Today, a dispatch from Eureka, Nevada, 1879. The town confronts two disasters: one natural and one human. Matilda Ashim recovers while Louis Monaco speaks out.
Dear listener,
When was the last time you felt the unsettling sense of calm before all hell broke loose? Do you remember that feeling, that sense of freedom that comes from impending chaos?
By now, you know that Eureka never turns down the opportunity to party. At least once a year, the locals gather together in the performance halls around town for a dance or a ball or a gala for the firefighters or the Masons or the Odd Fellows Society or some other social club. And, then, of course there are the Fourth of July parades that bring the entire town to march down Main Street, plus Chinese New Year, where the whole place echoes with the snap of firecrackers.
So this year, also, starts with a party. This time it’s hosted by the town’s Jewish congregation in honor of Purim. And though the Torah probably doesn’t have much to say about costume contests, that’s the main attraction at this year’s dance. Eureka has had masquerade balls before, but this one proves to be the most elaborate yet, with a gold watch and a diamond pin going to the first and second place contest winners. As the local newspaper notes, “No one will ever say that the Hebrews do anything in a half-way manner.”1
Matilda Ashim is recovering from last year’s lows, pushing ahead after illness had left her stuck in bed for weeks at a time. But if there’s one thing that Matilda loves, it’s a costume party. So she rallies and helps her family prepare their outfits for the contest. She attends as a sunflower—not the coat of many colors that she wore at her first Eureka costume ball, but not bad. Baruch attends as Richard the Third and May attends, in her most conceptual outfit yet, in a costume that shows the exchange of paper money for gold. We’re not sure if the concept lands, but the newspaper notes that she looks “remarkably pretty” anyway.2
The Ashims, though, are outclassed by the other competitors. There’s someone dressed as Sitting Bull, another as a Venetian flower girl, and another in full regalia as Louis XIV. The first place winner, however cringeworthy, is a prominent woman around town who shows up dressed in full Chinese costume. The second place winner is a woman dressed as a miner.3
Before the ball, Baruch approaches his mother with some news. He’s decided his time in the boomtowns has passed. He’s ready for a steadier, more stable life in San Francisco, where he’ll open and run a pharmacy. Decisive as he’s always been, he wastes no time in putting his business up for sale.4
We don’t know if Matilda and Simon consider following their son to California. Maybe they discuss the pros and cons of leaving. But a month later, Matilda makes the opposite decision: she’s going to invest further in her town.
She’s always been a good cook, hosting dinner parties in her home and carefully selecting the meat, fish, and vegetables that she sold at her grocery store. So, she decides that her next business will be a restaurant—the Epicurean, where she’ll cook French dinners, cater Eureka’s many parties, and offer five private rooms for rent.5
It’s a heavy lift, for sure, especially for someone who had been knocked down by illness for a portion of last year. But Matilda recognizes that there’s a market for fine cooking in town, especially for wealthier folks who want something more than country cuisine. And, probably most importantly, she knows that if she wants to emerge from bankruptcy quickly, she needs to get back to work.
—
In Eureka, bad things tend to happen when a strong wind starts to blow off the mountains. Maybe it’s a sudden cloudburst rolling through town, or maybe it’s a blizzard or maybe it’s a lightning storm. This spring, late on a Friday night, it’s a fire.
The firefighters at the Rescue Hose company notice the wind first and know what could come next. They begin preparing their gear for a possible blaze. There has not been a major fire in Eureka for years, though, so the rest of the town is busy and unaware this Friday night. That is, until the fire bell cuts through the night at midnight, just minutes before flames tear down the hillside and start to engulf buildings. From the opera house, the fire hits John and Regina Moch’s restaurant, which goes up instantly. Then the houses along Spring street go next, then the businesses on the eastern edge of Main Street. Even the house of ill repute on Buel Street catches fire, sending half-clothed men and women out into the street.6
The fire is so fast that most people only have time to run out into the night, leaving their possessions behind. One woman thinks quickly and begins dumping buckets of water onto her roof, which saves her house. Firefighters intercept the flames but the wind keeps feeding the blaze, which burns for two hours, gnawing at the east side of town. 300 buildings in total burn down. Only one person dies—John Moch, the Ashim’s old friend from Hamilton, sleeping a floor above his restaurant when it catches fire.7
For Matilda, just getting back on her feet with a new business and trying to emerge from bankruptcy, the fire hits hard. Her restaurant is spared, but she loses four houses that she’d purchased as investments, about $8,000 in value. It’s another setback and yet another reason that she needs her new venture to succeed.8
For now, though, the focus, yet again, is on rebuilding. There’s already a fund set up for the survivors, and Reno, which suffered a big fire years earlier, is sending supplies.9 This is not Eureka’s first taste of disaster, and the town knows how to regroup and recover. But there is now a massive burn scar across the east side of town, a dark reminder of just how unpredictable life can be here in this place.
