Sofio Henkel and the Early History of the Hanover Mine

By Rick Hendricks

Beginnings

The history of copper mining in southern New Mexico always brings to mind Santa Rita del Cobre and later the Chino mine. What is less well known is that another mine located some four miles north of Santa Rita actually out-produced the more famous mine from the middle of the nineteenth century until the advent of the Civil War. This mine received the very un-New Mexico appellation Hanover after the hometown of its discoverer, a trained metallurgist named Sofio Henkel. Henkel was born around 1820-1822 in what was then the independent kingdom of Hannover, which is now in Lower Saxony, Germany. It was there that Henkel received his training in metallurgy.[1] He left his homeland and took up residence in Mexico around 1844, settling in Chihuahua in and finding work at the national mint located there. With Henkel in Chihuahua were several men who had been born in Germany: Carlos Moye, Heinrich (Enrique) Müller, and William (Guillermo) Feldmann.[2] Their statements indicate that at least some of the men met in Germany not long before coming to the Americas.

Carlos (Charles) Moye, was a native of Freiburg, home of a famous mining academy founded in the middle of the eighteenth century. He arrived at the port of New Orleans in 1843.[3] Apparently he made his way to Chihuahua not long after arriving in the United States. Moye married María Elena Cuilty Bustamante on 29 November 1849.[4] When Luis Terrazas married Elena Cuilty de Moye's sister, Carolina Cuilty Bustamante, on 30 January 1852, Carlos Moye became the brother-in-law of a future governor who was one of the most powerful men in Chihuahua.[5] Moye became a naturalized American citizen on 15 January 1856.[6] President Andrew Johnson nominated him to be United State's Consul in Chihuahua on 9 March 1867.[7] Moye became a wealthy, highly diversified businessman and landowner, principally in partnership with Luis Terrazas, and built one of the most beautiful homes in Chihuahua, which he called Santa Elena in honor of his wife.[8]

Enrique (Henry) Müller was born in Germany in 1823 and became a naturalized American citizen, who became a prominent businessman and landholder in partnership with Luis Terrazas, as had his fellow countryman, Carlos Moye.[9] Müller was trained as a metallurgical engineer. After arriving in Mexico, he went to Batopilas, Chihuahua, to deal with the problem of flooding in the local mines. In Batopilas Müller also became a mine owner in his own right. In Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, he married Francisca Acosta, who belonged to a well-to-do family and brought a considerable dowry to the marriage. Müller became the best-known protégé of Luis Terrazas, and together they built an empire that included land, various types of industry, and banking. Müller eventually emerged as one of the largest hacendados in Chihuahua, holding vast amounts of land.[10] In 1865 after consolidating his holdings, Müller owned 375,000 hectares (926,645.180 acres) of land.[11]

William Feldmann (probably Friedrich Wilhem), was a native of Hamburg who later became a Chihuahua merchant active in the border region. When the German-Swiss diplomat Julius Fröbel visited Chihuahua in 1850 as a correspondent for the New York Tribune, Feldmann received him.[12] Feldmann was married to Catalina Elías. His son, Federico Guillermo Feldman, married Concepción Palacios in Durango on 1 December 1849.[13] It was probably this younger Feldmann who was the acquaintance of Moye, Müller, and Henke. Feldman and his wife Concepción were the godparents of Carlos Federico Guillermo Müller, born to Enrique Müller and Francisca Acosta on 4 November 1857 and subsequently baptized in Chihuahua.[14]

Working at the mint in Chihuahua, Henkel became aware of the remarkably high-grade copper ores being sent south from New Mexico and decided to prospect in that region. On the south side of a mountain that also came to be called Hanover, Henkel located very rich copper ores six miles from Santa Rita.

In March 1859 Henkel and his partner, John J. Thibault were operating the Hanover Mine.[15] Thibault was a native of Philadelphia, where he was born in 1818.[16] Thibault left Philadelphia and sailed to South America to seek his fortune so that he could marry his true love.[17] He wound up in California where he had good fortune in the gold fields. By March 1849 he was able to announce that he was building a “large and commodious hotel in Benicia,” California.[18] He returned to Philadelphia with $30,000, money enough to wed Lizzie Guillou.[19] On his honeymoon he learned that a fire in San Francisco had destroyed everything, leaving him penniless. He became the suttler at Fort Phantom Hill on the Brazos River in Texas. When the fort was abandoned in 1853, Thibault, his wife, and a baby headed for El Paso. He bought off threatening Indians with three barrels of whisky and made it as far as the Guadalupe Mountains where Indians jumped him and left him with only a mule and an ox. He finally made his way to Socorro, Texas, where he opened a store and began to make money.

