Whitman Symmes records

Little background information is available on the collection's provenance, although we have surmised that the records were probably assembled by Symmes in the course of his profession as mining engineer and mine superintendent on Nevada's Comstock Lode, and possibly because of his battles with mining stockholders. Arranged alphabetically by company name, the records consist primarily of deeds, agreements, financial statements, reports, correspondence, payrolls, articles of incorporation, court case documents, and assay reports for mines, mills, shafts, flume companies, and tunnel associations in Nevada, California, Utah, Wyoming, and Arizona. Not all types of documents are available for each company.

The collection includes a scrapbook of clippings of the newspaper column "Superintendents' Weekly Letters," dating from 1909-1912 which provides data on the progress of individual Comstock mines, as does a "Complete History of the Comstock Lode by Expert Mining Engineers..." from a 1908 Pacific Miner. The collection also contained six photographs of the St. John's Quicksilver Mine, near Vallejo, California, circa 1910.

No personal information about Symmes is found in this collection, although there are several reports by Symmes on the Comstock Lode. Of special note is Symmes' detailed report prepared in about 1914, probably for submission to stockholders and/or the Pacific Miner, on the conspiracy against him by five stockholders. In this report Symmes writes of his career as superintendent for several mines and related companies in the Comstock Lode and details particulars on mining activities in the period of about 1908-1914.