—
Charlie and his band watch the fire sweep through Eureka from the hills outside of town.
Among the band, there’s a sudden burst of energy, and all the adults are on their feet, running down the canyon to see the town go up. Charlie sees the glowing firelight reflected on the hillsides all around him as buildings get consumed by flames. Later he’ll tell people about the time that Eureka was turned all red from fire.10
—
Eureka is full of workers. Except for the doctors, lawyers, and mine owners around town, most of the place is made up of people who work long hours on their feet—washing laundry, digging out the mines, selling groceries, carting coal, cutting hair, tending bar.
But when it comes time to push for higher wages or more reasonable hours or a safer place to work—or even to support each other after a fire—most of these workers are on their own. Only a few groups of workers have formed unions. The printers in the newspaper belong to a national union, which helps set a standard for what they are paid.11
And the miners of Ruby Hill, a few miles west of town, also have a union. They meet on Friday nights, and they negotiate with the two big mining conglomerates that run the smelters and furnaces in town, Eureka Consolidated and Richmond Mining.12
A few years earlier, when Richmond Mining proposed to pay the miners in trade dollars, a type of coin that was losing value, the union pushed back. And the local newspaper rallied behind the miners’ call for a living wage:
“High wages are better for every people on earth. The better the laboring classes are paid, the more intelligence and happiness you will find among them. The man who must labor continuously for barely enough to procure a scanty livelihood for himself and wife and little ones occupies a most unenviable position indeed. It is little better than serfdom itself, and this is what must result from any material reduction in wages in a country like this…
No wonder, therefore, that miners are tenacious for fair living wages. Their figures are four dollars for a day’s work and it is their right to employ all legitimate and honorable means to maintain that standard…
The right is not denied to them to band themselves together in labor unions…It simply amounts to a corner on labor, precisely the same as capital always forms when it is to its interest to do so.”13
When it comes to union organizing outside of the mines, though, the town is mostly quiet.
For any worker who does want to organize a union, the single biggest roadblock is Eureka’s almost total dependence on pulling wealth out of the ground. Push too hard against the mine owners—particulary the big two, Eureka Consolidated and Richmond Mining—and soon the newspapers will be full of headlines warning that the mines will close, the production will cut back, and the town itself will cease to exist.
Many of the business leaders, politicians, and judges in town all have mining interests, too, so any pushback against them is also a threat against the prosperity of the town. The sheriff, most of the attorneys, and the local lawmakers all have investments in the mines.14
So, as Louis Monaco walks into Celso Tatti’s saloon on a July evening along with a crowd of about 500 charcoal burners, he must be wondering how the town will react to what will happen next.15
There are far more people than can fit in Tatti’s small saloon, but inside, the burners call the meeting to order and announce their plan: they are starting a union—and their first, and possibly only, goal is to earn more money for their charcoal.16
The price of charcoal has hovered around 25 cents for at least a year, and the amount the burners earn per bushel is shrinking as the cost to haul the coal goes up. It’s a circle with seemingly no end: the demand for charcoal continues, the burners move farther out of town to meet that demand, and the teamsters who haul the charcoal charge more to travel a longer distance, which means the burners get a smaller cut of the profit. Unless the burners can raise the overall price for a bushel of charcoal, they are trapped in this endless loop.
The meeting is not even over when the burners receive their first answer. Two representatives from Eureka Consolidated and Richmond Mining attend the meeting, and they have a decisive answer for the demand: no.17
The two men explain to the burners that the Eureka and Richmond companies, like lots of corporations, have shareholders. So, the men say, they must do everything possible to generate a return for them. Even a small jump in the price of charcoal would disadvantage those shareholders, which the two men simply can’t do. One of the men says he would rather close his company’s furnaces in Eureka than agree to a hike in coal prices.18
The meeting may not have gone as hoped, but Eureka now has a new union, and that is no small victory. The group reconvenes the next night in the town’s biggest theater, so there’s sitting room for the hundreds of men who attend.19 For many of these men, it’s probably their first time ever sitting down in the town’s theater seats.
