Freiberg and the Frontier: Louis Janin, German Engineering, and ‘Civilisation’ in the American West

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Freiberg and the Frontier: Louis Janin,German Engineering, and ‘Civilisation’in the American WestWarren Alexander Dym aa University of Miami , Miami, FL, USAPublished online: 10 Mar 2011.

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Freiberg and the Frontier: Louis Janin, German Engineering, and‘Civilisation’ in the American West

WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

Received 30 March 2010. Revised paper accepted 15 September 2010

Summary

Mining companies after the Gold Rush depended heavily on foreign expertise, and yethistorians of mining have glorified ‘German engineering’ in America. The applicationof German technology in America was fraught with difficulties, and most advanceswere micro- rather than macro-innovations, such as Philip Deidesheimer’s famoussquare-set timbering on the Comstock Lode. The problem began at German miningschools, such as the Freiberg Mining Academy, where Americans like Louis andHenry Janin, while they acquired advanced training and adopted an engineeringethos, struggled to learn about Mexican and American mining. Having complementedtheir course of study to remedy this deficiency, the brothers returned to the USintending to modernize mining on the frontier. Louis attempted the ‘Freiberg Process’of amalgamation on the Comstock Lode, but locally developed methods proved morefeasible, and the experiment failed. He came to apply his training rather toward themicro-level problem of how to reprocess amalgamation waste heaps.

Contents

1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

2. Mining schools in America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

3. Freiberg for Americans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

4. Amalgamating knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

5. Civilisation and Romanticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3126. Freiberg and the Comstock Lode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

7. Primacy of the micro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

8. Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

1. Introduction

One afternoon in the winter of 1863, just outside of Tubac, Arizona Territory,

Apache Indians surrounded Louis Janin. Clutching a revolving rifle, he found refuge in

a ravine, as his party, an expedition with the Sonora Exploratory and Mining Company,

scattered. Janin had prepared for this moment. Back at the Freiberg Mining Academy

in Saxony, Germany, where Janin and his brothers studied mine engineering and earth

science, he once asked his father to send a Colt revolver for practice. Now, facing an

enemy he had only read about before, the frontier lost much of the ‘Romantic

excitement’ Louis had then described.1 During the raid, Louis fired a handful of shots

1 Huntington Library, Janin Family Collection [hereafter ‘JFC’], Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg,January 11, 1860.

Annals of Science ISSN 0003-3790 print/ISSN 1464-505X online # 2011 Taylor & Francishttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/00033790.2010.537140

ANNALS OF SCIENCE,

Vol. 68, No. 3, July 2011, 295�323

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before escaping and reuniting with his colleagues. His narrative of the expedition ended

ominously the day prior.2

Advanced mining and metallurgy in America was a relative latecomer to an

otherwise impressive nineteenth-century industrialization. The transition from

small-scale placer mining to deep, capital-intensive operations conducted by

professional engineers and geologists was not complete before the 1880s.3

Instruction in Germany, such as the Janin received at Freiberg, helped fill the

scientific and technological void. Historians have discussed major American

innovations, such as hydraulic placer mining and the Californian stamp, but the

vast majority of improvements in the extraction and reduction of deep ores had

foreign origins.4 The contribution of French and British engineers was marked,

especially before the Gold Rush, and the Cornish had a famous legacy from

Pennsylvania to California. But the ‘Cousin Jacks’ from Cornwall had a reputation

as hardy workers*drillers, blasters, carpenters, hoisters, and mining captains*within a craft or apprenticeship system, introducing practical skill rather than

earth science and scientific management per se. Mexican mineros and azogueros

showed Americans how to work placers and recover silver with mercury

(amalgamation), but they did not advance the chemistry of silver refining.5

Industrializing nations of the late nineteenth century, such as Japan and the US,

would turn largely to Germany for scientific training in assaying, metallurgical

chemistry, amalgamation, and mine engineering. According to Brianta, German

territories, and in particular Saxony, were the ‘leading exporters of precious metal

mining and smelting technologies’.6 Mine engineering was a high-status profession

in Germany at mid-century, firmly tied to the larger academic and scientific

culture*and tied to the state*when in Britain and America it retained stronger

2 Huntington Library, Louis Janin Collection [hereafter ‘LJC’], Addenda, Box 1, nr. 64295 [no pagenumbers]. The raid is also recounted in John Ross Browne, Adventures in the Apache Country: A TourThrough Arizona and Sonora, with Notes on the Silver Regions of Nevada (New York, 1869), 212�17.Louis was the son of Louis Janin Sr. (1803�1874), a lawyer from New Orleans who became involved inthe legal battle over ownership of the New Almaden mercury mine in San Jose. He married thedaughter of the governor of Mississippi. He sent three sons*Louis, Henry, and Alexis*to Freiberg. Afourth may have fought for the Confederate Army, but the political leanings of the family remainunclear. Louis and Henry did not specify their politics but were focused on the West. See R. Raymond,‘Biographical Notice of Louis Janin’, Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, 49(1914), 831�36.

3 L. Hovis and J. Mouat, ‘Miners, Engineers, and the Transformation of Work in the Western MiningIndustry, 1880�1930’, Technology and Culture, 37 (1996), 429�56. Monte Calvert, The MechanicalEngineer in America, 1830�1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,1967). Alfred D. Chandler Jr, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). K.H. Ochs, ‘The Rise of American MiningEngineers: A Case Study of the Colorado School of Mines’, Technology and Culture, 33 (1992), 278�301.E. Layton, ‘Mirror-Image Twins: Science and Technology in Nineteenth Century America’, Technologyand Culture, 12 (Oct., 1971), 562�80.

4 R. Burt, ‘Innovation or Imitation? Technological Dependency in the American Nonferrous MiningIndustry’, Technology and Culture, 41 (2000), 321�47.

5 B.E. Seely, ‘European Contributions to American Engineering Education: Blending Old and New’,Quaderns d’Histoira del’Enginyeria, 3 (1999), 25�50. O. Young, ‘The Spanish Tradition in Gold and SilverMining’, Arizona and the West, 7 (Winter, 1965), 299�314.

6 D. Brianta, ‘Education and Training in the Mining Industry, 1750�1860: European Models and theItalian Case’, Annals of Science, 57 (2000), 268.

296 Warren Alexander Dym

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craft associations.7 US President Herbert Hoover’s collection of mining and

metallurgical texts abounds in German titles, and an especial interest in German

mining history was obvious by his 1912 translation of Georg Agricola’s De re

metallica (1556).8

Historians of American mining agree that the new nation relied heavily on foreign

expertise, but they also misrepresent ‘German engineering’ and the role of the

Freiberg Academy. There is a tendency to focus on macro- or big technologies (and

technological determinism),9 to mythologize the genius of German engineers, such as

Philip Deidesheimer and Adolph Sutro (much in the tradition of William Wright’s

The Big Bonanza of 1876), and to assume that German training prepared Americans

for careers at home. German expertise in America has been subsumed into the larger

(Turnerian) framework of ‘winning of the West’, in which science and engineering

projects from geological surveys to steam engines blazed a trail for settlement,

wrested land from both buffalo and Indian, and advanced America’s civilizing

mission. German industry becomes an example of the dominance of machines over

people, and engineers like Deidesheimer appear as the antithesis of 49ers or Cornish

drillers, who resisted processes of mechanization and industrialization. The Cornish

miner was ‘set in his ways’, whereas Germans were more educated and progressive.10

It may be useful to qualify the role of German expertise in America by

approaching the problem from a micro perspective, providing a more complete

picture of the difficulties of acquiring advanced skill overseas, and introducing

cultural factors that mitigated against an easy importation of foreign knowledge.

7 Technical education in Hochschulen and Realschulen was well developed in Germany by mid century.George S. Emmerson, Engineering Education: A Social History (Newton Abbot, England: David andCharles, 1973). See also Kees Gispen, Old Order, New Profession: Engineers and German Society, 1815�1914(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Bernd Faulenbach, ‘Preußische Bergassessoren im privatenRuhrbergbau, 1865�1914’, in Ingenieure in Deutschland, 1770�1990, edited by Peter Lundgreen and AndreGrelon (New York: Campus Verlag, 1994), 189�204, and Eric Dorn Brose, The Politics of TechnologicalChange in Prussia: Out of the Shadow of Antiquity, 1809�1848 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1993), Chapter Four.

8 David Kuhner, et al., The Herbert Clark Hoover Collection of Mining and Metallurgy (Claremont, CA:Libraries of the Claremont Colleges, 1980). German territories began rapid industrialization in the 1840s.Saxony, home of the Freiberg Academy, was an important territory in the Holy Roman Empire andemerged as a kingdom after Napoleon abolished the Empire in 1806. It lost northern territory to Prussia inthe 1815 Congress of Vienna. The remaining territory remained autonomous until Prussian victory in theAustro-Prussian war of 1866, when it merged with Prussia. In 1871 it became part of the German Empire.

9 Macro-innovations are fundamental design changes or inventions, whereas micro-innovations areimprovements to existing designs. Americans excelled in the latter. See Joel Mokyr, Lever of Riches:Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Also Burt,‘Technological Dependency’, 323�5. On micro- and macro perspectives among historians and the issue oftechnological determinism, see Thomas J. Misa, ‘Retrieving Sociotechnical Change from TechnologicalDeterminism’, edited by Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemmaof Technological Determinism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 115�41.

10 John Rowe, The Hard-Rock Men: Cornish Immigrants and the North American Mining Frontier(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1974), 83�7. ‘Freiberg’ courses through Spence’s important MiningEngineers and the American West, though not with the critical attention the school deserves. Clark C.Spence, Mining Engineers and the American West: The Lace-Boot Brigade, 1849�1933 (Moscow, ID:University of Idaho Press, 1993). On Freiberg-trained men in Colorado, see R. W. Paul, ‘Colorado as aPioneer of Science in the Mining West’, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 47:1 (June, 1960), 43.Other ‘Freiberg men’ appear in Paul’s Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848�1880 (Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press, 2001). German scholarship originally promoted the stereotype ofGerman engineering in America. A classic statement is Albert Bernhardt Faust, The German Element in theUnited States, with Special Reference to its Political, Moral, Social, and Educational Influence, 2 vols. (NewYork: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909), II. See also entries in Gerhard K. Friesen, editor, The GermanContribution to the Building of the Americas (Hanover, NH; Clark University Press, 1977).

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This paper addresses the matriculation of Louis and Henry Janin at the Freiberg

Academy, and Louis’s failed attempt to implement the ‘Freiberg Process’ of

amalgamation in Nevada. When the Ecole de Mines in Paris tightly controlled

admissions, allowing only a handful of Americans, Freiberg remained relatively open

and attracted scores. Many of its students became leaders in American geology and

surveying, including Raphael Pumpelly, Samuel Emmons, and Rossiter Raymond.

I argue that a Freiberg education, while it helped jumpstart theoretical fields in the

US, had a more checkered impact upon engineering practice. The course of study for

international students did not include instruction in American mining. Expecting to

head mining operations and mills in the Southwest, the Janin complemented their

studies to prepare for their transition into the field. Information about American

mining flowed to Germany from their father in California. The brothers’ letters and

student notebooks prove their determination not to number among the ‘professors’

of the American West who miners and investors ridiculed for their naivete.

