New article on Cotopaxi out today

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Released today in the Intermountain Jewish News in the L'Chaim magazine.

An interesting perspective - asking the public to be a jury.  Yet fairly accurate.

He misquoted the website:

cotopaxi-colony.com belongs to Nelson and you will not find the articles there.  You will find his research and his commentary, not mine.

cotopaxi-colony.blogspot.com is this blog where the articles are.  Just look at the home page, down the right side and you will see links to all of the articles I have posted thus far.  (taking a short break and will get back to this in a week or so).

I do not believe I said Saltiel was "guilty as sin" - perhaps "guilty as charged"?  I know I made it clear that I have not and never would call Saltiel a "villain".   And it is not my belief that we are allowed to judge another human.  But we can show the known facts about a situation.  I think the author is attempting to do that here.  Yet much has been omitted that I would definitely want to present to a jury!

I think the greater question is whether this is a "jury" issue?  I still contend that Saltiel simply wasn't in Cotopaxi very much.    And I think the peripheral story is what matters....the fact that Saltiel had just gotten a divorce, married another woman, had small children, was still traveling to NYC and other places, was in court, in jail, dealing with mine transactions and simply not present much when the Colonists were there.

And since the findings are not complete - the story cannot be complete!  Thus the jury cannot convene and the judgement cannot be made.

Ask yourself how you might read this differently if the writer has presented me, representing the Colonists as the defendant?  After all, I suppose my research is to defend the oral histories handed down by the Colonists families.  And that would make the "bounty" side the prosecution....attempting to prosecute the Colonist for their oral histories.  Now that could have been an equally interesting story!

I had to chuckle that I am being portrayed as the prosecution.  There has been no criminal charge made against Saltiel.  I am not attempting to prove anything about Saltiel.  And I do think that's made clear in the article - I'm working to prove the accuracy of oral histories and the facts of what happened.

Yet, overall, a rather interesting take on the story.  What did you think?

I know....you think I need to skip life, finish my research, and get this written down!  OK....next week!  Unless life gets in my way.  :)


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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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Cowboys, Indians and Newspapers

Using newspapers is such a valuable resource if you want to know about your family.  But don't just look at local newspapers.....sometimes the stories traveled far and wide.

I happened to be searching in the New York State historical newspapers archives and found this article in the

Note the date - June 9, 1882....just one month after the Jews arrived in Cotopaxi.

Here's the article:

Life in the Southwest.  Pueblo Col., June 8 -- Southern Colorado Utes are preparing for war.  They have been incensed by the killing of some of their members.  Large numbers of warriors are assembled on the Denver & Rio Grande road in war-paint.  They threaten to resist removal from their reservation as provided in the last treaty.

This proves that Indians were still in the area when the Colonists arrived.  Not just "in the area" but with war-paint on!

Cowboys?  I don't think we need proof that there were cattle ranchers in Colorado in 1882.  That's a given.

Here are a couple of links that might help you with your newspaper research....and they are free.

 Fulton History - has numerous New York State and New York City newspapers.

Colorado Historic Newspapers

Unfortunately, the Colorado site does not include any of the Fremont County newspapers.  They have not been digitized, but are available at the Fremont History Center in Canon City on microfilm.

Many events that happened in Fremont County were picked up by other newspapers, so it's still a great resource.

My suggestions on how you do a newspaper search:

1)  Use just the last name.  You will have to weed through a ton of newspapers, but it will help you find everything - those who use a first initial or abbreviate the first name.
2)  Use the surname and an occupation such as Nudelman carpenter
3)  Do both the full name and the abbreviation such as "HEAS" and then "Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society".
4)  Try every possibility.  Emigrant. Emmigrant.  Imigrant. Immigrant.  You might be surprised at what you will find.
5)  Think outside the box when it comes to dates.  Emanuel Saltiel died in 1900.  When I opened up my search dates to 1950 - I found a lawsuit by his children filed years after he died.

Newspapers not only prove oral histories - they often expand on them.  Now that I know the Indians were in Pueblo....I can go to other newspapers and look for more articles on this date and place and see where this takes us.  For now, it's enough to know that this really was the "wild west" when the Jews arrived in Cotopaxi.

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Were the Cotopaxi Jews tricked?

The family oral stories tell us that the Jews were brought to Cotopaxi with the promise of wonderful farms and they were tricked into going to work in Saltiel's mines because one could not farm in Cotopaxi.

Sometimes, it's as simple as finding a newspaper article.

Colorado Springs Weekly Gazette 29 Jan 1881 - a year and 4 months BEFORE the Colonists arrived at Cotopaxi:

"The Silver Cliff Prospect says, "Mr. Saltiel, of Cotopaxi, Fremont county, has inaugurated a novel scheme to secure laborers to work on the Silver Cliff extension of the Denver & Rio Grande railroad. He has opened recruiting offices for the enlisting of laborers at Chattanooga, Tennessee, New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama.  He expects to bring into the state about six thousand men from these points during the winter and spring."

I know that it says this recruitment was for building a railroad extension.  BUT....6000 laborers?  The overflow would have been surplus employment for his mines.

Where did he propose that they reside?  Was part of the labor intended to build homes for them?

Obviously, this never came to fruition.   But it proves that he was seeking a labor market as early as a year and 4 months before the Colonists arrived.

When Saltiel realized his employment offices failed, he must have needed a new source of employees.  Perhaps this is when he turned to HEAS in NYC?

We may never know....but when you are working on your own family genealogy, don't forget to look to historical newspapers for information.