Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1899-04-02

believed the reports and the crash
came like the fall Of house Of cards.
Stocks went down to a mere shadow OF
their former values. Literally thous-s
ands Of California men and women,
who were rich on Augusta, were poor
on August 5, and have never since re-
covered their wealth. The panic of
1875 in the San Francisco Stock Ex-
change did not affect the Bonanza
mines. The Big Four mining firm dis
laimed responsibility for the stock
gambling of the Toms, Dicks and
Harrys of the Pacific coast. There was
slight reaction in the value of Com
stock shares, but never again was there
anything like the enormous prices paid
for them.
For four years longer the California
and Consolidated Virginia. properties
were worked day and night. But the
Bonanza ledge was worked out by the
fall Of 1875. Exploratory work was
vainly conducted in every part of the
mine for further bonanzas. The mines
yielded good profits every month until
the latter part of 1873 Then the lode
had been dug so deep that it was too
expensive to mine there. The mining
firm mad sold all their shares bit by
bit for several years, and when 1881
came it had left only a handful OF
stock in the California and Consili-
dated Virginia. John w. Mackay
moved to New York that year and in
vested his $3S, 100000 in Atlantic cable
and telegraph lines. James G. Fair
had drawn out about s43,000000. James
C. Flood took out over $4,000, 900 more
and William S. O'Brien, who was an
invalid during the last years of his
life and had withdrawn early from the
firm, about Sill, 100000.
James G. Fair made his home before
and after he became a multi-million-
aire at a little wooden house on
Washoe street, in the mining camp OF
Virginia City. He was elected United
States Senator from Nevada in 1851,
and when his term of Senatorship ex-
pired he went to San Francisco to live.
All his four children were born in the
brought up like any other children in
the camp. Mrs. Fairs head was never
turned by the Aladdin wealth that
poured in upon her. While her hus-
band was adding 100000 or more p
month to his wealth, and while his
bank deposits in Gan Francisco often
ranked from $14,000,000 to $1S,000,000,
she and her little girls went to visit
among the miners cabins about the
camp, dressed in calico dresses ana
straw hats.
The future Mrs William X. Wander
bilt, Jr.-Miss Virginia Fair-was
named after the mining camp in which
she was born and reared to girlhood.
She is the youngest of the Fair chill
dren. Along with the children of the
poor Cornish and Irish laborers of the
camp she went to a red school house
on Gold Hill street. The old time min
ers in Virginia City remember her as
a dark-eyed and jolly little girl, who
played in the street and in the open
sand lots near her home with other and
less favored children Of fortune. She
inherits her fathers clear pink-and-
white Celtic complexion and her
mothers democracy. In 1884 she, with
her mother and sister NOW Mrs. Her
man Oelrichs, of New York;, and two
brothers, went to live in a superb
mansion on Pine street, in San Fran
cisco. Four years ago Miss Virginia
Fair spent several days in the decayed
old mining town of Virginia City,
where her father dug his enormous for
tune. She called upon q host of her
girlhood friends and left many pleas
ing remembrance there of her visit.
The possession of millions Of dollars
brought unhappiness to the last ten
years of James G. Fair. Mrs. Fair OBJ
tanned a dispensation from the Pope
and divorced her husband in 1886. Vile
scandals went abroad about the Sena-
tor in California. He gave Mrs. Fair
SIS. 600. 600 in stocks and bonds, and he
lived with his sons, James and Charles,
at the Lick Hotel, inn san francisco.
James, Jr., after a shameful debauch-
cry, died in an inebriate institution, and
Charles married a woman whom the
Senator publicly prescribed. While
the veteran miners income of thous-
ands week was piling up he was peri
odically the subject of some humiliat-
ing public scandal. He wrote and re-
wrote many wills in his last years, &C
cording to his moods. Sometimes he
would disinherit one heir, sometimes
another He had a mortal fear that
some woman friend would lay claim to
his property when he was gone. Mrs.
Fair died in October, 1894, and left her
prOperty to her daughters The Fair