The Mining Academy, though it did not provide international students with

nation-specific instruction, did impart an engineering ethos meant to apply

universally. This attitude became particularly popular through the spread of

Alexander von Humboldt’s work, including his Political Essay on the Kingdom of

New Spain (1810), and it encouraged the implementation of technologies ill fitted to

specific environments. There were important technical and economic reasons for

Louis’s failure with Freiberg amalgamation in America, but the civilizing mission

was equally significant. Aiming his Colt revolver that day in 1863*and Samuel Colt

was an owner of the Sonora Exploratory and Mining Company*Janin, like other

European-trained engineers in America, possessed a sense of cultural superiority

that upheld science and technology as a measure of civilization, and that offended

pioneer miners and mill men.11 Almarin Paul, developer of the Washoe pan process,

was openly skeptical of metallurgical chemistry and European expertise. The

pervasive nativism of miners in the West might influence their experience of foreign

innovations.

By focusing on the difficulty of acquiring information at Freiberg about

American mining, the imperialist attitude of early engineers, and the prejudice

miners had against foreign expertise, the common stereotype about German

engineering in America appears more complex than we hitherto imagined.

2. Mining schools in America

Historians of technology have drawn important distinctions between American

and European mining of the nineteenth century, explaining the relative backwardness

of the former. Since labor was plentiful in the West, especially after the Chinese

immigration, major technological innovations were few. Americans would sooner

11 On engineering and the civilizing mission: Michael Adas, Dominance by Design: TechnologicalImperatives and America’s Civilizing Mission (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). MichaelAdas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). Spence, Mining Engineers, Chapter 11. Antoine Picon, FrenchArchitects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). J.K.Wilson, ‘Environmental Chauvinism in the East: Forestry as a Civilizing Mission on the Ethnic Frontier,1871�1914’, Central European History, 41 (2008), 27�70. K.M. Olesko, ‘Geopolitics & Prussian TechnicalEducation in the Late-Eighteenth Century’, Actes D’Historia de la Ciencia i de la Tecnica 2, no. 2 (2009),11�44.


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import new machines and improve upon existing designs than invent their own.12

Another argument states that the US promoted a more individualistic and

decentralized approach to mining than that dominant in Europe, where governments

controlled specialized knowledge, owned mining operations, enforced mining codes,

and limited access to the elite.13 The French or Prussian governments, in contrast to

the young American one, could support and implement costly technologies and

operations. These distinctions can be overstated*many lower-status craftsmen still

headed European projects*but certainly mining in the American West embodied a

pioneering spirit foreign to Europe, and proceeded with little centralized control.

A further reason for dependence on European expertise more relevant here was

the absence of formal instruction in the US. There was no academic programme

devoted exclusively to mine engineering (as distinct from military and civil

engineering) before the Columbia School of Mines in New York (f. 1864),14 and

no state-backed school of mining comparable to the Paris Royal School of Mines

(Ecole Imperiale des Mines), the London Royal School of Mines, the Prussian Royal

School of Mines (Konigliche Bergakademie Berlin), or the Freiberg Royal Academy

(Konigliche Sachsische Bergakademie Freiberg). The aspiring engineer in the US

wishing to make a profession of mining had few alternatives but to travel abroad.

Institutions like West Point, The Rensselaer School, Harvard, Yale, Lehigh, MIT, the

University of Pennsylvania, and other private and public schools offered coursework

in engineering, mineralogy, and geology, informed by the latest in European

scholarship. But American professors like William H. Keating at the University of

Pennsylvania could only marvel at foreign institutions like Freiberg.15

Mine managers and metallurgists in the field since the Forty-Niners only

grudgingly employed young academics, and advanced a nativist notion of ‘roughing

it’ that did not look kindly on theoretical traditions or academic knowledge of the

sort promoted overseas. Geological and mineralogical knowledge did not guarantee

success in finding ores nor in working them profitably, as experience had proven.

‘The tenderfeet are taking the ore out where they find it, and the mining engineers are

hunting for it where it ought to be’*this sarcasm was common wisdom on

academically trained engineers in frontier society.16 In Leadville, Colorado, miners

commonly ridiculed Freiberg men, even through important managers, smelters, and

assayers were Freiberg-trained.17 When John Hammond returned from Freiberg in

1879 and approached George Hearst for work, he was clear about his low estimation

of foreign training: ‘The fact of the matter is, Jack, you’ve been to Freiberg and have

12 Burt, ‘Innovation or Imitation?’, 341.13 R. H. Limbaugh, ‘Making Old Tools Work Better: Pragmatic Adaptation and Innovation in Gold-Rush

Technology’, in A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California, edited by James J.Rawls and Richard J. Orsi (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 27. Eda Kranakis, Constructing aBridge: An Exploration of Engineering Culture, Design, and Research in Nineteenth-Century France and America(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1997), especially Chapter Eight. Burt, ‘Innovation or Imitation?’, 339.

14 The chief founder of Columbia, Thomas Egleston, received informal instruction at Freiberg while astudent at the Ecole de Mines in Paris. In Frederick Gleason Corning, A Student Reverie: An Album ofSaxony Days (New York, 1920).

15 ‘In Germany the art of mining seems to have arrived at its climax’. William H. Keating,Considerations Upon the Art of Mining, to which are added Reflections upon its Actual State in Europe(Philadelphia, 1821), 70. His remarks on the Freiberg Academy are found on page 54.

16 Mining and Scientific Press, 73 (August 1, 1896), 86, quoted in Spence, Mining Engineers, 71.17 Engineering and Mining Journal (March 27, 1880), 220.


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learned a lot of damn geological theories and big names for little rocks. That don’t

[sic] go in this country’.18

The poverty of training in mining, metallurgy, and earth science in America, while

embraced by rugged investors and managers like Hearst, displeased many politicians

and scholars. After the Morrill Act of 1862, which required states to promote

agricultural and mechanical arts at the college level, there were calls for a government

school of mines to compete with Freiberg, Paris, and London. Not surprisingly, the

earliest came from Nevada shortly after incorporation into the US. Senator William

Stewart introduced a bill to Congress in December of 1867 toward the creation of a

national mining school. He was instrumental in winning statehood for Nevada and in

passing important mining legislation, but the mining bill met resistance. Promoters of

the measure, government officials John Browne and Rossiter Raymond, and mining

consultants like Benjamin Smith Lyman, sharply criticized mining practice in

America and glorified European approaches, especially the Freiberg Mining Academy

(where Raymond and Lyman had studied).19 Browne emphasized the need to bring

chemistry and experimentation into metallurgical practice, which was otherwise

standard in Europe. Ignorance of chemical composition, especially of lower-grade

(and deeper) ores that were considered too costly to reduce, among other problems,

amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits unrealized.20 Browne quoted

the Freiberg-trained Austrian metallurgist, Guido Kustel, on amalgamation methods.

Foreign experts in America like him proved the need for an American mining school

to teach metallurgical chemistry and related subjects. One amalgamation technique

employed at Freiberg (the so-called barrel process) yielded only 5�9% loss in silver,

whereas on the Comstock, where metallurgists worked ores on a far greater scale, the

loss reached 35%. The difference, said Browne, was in the relative lack of advanced

science and technology in Nevada amalgamation. ‘The experts engaged in our mines

are nearly all foreigners’, but Americans should become experts too.21

Fear of government intervention in mining prevailed, as Congress gradually lost

sight of Stewart’s bill. Hundreds of Americans continued to acquire advanced

training overseas through the century, especially in Germany, even as American

technical training improved. Writing in 1876, one American observer noted that US

students, because of the poor state of mining education at home, studied in London

and Paris, but especially Germany. He noted of Freiberg in particular: ‘It is there that

the greater number of our past students have studied; the greater number of those

now abroad are there’.22 John Hammond, having completed a degree at Yale, left for

18 Spence, Mining Engineers, 74. See also Carroll W. Pursell, The Machine in America: A Social Historyof Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2007), 166�67, and J. A. Church, ‘Mining Schools in theUnited States’, North American Review (January, 1871), 73. The literature on nativism in Western mining isvast, if not always extended to matters of science and technology. For an overview, see Sucheng Chan, ‘APeople of Exceptional Character: Ethnic Diversity, Nativism, and Racism in the California Gold Rush,’ inRooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture, and Community in Gold Rush California, edited by Kevin Starrand Richard J. Orsi (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 44�85, and Paul, Mining Frontiers,Chapter 11.

19 ‘A Bill to Establish a National School of Mines’, in John Ross Browne, Resources of the Pacific Slope.A Statistical and Descriptive Summary of the Mines and Minerals, Climate, Topography, Agriculture,Commerce, Manufactures, and Miscellaneous Productions, of the States and Territories West of the RockyMountains (San Francisco, 1869), 665.

20 Browne, Resources, 660.21 Browne, Resources, 661.22 J.H. Bartlett, ‘American Students of Mining in Germany’, Transactions of the American Institute of

Mining Engineers, 5 (May 1876 to Feb. 1877), 434.


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Freiberg in 1876, since there were ‘no good mining schools’ in the US. His remark is

significant, considering that the Columbia School of Mines, Colorado School of

Mines, and other American programmes were then in existence. Freiberg was for the

mining student, ‘what Heidelberg and the Sorbonne were to his literary colleague’.23

The German geologist, Ferdinand von Richthofen, a sharp observer of California

and Nevada mining in the 1860s, confirmed that Americans went especially to

Freiberg for advanced training. He was adamant that only German innovations like

Plattner chlorination and Freiberg amalgamation could modernize American

mining.24 Spence considers Freiberg the ‘most important school’ in continental

Europe for training engineers in the American West.25 But how rigorous was the

programme for international students? Did professors teach American mining?

3. Freiberg for Americans

Mining trade schools (Bergschule) were in existence in Germany before state

officials founded the first higher-level institute (Bergakademie) in 1765 at Freiberg,

Saxony, home of the Government Mining Office, of which the school became an arm.

Small-scale mining began in this region as early as 1170, and it became a magnet for

scholars of the earth.26 The new school’s most famous personality was Abraham

Werner, professor of geology (‘geognosy’) and mineralogy from 1775 to 1817. In his

Principles of Geology, Charles Lyell credited Werner with first demonstrating the

application of geology to mining.27 Among his most famous graduates to broadcast

Werner’s reputation and add to Freiberg’s international fame were scientists,

polymaths, and Romantics such as Christian Leopold von Buch, Robert Jameson,

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wolfgang von Herder, Alexander von Humboldt, and

Novalis (Georg Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg). But the Academy’s reputation

was also based on a superb teaching programme: the high quality of lectures, an

extensive mineral collection, an exquisite display of model machines, and mandatory

tours to mines, metallurgical factories, and geological formations in Germany and

abroad. Freiberg students had formal permission to visit famous mining and smelting

23 John Hays Hammond, The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond (New York: Farrar and RinehartInc., 1935), 63.

