S. Deputy Surveyor to survey the claims. All claims, each containing 20.6 acres were filed in Yavapai County.

Robert and James Metcalf established claims on Metcalf Hill and founded the Longfellow Mine, now a part of the southeast portion of the Morenci Open pit mine. The Copper Mountain Mining District was organized at Joy's camp, and Yankie was elected president. Robert Metcalf returned to Silver City to seek financial backing for the Longfellow's development.

He met with Henry Lesinsky in Las Cruces. Lesinsky decided to travel to the mines to see if it would be worthwhile for him to participate in their development. Copper formations were strange to Lesinsky but he decided to open a store to provide supplies for prospectors and miners. This put him in a position to learn of new discoveries. Henry left Eugene Goulding in charge of the store and returned to Las Cruces. A while later Metcalf showed Goulding some of the copper ore from the Longfellow. Goulding contacted Lesinsky, who with Metcalf, Goulding, and four well- armed men, made another visit to the area.

On the sixth day of the trip, the party travelled up Chase Creek and camped at the foot of what would become the Longfellow Incline. They had spotted Indians so the next morning they hid their supplies in a cave, climbed the mountain, and investigated potential ore veins. Back at camp they discovered the Apaches who had been stalking them for several days and had stolen all their provisions. That night the Lesinsky party camped on the banks of the San Francisco River and secured food and a pack horse from a local rancher for the return trip to Silver City.

Metcalf became impatient and asked Lesinsky to become his partner, but Henry argued that Apaches would make mining impractical. On June 7, 1873 Henry, in the company of Eugene S. Goulding, Robert Metcalf, David Abraham, and William Grant, travelled to the San Francisco River area. They made a thorough exploration and satisfied themselves as to the feasibility of working the copper mines.

In 1873 Metcalf offered to sell controlling interest for $10,000. Henry discussed the venture with Charles and Julius and offered them equal share in the enterprise, warning that they might make a fortune, or lose everything. The three men took equal interests and called their company the San Francisco Mining Company. The officers included: Henry Lesinsky, president and general manager; Charles Lesinsky, vice president; and, Julius Freudenthal, treasurer. Problems facing the fledgling company included the Apaches, smelting, ore transportation and marketing.

After a few years, Metcalf ran out of money and threatened to kill anyone who came near the mine. Henry received a letter from Metcalf challenging him to a duel. He complained that he had lost his property, wife and child and that Henry knew the real value of the mines and had cheated him.

The two men met one day on the road to Clifton while Henry was travelling with a wagon train. He spotted Metcalf alone about two hundred yards away with a double-barrelled shotgun on his shoulder. Henry wrote in his memoris:

"I lowered my rifle, a sixteen shooter. I kept close watch on the movement of the enemy. He saw that I could shoot before he brought his gun down. We stood face to face. 'Going to Clifton?' asked he. 'Yes', I replied. 'I wish you good morning'. Metcalf turned and left. This fellow was a miserable braggart only. The next time we met I took no notice of him and finally he came to me for work. Let me state here that he sold a mine later on and got about $300,000."

In the spring of 1873 Henry travelled to El Paso to hire Mexicans to smelt the ore. The first smelter in the district, known as the Stone House, was erected in Chase Creek. Henry, who knew the Mexicans were skilled in smelting, let them work without interference These early furnaces were crude. The Arizona Citizen of November 8, 1873 reported:

"Sandstone was taken from Silver City to build furnaces in Clifton and it stands well. The first smelting in a furnace built of stone was made in five days and yielded 5500 pounds of copper and 6500 pounds of silver ore which was shipped away October 17." The problem was that the furnace had to be rebuilt after each smelting because it was destroyed by the intense heat.

Mexicans were also employed to scour the hillsides for mesquite and scrub oak to make charcoal, the smelter fuel. The blast was made with cowhide bellows. Lesinsky hired Isadore Elkan Solomon, a pioneer Jewish banker, to go into the Gila Valley and direct the crews of Mexicans who cut the mesquite trees to supply charcoal. From this venture, grew Solomonville, the first Graham County seat and the birthplace of the Valley National Bank. Recently the bank changed its name to BankOne.

