A Discovery Worth its Weight in Silver

Markleeville, Calif., resident Susan Korngold recently learned from a cousin doing their family tree that she was related to James Fennimore, half-brother to her great-great-grandfather.

In 1900, William Hickman Dolman described James as a “frontier hunter, and miner, a man of more than ordinary ability in his class, a buffoon and a practical joker: a hard drinker when he could get the liquor, and an indifferent worker at anything.”

In the spring of 1851, Col. John Reese arrived in the Carson Valley and started a store, naming it Mormon Station. Reese said that when he arrived, the nearest other settler was a man in Gold Canyon who had a trading post and wintered there in a kind of small dug-out.

“The man who lived in Gold Canyon was nicknamed Virginia, and it was after him that Virginia City was named,” Reese wrote. “I don’t know what his real name was. He discovered those mines there where the Comstock now is. He had a reservoir fixed in the Canyon to wash the gold out.”

Reese also wrote about what happened between James and Henry Comstock and how the Virginia City mining district got its name.

“Comstock found the ledge and he worked there for some time, and I guess Comstock and his party bought Virginia out,” Reese wrote. “The latter did not live but a little time afterward. His tent was about a mile above the road that ran up & down the river at the lower part of (G)Old Canyon where the emigrants road was.”

“Virginia was drunk a good deal through drinking whiskey,” Reese added.

Reportedly, he sold his claim to Comstock for a horse, a couple of blankets, and a bottle of whiskey.

It is Charles Howard Shinn 1896 writing in “The Story of The Mine” that brings us the lore as to how Virginia City got its name:

“Late one night, Old Virginny, going home with the boys and a bottle of whiskey, fell when he reached his cabin and broke the bottle. He rose to his knees, with the neck of the bottle held high, hiccoughed, “I baptize this ground Virginia Town!”

On Jun. 20, 1861, while James was riding his mount through Dayton, he fell and fractured his skull. All agreed that he was drunk.

He died the next day and lain to rest in town. Later he was removed to the cemetery on the hill overlooking Old Dayton.

The Daily Alta California, in July 1861, reprinted a Territorial Enterprise article about Jame’s passing, “During his residence in this Territory, though at times dissipated, he always bore the reputation of being an unusually kind-hearted and honest man. Peace to his ashes. All good men should respect the memory of the hardy and generous old pioneer.”

His original gravestone is in the Dayton museum, and a new stone was erected in 2001 but broken by vandals over the New Year 2009 weekend.

At that now-mended stone is where Susan Korngold raised a toast to her newfound, long-lost relative, “Cheers to you, dear Old Virginia!”