Brother, Alfred, died on the boat going to Perth and was "buried" at sea. Reuben Rickard (August 20, 1841 – February 28, 1896) was a mining engineer who served as President of the Town Board of Trustees in Berkeley, California from 1891 to 1893, and again for about one month during 1895. Rickard was born in England in 1841. He married Mary Elizabeth Humphreys October 3, 1863[1]. They had six children, three of whom died young. Rickard was hired by John Taylor and Sons of London to oversee their mining and metallurgical operations in Pontgibaud, France in the 1860s. In 1875, the Rickard family emigrated to the United States as Reuben had been hired to manage the operations of the Richmond Mining Company in Eureka, Nevada. He worked there six years before taking on another job inspecting mines for English investors throughout the western U.S. and Mexico. The family finally settled in Berkeley, California on July 24, 1882. Reuben's wife died of tuberculosis on March 28, 1895 in Central City, Colorado. Reuben Rickard died[2] in 1896 from dysentery while inspecting a mining project near Perth in Western Australia. His son Thomas Rickard also served as President of the Town Board of Trustees from 1903 to 1909. Another son, Edgar Rickard was a close lifelong friend of President Herbert Hoover. His daughter Leontine married William Bowditch Fisher on March 11, 1896. Reuben had a brother Alfred Rickard who was also a mining engineer based in Denver, Colorado, and a nephew Thomas Arthur Rickard who was a prominent writer on the subject of mining.
VIA Wikipedia One of the first major mines developed in the district, ore from the Republic mine was smelted in a small "Mexican" style furnace that was brought into the district in 1877. In 1882 the Republic Smelter was constructed to process the abundant Great Republic Mine ore. However, the ore proved to be too complex for the smelter. Open roasting of the ore was tried without success. A roaster was then added to the smelter. This also proved to be inadequate. A solution was reached in 1885, when Republic ore was combined with the purer Miller Mountain ore in the smelting process. By 1886, 420 tons of bullion from the Republic had been smelted and hauled by wagon to Cinnabar, the terminus of the the Northern Pacific Railroad. However the bullion was of such high lead content, the proceeds from its sale failed to pay mining, smelting and transportation costs. The mine superintendent Reuben Rickard proposed a desilvering plant. The silver would then be shipped to market. The lead would be stockpiled as an incentive for the railroad to come to Cooke City. When Republic stock holders could not come up with additional capital to build the desilvering plant, Rickard resigned, forcing the closure of the smelter and Great Republic mine. The property continues to be explored by its current owner. Several drill pads are scattered around the historic mine portals (Lovering 1929; Reed 1950).
When it was revisited in 1990, the remains of the Republic Mine consisted of a long linear development of adits, stopes, shafts, tunnels and open face cuts. It has several roads linking these various mine features. There is also a collapsed compressor house, a load-out chute, tailings piles and foundations from worker cabins (Gray 1990).
via Colorado Abandoned Mine Board
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