The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-01-04
EASY TIMES IN MEXICO.
FRESHMEN WHO BECAME MULTI-
 MLLLTON1JRES
With LsttIe Work-HOw Money Was Made and Lost Not So Very Long AgO-A ThOusnnd-Dollar Drawer Free to Everybody in the House.

AsO--A ThOusnnd-Dollar Drawer
 Free to Everybody in the House.
 Among the first settlers were
 the Devine brothers, former Santa Fe
 traders, who came to the then Rancho
 Refugio, sailing up the Rio Grande in
 their light draught schooners which had
 crossed the gulf from New Orleans.
 They, of course, made great deal of
 money, and the widow of one of them
 the daughter of General Garcia, later
 married Don Juan Clark. and her
 daughter, by Devine, married Francisco
 Garcia Meguerza, for many years a
 merchant on the main piazza i'll Mata-
 moras, who received with her a large
 fortune, which in some way he man.
 aged to dissipate, failing in the early
 nineties and dying in Monterey quite
 poor. This was somewhat remarkable,
 as he was man who lived quietly and
 was not of speculative nature, and
 thus ended the last of the Davine dol
 lars.
 Don Juan Clark, the stepfather of this
 Mrs Meguerza, was the first employer
 that the great Monterey multi-million-
 dlIG, IdlIIClO NllllllO, Ddu III llslo lCplAb
 lie. Clark, with Pats brother Frank were in business together under the firm
 name of Milmo t& Clark, having two little stores, one in Monterey run by
 Clark, and the other in Saltillo under
 Franks management Pat came over from Valley Mote, County Sligo, in
 1S4S, and went to work in the store in
 Monterey with Clark. His brother Frank did not want to give him any sal
 ary until he had learned the language,
 but Clark, who was always liberal, in- sisted that both of them had had sal
 ary on their arrival and insisted that
 Pat should have one too, so he could
 thank Don Juan for the first money he ever earned. In 1851 Frank died from
 the effects of hard living, while on voyage home to Ireland and Don Juan, having married and retired in 1850, leaving ten thousand dollars capital i'm the house. the business was moved to San Luis Potos, Pat as the clerk hav- ing control of it. Here things took bad turn, and Hale and Mulloney sold the concern out, though Pat managed to save some four thousand dollars from the wreck. This he invested on his own account in Mexican goods and went to Monterey to attend the fair there, Hale, Mulloney, Grogan and others of the old time Irish merchants helped him, and when the fair closed he had made some seven thousand dollars clear profit, and at the fair at Saltillo, which followed, he made five thousand dollars more This was the foundation of his great wealth, estimated when he died the other day at from fifteen to twen- ty million dollars. He established him. self at Monterey permanently and when he married Prudenciana. the daughter of the then Governor Santiago Vidauer of Nuevo Leon, he was worth about sixty thousand dollars This was in 1S56
 Governor Vidaurre was a man who himself had worked to the front by his own energies as a politician and soldier, and was known as "El Tigre del Norte,' or Tiger of the North, all over the re- public He had advanced from a position, which his education had secured him in the government offices, to the post of secretary and confidential adviser of the then governor Cordova, and in that of flee was the first to see an order from the then president of the republic, San ia Ana who thought Vidaurre was be- coming entirely too popular, to "shoot Vidaurre." When he read of this he lost no time, but at once raised the standard of revolt, and with some two hundred and fifty men that had focked to him retired to Lampazos, where he was very popular, and getting a force of some two thousand men in all re- turned and took Monterey, thus mak- ing himself the head of the power in the state. This was in 1S44. He was a leading man in the political affairs in the northern part of the republic and in his state until late in the sixties when not at that time being in accord with the government he was induced to go to tHe federal capital, where he lay hid for some time, but his whereabouts were sold, it is said, by an American, for the sum of fifteen thousand dollars and he was shot by those in power. At the place of his execution he gave a gold ounce to each of the soldiers who formed the firing party Ghere were five in alp, telling them to fire at his | face.
 In 1864 or '65 Milmo bought the fa- nous Mesa ranch in northern Nuevo | Leon, which is some fifteen miles long | by three or four broad, has an abun- dance of wood, water and pasturage, for | the herds of cattle that roam over it's 1 surface, while being on the top of a | mesa or mountain sever hundreds of | feet high, with steep sides, and but one | narrow path by which the top can be | reached they can neither stray or be | stolen. For this property he paid the | sum of but sixty thousand | dollars. He was then very rich. The following year, 1866, General Negrete, who had occupied Monterey during one of the changes of power so common | at that time, pleaded that Milmo, l through Vidaurres influence, had been able to get 8 large quantity of goods in ! the port of Tampico without | paying full duties. He caused Milmo to open his safe and took from it forty five thousand dollars that was there to pay his troop. Don Juan Clark, who was then in the bloom of manhood and full of deviltry later wanted Milmo to let him horsewhip Negrete, who had come up on the border, and was on the American side. But Milmo took the matter very colly, saying that if he had not had the money Negrete could not have taken 1t, and that there was plen- ty more where that had come from
 To |