Abstract
The Samuel Liddle General Store Records (1885-1887) are comprised of order forms, inventories, and customer ledgers for Liddle's General Store in Leadville, Nevada. The store was created to provide services to residents and prospectors during a mining boom in White Pine County that lasted from 1887 to approximately 1890. The materials also consist of Liddle's General Store accounts, business correspondence, and transactions, such as wholesale purchases of general merchandise and mining supplies from vendors in Eureka, Nevada, San Francisco, California, and smaller nearby locations. An undated hand-drawn map of the townsite is also included.
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Scope and Contents Note
The Samuel Liddle General Store Records (1885-1887) consist of business transactions between Samuel Liddle and several West Coast wholesalers vending various goods and supplies. These transactions include bills of sale, business correspondence, expense bills, inventories, invoices, memorandum, purchase orders, railroad expense bills, receipts, registry bills, and shipping receipts for Liddle's store. Thirty-six businesses are indicated, including the following: D. Nathan, J. Hausman, R. Sadler and Co., J.W. Lambert, Knight Bros., H.W. Campbell, Remington Johnson, Chas. Ferraris, J. Ahern, the Eureka and Palisade Railroad, and the Eureka Forwarding Company in Eureka, Nevada; Mathewson Bros. and Eugene Robinson suppliers in Hamilton, Nevada; M. Cicchi and Co., George Greenzweig and Co., Murphy Grant and Co., Son Bros., D. Block and Co., J.C. Johnson and Co., Levenson and Bryan, M. Honig, John Taylor and Co., A.D. Oakley, Morris and Levy, Siegfreid and Brandenstein, J.J. Mack and Co., C. and P.H. Tirrell and Co., and Holbrook, Merrill, and Stetson in San Francisco, California; as well as Booth and Co. in Sacramento, CA.
Other materials in the collection include a hand-drawn map of the townsite, and two stock share certificates for a mining company in Eureka.
Access Note
Collection is open for research. Digital surrogates must be used to protect fragile materials when possible. Arrangements must be made in advance to access digital files; please contact UNLV Special Collections and Archives for additional information.
Publication Rights
Materials in this collection may be protected by copyrights and other rights. See Reproductions and Use on the UNLV Special Collections and Archives website for more information about reproductions and permissions to publish.
Arrangement
Materials are arranged chronologically.
Biographical / Historical Note
Samuel Liddle owned and operated a general store in Leadville, Nevada during 1887. Born in England around 1841, Samuel traveled to the western United States to reach mining areas where his occupation as a mining engineer and machinist kept him employed.
Samuel left San Francisco around 1868 to capitalize on the boomtown of Hamilton, Nevada. Hamilton was located in the mountainous White Pine County of Northern Nevada. The residents began to extract silver ore in 1867, and miners and prospectors came to the area expecting immediate success. However, during the late 1870s the ore proved inadequate for processing, and Hamilton's economic potential declined with many residents leaving for better prospects.
An 1885 fire seemed to seal the town's demise, but in 1886 lead-silver ore was discovered a short six miles away from the original mine. On January 29, 1887, the
In September 1887, Samuel Liddle opened Liddle's General Store. He continued to operate the store through the town's economic boom. Like Hamilton before it, Leadville’s financial growth was temporary, and along with its post office, much of the town closed in 1891.
Samuel Liddle died on July 5, 1889 in San Francisco, California.
Sources:
Donna Frederick, June 2000. From
Preferred Citation
Samuel Liddle General Store Records, 1885-1887. MS-00051. Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Acquisition Note
Materials were donated in 1968 by Stella Fairbanks Brown; accession number Mssx31.
Processing Note
Material was processed in October 1985 by Christine Marin. The historical description was added by Dana Miller in May 2007. In 2018, as part of an archival backlog elimination project, Lee Hanover refoldered the materials, and revised the collection description to bring it into compliance with current professional standards. In 2019, due to significant preservation issues, Sarah Jones digitized the collection for preservation purposes.