These early furnaces were far from satisfactory. According to the Arizona Citizen of July 21, 1874, Lesinsky was wondering one day what kind of material the gates of hell were lined with, when a worker interrupted him by saying the furnace had burned through again. Lesinsky picked up a piece of copper plate and told the worker to plug the hole with it, temporarily. When he came back later, Henry was surprised to find the hole was still plugged. Louis Smadbeck, a cousin of Lensinky's, experimented with various liners but found that copper the material at hand, was best.

Just when the problems of fuel and furnace were solved, the price of copper plunged from 35 cents a pound in 1872 to 28 cents a pound in 1873. Only profits from the store kept them afloat. Another mine supplier, E. E. Burlingame, complained in the New Mexico Borderer about that "Jew" who was selling a hundred pound sack of flour for $15 while elsewhere it was selling for $10.50. Probably no less than a "quart of ink" was used in the correspondence between Lesinsky and Burlingame for a couple of weeks. Other Silver City resented attacks on their old- timers. "...such hasty and injudicious language as to lead us to greatly modify the previous high opinion we held of that gentleman, Mr. Burlingame.... is a comparatively new comer among us and it would seem as though modest--a proper becoming modesty--and a sense of his actual surrounding should have precluded him from criticizing and reflecting upon old residents, of whom he personally knows nothing, and whose standing in the community is certainly much more solid and permanent than his can be.... The very first sack of flour that ever went to Silver City was sent there by these very Jews... that whenever they call Mr. Lesinsky a Jew they simply show themselves to be 'curs' and Mr. L will bark at them,..."

That same year Morris Lesinsky of Mesilla, New Mexico, purchased forty mules and six large wagons to take to Silver City where he set up a freighting business for the Longfellow Copper Mining Company.

Several other pioneer Jews contributed to the Clifton-Morenci history. Scotsman, James Colquhoun arrived in Clifton in August, 1883, happy in the ignorance of the Arizona Copper Company's troubles. He was put up at the Clifton Hotel owned by Jake Abraham, and given a room in what was known as Telephone Row. Abraham wrote of his experience at the hotel: "I would not find its equal in all of Arizona. He was right."

It was constructed of one-inch lumber with a canvas roof and each room was divided by sheets of cheesecloth nailed to scantlings. It had mysterious powers akin to what is now known as the wireless. A whisper at one end of the row could be easily heard at the other. In the summer it acted as a Turkish bath and it was to the local scorpions what the Riviera is to the Parisian. When Jake wanted to get rid of a boarder who was inclined to board without paying, he merely moved him to Telephone Row. The Row did the rest. On Sundays Jake served the boarders wine which had the consistency of crude oil and the soporific quality of chloroform.

George Gamble left memories of another Jew who provided entertainment in the Clifton-Morenci area, store owner Sig Weisl. He was evidently a boxer and known as The Fighting Jew. Weisl had a fight about once a week and always won. But one day he met his match. He had some words with a husky young Mexican out in front of the store. Sig hit the Mexican and missed. They clinched and got down in front of an old pair of wagon scales. First Sig was on top, but the Mexican finally got on top and was mauling Sig so hard and so fast that a few of us who were present rushed up and pulled the Mexican off him and separated them and let them up. Then Sig stepped back, squared himself and said, Now you son-of-a gun have you got enough? If you have not I will give you some more. After leaving Clifton, Weisl ran a store in Carlisle, New Mexico, where he was shot and killed.

In 1876 Henry bought out the interests of David Abraham and Eugene Goulding in the Longfellow and now represented five-sixths interest in the mine. Times were tough but they held on and concentrated on getting supplies into camp and copper onto the market, while always working on the transportation problem.

In 1877 Henry Lesinsky negotiated with a San Francisco firm for Chinese laborers who would work for less than the Mexicans. This project does not appear to have come to much probably because local residents would have been resentful of that many Chinese coming into the area.

Negotiations have been entered by the company with a San Francisco firm for one hundred and fifty men from the Flowery Kingdom, who were expected to arrive at the Company's works, and if they give satisfaction are to be followed by others when the last of the Mexicans now there will fade from the company's view.

