A little late for the holidays, I know.
Unfortunately, except for Christmas Day itself, when I was completely symptom-free
of any signs of a head cold, the four days before and the seven days after, I was
under the weather with said head cold with heavy fog both outside my house and inside my brain. However,
this post scheduled for the day after Christmas is one I still wish to feature
because of its personal meaning to me.
If you use Kindle Unlimited to download your ebooks,
then you are probably familiar with their tendency to skip over anything at the
front of the book and start right at Chapter 1. Usually, I do not consider that
a big issue. However, for my most recent release, Stollen by Stella, I hope most readers will make a point to read my
dedication. In fact, with the hope that most
readers will find it interesting enough not to skip over it to Chapter 1, I changed my manuscript so the prologue has my dedication . Here
is it:
This book is dedicated to my maternal grandparents.
My grandmother, Goldie, was not German; she was
English. While they were still children, both of her parents emigrated from
England to the United States. She did not make stollen. However, she made
fruitcake using raisins, currants, and sugared citrus peel—three ingredients
also found in stollen.
I had a German (Prussian) great-grandmother and a
German-Swiss great-great-grandmother on my father’s line. If either brought
special German or Swiss Christmas recipes when they immigrated to the United
States, those recipes did not get passed down to my generation.
I have not featured Grandmother’s fruitcake in any
of my Old Timey Holiday Kitchen books because it was her secret recipe. She
refused to share it. She told me once, if she gave it to me, I would probably
pass out copies of it to all the ladies at church, and then everyone would have her good fruitcake
recipe.
Years after Grandmother’s death, I finally convinced
my aunt to pull the recipe from the box she inherited and share so I could use
it to make a groom’s cake (another tradition that came down through
Grandmother’s family line) for my second marriage.
Because I do not want Grandmother to roll over in
her grave or come back to haunt me, I keep her family fruitcake recipe
secret—just the way she wanted it. I will eventually share it with daughters
and daughters-in-law.
My grandfather, William, also the child of parents
who emigrated from England in the 1870s and early 1880s, until his early death at the age of forty-six,
worked as a foreman in the American Smelter (probably American Smelting and Refining
Company aka ASARCO) in Murray, Utah. This smelter
specialized in refining lead. At the time of his death, my mother was only two
years old.
The official cause of death was listed as pneumonia.
However, considering smelters at that time did not have the safety regulations
or require employees to wear protective gear to help prevent excessive exposure
to toxic heavy metals, such as lead, which is often found with silver (also a
heavy metal, but more chemically inert), I suspect the underlying cause of his
death was due to lead silicosis, an occupational lung disease similar to black
lung disease.
Stollen is a traditional German dessert bread. It
uses yeast rather than baking soda or baking powder for leavening. I featured
this dessert in my book—not only because it reminds me of my English grandmother’s
fruitcake, but also to honor the holiday traditions of my German ancestors.
Where do the smelters come into my book? I decided
to add a little intrigue and mystery in addition to the boy-meets-girl romance.
I already featured the two Jewell daughters living in early 1880s Cleora,
Colorado, in two earlier Old Timey Holiday Kitchen romances. However, their
brother, Thomas Jewell, never lived in Cleora. When the family moved to
Colorado so the father could accept a new job as a stationmaster (not station manager,
I learned during the research for this book) for the Denver and Rio Grande
Railway, Thomas stayed in their former home city of Kansas City. He worked for
the Union Pacific Railroad (southern route) in their freight yard. To learn
more about how freight yards in the 1880s and beyond were operated in larger
cities served by more than one rail line, please CLICK HERE.
Unfortunately, Thomas gets sacked. He decides
to visit family in Colorado while looking for another railroad job. It is while
he is transferring from one rail line to the Denver and Rio Grande in Pueblo,
Colorado, that he sees something he knows is not right. Hence, that mystery I
mentioned.
 |
| American Smelting and Refining Co., Pueblo, Colo. |
Colorado in the 1880s was a big silver mining
center. Unlike gold, which can be processed into its raw state on site, silver
is mixed in with other heavy metals like lead and zinc, plus other chemicals and
minerals of industrial value, and must be separated using a smelting process.
In the 1880s, Pueblo boasted about fourteen smelters. It processed ore from all
over Colorado and beyond, including that mined from towns and mines all along
the Denver and Rio Grande Railway line, including spurs. In addition, it
processed coal and iron ore, both used by the railroad—the coal to operate
their locomotives and the iron to manufacture their rails.
 |
| Colorado Smelter |
The more I researched the smelters in Pueblo, the
more my thoughts were drawn to my own family history and the role smelters
played in the lives of my maternal line.
Shortly after my Brown great-great grandparents
arrived by covered wagon into the Salt Lake Valley, they were sent to a
community called South Cottonwood. Much to the chagrin and opposition of the
early settlers of South Cottonwood, as the non-Mormons gradually replaced the early
leaders who were also members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, they decided to honor an early Washington, D.C.-appointed governor, Eli
Murray, by renaming South Cottonwood to Murray. The Browns farmed land in this
community. Although my great-grandfather, who was not the oldest son, did not
inherit the original Brown farm, he did obtain land which he did farm.
 |
| Utah Central Railroad |
The completion of the Utah Central Railroad in
January 1870 marked the beginning of smelting history in Murray. Mining
activities in the mountains surrounding the Salt Lake Valley began to explode.
However, most of those regions were not suitable for smelting. With the
completion of the Utah Southern Railroad, opportunities to transport ore from
other big mining regions such as Bingham Canyon (the death place of my paternal
great-grandfather) and Camp Floyd.