24 ‘Die Achtung vor Deutscher Ausbildung nimmt zu und es werden mehr und mehr junge Leute vonhier fur eine Reihe von Jahren nach Freiberg geschickt’. Ferdinand Freiherr (Baron) von Richthofen, DieMetallproduction Californiens (Virginia City, 1864), 13. Also, ‘Der technische Leiter musste direct vonDeutschland kommen und die verschiedenen Methoden der Reduktion von Silbererzen durch langerepraktische Beschaftigung in dortigen Silberhutten verschiedener Art genau kennen gelernt haben’.Richthofen, Die Metallproduction Californiens, 56.

25 Spence, Mining Engineers, 25.26 On the Freiberg Academy see Hans Baumgartel, Bergbau und Absolutismus: Der sachsische Bergbau in

der zweiten Halfte des 18. Jahrhunderts und Maßnahmen zu seiner Verbesserung nach dem SiebenjahrigenKriege (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag fur Grundstoffindustrie, 1963), Walter Hoffman, Bergakademie Freiberg(Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Wolfgang Weidlich, 1959), and Hanns-Heinz Kasper and Eberhard Wachtler,eds., Geschichte der Bergstadt Freiberg (Weimar: Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1986). Other important governmentmining academies included Paris, St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Chemnitz in Austria. Freiberg was the modelfor these other institutions, not all of which boasted such proximity to mines, or enjoyed the samereputation. See Brianta, ‘Education and Training’.

27 ‘Men already distinguished in science studied the German language, and came from the most distantcountries to hear the great oracle of geology’. Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 3 vols. (London, 1830),I, 56. Lyell was drawing on Cuvier’s ‘Eloge Historique de Werner’, read to the Royal Institute of France in1818.


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works in Germany and Austria, and were even paired with mining captains, who gave

practical instruction underground.28

When the Janin brothers matriculated, the Academy consisted of three buildings:

the main structure contained three lecture rooms, mineral collections (amounting to

over 60 000 items), geological collections (illustrating petrography, paleontology, ore

deposits, and microscopic examinations), a shop for the sale of minerals, the model

machine display, a workshop, the library (over 50 000 items), the boarding for the

superintendent of the Academy and the janitor, and the Academy prison. The second

building contained laboratories for assaying, blowpipe analysis, an office space for

surveying papers, and a lecture hall. The third building was for the chemical

laboratory, a lecture room, and boarding for a professor of chemistry. The

mineralogical collections were divided into specimens used in the course of

instruction, and the bulk that was available for study with oversight by one of the

professors.

Just as numerous American scientists studied in Britain in the 1830s, so aspiring

engineers, surveyors, and geologists flocked to Freiberg after the Gold Rush and

Comstock discovery (1859).29 While there were a total of only five Americans at

Freiberg between the school’s founding in 1765 and 1849, 24 studied there over the

next 10 years, and 48 in the following five years alone. A total of 21 Americans

enrolled in 1864 (Figure 1). In the late 1860s, the percentage of total enrollment

ranged from between one half to one quarter,30 after which point it began to decline,

as aspiring American engineers could choose from reputable programmes at home. In

1875, there were a total of 139 students enrolled at Freiberg: 64 were native Germans,

Figure 1. American Student Enrollment at the Freiberg Mining Academy. Compiled fromRossiter W. Raymond, Mineral Resources of the States and Territories West of theRocky Mountains (Washington, DC, 1869), and J.C. Bartlett, ‘American Studentsof Mining in Germany’, Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers5 (1876�1877).

28 Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 439.29 B. Sinclair, ‘Americans Abroad: Science and Cultural Nationalism in the Early Nineteenth Century’,

in The Sciences in the American Context: New Perspectives, edited by Nathan Reingold (Washington, DC:The Smithsonian Institute, 1979), 35�53.

30 Church, ‘Mining Schools’, f.70. Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 446.


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among them 42 from Saxony; the others came from all corners of the globe, including

18 from the US.31 Writing in 1867, William Pettee from America boasted that he

knew persons from at least 21 nations, including Russia, Norway, Sweden, Austria,

Chili, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, and Canada.32

In the 1860s, when the American presence was largest, there were 13 professors

offering over 30 courses. The academic programme for state (government-funded)

students was rigorous. They had to produce a birth certificate (confirming an age

between 16 and 23), medical and vaccination records, and strong letters of

recommendation. They were to show a degree from a trade school or secondary

school (Realschule), or pass an entry examination that demonstrated about the

equivalent of requirements for admission to Harvard College, including mathematics

to logarithms, French and English, and drawing. The Latin requirement could be

waived, but only with added emphasis on mathematics and practical studies. Upon

admission, all German state students without formal training in mining completed a

four-month practical course at the mines, including four or five six-hour shifts per

week. Under the supervision of a mining official, who reported to the professors on the

candidate’s progress, they studied timbering and masonry, drilling and hammering,

hoisting, and the crushing of ores. They kept journals of their work, which were also

submitted to the Academy. Inability to descend and ascend shafts, or to navigate the

tunnels property, was grounds for dismissal. Once formal coursework began, students

were expected to continue visiting mines periodically, especially during vacations and in

the spring and summer. There was a separate and shorter preparatory metallurgical

course required of all students prior to enrolling in metallurgy.

Lectures ran from October to July. According to Theodore Scheerer, professor of

chemistry and metallurgy, the Academy’s array of coursework could be arranged into

five groups: (1) mineralogy, geognosy, chemistry, and physics; (2) metallurgy and

assaying; (3) mining construction and surveying; (4) mathematics, mechanics, and

drawing; and (5) mining law. Each subject had related courses, such as crystal-

lography as related to mineralogy, ore deposits as related to geognosy, or blowpipe

analysis as related to assaying; and the five groups interrelated.33 Students were free

to choose their schedule for a given year, provided they worked toward a

comprehensive final examination each July, which involved submitting a thesis

(some five to six months worth of work) on a problem chosen by the faculty. Note

taking and drawings were mandatory and periodically inspected by professors, and

there were occasional oral presentations. In addition to the regular lectures there

were Praktikums for students wishing to complement their programme with outside

subjects. For those state students wishing to enter service upon completion of their

programme there were additional state examinations in mining, surveying, mine

construction, or metallurgy. These students would proceed to a year-long practical

training course on site at a mining or metallurgical works. The state would mediate

their transition into formal employment with financial aid and other services, and the

candidates were barred from settling outside of Saxony.34

31 Corning, A Student Reverie, 25.32 William Pettee Collection [WPC], Box 2, William Pettee to mother, Freiberg, Nov. 13, 1867.33 Festschrift zum hunderjahrigen Jubilaum der Koniglichen Sachsichen Bergakademie zu Freiberg

(Dresden 1866), 92�3.34 B.S. Lyman, ‘The Freiberg School of Mines’, in Mineral Resources of the States and Territories West

of the Rocky Mountains, edited by Rossiter W. Raymond (Washington, DC, 1869), 230�35.


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International, or independent students were subject to fewer regulations and

requirements than were state students. Wilhelm August Lampadius, an earlier

professor of chemistry and metallurgy, published a short brochure for internationals

in 1820. He defined the Academy’s major subjects, mindful of his audience’s

particular needs*they would not need German mining law, for example*and

distinguished four study programmes, ranging from one to four years in duration,

depending on the preparation and goals of the individual student. For the youngest

and least prepared, Lampadius recommended a four-year programme, beginning

with pure mathematics, physics, mineralogy, and other primary subjects, including

research trips to Silesia, Bohemia, or the Harz in the third year, and ending in the

fourth year with student-prepared plans for launching hypothetical mining and

metallurgical works. Students with stronger mining backgrounds, or who wanted

either mining or metallurgy alone, might follow shorter programmes. Only those

students interested in mastering a particular subject with a view to research and

teaching needed to spend more than four years.35

Lampadius did not address certain peculiarities of the course for independent

students. The regular programmes intended for state students and leading to a degree

took three or four years, complete with examinations in select fields every July. But

the pursuit of a degree for international students was optional, and Americans

generally opted out. Between 1872 and 1886, out of 249 total American students at

Freiberg, only 13 took a degree.36 This meant that they did not take examinations nor

prepare thesis papers every July to demonstrate mastery over subjects, like their

Saxon peers did. They could be examined if they wished, but only with a fee. The

preparatory courses in mining and metallurgy were also optional for international

students. This meant that Americans did not have to prove themselves in advance of

enrollment either, or familiarize themselves with working conditions, but only arrive

with strong letters of reference, and some schooling. Louis and his brother, Henry

Janin, left for Freiberg after their sophomore year at Yale,37 and Henry felt the need

to compensate for having missed the practical mining course.38 According to Bartlett,

entering Freiberg did not require German fluency and could be quite easy:

Admission to the academy is very easily obtained. If the applicant from a

foreign country can understand what the director says to him when he makes

personal application, and can speak a very moderate amount of German, and

can produce a diploma awarded to him by any college or technical school, that is

sufficient. Not having a diploma, he may, instead, pass an easy examination.39

Bartlett added that Academy statutes allowed for the dispensing of entry examina-

tions altogether in select cases. Once enrolled, moreover, attendance at some of the

lectures was optional for internationals, but mandatory for state students.

Many German students were artisans’ sons who had risen through the trade

schools (Bergschule), but foreigners like the Janin had wealth and status. International

35 Wilhelm August Lampadius, Anleitung zum Studium des Bergbaues und Huttenwesens auf derBergakademie zu Freyberg, fur Auslander (Freiberg, 1820).

36 R.H. Richards, ‘American Mining Schools’, Transactions of the American Institute of MiningEngineers, XV (May 1886 to Feb. 1887), 327.

37 Raymond, ‘Biographical Notice’, 832.38 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, April 4, 1859.39 Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 434.


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students paid an annual tuition of 11 US dollars, and between 7.50 and 22.50 US

dollars per (six-month) lecture series, amounting to close to 100 dollars per year.

According to Church, the total expense for a student at Freiberg was about 1200 taler

(865 dollars).40 The revenue generated by accepting international students helps

explain their high numbers. Henry Janin claimed that Freiberg, ‘survived largely on . . .non-Saxon payments’, an opinion Church echoed a decade later.41 Corning said that

the Academy was, ‘always exceedingly liberal and accommodating’ toward Amer-

icans, ‘facilitating in every way’ their admission.42 Louis Janin provided figures for his

father in 1858: aside from tuition, 25 taler for chemistry, 20 taler for metallurgy, 18

taler for blowpipe analysis, 15 taler for mineralogy, 20 taler for geology, and so forth,

for a total of 163 taler (117 dollars) for studies alone.43 This did not take into account

the cost of mineral specimens and equipment such as blowpipes, books, mandatory

tours and trips, ‘optional’ social events and dinners with professors and local notables,

not to mention daily expenses such as food and clothing, and medical expenses. The

boys would share a blowpipe, since the piece cost over 100 taler.44 Purchasing minerals

was also necessary (or so Louis claimed) because access to the Academy’s collection

was restricted.45 He thought it wise to condense studies and leave as soon as

possible.46 The brothers, who regularly complained that they were under-funded,

certainly met or exceeded Church’s estimation of 865 dollars per head.

