Emigrant from Erin Dies a Millionaire.
The story of the hunt for gold is ever a story of toil and privation, often a tragedy. For the one who strikes it rich, thousands are lost in the oblivion of poverty and ill fate.
Colonel Thomas Cruse, who died at the age of seventy-nine, in Helena, Mont., recently, was one of the lucky few who leaped from poverty to affluence thirty years ago. He discovered the Drum Lummon Gold Mine, north of Helena, sold it to an English syndicate for $1,500,000, retaining one-sixth interest, and shared in the profits of $30,000,000 which the mine has produced.
Mr. Cruse was twenty years old when he left County Cavan, Ireland, to seek his fortune in the mining camps of the West. He roamed around various diggings in California, Nevada, and Idaho, blew into Virginia City, Mont., in 1865, when Alder Gulch was at the height of its glory, and later struck the placers around Helena, where fortune smiled upon him.
Drum Lummon drew its name from the locality in Ireland where Cruse was born. Before it had a name it had a romance redolent with the ill luck of the original finder. He was a little, wiry Frenchman named L. F. Hilderbrand, who drove an express wagon to Deadwood long after Tommy Cruse put Drum Lummon on the mining map. In the very early days Hilderbrand prospected in Montana. A stumble on the mountain side caused him to chip off a piece of a bowlder which was so rich in gold quartz that his eyes popped in the excitement of riches in sight. He and his partner began to look for the lead from which the bowlder sloughed off.
Unfortunately, Hilderbrand and his partner undertook to roll out of the way the great bowlder which gave them a clew to wealth. By one of those queer capers of blasted luck which prospectors fear, the bowlder moved too quickly and rolled over and crushed the arm of Hilderbrand’s partner. Being without money and needing medical attention, they left the place, trudged to Helena, where the partner was under the care of a doctor, and Hilderbrand went to work in near-by places to earn money to pay the bill.
Some ten years later, Hilderbrand, still at outs with his luck, and weary of roaming, reached the spot where the bowlder sent his hopes skyward. The bowlder had the appearance of an old acquaintance, but the surroundings were changed to a bewildering extent. Before his eyes was a monster hoisting plant raising rich ore from a shaft hundreds of feet in depth, while in the gulch a huge stamp mill was at work. The bowlder occupied a place of honor in front of a building. Hilderbrand touched it, patted it affectionately, and tears filled his eyes. Presently through the mist of his tears he read the sign: “Drum Lummon Mine, discovered by Thomas Cruse.”
During the period of development, when hard luck pressed Cruse to the verge of abandonment, some one advised him to strike Sam Ashby for a couple of hundred. Ashby was a money lender in Helena who knew how to sweat the coin when put at work on good security. Cruse put the matter of a loan up to Ashby. All he got, however, was a fine line of free advice, coupled with the money lender’s assurance that he would rather throw paper money into the furnaces of his satanic majesty than loan it to such a “shiftless fellow.”
Years after, when Cruse’s day of prosperity came, one of the early visitors to the “Thomas Cruse Savings Bank,” just started in Helena, was Sam Ashby. The fortunes of Cruse and Ashby had been reversed. Cruse was flush, Ashby empty of pocket. Cruse led his would-be customer to the door, and, in the underscored language of the West, assured the customer that he would rather throw his money into the furnaces of his satanic majesty than to loan it to such “a shiftless fellow” as Sam Ashby.
Soon after his bank was started, at the age of fifty, Cruse decided that he had enough capital to support a wife. Miss Margaret Carter, sister of the later United States Senator Carter, became Mrs. Cruse. The wedding, in 1886, was the greatest social event in the history of Montana’s capital. It was a celebration for all the population.
Cruse arranged for an open house and free drinks with every saloon in Helena. Tradition has it that the whole male population of the town got drunk at the bridegroom’s expense, and it took a week to sober the people into a working condition. The jamboree was the greatest ever pulled off in the treasure State; no one attempted to rival the score.
The joys of wedded life were of short duration, however. Mrs. Cruse died within a year, leaving a baby daughter, on which the father lavished his affections and means.
What Count John A. Creighton was to Omaha, Thomas Cruse was to Helena. Every public enterprise, every promising industry, drew his support; benevolent and charitable movements commanded assistance from his purse. He was the chief contributor to the building of the Catholic Cathedral of Helena, which was dedicated on Christmas Day, the Methodist Hospital, the Young Men’s Christian Association, and the Young Women’s Christian Association shared in his bounty, and his liberality in supporting the local club kept Helena on the baseball map.
The career of Mr. Cruse was linked in many ways with the active lives of several former Omaha residents. A year or two before Cruse struck Alder Gulch, Patrick Gurnett, Mrs. Gurnett, and three young children started from Omaha with a bull team in a caravan which occupied six months in covering the distance to Virginia City, Mont. Cruse and the Gurnetts probably became acquainted there.
In subsequent years, when the Gurnetts became ranchers in the Missoula valley, south of Helena, Cruse’s poverty as a prospector was frequently relieved by the food reserves of the Gurnett homestead.
Frank J. Lange, son of an Omaha family of pioneer grocers, is the active manager of Cruse’s Savings Bank, and has been confidential associate and adviser of the millionaire for years past.
Another man, Harry Cotter, married Cruse’s daughter, Mary, who died a year ago last November. Cruse and Cotter did not pull together, and the death of the daughter widened the breach, which continued to the gold miner’s end.