| Finding Beautiful Gems by C. A. Stephens |
| This story by C. A. Stephens is fictional, yet it has been embraced by many as completely factual. Because, the story contains only "real" figures, the illusion is that truth is found in the story. The story is based on a series of facts, recounted in Augustus Hamlin's (1873) book, The Tourmaline. However, there are so many departures from fact in Stephens' story that some preamble is necessary to understand the story. C. A. Stephens was a prolific writer who primarily hooked his star to the weekly magazine - Youth's Companion. The magazine was originally a dreary religious magazine filled with allegory intended for young people. Eventually, the magazine evolved into an entertaining family magazine, although its undertones were typically religious, but much subdued, and in parallel with many of its counterpart magazines of the time period. (Charles Asbury Stephens was born in Greenwood, Maine and was a cousin to Addison Emery Verrill, also of Greenwood. Stephens undoubtedly knew Elijah and Augustus Hamlin, although he wouldn't have known Elijah very well.) First published in the Youth's Companion on October 3, 1878, Stephens' adventure story was simple yet exciting. (The story was republished in the anthology series - Knockabout Club.) All of Stephens' stories were designed particularly for youth, although they were widely read by all of the family. Stephens took the basic Mount Mica story and made it a story with youthful participants. The story was not intended to be historically accurate and the details weren't really important. In actuality, Elijah Hamlin was twenty years old and a practicing lawyer, while Ezekiel Holmes was a medical student at Brown University (age 19 years old), when the tourmaline discovery was made. The exact discovery day is unknown, yet Stephens made the day, November 30. Ezekiel was at school until Christmas break and the discovery was certainly made in the waning days of December, 1820, although Lawrence Sturtevant inaccurately argued that the discovery had to have been made in 1821. Stephens changed many details, only a few of which are listed here. For example, Parker Cleaveland does not seem to have known of the tourmaline discovery in Paris until 1823 when Holmes was attending Medical School at Bowdoin College. The mineral-bearing package, carried by Enoch Lincoln, was to go to Benjamin Silliman at Yale College. Of course, John Webster found his crystals before Charles Shepard did, etc. Cleaveland did write to Hamlin after Elijah had moved to Columbia, Maine and a letter exists where Hamlin supplies some mineralogical information to Cleaveland in 1828. On August 28, 1829, Augustus C. Hamlin was born in Columbia and was Elijah's son, not merely a "relative" as the story indicates. The discovery of finding the first tourmaline was credited to Ezekiel Holmes by Elijah Hamlin and given their different personalities, the story made Ezekiel sound like a dilletante when the opposite was true. Ezekiel was the bookworm naturalist, while Elijah was the playboy, although much interested in nature. Stephens called the boys by nicknames: "Zeke" and "Lige", but while they are plausible, there doesn't seem to be any indication that these nicknames had a basis in fact. Of course, the illustrations are entirely fabricated and it is unlikely that the scenes looked anything like the illustrator's (Russell Richardson's) imagination. In particular, the illustration "Drilling the Rock" was most likely the state of the ledge after it had been mined by the 1860's Mount Mica Company and later by Elijah and Augustus. The reader is further cautioned in accepting all details in Hamlin's 1873 and 1895 histories of Mount Mica. Review of Hamlin's extensive correspondence, mostly to Joseph Leidy, contradicts many aspects of Hamlin's 1873 and 1895 accounts. See further details of the history of mining at Mount Mica in King (2000), Mineralogy of Maine, volume 2. If you're a scorekeeper when it comes to ages, Ezekial Holmes (1801-1865) Elijah Livermore Hamlin (1800-1872) Hannibal Hamlin (1809-1891) Cyrus Hamlin (1802-1839) SPECIAL THANKS go to Larry Glatz of Norway, Maine who supplied the issue number for the Stephens story so I didn't have to read through a lot of microfilm! |
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