It’s time to choose leadership for the union, and the burners elect a mixture of Italian speakers and trusted business owners around town. The president is an Italian-speaking bar owner, the vice president, also an Italian immigrant, is a popular worker at a local store. The secretary is Joe Hausman, the gun shop owner who converted to Judaism and got married a few years earlier in Matilda Ashim’s home.
For treasurer, the group chooses one of the town’s most popular merchants, the one and only Solomon Ashim. Always outgoing, Solomon tells the group that if anyone else wants to sign up, they should visit him at the Ashim and Brothers store in person.20
When the meeting ends, the list of members of Eureka’s newest—and most unlikely—labor union tops 600 names.
The new union will call itself the Eureka Coal Burners’ Protective Association.21
The Burners’ Association wastes no time in laying out their vision for the future. The smelters would pay 30 cents per bushel, up from the current 25 cents. The men who currently own their contracts, like Joseph Tognini and John Torre, would need to supply receipts that clearly spell out how much the burners earn per bushel. And they would need to pay the burners in cash or coin moving forward, no more unfair credits with businesses in town. If the Association members don’t see their demands taken seriously, they’ll go on strike.22
It’s hard to tell if the town takes this adventure seriously at all. The burners do not have many cards left to play, and forming a union is a last chance effort. But if the burners do succeed in cutting off charcoal supplies to the smelters and furnaces, that will, temporarily at least, freeze production in Eureka entirely.
The local newspaper feels confident that the burners have made their point, and that the whole stand-off will end soon.
“The burners are determined to sell no coal for less than 30 cents per bushel. They have, of course, the same right to ask a certain price for their coal as a merchant has for his goods and can refuse to give any to the teamsters if they see fit. The Association disclaims any intention of resorting to violence, and says there is no occasion to do so, as all of the burners are in active sympathy with its objects. It would prove unfortunate for the camp were any of the furnaces to shut down, but this is hardly probable, and we hope in a few days to be able to state that the matter has been adjusted to the satisfaction of all parties.”23
Eight days later, there’s been little progress. The burners continue to push for their 30 cents per bushel price hike, and the two largest mining companies continue to say no.
One evening, a group of teamsters arrive at a coal camp to load their wagons. 35 coal burners armed with old guns and weapons made of scrap emerge out of the darkness and stop them from hauling the coal away. It’s peaceful but tense, and the teamsters ride back to town without any coal for the smelters.24
Whether this little show of defiance changes minds, we don’t know, but two days later, the local newspaper reports that Eureka Consolidated agrees to pay the new price of 30 cents per bushel. This is a rare—maybe unprecedented—win for a scrappy band of immigrant men, most of whom don’t speak English, against a corporation that wields real power in this town. The Association quickly agrees to the deal and sends out a notice to members to start filling up the wagons for Eureka Consolidated once again.25
But news spreads slowly to the burner camps, where updates are often passed by word of mouth from burners who have recently been in town. So when teamster Bob Brown rolls his wagons into a charcoal camp the same day as the Association signs the agreement, he’s greeted by more armed men who stop him from loading coal.26
Unlike the other teamsters who have mostly tolerated the strike, Brown does not handle his business being disrupted well. He rushes back to town and visits with the sheriff, a low-key Irishman named Matthew Kyle. Kyle has been enforcing the law in town for the past four years, arresting horse thieves and hauling drunken men into holding cells to sober up. So far, though, he hasn’t had to deal with any major labor strikes.27
Brown tells Kyle he wants to file charges against the five men who stopped him from loading his wagons, and so the sheriff and his deputies head out to the burner camp with arrest warrants.
There, they find even more burners—about 100 or more—on strike. Some of the men carry cast-off guns and clubs to stop anyone from meddling with their charcoal stash.28
The men tell Kyle that they are on strike by order of the Burners’ Association. He tries to explain to them that, one day earlier, the Association had lifted the strike on any charcoal loads going to the Eureka Consolidated, but the men want to see the order in writing.