Thibault bid on the corn contract with the army but was accused of attempting to bribe an officer. He subsequently lost his shipment of corn at which point he departed for Chihuahua where he found employment as a clerk. While in El Paso on business he learned his wife was ill and returned to Chihuahua. He gathered the family and headed back to El Paso, but his wife died. Sometime after returning to Socorro, Thibault got involved in copper mining with Henkel.

On 12 July 1859, Henkel, who was a resident in Santa Rita del Cobre, filed a claim for a new vein at Chuchupate (Ligusticum porter, osha) The vein was located at a peak on the Arroyo del Álamo in the canyon of the same name. He requested confirmation under the terms of the Mexican mining ordinances in force at the time. The claim was registered, approved, and recorded by Rafael Ruelas, probate judge of Doña Ana County, on 20 July 1859.[20]

In January 1860, a conveyance from Sofio Henkel to George A. Hayward and William McGroty, partners doing business as Hayward and McGroty, for $16,000 was recorded.[21] Henkel deeded a copper mine, buildings, furnaces, bellows, machinery, and other appurtenances. Located eight miles northward from Santa Rita del Cobre; it was bounded on the east by Mimbres River, on the south by the placer of San José, on the west by Pinos Altos, and on the north by the Arroyo of Chuchupate.

The conveyance, dated 5 January 1860, was intended as a mortgage to secure the payment of two promissory notes held by the partners. The mortgage was payable in one year and eight months. The terms were $12,000 at 12% interest with $4,000 due on 23 March 1860 and $1,860 payable on 1 September 1861. If payments were made, the sale was to be voided. In addition, Henkel and Thibault, doing business as Henkel and Thibault, agreed to deliver to Hayward and McGroty the entire produce of the Hanover Mine at the rate of ten cents per pound until 1 September 1861.

The Henkel and Thibault partnership was allowed to draw on two-thirds of what was produced at their mine and receive the full value thereof, the remaining third to be applied to liquidation of the debt. Henkel and Thibault were obligated to dispose of copper to Hayward and McGroty who were in turn bound to pay when required and on delivery the full value of the two-thirds at ten cents per pound.

The Mesilla Miner reported in its 9 June 1860 issue that Henkel and Thibault had five hundred men–which was surely an exaggeration–employed in the operation and were making a great profit.[22] The partnership, however, must have been fraught from the start. The San Antonio Herald ran a notice that Thibault had placed in October 1860 stating that the partnership between Sofio Henkel and J. J. Thibault for working the Hanover Copper Mines in Arizona under the name of Henkel & Thibault was dissolved by mutual consent.[23]

The Census of 1860
The best picture of the Hanover Copper Mine is obtained from the various schedules of the United States Federal Census enumerated in August 1860. The census of the Hanover Copper Mines noted fewer than two hundred inhabitants. Henkel listed $10,000 in real estate and a personal estate of $106,000.

Henkel’s household consisted of his wife, Bernarda Hinojos; a seventeen-year-old girl named Guadalupe Herrera, whose relationship to Henkel and his wife is unclear; two servants named Nicanora Núñez and Nicolás Frisco; and one of Henkel’s clerks, Friedrich Koch, from Hesse-Kassel. Hesse-Kassel was a mid-sized German state, strategically located between the main part of Prussia and the Prussian provinces of Westphalia in western Germany. In the 1830s and 1840s, it was known for its poverty, an archaic agrarian structure, and acrimonious constitutional politics, which probably accounted for Koch's motivation to leave.

Thirty-nine-year-old Mariano de Valois and his father, sixty-two-year-old Pedro de Valois, were merchants from Chihuahua residing at the Hanover Mine. Mariano listed a personal estate valued at $3,000. Pedro de Valois was a Chihuahua merchant, a native of Bilbao in the Spanish Basque province of Guipúzcoa, who was heavily involved with brokering copper from Santa Rita at an earlier period.[24] He suffered a rather celebrated loss of a mule train of copper destined for Mexico City when insurgents in the war for Mexican independence robbed the caravan in the area of Zacatecas in 1810.