The following is from a historical marker in Murray,
Utah, which honors the city’s smelting history:
 |
| Murray Smelter Marker- photo by Andrew Jackson for hmbd.org |
Gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc were found at Alta, Park
City and Tintic in the years 1834 to 1869. Since no smelting was done in the
state or the surrounding area, smelters had to be built. Billy Moran built the
first smelter at 5189 South State Street on American Hill in 1869. The Woodhall
Brothers built the first furnace on State Street by Big Cottonwood Creek June
1870. In 1871 the Germania Refinery & Wasatch Smelter were erected west of
State Street on opposite sides of Little Cottonwood Creek. The Hanauer Smelter
was built in 1872. The Horn Silver Smelter
at 200 West 4800 South and the Highland Boy Plant 800 West Bullion came on
stream 1880-1886. American Smelting and Refining Company took over the Germania
Plant operations and later built a plant at 5200 South State St. which began
operations in 1902.
Smelting and ore refining grew from 0 tons to thousands of
tons of ore per day. The need for smelting eventually decreased and in November
1950, the great smelting operation at Murray faded into History. Smelting in
Murray had directly employed 10,000 people and indirectly thousands more, many
of these people were pioneers who settled in the Murray community prior to the
coming of the railroad.
There was a reason I highlighted the Horn Silver
Smelter (often referred to the Franklyn or Francklyn Smelter).
 |
| Frisco, location of the Horn Silver Mine, near Milton, Utah. |
This smelter was built to primarily handle the silver mined from the
Horn Silver Mine in Frisco, Utah, about seventeen miles west of Milford, which
was many miles to the south of the Salt Lake Valley. However, due to the scarcity of fuel, water,
and iron ore, smelting on site was difficult and expensive. The completion of
the Utah Southern Railroad Extension to Frisco on June 23, 1880 changed
everything. Ore could be shipped to Murray, Utah, for processing. During its
peak years some 150 tons of ore a day were sent to the Salt Lake Valley for
smelting.
The Franklyn or Horn Silver Smelter was established
in Murray in early 1881. The name Franklyn was also the name of a railroad
station on the Utah Central and Denver and Rio Grande railroad lines. The Horn
Silver Mining Company built the smelter to provide a place for their ore from
the Frisco mines to be smelted. It was provided with the most modern machinery of
its day. It continued until the silver ore was depleted, and the smelter no
longer needed.
This from the segment about my great-grandparents in
the book, The
History of Murray City, Utah
“… Edwin [Brown, father of Goldie] then acquired a
farm on West Forty Eighth South…Part of this acreage was sold and the Horn
Silver Smelter was built. As the men came to work at the smelter, Mr. Brown
observed that they had no place to stay, so he built and operated the American
House, a large boarding house on 2nd West 4800 South.”
My great-grandparents lived in this house for several
years. Although the history indicates that my great-grandfather ran the
boardinghouse, do not doubt for a minute that it was my great-grandmother and
her oldest daughters (My grandmother was the youngest of eleven children, nine
of whom were daughters) who did the majority of the day-to-day work. My great-grandfather did work for a time in one of the smelters, but he also had land he farmed.
Based on his death certificate, my grandfather, William, worked as a day laborer at American Smelting Company in Murray, Utah. Since the
American Hill smelter was long-gone by the time he would have been old enough
to work, I suspect the name was a less-than-accurate, shortened version of the smelter
predominant in Murray in the early 1900s, the American Smelting and Refining Company. Also, his World War One
draft record states he was a millman at A.S.&R.Co. The information that he worked as a foreman at the time of his death came to me directly from my grandmother when she related the circumstances leading up to his death, his death itself, and its impact on her and her two daughters.
American Smelting and Refining
Company (ASARCO) bought many of Murray’s smelters as part of its efforts to
consolidate the smelting industry in Murray. ASARCO
built its own smelter in Murray in 1902, which became the largest and most
modern lead smelter in the State of Utah and became a major landmark in the
city of Murray. The ASARCO smelter could handle 1200 tons of ore per
day through its eight blast furnaces and employed nearly one thousand five
hundred people.
From my family history photographs,
I compared the image of my grandparents’ wedding portrait (1913), when William
was age thirty-two and the one taken with my mother, less than two years before
his death. At the time, William was forty-four years of age. Coupled with my
knowledge that my grandfather smoked, I can see where his occupation working
with a toxic heavy metal like lead had a negative impact on his health.
 |
| ASARCO Murray Smelter |
American Smelting and Refining
Company continued operations in Murray, Utah, until 1949. Like most lead
processing smelters in the United States, it became a Superfund site. The
towering smokestacks were demolished in the year 2000, after which there was
extensive soil removal and remediation efforts made to remove toxicity.
I greatly enjoyed the research
involved in writing my
Stollen by Stella,
which celebrated the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Because of the
mystery and suspense elements in this romance novel, it is a story that might
be enjoyed year-round. To find the book description and purchase options,
Please CLICK HERE
Sources:
Brian P.
Winterowd, “Murray Smelters,” in The History of Murray City, Utah, ed.
Edna Mae Wilkinson (Murray, Utah: Murray City Corporation, 1976), 251-255.
The
History of Murray City, Utah, ed. Edna Mae Wilkinson (Murray, Utah: Murray City
Corporation, 1976), page 379.
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=124034
https://historytogo.utah.gov/horn-silver-mine/
https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/r/RAILROADS.shtml
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