Eli B. Kelsey
1819-1885
The portrait of Eli B. Kelsey is from
Phrenological Journal, July 1871, p.35
Though not a Hickman, he was an associate of the Hickman family and was one of the earliest promoters of mining at Bingham Canyon. He was a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Tooele who who became disenchanted with the leadership of Brigham Young. Believing that economic development was Utah's salvation, he apostatized and joined the Godbeite movement and with the same enthusiasm he had once used in seeking converts as a missionary, he actively sought eastern capital to develop Utah's mines, lecturing on the subject in eastern cities. This was not an unselfish venture; he wanted to become fabulously wealthy in the process.
A pamphlet he wrote attempts to persuade the reader that his property, the Kelsey Tunnel would be a profitable stock investment. It seeks to do this by association to other successful Utah properties. Unfortunately for Kelsey, one of those properties, the Emma mine in Little Cottonwood Canyon was defamed by scandal, and several others he mentions, though indeed sold as he claimed for large sums of money, failed to return the investment to their buyers. Because in the case of the Emma mine British and American investors lost millions of dollars; prospective investors were thereafter more cautious in investing in Utah's mines. History has a way of repeating itself. Mining stocks were to the Nineteenth Century what the Nasdaq is to us today.
To read Kelsey's pamphlet, The Mines of Utah, click here.
To return to the Hickman Index page, click here.