Although he is not listed in the 1860 census, Robert Kirk was an employee in the Hanover Mine. Leonardo Zapata was a refiner of copper for Henkel.[25] Manuel Barela was another of Henkel’s employees not listed in the census. The overwhelming majority of the population was of Mexican origin. There were at least four members of the De la O family working at Hanover. One of them, Manuel, might have been Henkel’s bookkeeper and ended up with the Hanover Mine account books.[26] Most of the individuals listed in the census were mine laborers. Additional occupations included: carpenter, blacksmith, mason, baker, freighter, and shoemaker.

Schedule 4 of the 1860 census, Products of Agriculture, recorded that Hanover Copper Mines included 44,118 unimproved acres and 5,566 improved acres, all owned by Sofio Henkel. In addition to Henkel, six other men owned livestock. Schedule 5, Products of Industry for the year ending 1 June 1860 provides the following information. Sofio Henkel was the sole owner of the Hanover Copper Mine, which had a capital investment of $47,000. The mine consumed 450 tons of charcoal valued at $5,625. Power for the works was provided by four-mule teams. There were 150 males employed at a monthly cost of $4,500 or $30 per worker per month—a dollar a day. Thirty-six females provided labor that averaged $450 per month or $12.50 per worker per month. Annual production of the mine was four hundred tons of copper worth $120,000. This would make the price per pound 15 cents. By way of comparison Lake Copper on the New York market averaged 22.875 cents per pound in 1860, and worldwide copper prices averaged 18.84 cents in 1860. [27]

Rossiter W. Raymond, United States Commissioner of Mining Statistics, writing in 1870 provided different information for the Hanover mines. According to Raymond, there was no proper vein at the Hanover mines.[28] The ore occurred as carbonate, gray sulphuret, and red oxide; it also contained gold and silver. A considerable amount of native copper was found in sheets and lumps. He stated that the copper from Hanover commanded a market price equal to the best Russian copper. It was extracted and smelted for ten cents a pound and sold in New York for twenty-three cents a pound. Before the Civil War, it traveled by mule wagons from Mesilla to Port Lavaca, Texas, at a cost of six cents per pound. It was transported from Port Lavaca by schooner for $5 a ton.

On 22 November 1860, almost certainly in Mesilla, Sofio Henkel deeded to Jacob Amberg, a prominent German Jewish merchant of Santa Fe, the Hanover Mine for an advance of $20,000.[29] Henkel’s sale of the mine was construed to be a mortgage. He and Amberg also signed a fifteen-point covenant that was to provide for the operation of the Hanover Mine and disposition of the copper produced. Under the terms of the covenant Henkel was 1) to operate the Hanover Mine 2) sell and deliver to Amberg all the copper produced for ten cents a pound and not to sell or deliver copper to any other person 3) dispose of all of the copper produced in the first year to Amberg in payment of the supplies and means needed to develop the mine, make the necessary inprovements, and cover current expenses 4) pay 1 percent interest per month on the money advanced 5) earmark one-fourth of the copper produced after the first year to repayment of the $20,000 until it was paid in full 6) furnish Amberg with weekly accounts and pay expenses weekly 7) bind himself not to make or contract debts outside of the store to be placed at Hanover Mine by Amberg 8) neither permit any other store at the mine nor permit the sale of any goods except those of Amberg 9) erect a comfortable storehouse and dwelling for Amberg and pay for any additional necessary improvements in copper or cash after the term of three years has passed; Amberg was 10) to establish a mercantile house at the Hanover Mine for the use of Henkel and the mine and to facilitate operation of the mine 11) furnish all goods, wares, merchandise, and supplies needed for the operation of the mine and provide needed cash up to the an amount equal to the value of the copper produced monthly 12) set the lowest retail prices possible for goods destined to Henkel’s personal use with all profits going to Amberg 13) to have the right to evict Henkel and take possession of the mine if the advance was not repaid within three years 14) re-deed the mine to Henkel if the money was repaid on time; and both Henkel and Amberg agreed 15) that the covenant and agreement was transferable and assignable. In considering this transaction, it should be remembered that Henkel had signed an agreement in January 1860 with Hayward and McGroty to deliver all the copper produced at the Hanover Mine, which would seem to be at odds with his contractual obligations to Amberg. On 3 December 1860, Amberg sold his interest in the mortgage and covenant to the Frenchman, Eugène Léonard.