Just as Kyle and the deputies are going to leave, an Association member arrives from town, reassuring the men that the strike on the Eureka Consolidated coal shipments is, in fact, over. The burners get back to work, and the five men facing warrants surrender themselves to Kyle two days later.29
But Brown’s reaction to the strike seems to have unsettled the town. Two of the Association’s leaders, the Italian bar owner and Joe Hausman, the gun shop owner, both resign, but not before taking out an ad in the newspaper that distances themselves from the whole mix-up.
“Notice is hereby given that we resign the offices of President and Secretary, respectively, of the Eureka Coal Burners’ Association, to take effect from date. We have used our best endeavors to promote the interests of the coal burners, and raise the price of coal to 30 cents per bushel, in a peaceable way, and never have countenanced any lawless proceedings or infractions of the laws. We have obtained the price at the Eureka Consolidated, but not at the Richmond.”30
This doesn’t satisfy Brown. The next day, he files a lawsuit naming the four leaders of the Association—including Joe Hausman and Solomon Ashim—as liable for $3,800 in damages, the amount he claims he lost by not being able to fulfill his charcoal contract.31
This is a sticky moment for the Association. On the one hand, they did approve a general strike if the Eureka Consolidated and Richmond Mining didn’t come to the table. But what actually is a strike when it comes to the burners? If they simply walk off the job, there’s nothing to stop the teamsters from shoveling up their charcoal and heading off with it to the smelters. But if they use force to stop the teamsters from loading the wagons, isn’t their strike forcing others to stop working, also?
It’s clear that the people of Eureka will support a worker’s right to better wages, but what no one knows is if they will still support that worker if he picks up a rifle or a club.
One week later, the Burners’ Association reconvenes, this time at the Eureka County Courthouse in town. It’s clear to the burners that their struggle is ramping up, that what seemed like a victory may be, at best, becoming a stalemate.
And so the rest of the Association leadership—the Italian immigrant store worker and Solomon Ashim—resign their posts. Replacing them will be four charcoal burners, men with firsthand experience dealing with the teamsters and being paid on credit for hard work.32
The Association has tried to form a coalition of Italian immigrants and well-meaning allies in town. That’s fallen apart. So, now, the Charcoal Burners’ Association will return back into the hands of the burners themselves.
Then the group decides on what to do next. Some burners argue that they should take Richmond Mining’s offer of 28 cents, while others argue that they should stick to their 30-cent precedent with Eureka Consolidated. Many of the burners worry that, at 30 cents, the mining companies will just close down the smelters entirely when they need the burners to return to a lower price.
But they have come this far, and so they stick with 30 cents per bushel as their asking price, plus the chance to inspect the receipts when the charcoal arrives at the smelters.33
The local newspaper is not convinced that this is the right decision. They look at the strikes that swept the country two years earlier and led to a violent crackdown by state militias against unions. There hasn’t been real violence here yet, but the newspaper editors are wary.
“The result of the strikes in Pittsburgh and Fall River should convince every thinking man that there is nothing gained by such a course.”34
We don’t know if the new leadership of the Association reads the article in the Eureka Daily Sentinel. But we do know that the strikes continue, as the burners push for 30 cents per bushel to be the standard for their coal.
For years, the burners have lived in the far outskirts of town, in the Western Shoshone valleys and beyond. They’ve dug their homes into the dirt and built lean-to shacks out of excess wood. Over time, they’ve learned the back roads, the shortcuts, the ways to make sense of a landscape that can often blend into itself. And when it’s time for the strikes, they put all that knowledge to good use.
Over the next two days, the burners head back out into the countryside and prevent teamster after teamster from loading their wagons with charcoal.
Burners stop wagons to the north of town, and they stop wagons heading to John Torre’s ranch in Fish Creek. They grab whole bushels of charcoal from wagons on Joseph Tognini’s ranch and throw them into the dirt. And six burners pull teamster George Lamoureux from his house before dawn, warning him to stop loading charcoal. They pass messages to one another across the rugged backcountry, and they use smoke signals to organize across the valleys and the hills.35
This latest move pushes the corporations too far. After two days of strikes, Eureka Consolidated retracts their offer of 30 cents per bushel. And Sheriff Matt Kyle sends a telegram to the governor asking to activate the state militia in Eureka.36
Then, Kyle goes one step further: he prepares another round of arrest warrants and says he or his deputies will personally deliver each one themselves.
