Part of a weekly look at items of local interest selling on eBay.
Another lovely stock certificate from the Lardeau sold last week for $90 US.
The stock from the Huron Gold Mining Co. for 1,000 shares was issued to John Klatters on May 8, 1900 and was signed by secretary Samuel P. Halls and president James T. Garrow, a lawyer who represented Huron West in the Ontario legislature from 1890 to 1902. He was also reeve of Goderich, a small town off Lake Huron, from 1874-80, and later became a judge.
His home still stands in Goderich and is on Canada’s historic places register.
Halls was a teacher and principal.
According to Henderson’s British Columbia Gazetteer and Directory of Mining Companies for 1900-01, the company was incorporated a couple of months before the stock was issued with a capital of $1.5 million. Its head office was in Goderich, while a branch office was in Rossland.
Other members of the executive were vice-president George Acheson — a builder whose home in Goderich also on the historic places register, and managing director W.H. Jackson.
The company had four claims collectively known as the Fish Creek group, about which not much is known.
The stock’s seller was in Orilia, Ontario.
Last month, a 1904 bond from the Metropolitan Gold and Silver Mining Co. of Lardeau sold for $88 US.
• A nice envelope from the Edgewood Cash Grocery postmarked 1944 sold for $34 Cdn last week.
The return address indicated the store was operated by “McLeod and Son” and offered “groceries, meats, provisions.”
This was John Neil and Jackie McLeod, who arrived in Edgewood around 1910, according to a mini-biography by John's great granddaughter Rochelle DePaolis that appeared in the October 2010 issue of the community newsletter The Edge.
John moved to Edgewood from Nelson and erected many buildings, including a house for his wife Agnes and children. The first telephone switchboard was in this house, operated by Agnes and later daughter Belle.
In May 1920, after returning from World War I, John built the community’s cenotaph, in which he enclosed a time capsule.
Around that time he also opened the cash grocery with a Mr. Dority, whom he bought out in the early 1930s. He and Jack operated the business until John’s death in 1948. Jack continued on until Edgewood was flooded out by dam construction in the late 1960s.
The cenotaph and time capsule were moved, stone by stone, to their present site in the new townsite.
• The Trail Historical Society bought the two press photos of the 1961 Trail Smoke Eaters mentioned in this column a few weeks ago, for half the asking price.
The photos showed the team getting off planes in Oslo and Prague.
This story will appear in the West Kootenay Advertiser on April 19.