Henkel’s account with the firm of Elsberg and Amberg for 1861 began with a credit carried over from 1860 of $1,701.20. The following amounts were added as the year wore on:[30]

28 January 1861	9,104 pounds at 10¢	$910.40
14 February 1861	8,729 pounds	$872.90
19 February 1861	7,405 pounds	$740.50
21 February 1861	1,967 pounds	$196.70
18 March 1861	24,818 pounds	$2,481.80
30 March 1861	6,542 pounds	$654.20
6 April 1861	9,900 pounds	$990.00
22 April 1861	8,111 pounds	$811.10
27 April 1861	8,334 pounds	$833.40
30 May	32,804 pounds	$3,281.40
		$11,772.40

 

With the copper carried over from the previous year, Henkel had provided $13,473.60 that could be applied to offset $49,570.55 in merchandise and cash that Elsberg and Amberg had provided to Henkel. Of course, Henkel was being credited at a price much below market price.

Henkel responded to Thibault’s earlier newspaper item by placing items in the Mesilla Times of 13 and 23 February 1861, going so far as to deny that any partnership ever existed. At the time Thibault was back in Philadelphia. At the 21 February meeting of the Franklin Institute, Thibault and William Wrightson of the Santa Rita Mining Company submitted for examination specimens of ores and minerals. Wrightson spoke about the mines of Arizona and western New Mexico. At the18 April meeting Thibault made donations of gold, silver, and copper.[31]

The Mine Works at Hanover
In 1860, Henkel was working a vein ten to twelve feet wide.[32] The following year the mine had three new furnaces and was smelting copper in sufficient amount to keep a pack train going to Mesilla.[33] After smelting, the copper was cast into pigs of 100 to 120 pounds in molds that cost $600 each. Typical pack trains carried between twenty and twenty-five thousand pounds of copper to Mesilla. From 1858 to the spring of 1861 Hanover produced one million pounds of copper. Owen and Cox, who visited the site in 1864, at which time it had been abandoned, noted a sixty-three foot shaft with crosscuts in green and blue carbonates, native copper, and occasionally vitreous copper with the ore ramifying through decomposing feldspar, sometimes fifty to sixty feet thick.[34] When he assayed a sample he found it had 72.64 percent of oxide or 58 percent metallic copper.  

Apparently the smelting was done first in a high blast furnace and then refined in a reverberatory furnace. This method was common in Spanish America, and Henkel likely learned it in Mexico. Henkel used a tall blast furnace, however, and Mexican ones were typically low, so this may have been something he learned while practicing metallurgy in Germany. Rather than innovation, however, the remarkably high copper content of the ores probably best explains why Henkel could boast that he had only to smelt three times rather than the five common in Germany. Henkel used walnut, oak, pine, and piñón for coke to fire the furnaces.

Decline
There are two plausible explanations for the decline of the Hanover Mine and Henkel's ruin. Henkel advanced both ideas. One possibility was that Eugène Léonard allowed Confederate troops to carry 187,000 pounds of copper to San Antonio. In depositions prepared for the case of Amberg v. Henkel and Leonard, Henkel maintained that when the Confederates invaded the Hanover Mine in the fall of 1861, Léonard sided with them.[35] When Union forces eventually forced them out, Léonard departed with them.

Eugène Léonard, born in France around 1817, was a resident of Las Cruces at the time of the 1860 census.[36] His occupation was listed as gentleman, with real estate valued at $3,500 and personal property valued at $3,000. He shared a dwelling with Miguel Perea, age forty-five; Bartola Perea, age twenty-eight; Hilario Peralta, and thirty-five; Vidal Peralta, age seventeen; and Juan Varela, age twenty.

A pack train belonging to George A. Hayward and William McGroty transported 30,000 pounds of copper to San Antonio in February 1861.[37] Francisco de la O, a business associate of James Magoffin, stated that Henkel owed him $3,270. 52 1/4. De la O and Magoffin were also involved in shipping copper.[38] De la O indicated that in March 1861 he had 15,000 to 20,000 pounds ready to transport. De la O had on order machinery that was expected to improve production. At the same time, he was developing a charcoal-making business to supply the mines.

