When H. C. Was a Miner

This photo is a cropped version of one of my most favorite old photos.  The original version was one of the first few photos I posted when I started writing this weekly blog over seven years ago.  I think it was my mom’s favorite old photo too.  When she was older and forgetting things about her life, she never did forget about this photo.  She would ask me regularly if I knew where it was, and I would reassure her that I did.  I would hate for this photo to be lost.  It’s one of the main reasons I share these photos and stories of my ancestors.  I want them to be ‘out there’ in the digital landscape so they can be seen by many people and are less likely to disappear.

I only know of one original photo.  I think my mom had it glued into a photo album that she had when she was younger.  I remember seeing that album when I was a kid.  But at some point, she pulled those photos out of the album and had them in a box.  I don’t know if she threw any of them away or not.  The photo seems pretty fragile, yet she was able to get it out of that album mostly intact.  The back of the photo still has a thin layer of the black album page that it was glued to.  I’m curious if any other family member has an original copy of this photo.

The photo of course has been edited.  I cleaned up the original photo.  When I cropped this version, I also ran it through a program to sharpen it a bit.  With him being the only one in this photo, I don’t have to say which one is him.  The original photo has five other men around him.  It was taken at a Cripple Creek goldmine in Colorado.  When I got a book about H. C.’s niece Enola Phenice, it talked about her father Chauncey Phenice and another brother William Emory Phenice mining for gold in Colorado in the early 1900s.  I didn’t realize it was a family activity.  Chauncey and Will went to Victor, Colorado, to hopefully earn some cash in the gold mines.

When H.C. went to Cripple Creek in 1906, he brought his family with him.  He had married his English sweetheart Daisy Keys in 1900.  Their son Sylvan was born in 1901.  (Eleven months after they were married, thank you.) Grace was born in 1903.  They were both born in China.  No, not the country China, but the village of China in Jefferson Davis Parish in Louisiana.  They were only in Colorado for a short time, so I’m thinking they moved there in the spring of 1906.  I know that H.C. and Daisy were in Precept, Nebraska, in March of 1906 for the wedding of H.C.’s younger sister Lola Myrtle.  They were witnesses at the wedding.  They also took a photo with Lola Myrtle and other siblings Emma and Edd.

So I’m thinking that they moved to Colorado after the wedding.  It would have been too cold before that I would think.  Like I said, they didn’t stay there long.  What I heard was that Daisy wasn’t too fond of the local woman.  Or maybe it was women who came to town to “keep company” with the men who came alone to try to make it rich.  Supposedly they were flirting with little Sylvan when he was walking to school or church or some such thing.  He was only 5 years old!  It’s more likely that they were flirting with the older Harry Phenice and Daisy didn’t care for that.  So back they moved to the small community of Hathaway where my grandmother Myrtle was born later that year.

As a bonus, I’m posting this photo of H.C.’s younger brother James Edmund Phenice.  He never married and lived with his parents Charles and Kate most of his life.  This photo is from the Lincoln collection from my cousin Mona.  Her father Harry Lincoln Quillen had a fondness for his Uncle Edd.  It was a rough little photo that was part of a strip of photos like you get from a photo booth.  I cleaned it up, sharpened it, and colorized it, so I thought I’d share it, too.  Enjoy.