Many foreigners, given their lack of preparation and the relative lax discipline

they found at Freiberg, fell between the cracks. Persifor Frazer of the University of

Pennsylvania claimed that, while most Americans at Freiberg got along fine, ‘young

men of property’ and no real inclination to study mine engineering did not.47

Raphael Pumpelly recounted the story of one Kamienski, who enrolled at Freiberg,

‘less to study than to [court] a young Russian princess’.48 According to Corning,

most Americans came for instruction in mine engineering and metallurgy, and left

after one or two years, without a degree. They were complementing coursework they

had already completed at American universities, or simply having a ‘look around’.

They were unsure which lectures would find practical application in American

mining*an ‘embarrassing realization’.49 According to Bartlett, the Academy did not

address the problem of inadequate preparation on the part of foreigners, but upheld

a ‘laissez faire’ principle that fostered negligence.50 As a result, some Americans

became ‘discouraged and lazy’, falling victim to the ‘temptations of Freiberg life’.

When the academic year ended in 1867, William Pettee was thrilled to miss the

examinations his Saxon peers had to take, and rush off to the nearby Saxon

Switzerland (Sachsische Schweiz) mountain range.51 Another temptation was the

40 One taler � 72 cents. Church, ‘Mining Schools’, 69�70. Lampadius figured 500�700 taler in 1820.41 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Dec. 18, 1859. US students, ‘probably paid at least one

half the fees received by the professors’. Church, ‘Mining Schools’, 70.42 Corning, A Student Reverie, 25.43 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Oct. 6, 1858. Janin’s figures are corroborated by Church,

‘Mining Schools’, 69�70.44 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, March 21, 1858.45 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Dec. 5, 1858.46 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Oct. 6, 1858.47 In Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 446.48 Raphael Pumpelly, My Reminiscences (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1918), 129.49 Corning, A Student Reverie, 25.50 Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 436.51 WPC, Box 2, William Pettee to mother, Freiberg, July 23, 1867.


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robust social life in Freiberg and Dresden. Alexis Janin*the third brother to

matriculate at Freiberg*described high society in some detail to his mother, much of

it surrounding Chief Overseer of Mines (Oberberghauptmann) Friedrich Constantine

von Beust’s family.52 Pumpelly too spoke of a lively circle around the von Beusts.53

Other distractions that the Janin would navigate at Freiberg included a large

English-speaking community (much of it centered at the Hotel de Saxe), a robust

student culture that included formal dueling and drinking bouts, and gambling.

Even before enrolling, Louis Janin informed his father that he had ‘heard a good

deal of bad’ about Freiberg, namely, that students were ‘fond of fighting’.54 Alexis

Janin, upon arrival in 1864, was disappointed to find so many English speakers. He

preferred the company of Germans, having ‘little to do with the Americans’.55 In

1866, Alexis complained that there were some 38 Americans in attendance, ‘mostly

Yankees’.56 Bartlett added that many Americans lacked sufficient German and

mathematics to profit from lectures altogether. This was why Alexis thought he

might require a four-year stay.57 His two brothers had been better prepared. They

began with formal instruction in German, French, mathematics, and other primary

subjects at a school in Dresden before moving to Freiberg. Henry even showcased his

High German to his father in a letter of May 12, 1857. By contrast, William Pettee,

who the Academy clearly admitted without adequate German, felt like a ‘fool’

listening to lectures in a language that he could not understand.58 Pumpelly hired a

German student to instruct him in mathematics every morning, but it remained a

‘handicap’ his whole life. Pumpelly had not even been prepared at Yale, he

admitted*Germans had ‘better preparatory education’ in general.59 Louis Janin

too needed private lessons in higher mathematics.60

4. Amalgamating knowledge

The low admissions standards for international students, their special status, and

the myriad of distractions they faced are sufficient to qualify the stereotype of

German technical education. But like most of the Americans for whom records exist,

the Janin capitalized on their short stay and became leaders in American mining. The

most significant obstacle facing the Janin at Freiberg was purely academic: the

relative neglect of instruction in American mining practices. The Academy was

famous for providing practical experience in mines and metallurgical works, but the

highly advanced technologies Americans studied there would not easily apply in

America. From an early date, the Janin sought to remedy this deficiency by acquiring

information about Mexican and American mining.

52 JFC, Box 19, Alexis Janin to mother, Freiberg, Dec. 2, 1864. Buest became Oberberghauptmann in1851. His brother was prime minister of Austria-Hungary.

53 Pumpelly, Reminiscences, 135.54 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Dresden, May 23, 1857. On the revival of dueling among the

middle class in Germany, see Ute Frevert, Men of Honor: A Social and Cultural History of the Duel(Oxford: Polity Press, 1995).

55 JFC, Box 19, Alexis Janin to mother, Freiberg, Oct. 24, 1864.56 JFC, Box 19, Alexis Janin to father, Freiberg, May 11, 1866.57 JFC, Box 19, Alexis Janin to mother, Freiberg, Feb. 23, 1866.58 WPC, Box 2, William Pettee to mother, Freiberg, Oct.8, 1865.59 Pumpelly, Reminiscences, 128.60 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Oct. 6, 1858.


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The Janin were the sons of Louis Janin Sr., who was a prominent lawyer involved in

the important New Almaden Mine case. A cinnabar deposit, discovered by a Mexican

army official in 1845 near San Jose, promised to replace Almaden in Spain and

Huancavelica in Peru as the major source of mercury for North America. Mercury was

essential to the amalgamation of silver and gold ores. A British firm, having purchased

the claim from the original Mexican group before the US annexed California in 1848,

maintained the legality of its ownership against a rival company from New York.

President Lincoln would intervene in the end, and the Supreme Court divided the land

between the claimants.61 The father certainly intended the boys to become leaders in

Western mining after Freiberg. Not only had New Almaden become international news

when they shipped off, but so had the Comstock Lode in Nevada. The brothers

expected their father to help procure start-up positions in California mercury before

they would migrate eastward.62 In his student notebook for 1859, Louis takes notes

from a former Freiberg graduate, Benjamin Lyman, on the history of New Almaden.63

Louis would head the nearby Enriquetta cinnabar deposit in California, before taking a

position on the Comstock Lode, leaving Henry in charge of Enriquetta.

The Janin specialized in mercury amalgamation at Freiberg. The latest innovation

involved two steps: roasting powdered silver ore with salt before treatment with

mercury in barrels. Salt converted silver sulphides into chlorides (more amenable to

mercury), as heat oxidized other unwanted substances, freeing more metal to bind

with less mercury. Metallic iron introduced into the barrels contributed to the

reduction of silver chlorides, which mercury continued more completely. Following

roasting and amalgamating (‘calcination’ and ‘trituration’) the mercury-silver

amalgam that formed was separated (‘retorted’) as usual. The chemist, Christlieb

Ehrgott Gellert, among others at Freiberg, had improved on this technique by

introducing rotary motion during the mercury stage, and the professor of mathematics

and inspector of mines, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm von Charpentier, founded an

important amalgamation works at Halsbrucke implementing these improvements in

1790. The Janin visited Halsbrucke, and they saw the adoption of Freiberg methods in

Hungary.64 Freiberg amalgamation became the pride of the school and territory for

decades to come, and Halsbrucke a must-see for student and tourist alike65 (Figure 2).

61 Louis Janin Sr. represented the New York-based Quicksilver Mining Company against Barron, Forbes andCo. See Milton Lanyon and Laurence Bulmore, Cinnabar Hills: The Quicksilver Days of New Almaden (LosGatos, CA: Village Printers, 1967), Milton H. Shutes, Abraham Lincoln and the New Almaden Mine (SanFrancisco, 1936), and Mary Laura Coomes, ‘From Pooyi to the New Almaden Mercury Mine: Cinnabar,Economics, and Culture in California to1920’ (Ann Arbor, MI: Universityof Michigan PhD Dissertation, 1999).

62 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Dresden Oct 2, 1859. Also Freiberg, Oct. 16, 1859. Also Orleans,Jan 3, 1861.

63 LJC, Box 1, Book 1, pp. 44�6.64 LJC, Box 1, Book 2 [no page #].65 One travel brochure of 1850 described Halsbrucke as the ‘largest amalgamation works in the world’.

Erinnerungen an Freiberg’s Bergbau: Ein Leitfaden fur den Besuch der Gruben und Waschen, sowie derHutten, des Amalgamirwerkes und der Extractionsanstalt (Freiberg, 1850), 31. Baron Ignaz von Born ofAustria revived a South American process of boiling powdered ore (Cazo or Barba process) in copperkettles. Gellert and Charpentier joined Born and others at Skleno, Slovakia, to learn the new technique,which they developed back at Freiberg. See M. Teich, ‘Born’s Amalgamation Process and the InternationalMetallurgic Gathering at Skleno in 1786’, Annals of Science, 32 (1975), 305�40. Barrels in production atHalsbrucke ended in 1856 after changes in costs and quality of ores made smelting more attractive. Themodels the Janin would have studied involved separate roasting of ores followed by amalgamation inrotating casks with moderate heat. For a technical explanation of amalgamation at Halsbrucke, see JohnArthur Phillips, Elements of Metallurgy: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Extracting Metals from theirOres (London, 1887), 694�99.


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Figure 2. The ‘Freiberg’ barrel for amalgamation. From Bruno Kerl, A Practical Treatise onMetallurgy I, William Crookes and Ernst Rohrig, trans. (London, 1868). This itemis reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.


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But what did the Janin learn about American amalgamation? Certainly, Germans

were fascinated by technology in the US,66 and Academy professors were interested

in the metals industry outside of Europe, including amalgamation in the Americas.

Lampadius had formally tested the major Mexican technique at Freiberg in 1816 in

light of reports that it compared favorably with European methods. The Mexican

miners (like their Spanish predecessors) ground silver ore in an arrastra before

spreading it over an open-air patio (lavadero). The azoguero then introduced

‘magistral’ (roasted copper sulphate) and salt, before sprinkling mercury over the

mix.67 A heavy amalgam of mercury and silver settled to the patio floor, and was

retorted. The Freiberg process was markedly faster than this, as roasting rather than

natural heat oxidized the mix, and it used less mercury; but the cost of roasting in

reverberatory furnaces and maintaining barrels was considerable, and offset much of

the savings. The barrel technique also involved a controlled (experimental) step-by-

step process, in which the introduction of substances, including iron, was carefully

timed and calibrated; whereas the azoguero relied on his ‘feel’ for the mixture*a sort

of tacit knowledge*inferring how ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ it seemed, and introducing reagents

accordingly.68 Lampadius and Heinrich Gottlieb Kuhn of the Meissen porcelain

manufactory conducted numerous experiments, concluding that the fineness of the

crushed ore and magistral used in the patio had definite value, but that otherwise

more mercury was saved in the barrels.69 Lampadius’s successor at Freiberg, Carl

Plattner, in a (posthumous) publication of lectures, described the patio process in

scientific detail, noting that it conformed to conditions in the American Southwest

(abundant sunshine for the patio, but lack of wood for roasting and construction). He

otherwise gave a far more detailed description of the superior, Freiberg method.70

Plattner’s description of mercury mining was also in depth, and included a full

section on Almaden, Spain, but only one small paragraph on California.71 Bruno

Kerl’s important textbook was even better informed on American metallurgical

practices from New York to California. Like Plattner, Kerl noted that European

amalgamation was preferable to the Mexican, but certain climatic conditions and

resource limitations in the New World had favored the patio process there.72 He

included a technical description of the patio and discussion of the chemistry believed

to be at work.73 Otherwise Kerl said little about mercury mining in California,

66 Volker Depkat, ‘The Birth of Technology from the Spirit of the Lack of Culture. The United States as‘‘Land of Technological Progress’’ in Germany, 1800�1850’, in Europas Blick auf Amerika vom 18. bis zum20. Jahrhundert, edited by Michael Wala and Ursula Lehmkuhl (Cologne: Bohlau Verlag, 2000), 23�53.

