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John William Mackay (November 28, 1831 – July 20, 1902) was an Irish-American industrialist who rose from rags to riches. Born into abject poverty and raised in the slums of New York City, Mackay became one of the four Bonanza Kings, a partnership which capitalized on the wealth generated by the silver mines at the Comstock Lode in Nevada, making him one of the richest Americans in his time. He also headed a telegraph business that laid transatlantic cables, and he helped finance the New York, Texas and Mexican Railway Company. His granddaughter Ellin Berlin was the wife of Irving Berlin. Life and career Early years John William Mackay was born in Dublin to a working-class family. They had a dirt floor hovel shared with a pig. In 1840, the family emigrated to the notorious Five Points slum in lower Manhattan; his father died soon after. As a boy Mackay hawked newspapers such as the New York Herald, and later apprenticed at William H. Webb Shipyard to support his mother and sister. Gold and silver mining In 1851, he sailed by clipper around the Horn to California and worked eight years in placer gold fields in Sierra County without much success. In 1859, he went to Virginia City, Nevada, site of the recently discovered Comstock Lode, and there began work at $4 a day laboring in a mine by day and working his own small claims in his spare time. He bought small claims or "feet" and used the proceeds of his labor and finds to buy more feet. In 1865 he used his savings to buy into the Kentuck mine and hit big, he was suddenly worth US$1.6 million, more than enough to retire for life. He then began investing in other mines, sometimes risking everything he had. He formed a business partnership with fellow Irishmen James Graham Fair, James C. Flood, and William S. O'Brien, later known as the Bonanza Kings. The four dealt in mining stocks and operated silver mines, and had a success in the Hale & Norcross mine. In 1871, using proceeds from the Hale & Norcross they bought out a number of smaller mine claims under the name of the Consolidated Virginia Mining Company, and later added the nearby California mine. In 1873, the Con Virginia made the greatest ore body discovery ever found in North America, known as the "Big Bonanza". The strike would pay out US$181 billion in current dollars, with Mackay's portion being about $50 billion. The bonanza was in a location previously overlooked and outside where other strikes had been found. The four-way partnership was more commonly known as the "Bonanza firm". With the proceeds, together they established the Bank of Nevada of San Francisco to compete with the Bank of California.: 144–161, 186–188  Marriage Marie Louise Antionette Hungerford. “Louise” was born in New York and moved to the Downieville, CA goldfields with her parents, Major Daniel E. Hungerford and his wife Eveline, in 1854. In 1863, at 19, she was married to Dr. Edmond Gardiner Bryant, when their family moved to Virginia City. The couple had two daughters. Dr. Bryant dabbled unsuccessfully in stocks on mines and let his practice slip away. They became financially strapped. Apparently Dr. Bryant had not wanted children or wanted boys, for he allowed his youngest child to die by refusing to treat her. The family was so poor they couldn’t afford a headstone. Shortly after, in 1864, Dr Bryant left his wife and only living daughter in Virginia City, without funds, a fate close to abandonment. He heading east to the silver camp of Austin NV. Mrs. Bryant was kept out of prostitution only with the help of a benevolent father Patrick Manogue, who found her work sewing dresses for the “well-to-do” ladies of the camp. In 1865, Dr. Bryant returned “very dissipated”. He injured his oldest daughter Eva, breaking her hip. When the bone mended, Eva would have a lifelong limp. Dr. Bryant left again, reasons unknown. Sometime in early 1866, Mrs. Bryant found out her husband was sick and dying of tetanus in a mining camp northwest of Downieville CA. She rushed to his side and was with him through the whole ordeal. By July 1866, she was a widow at the age of 22. She and John wed on Nov 25, 1867 in Virginia City. One of her first acts as Mrs. Mackay was to have a headstone placed above the grave of her child, Marie Bryant. She had their first son in 1870, John W. Mackay, Jr. followed by Clarence H. Mackay in 1874. John Mackay always treated his step-daughter Eva/Evelyne as if she were his child, and he formally adopted her on Christmas Day in 1870. Mr. Mackay had promised to do whatever he could to help his wife and daughter, and to that course, the Mackay’s heard of a doctor in France that might be able to help young Eva. The family left in 1871, consulting with the doctor as hoped. Eva had the surgery in June of 1872. Although the surgery didn’t go as well as planned, it did help. The family returned to San Francisco in 1873, Louise pregnant with their second child, Clarence. But a seed had been sown; Louise really loved Paris. She never returned to Virginia City again. Louise, no longer interested in San Francisco by 1876, the family was moved to Paris with Mackay's blessing. He purchased a large mansion for her in Paris, 9 Rue de Tilsit, where his wealth enabled her to become a noted society hostess for two decades, entertaining royalty and throwing lavish parties. The building is today occupied by the Belgium Embassy near the Arc de Triomphe. In 1879, Louise’s younger sister Ada Hungerford, married Count Joseph Telfener. From then on, she was Countess Telfener, possibly the first California born woman to achieve a European title. As his telegraph business expanded, in 1884 the family was moved to London for the boys' schooling and easier communications through his owned cables. In 1885, his step-daughter, Evelyne, married the Neopolitan prince, Ferdinando Colonna di Stigliano. Evelyne's portrait was later painted by the Italian painter, Vittorio Matteo Corcos. 18 years after John's death, Louise returned to the United States in 1920, dying at age 85 in 1928. Communications companies In 1884, with James Gordon Bennett, Jr., Mackay formed the Commercial Cable Company, largely to fight Jay Gould and the Western Union Telegraph Company, laid two transatlantic cables, and forced the toll-rate for transatlantic messages down to twenty-five cents a word. In connection with the Commercial Cable Company, he formed in 1886 the Postal Telegraph Company as a domestic wire telegraph company so that Commercial would not need to rely on Western Union to collect and distribute telegraphic messages. Until Mackay and Bennett entered the field, all submarine cable traffic between the United States and Europe went over cables owned by the American financier Jay Gould. A rate war followed that took almost two years to conclude. Jay Gould finally quit trying to run John Mackay out of business. He was quoted as saying in reference to Mackay, "If he needs another million he will go into his s.... Discover the Gregory Crouch popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Gregory Crouch books.