In the beginning the company used ox wagon transportation within the district and for hauling bullion to market to Independence, Kansas. Nicholas S. Davis, a Civil War veteran and engineer, was hired by Lensinsky to improve the district roads, which were under constant attack by Apaches. Davis decided to abandon the wagon road, and build a railroad from the Longfellow mine to Clifton, hoping that Apaches would find shooting at a locomotive not nearly as interesting or economically rewarding as shooting at teamsters.

In 1878, work was begun on the 20-gauge railroad along the Chase Creek bed. The railroad, built at a cost of $50,000, used a stone wall above the creek level to keep sliding rocks from rolling down on the tracks during the rainy seasons.

Sammy Freudenthal, another nephew of Julius, served as Clifton's first Justice of the Peace. He usually sentenced miscreants to work a stint the mines. He also supervised the building of this wall. Eight miles of railroad were completed in 1879 with grade of 30 feet to the mile and very sharp curves.

The first trains were mule-powered. When the train started up hill to the mines the mules were hitched to the front to pull the cars. When the ore-loaded train went down hill, the cars moved by gravity and the mules rode down in the last car. Sammy served as the conductor on the mule train's first trip, and accompanied it on the down grade to set the brakes.

The first locomotive, purchased from the H.K. Porter Company in Pittsburgh, was shipped in April of 1880 by steamer from New York around Cape Horn to San Francisco; then by rail to Fort Yuma and from there by bullock teams to Morenci where it arrived in the Autumn. The Little Emma known to the locals as El Vapor, weighing around 17,000 pounds, travelled between twelve and fifteen miles per hour. A locomotive similar to the Little Emma stands in Clifton today as a tribute to those early dangerous days of mining.

In 1883, the Arizona Copper Company completed the Coronado railroad which passed by ten mines and was connected to the ore sources by inclines. That year nine men were killed when ore cars dashed down the Coronado incline, out of control. A concealed flaw in the drawbar caused the break, releasing the cable as the cars were lowered.

The Coronado railroad remained in operation until 1923, offering passenger service to Metcalf, Clifton and points south.

During 1870s and early 1880s, six mines were established by Lesinsky's firm: the Boulder mine owned by Henry, the Copper Crown by William Grant, the Coronado by Morris, the Horseshoe Mine by Julius Freudenthal, the Crown Reef by Louis Smadbeck, and the Mathilda by Charles. To furnish power the company built a water wheel and dug a ditch three miles long, capable of carrying enough water to furnish forty horsepower. Henry wrote, "One day a party of Englishmen and Scotchmen (sic) came our way. They had bought some mines in the neighborhood and began to investigate our property. ....Ours was a prosperous camp. ... Six hundred men worked for us."

Henry declined the price offered by the British but in 1882, the company accepted $1,200,000 by the Arizona Copper Company Ltd. Henry died in April, 1924 but never lost interest in Arizona. He did, however lose the affection of his Uncle Julius. Henry wrote:

You may find it strange that I make no mention of my partners. I must say right here that with my brother Charles, I am in the greatest of amity. Not so my uncle. When we meet, we seek to separate as soon as possible. Whose is the fault I know not. I will not say that I am entirely faultless, but I can not say that it is my fault alone.

There is no tribute greater than that offered by a contemporary, such as James Colquhoun who became general manager and president of the Arizona Copper Company. He wrote:

"About the time (1870s) the Lesinskys took an interest in the mines, advancing the necessary food and supplies, even when there seemed to be no prospect of there being any return for the money so invested. It was quite impossible to ship ore, with profit from Morenci to Swansea. The mine owners sank deeper in the mines, and as their ore reserves increased so did their debts expand. ... Nor can too much credit be given to the Lesinskys, the Freudenthals and the Metcalfs, for the great parts they played in the development of the field."

 

SOURCES

Lesinsky Files. Arizona Historical Society. Tucson Arizona.

Lesinsky Files in the David A. and Leona Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives, Tucson. University of Arizona Library, Tucson, Arizona.

Arizona Weekly Star, March 9, 1892, June 21, 1883, January 25, 1883.

Clifton Clarion, November 18, 1885, March 30, 1887.

Copper Era, August 15, 1913, March 1, 1900.

Undated memories of George Gamble.

Arizona Mining Journal, December 1, 1915.