67 Magistral was also called green vitriol, iron vitriol, and copperas, and would have differed in compositionfrom region to region. Roasted copper pyrite would have yielded iron and copper sulphate, and together withsalt converted silver sulphurets in the ore into silver chlorides, which bonded easily with mercury.

68 The mercurist ‘heated’ the mixture with magistral (and sunshine), but when the mercury failed to bindand became pastry, he ‘cooled’ the mixture with lime. On the patio process, see Peter Bakewell, editor,Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1997), especially chapters Four andFive. Also his Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1971), 14�5.

69 Lampadius was actually testing a new ‘magistral’ (copper rich salt) recommended by FriedrichSonneschmid, who had visited Mexico. Wilhelm August Lampadius, Neue Erfahrungen im Gebiete derChemie und Huttenkunde gesammelt im chemischen Laboratorio zu Freiberg und in den Huttenwercken undFabriken Sachsens un den Jahren 1808�1815 (Weimar, 1816), 204�13.

70 Carl Friedrich Plattner, Vorlesungen uber allgemeine Huttenkunde (Freiberg, 1863), II, 265�70. Hissuccessor at Freiberg, Theodor Richter, produced the collection from Plattner’s manuscripts.

71 Plattner, Vorlesungen, 312.72 Bruno Kerl, A Practical Treatise on Metallurgy, Crookes and Rohrig, trans. (London, 1868), 318.73 Kerl, Metallurgy, 335�46.


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though he provided figures showing that production at New Almaden was the

highest in the world.74

The Janin could acquire technical information about mercury mining and

amalgamation in the Southwest by consulting Humboldt, Lampadius, Plattner,

Kerl, and the articles they referenced. But beyond the technology of the patio process

and preliminary inquiries into its chemistry*most of which favored the Freiberg

technique*the brothers were greatly limited. The Freiberg curriculum was oriented

toward state service, and professors taught little to nothing about Pennsylvania coal,

Michigan copper, California gold and mercury, or Nevada silver, not to mention

American mining law and labor practices, Spanish, and other subjects of interest to

the Janin. Bartlett was clear on this:

American methods and machinery are hardly mentioned at Freiberg . . .American pumps, drills, engines, waterwheels, amalgamating machinery, and

metallurgical processes are quite ignored, and American hydraulic mining is

disposed of in about five minutes.75

Henry Janin added that there was, ‘very little in the American and German journals’

on American mining.76 The new professions of mine engineer and manager in

America were ‘not really understood’ in Germany.77 Substantial practical experience

in Western mining would be necessary. The ‘rules and regulations’ Louis learned

overseas did not apply in America; the ‘mass of details’ might be of little use.78 Henry

echoed his brother, warning their father that to assume a high position in Arizona

immediately upon return to America would be dangerous. It would lead investors

into ruin and damage Henry’s reputation.79 His remarks were prophetic, since Henry

was at the centre of a great swindle in 1872 that almost cost him his career.80 Louis

noted that compatriots he met in Germany wished to become ‘practical geologists’,

by which he meant state surveyors and cartographers, like Pumpelly. These men ‘did

not know much’ about mining.81

The Janin would have to complement their studies at Freiberg. Already in

December of 1858, Henry asked his father for ‘any piece of information’ concerning

American mining in Arizona.82 Louis too knew that he was destined for the

Southwest, and repeatedly requested information. He read any available study on

Mexican mining, including Humboldt’s Political Essay.83 Henry, having read Saint-

Clair Duport’s On the Production of Precious Metals in Mexico (1843), marveled over

how ‘clumsy’ amalgamation was there. Duport compared it with the Freiberg or

74 Kerl, Metallurgy, 531.75 Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 439.76 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Dec. 18, 1859.77 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg May 8, 1859.78 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 23, 1859.79 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 24, 1859. See also Box 20, Henry Janin to father,

Dresden Oct 2, 1859.80 Henry accidentally confirmed a diamond field without realizing that it had been ‘salted’ or artificially

prepared to create an investment bubble. Henry Janin, A Brief Statement of my Part in the UnfortunateDiamond Affair (San Francisco, 1873). Robert Wilson, The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and theGreat Diamond Hoax (New York: Scribner, 2006), Chapter 12.

81 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Dresden, July 26, 1857.82 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg Dec 15, 1858.83 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 23, 1859. Louis also mentioned Friedrich

Wislizenus’s Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico (1848), and Saint-Clair Duport’s On the Production ofPrecious Metals in Mexico (1843).


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barrel process, according to Henry, ‘the most perfect and economical method’.

Duport doubted that European processes could be transplanted to the American

West, but the Janin brothers would face the challenge.84 Henry requested information

on the mining laws and amalgamation techniques of California, and requested more

than once that the Mining Journal be sent directly to Freiberg.85 He even asked his

father to ship samples of California cinnabar representing three grades of quality.

Henry, considering how to introduce the latest oven design from Idria, Austria, into

California, wished to study the difference in quality and composition of the

respective ores.86 In his student notebook for 1859, Louis mentioned that he was

reading articles on California and Mexican mining, as well as the reports and

charters of California and Nevada mining companies, and had made comparisons

with European production.87 The following year, he showed full comprehension of

the patio process (at least in theory), describing the composition and function of the

arrastra, and the amalgamation stage. Louis’s notes on the ‘magistral from

Guanaxuato’ suggest a reading of Humboldt, who described the patio at that site

in particular. Louis understood that the Mexican azoguero did not rely on chemical

knowledge: ‘The process of the operation is made known by the color of the

mercury . . . when the patio to too hot [sic] some add lime or ashes . . . when too cold,

magistral [is] added’. An occasional quote in Spanish concerning love and relation-

ships reveal his study of the language. Already in August of 1857, before arriving in

Freiberg, Henry informed his father that he was studying Spanish and had borrowed

materials from a South American student.88

Popular and scientific journals and newspapers were another important source of

information for Americans in Freiberg. William Pettee mentioned a number of titles

sent to Freiberg, including Harpers Monthly and Weekly, Atlantic, New York Weekly

Herald, Times, and World.89 The Academy received select mining journals from

America, but it bound them only once a year, Henry complained, which meant that they

were always one year behind. Henry considered the Herald to be sub par, filled with

reports by men with no practical experience in Western mining, but Louis said it was a

‘treat’ to all the Americans.90 Both brothers read the Herald regularly, but for mining,

they relied on Mining Magazine, Mining Chronicle, and Mining Journal. They learned

of transportation and fuel constraints in Arizona, the difficulty of acquiring mercury,

and Indian hostilities. Henry was especially interested in the New Almaden mine, the

legal battle over which his father was deeply embroiled.91 In a student notebook, Louis

listed articles from the Mining Journal on the Rocky Mountains, New Almaden, and

other American regions.92 From a study by his compatriot at Freiberg, James Hague,

Louis understood that the high value of Arizona ore was more than offset by labor and

fuel costs.93 As for the Indians, according to the Herald, the Southwest was ‘infested’

84 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Feb. 1, 1859.85 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, July 25 1859. JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father,

Freiberg, March 20, 1859.86 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Dec. 18, 1859.87 LJC, Box 1, Book 1, 80.88 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Aug. 25, 1857. Louis’s notes on magistral and the patio

process appear toward the end of LJC, Box 1, Book 2.89 WPC, Box 2, William Pettee to mother, Freiberg, June 6, 1866.90 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 11, 1860.91 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 24, 1859.92 LJC, Box 1, Book 1, p. 93.93 JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 23, 1859.


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with them.94 Louis reminded his father to send the boys a Colt revolver and revolving

rifle, since rudimentary marksmanship may one day become necessary.95

5. Civilisation and Romanticism

The Janin, having pursued extra-curricular studies on Mexican and American

mining, would return to the US with an adequate understanding of the environ-

mental and economic challenges of importing European expertise. They also

returned with a new sense of their profession as a higher calling. Freiberg, like the

Prussian Mining Academy, elevated mine engineering in status and prepared

graduates for prestigious government positions. Mine engineering was fast becoming

a vehicle for the spread of ‘civilisation’. Early in his tenure at Freiberg, Henry Janin

distinguished the training he received from the knowledge of Cornish miners in

America: the ‘simple, practical Cornish mining captain’ did not burden himself with

paleontology. American mining required a more scientific foundation:

The branches of metallurgy and mining have not as yet been cultivated to any

extent in America by men of higher scientific attainments*those who conduct

such operations are mostly practicians[sic], the majority from Cornwall.96

One major authority to associate European mining with civilisation was Alexander

von Humboldt. He had studied under Abraham Werner, and served in various

bureaucratic capacities in Saxon mining before sailing for New Spain in 1799. In the

Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Humboldt’s remarks on ‘primary’,

‘secondary’, and ‘transition’ formations in Mexico drew explicitly on Werner’s

system, and Saxon geology was the major point of comparison.97 Humboldt was

highly critical of Mexican mining. He ridiculed traditional digging methods*the so-

called sistema del rato, or ‘system of the moment’, which many derogatively called the

‘rat-hole system’*lack of science, general mismanagement, and even the deviousness

of workers.98 Americans in Germany were greatly interested in Humboldt, and Louis

Janin recounted that some dined with the scholar shortly before his death.99

The engineering ethos took a distinctive form at Freiberg, as it incorporated a

strong Romantic sentiment that may have suggested a heroic role for the mine

engineer. The author Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) studied at Freiberg. In his

Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the old miner is likely Werner; and in Die Lehrlinge zu Sais,

the master of the Temple is probably Werner again. Other Romantic authors and

scientists affiliated with the Academy included the physician, Gotthilf Heinrich von

Schubert, who came to Freiberg after exposure to Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph

Schelling’s Naturphilosophie; the geologist, Henrik Steffens, who studied three years

94 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, March 20, 1859.95 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, April 4, 1859. Also Freiberg May 10, 1859. Other

internationals may have also complemented their studies to prepare for service back home, as did ManuelDa Camara from Brazil, who had a particular interest in gold. See Silvia Figueiroa and Clarete da Silva,‘Enlightened Mineralogists: Mining Knowledge in Colonial Brazil, 1750�1825’, Osiris 15 (2001), 181.

96 JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Dec. 18, 1859. On the gentlemanly status of geology, see MartinJ.S. Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 15�37.

97 Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (London, 1811), 153�60.98 Humboldt, Political Essay, 257�72.99 Louis added respectfully: ‘He died Friday the 6th about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, after several days

confinement in his bed’. JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg May 8, 1859.