On 24 March 1861, Henkel placed an item advising readers not to cash a note in the amount of $500 claimed by Thibault. Henkel said he would not pay the note because he never received the services offered. He likely lost control of the Hanover Mines after the formation of the Arizona Rangers in May 1861. A pack train led by an individual named Ellsburgh arrived in Mesilla in early June with 25,000 pounds of copper from the Hanover Mine. Two trains left Mesilla for San Antonio with copper from Hanover, one in May and the other in June.[39] Also in June 1861 Henkel failed to appear in Mesilla and defaulted on two relatively small loans. On 7 June in the case of Rafael Bermúdez v, Sofio Henkel, a writ was issued giving judgment to Rafael Bermúdez in the amount of $141.60 at 6 percent interest from 7 June 1861 and costs of the suit because Henkel failed to appear.[40] Also on 7 June another writ was issued that indicated that in the case of Nestor Varela v. Sofio Henkel, judgment was granted in favor of the plaintiff because Henkel did not appear. The judgment was in the amount of $92.50 at 6 percent interest from 7 June 1861 and costs of the suit.[41]

William McGroty was a thirty-five-year-old Irishman in 1860.[42] He was described as a merchant with real estate in Mesilla valued at $1,000 and personal property valued at $4,000. Hayward and McGroty appear in the Confederate court records for Doña Ana County. Hayward was a juror in probate court in August and September 1861. Hayward was summoned to serve again in March 1862.[43]

McGroty served in probate court in November and December 1861.[44] Colonel John Robert Baylor, C. S. A, stated on 1 August 1861 that he sent federal drafts with McGrorty to New York where McGrorty was to act as Baylor’s agent in an attempt to cash federal drafts captured at Fort Fillmore.[45] The drafts amounted to $9,500, $5,500 drawn on the assistant treasurer of New York and $4,000 drawn on the assistant treasurer of St. Louis.[46] Determining that St. Louis was too dangerous, McGrorty left the draft designated for St. Louis in New York. Baylor paid McGrorty $300 for his services.

The second explanation for the decline of the Hanover mine, which Henkel also noted and other observers corroborated, was Indian attacks. It is known that after Confederate soldiers killed Apaches, apparently indiscriminately, the Apaches made it practically impossible to work Hanover. This apparently was what Henkel told Richard E. Owen and E. T. Cox.[47]

Henkel fled the Confederates and perhaps the Apaches too in the fall of 1861. He barely escaped Hanover with his life and arrived in Mesilla in rapidly declining health.[48] By the spring of 1864 he was established in Santa Fe. United States Internal Revenue Service records indicate that on 20 April 1864 Henkel paid $25 in taxes on a retail liquor establishment he was operating in Santa Fe.[49]

In Santa Fe on 8 January 1865, Henkel sold an interest in the Hanover Copper Mine to Charles P. Clever, a fellow German immigrant, for $45,000.[50] On 23 February, Henkel sold another one sixth of the mine to Clever for $3,200.[51] Clever was born in Cologne, Prussia, and immigrated to the United States in 1848. He had a distinguished career as a lawyer and politician.[52]

At the March 1865 term of District Court of the First Judicial District sitting in Santa Fe in the case of Amberg (complainant) v. Henkel and Leonard (defendants in chancery) was heard.[53] Jacob Amberg alleged that Henkel had not made payment on the mortgage that Eugène Léonard held, which meant that Léonard did not pay what was due Amberg and instead gave the Confederate forces from Texas more than $20,000 worth of goods, then joined the Rebel forces, and fled the area. By this action Léonard forfeited any claim to possession of the mine.

Henkel agreed to pay $20,000 and an additional $15,758 of what was owed by working the copper mine. The mortgage would be foreclosed unless the $20,000 was paid within two months. At such time the marshal would advertise for six weeks and then sell the Hanover Copper mine. The sale was to take place in Mesilla, Santa Fe, or on the premises. Any surplus would be applied to $15,000 owed Amberg, which the marshal was to collect.

On 17 August 1865 Henkel, who was listed as a resident of Santa Fe, deeded to Jacob Amberg 38/101 undivided parts of the Hanover Copper Mine and paid him $5. Amberg accepted this consideration as a settlement for the $35,758.15 owed him.

