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Farmington News for June 5, 2013
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From “Doc Alders, Farmington’s Lone Eagle”: The Alders brothers and Lloyd Mattesich became the partners in a hard rock mine up out of Columbia beyond Italian Bar on the Stanislaus River.

Doc, Pete and Lloyd took about forty tons of ore out of the mine shaft. A much larger quantity of waste was dumped on the mountain side. It’s hard to say how smart they were but they certainly weren’t lazy. They grossed $1800. With wages at $2 a day this wasn’t bad. Because of the hard times, this was going on all over the Mother Lode.

The story behind the lease to the mine was intriguing. It seems that the mine was owned by the widow of State Senator John B. Curtin of Sonora. Senator Curtin ended up defending one of the owners of the mine in question against a murder charge.

It seems that the two old miners that operated the mine would work the mine for ore and then reduce the ore in an arrastra mill down at Knight Creek about a mile below the mine. The digging was dry so they took the ore down to water. Things went just fine for a while then one of the miners became suspicious that his partner reducing the ore at arrastra was “high grading” on him so he shot and killed him. He hired Sonora lawyer Senator Curtin for his defense and ended up deeding over the mine to cover the legal fee. When the Senator died, his widow became the owner. The Alders brothers and Lloyd Mattesich leased the mine from Widow Curtin.

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Congratulations to new parents, Kevin and Megan Kroon. The anticipated arrival of their daughter Ava Mae Kroon was Thursday, May 30th. Ava weighed in at six lbs., 15 oz., and 19 inches long. Ava is their first child. Grandparents are John and Gayle Kroon of Farmington and Larry and Susan Dunn of Escalon.

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Happy Birthday, Joey Kroon on June 11th.

Happy Birthday to Barbara Boone, June 15th and also Happy Birthday goes out to Nick Kroon, also June 15th.

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Please contact me if you have items for the Farmington News column. E-mail me at farmingtonnews@gmail.com or phone 896-6697.