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at Freiberg, and synthesized Werner’s thought with Schelling’s philosophy; the

philosopher, Franx Xaver von Baader, who studied three years at the Academy

before turning to Naturphilosophie; and Goethe, who was a regular correspondent

with the Freiberg overseer of mines, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich von Trebra. The

promotion of mining as a heroic undertaking reached something of a high point at

Freiberg during its centennial celebration in 1866, which many Americans witnessed.

The commemorative publication (Festschrift) described geology as a Romantic

science, and the mining official’s education and purpose as a special calling.100

Freiberg had fostered a Romantic cult of personality since the days of Humboldt

and Werner, and some of that worship extended to geologist Bernhard von Cotta,

under whom the Janin brothers studied. Aside from his vast academic writings, Cotta

taught geology (‘geognosy’), paleontology, and ore deposits at the Academy for over 30

years.101 Americans boasted of their interactions with Cotta in their letters and

memoirs, and recalled their geological excursions in particular. In his memorial for

fellow alumnus Samuel Emmons, Arnold Hague said that he and Emmons, ‘took all

the weekend excursions with dear old Bernhard von Cotta’.102 Practical experience in

mines and mills was one of the hallmarks of a Freiberg education, and a distinguishing

feature from the Paris or Russian schools, not to mention the American. Freiberg

students were required to tour local mines and smelting works, and if possible, major

works in the Harz Mountains, Bohemia, or Hungary. Cotta, continuing a tradition

that began with Werner, organized and guided these expeditions, mediating student

travel across national boundaries, introducing students to important mining and

metallurgical officials, and explaining mineralogical and geological features.

Geology was a decidedly dilettantish field in the nineteenth century, and the

geological tour had associations with Romanticism. Famous expeditions that captured

the Romantic mood included Horace-Benedict de Saussure’s ascent of Mont Blanc in

1787, and Humboldt’s travels through New Spain. Cotta’s student tours, aside from

illustrating important geological features and theories, and imparting the inherent

value of travel and field experience, were also gentlemanly and Romantic. He

published an account of an eight-day geological expedition to Hungary and Bohemia

in the summer of 1860 with Louis and Henry Janin, Edmund von Fellenberg from

Switzerland, and Clement LeNeve Foster from England.103 Cotta’s reputation

100 See especially Scheerer, ‘Das Bergmannische Studium’, in Festschrift, 1866. On Romantic science andFreiberg, see A.M. Ospovat, ‘Romanticism and German Geology: Five Students of Abraham GottlobWerner’, Eighteenth Century Life, 7 (1981�82), 105�17. Also, W.A. Dym, ‘Scholars and Miners: Dowsingand the Freiberg Mining Academy’, Technology and Culture, 49 (2008), 833�59. On Goethe and Freiberg,Walther Hermann, Goethe and Trebra: Freundschaft und Austausch zwischen Weimar und Freiberg (Berlin,1955). For a broader discussion, see N. Heringman, ‘The Rock Record and Romantic Narratives of theEarth’, in Romantic Science: The Literary Forms of Natural History, edited by Noah Heringman (Albany,NY: SUNY Press, 2003), and M. Shortland, ‘Darkness Visible: Underground Culture in the Golden Age ofGeology’, History of Science, 32 (1994), 1�61.

101 On Cotta, see Otfried Wagenbreth, Bernhard von Cotta: Sein Geologisches und PhilosophischesLebenwerk an Hand ausgewahter Zitate (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1965), and Bergakademie Freiberg, DieBedeutung Bernhard von Cottas fur die geologischen Wissenschaften, in Freiberger Forschungshefte D 137(Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag fur Grundstoffindustrie, 1980).

102 A. Hague, ‘Biographical Memoir of Samuel Franklin Emmons’, in National Academy of SciencesBiographical Memoirs (Washington, DC, 1912), 315.

103 Fellenberg (1838�1902) became a major explorer and mineralogist, leaving a large mineralogicalcollection to the Museum of Natural History in Bern, which he also served as president. Foster (1841�1904)worked for the Geological Survey of England before becoming professor of mining at the Royal College ofScience, fellow of the Royal Society of Science, and president of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall.


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preceded him in many of the locations they visited, as mine managers, smelting work

managers, and other administrators (Bergverwalter) entertained the party along the

way. At the mining town of Abrudbanya, once the locals had identified an American

and Swiss in the party, Cotta and the boys became the guests of honor at a national

celebration.104 At Nagyag, their visit to the mines was particularly inviting. At the

shaft head, which was decorated in its honor, the party boarded specially prepared

wagons with armchairs, driven by a mining student and horse. After a comfortable

tour through the tunnels, the party exited to find six horses ready to carry it to the

mining offices for a splendid meal. Cotta only regretted not having enough time to see

the precious stones collection and purchase samples.105 Cotta peppered his geological

observations with notes on the customs, dress, food, and daily life of the local

inhabitants, and their nationalistic sentiments. Many of his remarks were positively

Romantic in style: Along the way to Nagyag, ‘magnificent woods adorn trachyte

stones’, and, ‘one enjoys primal life [Urleben] and the opposite of modern civilization’.

The highest peasant huts afforded a view of a ‘romantic gorge’ below.106

Cotta’s pupils engaged in their own Humboldtian, or rather Goethean tours.

Henry Janin accompanied Pumpelly to the Harz Mountains. Louis Janin and

Clement Foster set out together to tour the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) around

Freiberg shortly after their trip with Cotta. That Louis intended an audience for his

narrative was clear in its title: ‘Geological, Metallurgical, Mining, and Pleasure

Excursion through the Obererzgebirge, for the Information of Parents and Friends’.

The boys set out from Freiberg to Grunthal, and already we have rich descriptions of

the local ladies. Soon, Louis (a la Werther) was enchanted by the soft voice and

domesticity of a small-town girl. Certainly the boys also acquired invaluable

technical information on this excursion. They learned of the Patera amalgamation

process from the man himself at Joachimstal,107 they met the chemists of the blue dye

works of Schneeberg, and they purchased mineralogical samples. Louis made

extensive notes on silver refining at Joachimstal in particular. That he also inserted

notes from Cotta’s Der innere Bau der Gebirge (Freiberg, 1851), and referred to

Cotta’s study of Joachimstal in his Die Lehre von den Erzlagerstatten (Freiberg, 1853),

suggests that Louis may have brought his professor’s texts on this trip. The journal

begins with a course listing, which confirms that he had Cotta on geognosy, Moritz

Ferdinand Gatzschmann on mining, Scheerer on chemistry, and Weisbach on

machines.108

Louis would express a unique blend of technical expertise and German Kultur on

the American frontier. The Janin returned to America strongly identified with the

new profession of mine engineering, which already enjoyed high status in Germany.

Geology was a prerequisite for mining at Freiberg, where it shaded off into

Romanticism.

104 B. von Cotta, ‘Ueber Erzlagerstatten Ungarns und Siebenburgens’, in Gangstudien: Beitrage zurKenntnis der Erzgange, 4 (1) (1862), 19.

105 Cotta, ‘Ueber Erzlagerstatten’, 24.106 Cotta, ‘Ueber Erzlagerstatten’, 23.107 The technique involved roasting followed by treatment with hyposulphite of sodium. Phillips,

Elements of Metallurgy, 733.108 LJP, Box 1, Book 3, Freiberg, 1860.


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6. Freiberg and the Comstock Lode

And now is the time to prove through deeds that mankind is not inferior to the

gods in virtue.109

Louis Janin was not the first to attempt Freiberg amalgamation in the New

World. In the 1780s, the Spanish Crown sent its leading metallurgist, Fausto de

Elhuyar, to Vienna and Freiberg to learn the new technology, before dispatching him

to Mexico in the company of additional workers and experts from Germany.110 The

mission had little success, as both the patio process and traditional smelting proved

more cost effective, and local mineros resented the criticism of ‘enlightened’

foreigners.111 Already, economic and cultural problems had united against Freiberg

technology overseas. The result of Humboldt’s travels through the Americas, the

Political Essay (1810), which included detailed accounts of silver mining and

amalgamation, renewed interest among European investors. But most ventures in

Mexican mining of the early nineteenth century also failed, due to Mexico’s civil war

and political instability. Humboldt, on whose information many relied, ‘tended to

ignore local conditions and to assume that what was good for Saxony must

necessarily be good for Mexico’.112 He, like Elhuyar before him, was optimistic about

Mexican mining but believed that companies would have to thoroughly reform and

reopen operations. When British firms recommended Humboldt’s work in ‘inflated

prospectuses’ they excited unwise investment in an unstable land.113 An English

diplomat to Mexico, Henry Ward, said that Humboldt’s promise that Freiberg

barrels would reform Mexican mining had not been realized. ‘The Germans merely

shorten the process’, explained Ward, and the quantity of (lower-grade) ore many

companies had to work to become profitable exceeded the capacity of the barrels.114

Still, Ward observed a number of ongoing experiments to run barrels, as German-

trained engineers seemed ubiquitous.115 Prospects were not good: the largest German

109 LJC, Box 1, Book 4. Louis was quoting from Goethe, Faust, Part I, lines 712�13.110 Elhuyar (1755�1833) also visited Uppsala, Sweden. He would head Mexico’s Royal School of

Mining. Among his mining and metallurgical experts in the New World were three fellow Freiberggraduates, Friedrich Traugott Sonneschmid, Thaddeus von Nordenflicht, and Luis Lindner. Clement G.Motten, Mexican Silver and the Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950).Walter Howe, The Mining Guild of New Spain and its Tribunal General, 1770�1821 (London: HarvardUniversity Press, 1949), 307. See also R. M. Buechler, ‘Technical Aid to Upper Peru: The NordenflichtExpedition’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 5 (May, 1973), and A.P. Whitaker, ‘The Elhuyar MiningMissions and the Enlightenment’, The Hispanic American Historical Review, 31 (Nov, 1951), 557�85. Foran overview of German miners in the New World, Thomas Adam, editor, Germany and the Americas:Culture, Politics, and History. A Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005),s.v. ‘Mining’, and Wilhelm Pferdekamp, Deutsche im Fruhen Mexico (Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,1938).

111 In Motten, Mexican Silver, 54.112 Young, Western Mining, 78.113 I. Vassoler, ‘The Mexican Mining Bubble that Burst’, in Alexander von Humboldt: From the Americas

to Cosmos, coordinated by Raymond Erickson, Mauricio A. Font and Brian Schwartz (New York: BildnerCenter for Western Hemisphere Studies, 2004), 432. The Mexican Civil War began in 1810, and politicalinstability continued after independence from Spain in 1821. See also M. E. Rankine, ‘The MexicanMining Industry of the Nineteenth Century with Special Reference to Guanajuato’, Bulletin of LatinAmerican Research, 11 (Jan 1992), 29�48.

114 Henry Ward, Mexico in 1827, vol. II (London, 1828), 132.115 Ward, Mexico, 361, 530, 531, 533. Eduard Harkort, a Freiberg graduate from Germany working for

an English company, had to abandon his metallurgical and surveying work when war broke out betweenTexas and Mexico. He was reduced to addressing his Freiberg professors from a prison in Veracruz.Harkort to Breithaupt, February 11, 1834. In Mexican Prisons: The Journal of Eduard Harkort, 1832�1834(College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1986).