On 16 January 1866, Erineo Sánchez and his wife, Octaviana Romero, sold a lot and house to Sofio Henkel in Santa Fe for $1,800.[54] The lot measured 21 feet 6 inches by 236 feet. The property was bounded on the north by the street that ran west from the southeast corner of the plaza, on the south by the Río Chiquito, on the east by the house and lot of Ermenejildo Sánchez, and on the west by an alley on which the house of Reyes González sat. The following day Henkel mortgaged the property, receiving $800 from Sánchez and his wife in exchange for a promise to repay the mortgage by 1 September 1866.[55] Then, on 24 January, Henkel sold the property to his wife, Bernarda Hinojos, for $1,000.[56]

On 20 October 1866, a certificate of mining location to Amberg, Clever, and Thomas J. Bull, owners by right of purchase of mines near Pinos Altos known as Hanover Copper Mines, formerly owned by Sofio Henkel. This was done to comply with "An Act Concerning Mining Claims" of 18 January 1865 and "An Act Concerning Mining Claims" of 3 January 1866.[57]

When the United States Federal Census was enumerated in Santa Fe in late July 1870, Sofio Henkel was described as a blacksmith. In addition to his wife, there was a two-year-old girl named Guadalupe, who was their daughter, living in the home. There was also another young girl, age eight, who was living with the family. Her relationship to Henkel and his wife, if any, is unknown.

Death of Sofio Henkel
An item in The Daily New Mexican of 10 October 1877 indicated that Sofio Henkel, “an old resident of this Territory and a former citizen of Santa Fe,” had died on 29 September in Las Palomas, which was then in Socorro County and is now in Sierra County, New Mexico.[58] The newspaper was wrong. Henkel, a resident of Precinct Fourteen in Socorro County, died on 17 September.[59] Because there was no one to administer his estate and because Henkel had left an heiress, Florentino Castillo petitioned Probate Judge Estanislao Montoya for a letter of administration. Florentino Castillo as principal and Clemento Castillo and Consuelo Baca as his guarantors posted a $50 bond against their promise to faithfully administer Henkel’s estate.[60]Judge Montoya complied with Castillo’s request and named him administrator of Henkel’s estate.[61]

Inventory of the Estate of Sofio Henkel[62]

3 beds, one small and two large	6.00
3 blankets	3.00
1 bedspread	1.50
2 homespun blankets	3.00
2 wooden chests	2.00
2 iron pots	4.00
1 lock	1.00
5 cloaks	5.00
1 stand-alone bed	1.50
1 middle-sized meat dish	.50
2 benches	1.50
1 iron cook pot	1.50
2 small wooden boxes	1.50
1 small pail and stone slab with papers	1.50
2 plates and a cup	.37
4 spoons, a bowl, and a salt cellar	1.50
1 drinking gourd, 1 pillow, 1 sheet	.75
1 small barrel	.50
7 books of different types	7.00
1small cardboard box with 11 envelopes	.12
3 pictures 4 knives two forks	3.00
1 mirror, 1 santo, 1 old watch	2.50
1 glass, two curtains	5.00
1 mattress cover, 1 tent cushion	3.00
1 tablecloth	1.00
1 house lot 20 yards	5.00
7 peach trees enclosed by a fence	1.00
1 three-room jacal $67.24	$67.24

On 1 October 1877, Desiderio Montoya petitioned Judge Montoya for the guardianship of Guadalupe Henkel, who was a ten-year-old orphan who had lost both parents.[63] Judge Montoya granted the request the following day. Desiderio Montoya as principal and José Andrés Montoya and Ricardo Pino his guarantors posted a $500 bond against their promise to faithfully administer the guardianship of Guadalupe Henkel.[64]Estanislao Montoya granted Desiderio Montoya’s request and named him guardian of Guadalupe Henkel.[65]

Conclusion
In August 1860, Sofio Henkel owned $10,000 in real estate and had a personal estate valued at $106,000. The Confederate invasion of southern New Mexico resulted in the direct loss of much valuable processed copper. It also provoked the Apaches into making it impossible to work the mines. These occurrences took place a just at the moment when the Hanover Mines were beginning to produce in abundance, Henkel might well have taken a place similar to that held by his fellow countrymen Moye, Müller, and Feldmann among the wealthy. As it happened, he never recovered his losses and got back on his feet as a businessman. When he died in September 1877, his meager assets did not even amount to $200.

 

Sofio Henkel and the early history of the Hannover Mine; German Heritage and Culture in New Mexico