John MacKay

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.

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.

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.

“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 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 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 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 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.

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.

Marie Louise Antionette Hungerford.