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mining company in Mexico, the Deutsch-Mexikanischer Bergwerks-Verein, which

formed in 1824, was bankrupt in 1837.

Troubles with Freiberg barrels in America continued right up to the Janin. Before

Louis visited Arizona, Samuel Colt’s Sonora Company had hired German engineers

Frederick Brunckow, Guido Kustel, and Hermann Ehrenberg to modernize its

mines.116 The geologist living by the Comstock, Ferdinand Richthofen, credited

Kustel with introducing barrels into Arizona, but added that other Freiberg

graduates, including Louis Janin, spread the technology.117 Kustel became interested

in the company when it sent Arizona ore to him in San Francisco for assaying. The

result was so promising that he bought shares and moved to Tubac, where the

company had headquarters. In Kustel’s opinion, some of the local ores were fit for

smelting, and others for the patio, but the majority required amalgamation ‘founded

on the principles of the Freiberg method’.118 He began erecting barrels but quickly

learned how costly and time consuming the undertaking would be. By the time

Kustel’s first shipment of machinery from San Francisco arrived, ‘the rainy season

had set in, the material on the mine . . . had been destroyed, the contracts to deliver

the timber broken, and the workmen employed in building the works . . . had left’.

The company had few provisions, and they could not pay the Mexican workers

regularly. The barrels had warped and no longer fit their beams. When the company

had finally erected machines, it became clear to Kustel that without a steam engine

(to replace the mules) he would not have sufficient motive power.119 At the

Heinztelman mine, where a forty horsepower engine could theoretically work 12

barrels, the engineer was limited to three. Herman Ehrenberg expressed his

frustration: only ‘total ignorance, misunderstanding on the subject, or the want of

faith somewhere, could have delayed us so long’.120 The advantages of the Mexican

patio process became clear: ‘in a country like this it offers many advantages, among

which is the non-consumption of expensive white labor [read: carpenters and

engineers], of wood, no roasting being necessary’.121

Nevada was no more accommodating than was Arizona. The auriferous (gold-

bearing) ores at the Comstock Lode were rich in silver, and the question of how to

amalgamate was the most pressing concern. An early success was the so-called

Washoe Process, which was an adaptation of the Mexican patio, but now with

mechanical (‘California’) stamps to crush the ore, and enclosed steam-heated iron

pans for mercury treatment rather than open-air flats. Soon there were scores of

methods and experiments in silver refining beyond the Washoe: old-fashioned

smelting works, patio works, all manner of Washoe pans, and even fanciful methods

using magnetism and electricity. A manual for quartz miners published in San

Francisco provided basic instruction on refining methods, including the patio, pan,

Plattner chlorination, Freiberg, Veatch, and other methods for the extraction of gold

116 Herbert G. Houze, Samuel Colt: Arms, Art, and Invention (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,2006).

117 Richthofen, Die Metallproduction Californiens, 14 and 52.118 Report of Frederick Bunckow . . . to a Committee of the Stockholders of the Sonora Exploring &

Mining Co. upon the History Resources, and Prospects of the Company in Arizona (Cincinnati, 1859), 8.Kustel’s partner at the assay office in San Francisco was another Freiberg graduate, Ottokar Hofmann.

119 Report of Frederick Brunckow, 17, 19, 22, 26.120 Report of Frederick Brunckow, 23.121 Report of Frederick Brunckow, 47.


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and silver, suggesting that numerous varieties vied for customers in California and

Nevada at that time.122

Like Kustel and Ehrenberg before him, Louis, who had read a report of the

Sonora Company,123 tried in vain to run Freiberg barrels. The major Comstock mills

to implement this process between roughly 1861 and 1863 were the Ophir and Captain

Dall mills, the Mexican (or Silver State) Mill, and the Gould and Curry Mill.124 Louis

headed the Mexican before being promoted to the Gould and Curry in 1864, so this

Freiberg graduate certainly oversaw barrels at both sites. His intentions at the

Mexican Mill were clear in 1861. We find detailed notes concerning Freiberg methods

in his diary, complete with formulae and diagrams showing ‘chemical changes during

roasting’ and the ‘chemical process in barrels’ (Figure 3). Referring to Halsbrucke,

Janin specified that an overshot waterwheel moved twenty rotating barrels, each 34

inches long by 32 inches wide, to mix mercury with the treated ores.125 Louis also

periodically visited one Captain Dall in Washoe, who we know ran the longest-lasting

Freiberg mill.126 Nevertheless, by 1864, these mills had turned to variations of the

Washoe, treating lower-grade ores. ‘All [had] yielded to the Washoe process’, said

Hodges, which was ‘well adapted to local conditions’.127 He stressed economic

constraints, especially the high cost of roasting ore separately in reverberatory

furnaces, and of maintaining barrels. Freiberg amalgamation (namely at Dall’s)

became feasible only for select high-grade ores, which were becoming more rare.

But why did inventive mill men not improve on the barrels, as they did the pans?

Could barrels not have handled high quantities of low-grade ore? In a report of 1864

for the Arizona Mining Company, Kustel still promoted barrels as economically

feasible.128 His colleague Ehrenberg’s claim that ‘ignorance’, ‘misunderstanding’, and

‘lack of faith’ contributed to their struggle points to extra-economic issues. Most

technical treatises of the period and formal reports and statements such as Hodges’s

emphasized economic and environmental determinants, but cultural factors were also

significant, including the civilizing mission assumed by many foreign-trained

engineers since Delhuyar and Humboldt, and the stubborn nativism of many

frontier mill men. Louis Janin’s American diaries reveal a man at pains to master the

environment around him, still finding console in Romantic literature*Schiller,

Tennyson, Thackery, and even Goethe’s Faust*and confident in new science and

technology. Louis was in contact with Kustel and the inventor of square-set

timbering, Philip Deidesheimer, and he entertained geologist Richthofen for some

weeks in 1865, all of which would suggest that Louis numbered himself among those

men modernizing mining with German chemistry and engineering.129

That European, and especially German practice was the standard against which

Louis judged Mexican mining was clear during the same exploratory trip of 1863 that

122 Wheeler and Randall, Quartz Operator’s Hand Book (San Francisco, 1865).123 LJC, Box 1, Book 1, p. 81.124 E.J. Michal, ‘Win Some, Lose Some: The Evolution of Milling Practice on the Comstock Lode’,

Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 48:2 (2005), 260�61.125 LJC, Box 1, Book 5 [no page numbers]. LJC, Box 1, Book 6, Sept. 25. Janin’s dimensions are

corroborated in Kerl, Metallurgy, 322.126 A.D. Hodges, ‘Amalgamation at the Comstock Lode’, Transactions of the American Institute of

Mining Engineers XIX (1890), 202.127 Hodges, ‘Amalgamation’, 203. Smith, History of the Comstock, 45.128 Huntington Library Rare Books, Nr. 29959, 21.129 LJC Addenda, Box 1, nr. 64296. Entries for Jan. 4, Jan. 9, Mar. 27.


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almost cost him his life. Aside from Latin and French dictionaries, books of leisure,

and important English titles such as Charles Lyell, Louis carried a German

dictionary, Bernhard von Cotta, Theodore Scheerer, Bruno Kerl, an edition of the

Freiberger Jahrbuch, and Humboldt’s Essay.130 Echoing Humboldt’s critical attitude,

Janin expressed frustration that he could not acquire proper information about the

patio from Sonoran metalworkers: ‘I have found it impossible to form from inquiry

Figure 3. Louis Janin’s sketch of the ‘chemical process in barrels’. Louis Janin Collection,Box 1, Book #5. This item is reproduced by permission of The HuntingtonLibrary, San Marino, California.

130 LJC Addenda, Box 1, nr. 64295. Louis specified that these were ‘books packed up’.


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an opinion as to the cost of workings on the Patio . . . this is owing to the carelessness

of the management and [its] want of money’.131 During his European tours, Louis

needed only call upon local mining and metallurgical officials, who were mostly

forthcoming with information. He had other derogatory comments: mine operators

gave their workers ‘too much freedom’. The labor was ‘cheap but poor, therefore a

larger number is required’. Louis’s Mexican guides did not perform to his standards:

‘The great trouble in traveling with Mexicans is that one cannot get them to start

early enough. They are so thinly clad that they will not start before the sun is up’.

Mexican farmers were simply ‘rude’. Tensions between Mexican workers and their

American and German managers could escalate. Pumpelly once resorted to

monitoring his staff at gunpoint. Kustel insisted that only white men select high-

grade ore for barrels, since ‘Mexicans will steal the richest ores’.132As for the Native

Americans, a dance Janin witnessed was ‘stupid’.133

Back in Nevada, Louis spent most of his free time in the comfort of the little

Civilisation then available, calling on the local elite, enjoying dances, and once

attending a private performance of Romantic composer Mendelssohn’s work.134

A dispute at his Virginia City mill gave Louis occasion to position himself socially:

‘Never trust any man who is not a gentleman by education as well as instinct. The

‘‘middle class’’ is the wickedest’.135 He clearly identified with an upper middle class in

America, and had a patronizing attitude toward his workers, which would have included

Mexicans and Cornish. That imperialistic attitude, while it recalled Humboldt, was

characteristic of mining engineers in the West. The founder of the Sonora Exploratory

and Mining Company, the German-American and Lieutenant-Colonel, Samuel

Heintzelman, considered Mexican laborers lazy and socially inferior.136

The mission to erect Freiberg barrels pit an imperialist attitude against a

pervasive nativism that considered chemistry outsider, even foreign knowledge.

Popular chemistry or charlatanism on the Comstock only confirmed existing

prejudices against experts. The dominant theory behind patio amalgamation was

that mercury ‘digested’ silver; the azogueros manipulated the ‘cooling’ and ‘warming’

virtues of their reagents in effecting this digestion.137 But whenever the mines grew

deeper and the ores more complicated (‘refractory’)* silver appears as sulphides

below the oxidation level*traditional amalgamation became less effective. This

opened the door for ‘process-vendors’ and ‘quacks’ to peddle vials of reagents and

other supposedly scientific means of working the sulphides.138 In the absence of a

licensing system, scores of charlatans paraded around with ‘M.E.’ (mining engineer)

after their names.139 A man named Isenbeck ‘professed to practice . . . the Freiberg

flux process’, but really only swindled his customers and defiled the name of

131 LJC, Addenda, Box 1, nr. 64294. Folded manuscript enclosed in back.132 Huntington Library Rare Books, Nr. 29959, 21.133 LJC, Addenda. Box 1, nr. 64295. The Pumpelly incident is recounted in Pumpelly, Reminiscences, 220.134 LJC, Addenda, Box 1, nr. 64296, Wed. 4th.135 LJC, Box 1, Book 6 (1864), Sept. 26.136 Diane M.T. North, Samuel Peter Heintzelman and the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company

(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980), 41.137 On alchemy and the patio process, see Joaquın Perez Melero, ‘From alchemy to science: The

Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment in Spanish American mining and metallurgy’, in The Revolutionin Geology from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment: Geological Society of America Memoir 203 (2009),G.D. Rosenberg, editor.