The next day, Kyle and his deputies arrest the president of the Burners Association, then the treasurer. The day after, they arrest five more burners on conspiracy charges, then nine more men the next day.37
The teamsters are on edge and start traveling to pick up charcoal accompanied by guards with guns. One teamster says it feels like “every sage brush concealed an armed striker.”38
Back in town, Matt Kyle holds the arrested charcoal burners above a local saloon, where they kill time by dancing and singing songs in Italian.
With so much uncertainty in the air, both Eureka Consolidated and Richmond Mining decide to pause their operations. What they don’t tell the burners is that they have a surplus of charcoal that could last them at least a year in reserve.39
Now, Louis Monaco is facing a dilemma. He’s been closely watching the union organizing effort from the very beginning back at Celso Tatti’s saloon. Maybe more than anyone outside of the mining business, Monaco understands the fundamental unfairness of the system in which the burners operate.
And so, as the arrests of the burners continue, Monaco quietly submits an anonymous letter, signed with the pen name “Veritas”—”the truth”—to the Eureka Daily Sentinel.
The letter argues that the burners, pushed to the margins and often cheated out of money they had earned, are not collaborating on some vast conspiracy. They are just hungry, tired, and being treated unfairly.
Monaco doesn’t hesitate to call out who he sees as the culprits in this mess: the “charcoal ranchers” and teamsters like John Torre and Joseph Tognini, the men who hold the contracts and could, if they wanted, renegotiate better terms for the burners. The fact that many of these men are also Italian or Swiss is yet another betrayal to Monaco. He writes his letter directly to these men.
“Not even the slightest hint has been thrown to…demonstrate the wrong treatment these poor coal burners have been subjected to through their contractors, who have grown fat and opulent, generally at the expense of the poor producers…Two alternatives are left to them, either to starve to death or to rise against monopoly, their oppressor.
The burner works on, for months and years, and…in nine cases out of ten, the poor burner in reward for his hardship…has the pleasure of knowing from his contractor (who generally is also his dealer) that he is yet indebted to him.
Enough, gentlemen, throw down your mask, be fair and just, and in atonement for the past, be at least humane in time to come. And since you have been made rich by these poor workers, don’t try to raise prejudices or talk of sending an army with guns, bullets. It better becomes your duty to send an army of cheese and macaroni to quench the hunger of these poor, famished, desperate wretches, who are really more hungry than ill-disposed.”40
The next day, the “charcoal ranchers” respond. Joseph Tognini and another teamster, Joseph Vanina, submit a reply to the Daily Sentinel.
The two men defend themselves with an immutable law of capitalism: they are simply providing the supply to meet the demand at a price that the market will bear. Plus, they say, imagine what would happen to the town if the two largest employers—some would say the reason the town exists at all—decide to pack up and move on. They argue that all of that is at risk thanks to the burners’ actions.
“There is a law governing the business conduct of all men: that of supply and demand. It is said that the coal burners have been persecuted by these “monopolies.” Please let Veritas give dates, facts, and particulars. Let him point to a single instance wherein such persecution exists or has existed.
Please name the contractor or middleman who has grown fat and opulent. Please indicate the poor devils who have been starved to death under the grinding extractions of the two companies who today furnish the health and life of this camp. Every reasonable man knows that the prosperity of the Eureka Consolidated and the Richmond Mining Companies is the prosperity of every man, woman, and child in that camp.
Veritas is exceedingly funny in his conclusions, when he speaks of cheese and macaroni as opposed to guns, bullets, but we imagine his levity will not be appreciated by the better class of Italians.”41
The next day, Sheriff Kyle’s deputies arrest the Burners’ Association vice president. Louis Monaco responds to Tognini’s letter in print. This time, he uses his real name.
“We are strikers, not rioters. If strikes fail, that does not prove they were wrong.
We admit one point, that we are poor. We cannot afford to hire lawyers or other proficient talents that know it all to keep up a war of pen and ink…Veritas is not a professional knight of the quill, but a knight of the camera, and…has volunteered his services to this cause in as far as things are kept within the limits of the law…The other side of the medal has been exposed. His task is at an end. To the people belong the sentence.
