Setting the record straight - "When Jewish Colonists Prospected for Utopia in Cotopaxi"

I'm determined to set the record straight about Cotopaxi.  One of the ways to do that is to start dissecting every article written.  Not in any order - here's the first article.

"When the Jewish Colonists Prospected for Utopia in Cotopaxi"

Starting with the third sentence:

"Nearby, a one-eyed farmer and his fallen bride battle the rocky soil of their ramshackle homestead."

We know the one-eyed farmer was Jacob Muhlstein

"Fallen bride".  It means immoral.  degraded.  having lost her chastity.  conquered.

Nettie Muhlstein was anything but that!  She was honorable,  a pious woman, religious.  May her memory be a blessing!

"Half-starved Indians skulk in the town’s shadows."

There is no documentation on this - only conjecture (imagination).

"...winds its way by train and wagon through isolated valleys under watchful eyes."

During the train wars of 1880, there were guard posts along the railroad tracks.  These were called DeRemer Forts.  That ended 2 years before the Colonists arrived.

The 3rd paragraph is good and I give the author credit for writing about this.  Here we see that Emanuel H. Saltiel was a man who could reinvent himself.  He was accused of mutiny.

"Why not settle their fellow “Israelites” on the “rich phosphate soil” of southern Colorado? Saltiel knew the region well, having invested “nearly eighteen years of hard and generally successful work” there."

In 1866, Saltiel was drummed out of the Army at Ft Laramie WY and he showed up the next year in Denver as a clerk.

In 1866, he is residing in NYC (in November)
in 1867 he is listed as a publisher of the Denver Daily Times
in 1868 he published the "History & Business Directory of Cheyenne (in February)
in 1868 he started the "Western Hebrew" newspaper in Chicago
in 1870 -1874  he is residing in NYC, in publishing.
In 1874, he was in  Alabama, in publishing.
In 1876 he was in St Louis, in publishing.
In 1877, he was in Boulder CO in mining operations.

By 1881, he had 4 or 5 years experience in mining and only 3 years in Colorado. Unless you go back to 1866.  No matter how you look at it, he did not have 18 years of work in Colorado.

"After all, he owned a mining operation in Wet Mountain Valley and most of the land in the boomtown then emerging around the railroad depot he had humbly named “Saltiels.” 

The Wet Mountain Valley is south of Cotopaxi and there is no record of Saltiel owning a mining operation there.  I have checked the Custer County records and there is no listing of his name on any document in their records.  The only operation he owned was in Cotopaxi.

There is no record of the area at Cotopaxi ever being named "Saltiels."  There are numerous records that show the area was always identified as Twp 48 N, 12E, Section 31.  The first time it is identified as Cotopaxi is in 1879.

Henry Thomas, aka Gold Tom, is the first to use the word Cotopaxi when he located the Cotopaxi Lode which he sold to E. H. Saltiel.  Saltiel acknowledged that Gold Tom identified the mine.

E. H. Saltiel's house was listed as a boarding house in the 1880 census and lists 8 boarders residing there....it was called "Saltiel's".  That title referenced a boarding house, not the town.

There is no record of the railroad ever naming the place "Saltiels".  The first Post Office record calls it Cotopaxi.

E. H. Saltiel first staked his land in 1879.  He made a declaration at the Clerk & Recorders office and identified 160 acres and declared it as his.  He never filed a claim with the Federal Land Office.  He did not live on his land for 5 years, so he did not meet the requirement of the homestead act.  He then staked this same land under the mining claim act in 1881, leaving out 5 acres for his residence.

"The reunited lovers spent their first months together with Jacob’s newly immigrated parents in the gold rush town of Blackhawk, Colorado, nestled in the foothills of the Rockies."

Jacob's parents were Baruch Zalman Milstein and his wife, Annie.   Baruch filed his land declaration on June 20, 1882.  This was for land south of Cotopaxi.  He was not in Blackhawk.  Further, I have been to both the courts and the clerk's offices in Gilpin County and again, there is no record of any Milstein being there.  I checked the records from  1878 to 1890.

"Water would have to be brought by means of a three-mile-long channel the colonists were instructed to dig from a high mountain lake down to their fields."

All of the water rights had been dispersed prior to 1882 and you would need to purchase rights.  There would be no point in digging the channel until there were rights.  One newspaper article tells us that the estimated cost was $3000 - $4000 and this was presented to HEAS.  This irrigation ditch was never dug.

"Saltiel insisted that Schwarz had failed to fence the lands as he had been instructed."

Timelines are so critical.  The colonists arrived May 9, 1882.  The land was staked out later that month and surveyed in June. You cannot begin to fence the land until you know what is yours to fence!  Schwarz did not fail.  Saltiel failed to have the land surveyed prior to the colonists' arrival.

"But Schwarz was by this time already supplying Denver and New York with rumors of Saltiel’s misdeeds."

The records confirm that Schwarz supplied facts.

The rest of this article is accurate.  So I compliment the author on that aspect.

When you are researching a story for your family tree, be particularly cautious when it comes to recent newspaper stories about something that happened over 100 years ago.  Time tends to alter stories - it's one of the reasons that I prefer to use the oldest dated stories.  Where Cotopaxi is concerned, I don't give much credit to anything written after 1900, unless they are well documented.  Newspapers are so much different from well researched books and manuscripts.  Footnotes and bibliographies are critical to providing us authenticity.  Newspapers just don't do that.  But they are a very good source for leads and other information.

Even when it comes to stories written by people who were there.  Think about it - how accurate are your memories of things that happened 40 or 50 years ago in your own life?

On the other hand, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could find a diary written by someone at the time the event occurred?  In genealogy - as in life - you can always hope!

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