138 Hodges, ‘Amalgamation’, 208.139 Spence, Mining Engineers, 75.


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Freiberg, and scientific expertise more broadly.140 Like a witch’s brew, salt, potash,

borax, lime, nitre, and alum, not to mention sagebrush, bark, and other vegetable

matter went into the amalgamating pans. According to author Dan de Quille

(William Wright), ‘a more promiscuous collection of strange drugs and vegetable

decoctions never before was used for any purpose’. The goal was to ‘physic’ the silver

from the rock by making it sick, as it were.141 The chemical metallurgist’s reagents

appeared as more ‘doctor’s stuff ’ under these conditions, said Thomas Egleston of

the new Columbia Mining School.142

The majority of mill men treated all ores, irrespective of chemical variation as to

sulphides, with the same generic processes. ‘While all the machinery . . . was brought

to a high state of efficiency’, confirmed Hodges, ‘the chemistry of the process

received comparatively little attention’.143 Almarin Paul, the central figure behind the

Washoe technique, admitted (with pride) that ‘none of us knew anything’ about silver

reduction.144 In commentaries for the San Francisco Bulletin he derided ‘process-

vendors’ and mocked the ‘wonderful discoveries’ and ‘little red powder things’ of

chemistry.145 He conceded limited successes for the Freiberg process, but predicted

the failure of any approach so dependent on advanced chemistry. ‘All this de-

sulphurizing . . . is a humbug’.146 Arnold Hague, while he pushed for a more

systematic metallurgical chemistry, confirmed that some mill men in Nevada had

grown so skeptical of any chemical agent beyond mercury that they excluded them

entirely from the pans.147

The Washoe method was no macro innovation*it simply transferred the

Mexican reagents to iron pans*but Paul promoted his innovation as peculiarly

American. It was a mechanical improvement on the patio, but it was the ‘patio . . .perfected’.148 And it was ‘purely american’ [sic]* that also distinguished it from the

Freiberg process in Paul’s eyes.149 Egleston maintained that Freiberg barrels never

received a fair trial for this very reason. He claimed that they were ultimately cheaper

than Washoe pans, but that Paul’s method was ‘best known’ since it was ‘peculiarly

American’. Egleston made his point clear: ‘barrel amalgamation is a foreign process,

and one against which there is a great deal of prejudice’.150 Collins developed the

sentiment: ‘Had the same amount of attention and inventive skill which has been

lavished on the pan, been devoted to improving the mechanical appliances of the

140 Raymond, Mineral Resources, 225. Colorado too was ‘infested with a race of pseudo-scientists,charlatans who bestowed upon themselves the title of ‘‘professor’’, and talked learned nonsense aboutpatented processes and ingenious gadgets that they had invented to conquer the ‘‘refractory ores’’’. Paul,‘Colorado as a Pioneer of Science’, 40.

141 Dan de Quille, The Big Bonanza (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 92.142 Thomas Egleston, The Metallurgy of Silver, Gold, and Mercury in the United States (New York, 1887),

vol. 1, Metallurgy, 384. The same was true in Colorado when mining passed the oxidation zone. J.E. Fell Jr,‘Nathaniel P. Hill: A Scientist-Entrepreneur in Colorado’, Arizona and the West, 15 (Winter 1973), 324.

143 Hodges, ‘Amalgamation’, 207.144 Grant H. Smith, The History of the Comstock Lode, 1850�1997 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998), 42.145 San Francisco Bulletin, April 4, 1863. In ‘Writings of Almarin B. Paul,’ Huntington Library Rare

Books, Nr. 256922, p. 88.146 ‘Almarin B. Paul’ [no date], 143.147 In Rossiter W. Raymond, Mines, Mills, and Furnaces of the Pacific States and Territories (New York,

1871), 412. Phillips and Eissler observed this trend a decade later. Phillips, Elements of Metallurgy, 712;Manuel Eissler, The Metallurgy of Silver: A Practical Treatise on the Amalgamation, Roasting, andLixiviation of Silver Ores (London, 1889), 32.

148 ‘Almarin B. Paul [no date], 88.149 ‘Almarin B. Paul’ [no date], 142.150 Egleston, Metallurgy, 348.


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barrel process, the latter would have [held] its own’.151 These men could imagine the

success of Freiberg barrels for high- and low-grade ores had mill men not been so

drawn to pans and adverse to European contributions.

7. Primacy of the micro

Institutional, economic, and cultural factors had once again combined to seal the

fate of Freiberg barrels in America. This is not to suggest that Freiberg had no lasting

influence in Nevada mining and beyond. The Washoe and patio techniques were

successful on the Comstock after having undergone substantial micro-level adapta-

tions. Mill men introduced countless variations to pans in particular. While this was

less true of barrels, mill men adapted components of the Freiberg process*no longer

identified exclusively with Germany*such as independent roasting and barrel

mixing, to other procedures. Properly speaking, elements from all three major

approaches*Mexican, Washoe, and Freiberg*combined into various new forms in

the Americas, according to local mineralogical and economic conditions. The

Kroncke process, which was applied in northern Chile, did not call for roasting,

but did employ huge Freiberg-style barrels. Reagents included copper chloride, salt,

mercury, and lead or zinc, which decomposed calomel and may have had had an

electro-magnetic effect. By contrast, the Reese River in Nevada involved independent

roasting followed by Washoe pans, not barrels. At Pachuca, Zacatecas, and other

Mexican sites, a version of the Boss system became popular, in which barrels mixed

crushed ore and chemicals before the product passed continuously through a series of

pans. Whenever mill men conducted a chloridizing roast, as in Reese River

operations, they used the Bruckner or Stetefeldt furnace rather than the reverbera-

tory of old. The Stetefeldt involved dropping pulverized ore mixed with salt through

a stream of hot air and fire. This required far less labor and increased the exposure of

sulphides, making roasting cost-effective once again.152

Not only did the Freiberg process fragment in this way, but chemical metallurgists

also co-opted the patio reagents. Janin, having given up on barrels, brought his

Freiberg education to bear on the smaller-scale problem of amalgamation run-off.

After becoming superintendent of the Gould and Curry in 1864 Louis began

investigating the excess gold, silver, and mercury that showed up in waste heaps

before and after processing. These were the so-called ‘slimes’ and ‘pan-tailings’ which

the mill men stored, since the material sometimes assayed highly, but could find no

profitable means of working beyond running them over water sluices to capture

remaining metals.153 De Quille witnessed Mexicans working mill tailings in

traditional patio grounds on a small scale, and other ‘grubbers’ scooping tailings

from rocks surrounding the mills.154 With Gould and Curry Louis (soon assisted by

his two brothers) had the luxury of devoting a large mill to experimentation on

151 Henry F. Collins, The Metallurgy of Lead and Silver (London, 1900), 118.152 Phillips, Elements of Metallurgy, 719. Charles Stetefeldt, a graduate of the Clausthal School of

Mines, had established an assay office and consulting firm in Austin, Nevada, with the Freiberg graduate,John Boalt. Eugene J. Michal, ‘Charles A. Stetefeldt: Central Nevada’s Pioneer Silver Metallurgist,’Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 48 (2) (2005), 289�311.

153 Between 1859 and 1880 the total amount of silver lost in tailings on the Comstock was around 70�75 000 000 dollars. Total silver output was some 300 000 000 dollars. Loss in quicksilver averaged onepound per ton of ore. Smith, Comstock Lode, 256�57.

154 De Quille, Big Bonanza, 94.


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tailings. Above all, they tested proportions of copper sulphate and salt*the same

chemicals azogueros had used for centuries on the patio, and that Almarin Paul had

transferred to iron pans. Hodges considers this a small triumph of chemistry in

metallurgy, but really it was a further admission of Mexican experience into

industrial mining.155 Janin had effectively returned to Lampadius’s experiments of

1816, or to Friedrich Sonneschmid, who had joined the Elhuyar expedition to

Mexico in 1788, and who had called for more experimentation on magistral and salt,

and less devotion to Freiberg methods.156 Louis had just completed his tour of

Sonora and Arizona, in which he took copious notes on the patio process and

magistral. A fellow Freiberg graduate, Arnold Hague, quickly followed Janin’s work

with a series of experiments at Yale on the chemistry of the Washoe process,

published in 1870.157 A more exact understanding of mercury, copper sulphate, salt,

and other reagents, in light of Janin, Hague, and other chemical metallurgists, soon

became the norm on the Comstock and elsewhere.158

8. Conclusion

Louis Janin went on to manage mines in Mexico and assist the Meiji Government

in Japan, before returned to the US as a consultant. A full account of his struggle to

modernize mining would follow his career around the globe. This paper focused on

the early years, when Louis matriculated at the Freiberg Academy and first returned

to the US. The American West, notwithstanding extraordinary successes such as

Deidesheimer’s timbering and Sutro’s tunnel, were not hospitable to foreign expertise

and macro innovations. Technological innovation tended to be small-scale and

involve micro innovations, like the Janins’ work on tailings, improvements to copper

pans, or incorporation of roasting to existing methods.

While it is tempting to discover Louis’s failure at the point of impact alone, the

problem began in Europe. No doubt the name ‘Freiberg’ had great resonance in

America, but historians have glorified German expertise and the Freiberg Academy,

and few have investigated the difficulty of acquiring advanced technology to begin

with. The Janin’s training was more self-motivated than we might assume, as formal

instruction neglected American mining. The curriculum was rich in theoretical

studies such as geology, surveying, and mechanics that had universal application, and

in experience with European mining and metallurgical practices, but weak in non-

German mining. Rather than provide instruction in American mining per se,

Freiberg imparted to American students an engineering ethos or civilizing mission

intended to apply for the US as for any developing nation. Louis Janin learned the

hard way that Humboldt’s great predictions for Mexican mining had been misguided.

The imperialist attitude that European-trained engineers carried to America met

155 Hodges, ‘Amalgamation’, 211.156 Friedrich Sonneschmid, Tratado de Amalgamacion de Nueva Espana (Mexico City, 1805).157 Arnold Hague, ‘The Chemistry of the Washoe Process’, in Clarence King et al., United States

Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (Washington, 1870).158 It was the ‘chemical knowledge of his assistants’ that made George Langtry’s tailings-mill the most

successful on the Comstock. Hodges, ‘Amalgamation’, 217. The study of the chemistry of amalgamationcontinued through the nineteenth century until even Hague’s research had become outdated. See H.F.Collins, ‘On the Chemical Reactions Involved in the Amalgamation of Silver Ores,’ AIME VII (1899), 229�35.


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widespread nativism on the frontier, including hostility to chemistry and its

‘professors’.

The extent to which mining companies in the newly annexed Southwest overcame

institutional, economic, and cultural constraints in the adaptation of advancedtechnologies therefore determined their relative success. ‘Technological-determinist

accounts’, says Misa, ‘remain plausible only when the analysis stays at the macro

level; micro-level analysis dissolves the technical logic, necessity, and order-driven

patterns into a swirl of competing personalities and contingent factors’.159

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Mary Terrall and Kathryn M. Olesko for reading an earlier version of

this paper, Elliot West and Fred Quivik for important discussions, and the

Huntington Library for its support.

159 Misa, ‘Retrieving Sociotechnical Change’, 138.


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Documents

Freiberg and the Frontier: Louis Janin, German Engineering, and ‘Civilisation’ in the American West