Louis Monaco, alias Veritas, for the Coal Burners”42
Even as the people of Eureka read their newspapers and wait for the latest skirmish in the charcoal saga, a 26-year-old Deputy Sheriff named James B. Simpson and four officers ride out about 20 miles from town to Fish Creek. This is the long, rugged valley where John Torre runs his charcoal ranch. The officers are heading to Fish Creek because it’s rumored to be the center of organizing for the strikers, and they still have arrest warrants to serve.43
As they head toward Fish Creek to make arrests, they run into a group of frustrated teamsters, who tell the police that they have been harassed and threatened by charcoal burners all day. This group includes some familiar faces. One is Bob Brown, whose lawsuit led to the resignation of the entire Burners Association leadership. The other is Billy Martin, the sometimes-hero of Eureka.44
As it turns out, this isn’t the first time that Deputy Simpson and Billy Martin have ended up on the outskirts of town together.
Earlier that year, Simpson and Billy had chased down a gang of horse rustlers. About 40 miles from town, in the middle of the night, Simpson and Billy caught up with the thieves. As one of the thieves thundered off into the night on his stolen horse, Billy lined up his revolver and shot him directly off the saddle. The story made the papers, and both Simpson and Billy got their names in print.45
Simpson has become known around town for making flashy arrests that sometimes require bending the rules. Two years earlier, he chased two horse thieves more than 700 miles from Eureka to Utah. When he finally caught and arrested the two men, they argued he had long since left the territory in which he could legally arrest anyone.
Simpson, in a reply that ended up quoted in the local paper, said, “I am a deputy sheriff and not a surveyor…I don’t know whether we have crossed the Utah line or not,” then hauled the thieves back to town to face trial.46
So, here they are again, two men who, in their own ways, have pushed the limits of the law, now reunited in the dusty landscape on the edge of town.
Simpson could send the teamsters home and continue on to make his arrests with his four fellow officers. But he knows Billy Martin, and he probably knows Bob Brown and the other teamsters, too. So, he asks them to join him and his officers, and the group rides deeper into the Fish Creek valley together. All of the men are armed.
Just a few hours later, five charcoal burners will be dead.
If you’d like to learn more about the charcoal burners conflict in Eureka, including a moment-by-moment breakdown of events, check out Charcoal and Blood by Silvio Manno. A special thanks to Silvio for his assistance with this series.
Works Cited:
1. Eureka Daily Sentinel, March 7, 1879
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Eureka Daily Sentinel, March 6, 1879
5. Eureka Daily Sentinel, June 7, 1879
6. Eureka Daily Sentinel, April 20, 1879
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Robert D. McCracken, “An Interview with Lucille Allison Estella,” Eureka Memories, 1993
11. Eureka Daily Sentinel, March 24, 1876
12. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 12, 1878
13. Eureka Daily Sentinel, March 24, 1876
14. Silvio Manno, Charcoal and Blood: Italian Immigrants in Eureka, Nevada and the Fish Creek Massacre (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2016), pg. 59
15. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 8, 1879
16. Phillip I. Earl, “Nevada’s Italian War,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Summer 1969
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 8, 1879
21. Earl, “Nevada’s Italian War”
22. Ibid.
23. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 18, 1879
24. Earl, “Nevada’s Italian War”
25. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 20, 1879
26. Earl, “Nevada’s Italian War”
27. Eureka Daily Sentinel, March 26, 1879
28. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 18, 1879
29. Earl, “Nevada’s Italian War”
30. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 24, 1879
31. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 25, 1879
32. Eureka Daily Sentinel, August 5, 1879
33. Earl, “Nevada’s Italian War”
34. Eureka Daily Sentinel, August 5, 1879
35. Earl, “Nevada’s Italian War”
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Eureka Daily Sentinel, August 14, 1879
39. Earl, “Nevada’s Italian War”
40. Eureka Daily Sentinel, August 15, 1879
41. Eureka Daily Sentinel, August 16, 1879
42. Eureka Daily Sentinel, August 17, 1879
43. Earl, “Nevada’s Italian War”
44. Ibid.
45. Eureka Daily Sentinel, May 1, 1879
46. Eureka Daily Sentinel, June 12, 1915