John William Mackay

John William Mackay (November 28, 1831 – July 20, 1902) was an Irish-American industrialist who rose from rags to riches. Born into abject poverty and raised in the slums of New York City, Mackay joined in the California gold rush in 1851. He did not find gold but moved to Nevada in 1859 and found silver. He became one of the four Bonanza Kings, a San Francisco partnership which capitalized on the wealth generated by the silver mines at the Comstock Lode in Nevada. He was one of the richest Americans in his time. He also headed a telegraph business that laid transatlantic cables, and he helped finance the New York, Texas and Mexican Railway Company.

John William Mackay was born in Dublin to a working-class family. They had a dirt floor hovel shared with a pig. In 1840, the family emigrated to the notorious Five Points slum in lower Manhattan; his father died soon after. As a boy Mackay hawked newspapers such as the New York Herald, and later apprenticed at William H. Webb Shipyard to support his mother and sister.

In 1851, he sailed by clipper around the Horn to California and worked eight years in placer gold fields in Sierra County without much success. In 1859, he went to Virginia City, Nevada, site of the recently discovered Comstock Lode, and there began work at $4 a day laboring in a mine by day and working his own small claims in his spare time. He bought small claims or "feet" and used the proceeds of his labor and finds to buy more feet. In 1865 he used his savings to buy into the Kentuck mine and hit big, he was suddenly worth US$1.6 million, more than enough to retire for life. He then began investing in other mines, sometimes risking everything he had. He formed a business partnership with fellow Irishmen James Graham Fair, James C. Flood, and William S. O'Brien, later known as the Bonanza Kings. The four dealt in mining stocks and operated silver mines, and had a success in the Hale & Norcross mine. In 1871, using proceeds from the Hale & Norcross they bought out a number of smaller mine claims under the name of the Consolidated Virginia Mining Company, and later added the nearby California mine. In 1873, the Con Virginia made the greatest ore body discovery ever found in North America, known as the "Big Bonanza". The strike would pay out US$181 billion in current dollars, with Mackay's portion being about $50 billion. The bonanza was in a location previously overlooked and outside where other strikes had been found. The four-way partnership was more commonly known as the "Bonanza firm". With the proceeds, together they established the Bank of Nevada of San Francisco to compete with the Bank of California.

Marie Louise Antionette Hungerford aka "Louise" was born in 1844 in New York. She moved with her parents in 1854 to the Downieville, CA goldfields. In 1863, at 19, she was married to Dr. Edmond Gardiner Bryant in Virginia City. Bryant invested unsuccessfully in stocks and mines and they became financially strapped. They had two daughters, the oldest Eva. Bryant carelessly allowed his youngest daughter to die by refusing to treat her illness. In 1865, Bryant somehow injured Eva, breaking her hip. In 1866, Bryant contracted tetanus in a mining camp and Louise became a widow at the age of 22.

Louise, now widowed with a slightly disabled daughter, married Mackay in 1867 in Virginia City. She had their first son in 1870, John W. Mackay, Jr. followed by Clarence H. Mackay in 1874. John Mackay always treated his step-daughter Eva as if she were his child, and he formally adopted her on Christmas Day in 1870. The Mackay's heard of a doctor in France that might be able to help Eva. Although the surgery didn't go as well as planned, it did help. The family returned to San Francisco in 1873, Louise pregnant with their second child, Clarence. But a seed had been sown; Louise really loved Paris. She never returned to Virginia City again.

Mackay purchased a large mansion for Louise in Paris, where his wealth enabled her to become a noted society hostess for two decades, entertaining royalty and throwing lavish parties. The building is today occupied by the Belgium Embassy near the Arc de Triomphe. In 1879, Louise's younger sister Ada Hungerford, married Count Joseph Telfener. From then on, she was Countess Telfener, possibly the first California born woman to achieve a European title. As his telegraph business expanded, in 1884 the family was moved to London for the boys' schooling and easier communications through his owned cables. In 1885, his step-daughter, Eva, married the Neopolitan prince, Ferdinando Colonna of Stigliano. Eva's portrait was later painted by the Italian painter, Vittorio Matteo Corcos. 18 years after John's death, Louise returned to the United States in 1920, dying in 1928 at age 85.

In 1884, with James Gordon Bennett, Jr., Mackay formed the Commercial Cable Company, largely to compete with Jay Gould and the Western Union Telegraph Company. Until Mackay and Bennett entered the field, all submarine cable traffic between the United States and Europe went over cables owned by the American financier Jay Gould. Mackay laid two transatlantic cables, and forced the toll-rate for transatlantic messages down to twenty-five cents a word. In connection with the Commercial Cable Company, he formed in 1886 the Postal Telegraph Company as a domestic wire telegraph company so that Commercial would not need to rely on Western Union to collect and distribute telegraphic messages. A rate war followed that took almost two years to conclude. Jay Gould finally quit trying to run John Mackay out of business. He was quoted as saying in reference to Mackay, "If he needs another million he will go into his silver mines and dig it out".

Once Mackay had conquered the Atlantic with the Commercial Cable Company and North America with the Postal Telegraph Company he turned his sights to laying the first cable across the Pacific. He subsequently formed the Commercial Pacific Cable Company in secret partnership with the Great Northern Telegraph Company and the Eastern Telegraph Company. Although he died in 1902 before his vision was completed, his son Clarence H. Mackay, saw the project through to completion between 1904 and 1906. Commercial Pacific operated a cable line from San Francisco to Manila, Philippines, via Hawaii and Guam, with a subsequent spur that went from Manila to Shanghai, China.