Nevada Appeal 160 years in publishing: Chapter 7: History of the Nevada Appeal: What others thought of Harry


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Nevada Appeal to celebrate 160th birthday with Meet Your Merchant 

The Nevada Appeal is hosting “Meet Your Merchant: Connecting Community with Business” on Saturday, May 17.

The event will offer community members a chance to discover new businesses they may not know in Carson City.

The event will be free to the community. It will run from 2-5 p.m. on Saturday, May 17 at the Carson City Multi-Purpose Athletic Center Facility, 1860 Russell Way.

Booth space for business is available at nevadaappeal.com/meetyourmerchant.

The event corresponds with the Appeal’s 160th year in publishing. During the event there will be a recognition for the Appeal’s achievement. The Appeal’s first edition was published on the morning of May 16, 1865.

For information, or to sponsor, check out the web page or contact Annemarie Dickert at adickert@nevadanewsgroup.com.

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CHAPTER 7 

On May 16, 1990, the Nevada Appeal turned 125 years old. To celebrate the occasion the paper published a book on the Appeal’s 125 years in history. For the next eight weeks the Appeal will reprint parts of the book leading into the Appeal’s 160th birthday. The book was produced by then-editor Don Ham with help from John S. Miller, Daun Bohall, Guy Rocha, Jon Christensen and Noreen Humphreys.

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One of the important measures of a man is what his peers and contemporaries think of him. Henry Mighels had an impact upon people that moved them to comment on him; giving historians an oblique angle from which to examine and measure. 

Most eloquent observations came from George C. Gorham, a lifelong family friend and confidant. Gorham is noticed the first time by history writers when his San Francisco home is used for the welding of Harry and Nellie. Gorham also wrote Harry’s obituary in the May 29, 1879, Appeal at which time he claimed a 27-year friendship. 

Having known him since he was a 22-year-old youth knocking about the California gold camps, Gorham was eminently qualified to assess the man’s successes and his impact on the world. 

Gorham also wrote a sketch of Mighels which appeared at the front of Mighels’ book, “Sage Brush Leaves.” In the book Gorham noted: 

... he was passionately devoted, making his wife his partner and confidential adviser in all his affairs, whether politics or business. From 1866 to 1878 inclusive, his great force of mind and his political sagacity, which grew with every contest, until he became a consummate organizer and leader of men and opinion, were enlisted in the cause of the Republican party. 

In 1876, he was from Ormsby County to the Assembly, of which body he was chosen speaker by acclamation. This unusual tribute was well bestowed, for in the speaker’s chair, he instantly as if by intuition brought to its the same strong sense and spirit of control which he had shown in other places. At the end of the session, at which his rulings were uniformly sustained, he was presented with different testimonials by the two parties and the attaches… 

Harry’s grandson possesses a carved ivory gavel embellished with his grandfather’s name, title and legislative session. The gavel was presented to Harry by his fellow legislators.

Gorham stated in the Appeal obituary on Harry: 

His lion heart has ceased to beat. His generous hand lies still in death. His fiery spirit no more inhabits the pleasant earth which he loved so well. His presence will no longer inspire his fellows in Nevada when the pditical battle rages. His home will be no more graced with his royal presence, but there will dear memories of him linger to soften the grief which is now too deep to be touched by human sympathy, and to inspire his fatherless boys with a desire to emulate the virtues of their sire… 

In the obituary Gorham referred to Mighels as a dear friend, tender father, proud and loving husband, incorruptible citizen, sterling patriot, brave soldier, dauntless leader and wise thinker. 

In both the book and in the obituary, Gorham commented:

Mr. Mighels was a writer of great versatility. In his writings will be found vehement appeal, subtle argument, fierce invective and crushing irony, when foes were to be dealt with while in the presence of Nature, he was full of sweetest poetry and the call of human sufferings and wrongs, as gentle and kindly as Mercy itself. 

Nellie V. Mighels, after burying her husband, notified many of his friends and associates by sending them each a copy of his book. 

Included on her list was Gen. A.D. Sturgis, Harry’s Civil War commanding officer.

In his response to the new widow, Sturgis reveals the fact Harry was a personal and family friend as well as a wise and trusted officer on his staff. His letter, posted from Fort Meade Dakota Territory, reads: 

Your very kind letter, accompanied by a handsome copy of “Sage Brush Leaves” reached me just as was starting on a visit to Deadwood. During that visit I was so unfortunate as to acquire a severe cold -— one indeed which seems to have permeated my system so thoroughly as to render me almost incapable of any kind of effort, either physical or mental, which I trust satisfactorily explains my long silence. Under any circumstance I prize this little book very highly for its own intrinsic merits — for the kindly and cheerful humor which everywhere prevails from beginning to end; but its value to one is infinitely enhanced by the circumstance that the writer found a place even among his last thoughts for his old friend and commander, and found time, even at the moment when the world was sliding away from him, to remember me and request that a copy of his book might be sent me! 

How much of “Mighels” was shown in that single and touching circumstance. Those alone can appreciate who knew the great big heart that beat in his manly breast! 

Dear “Old Mighels!” His heart went out in kindness to all the world, and the very last person he ever thought of, was Mighels himself. With a mind sparkling as a diamond — a heart filled to running over with the milk of human kindness — a courage which shrank from no danger — he had in addition, that which charmed and fascinated from the very first moment of his acquaintance. 

He joined me for the first time at Ft. Leavenworth in the spring of 1862, and by his open, frank, genial and straightforward manner, at once so rooted himself in my affections that in all our subsequent trials, hardships, aspirations and dangers, my heart clung to him precisely as though he had been a member of my own family. 

Indeed, my children grew up to look upon him and love him as though he in some way belonged to them — and it is very hard for them as well as for myself to realize that none of us will ever listen to the bright sallies of his ever-ready wit or hear his cheerful voice again! 

There were many people who thought highly of Harry. The publishers who hired him to come to Carson City were anxious to keep him. At Mighels insistence, they purchased a lot and building on Second Street facing the Capitol plaza (called the public square since the Capitol building did not yet exist); along with materials, presses, type fonts and equipment. 

As he explained to Nellie: 

I told them before I came here that I would not consent to take charge of a paper that was a mere speculation, liable to frequent charge of proprietors and they assured me that it would be a permanent institution… the purchase of a new office by the Appeal proprietors is better guaranty of permanence than they exhibited before with the old one. 

In the Appeal’s purchased building, Mighels turned the upper part of the tiny, two-story building into a “cozy little sanctum” where he could sleep at night and work during the day. Up until that time he was obliged to work at a table in the state controller’s office. The state controller was a longtime personal friend who was anxious to see Harry stay and prosper in Carson City. Mighels even penned letters to his fiancé on the state controller’s office stationery. 

State Controller A.W. Nightingill was indeed an enthusiastic booster of Harry Mighels. In addition to providing him workspace, Nightingill also insisted Harry move in with him. Nightingill must have also felt responsible for Harry’s eventual fate since it was he who tipped off Mighels about the job to begin with. Obviously Nightingill was anxious to see him succeed. 

Other Carsonites also made room for Mighels. According to his letters, his first Thanksgiving in Carson City was spent with the governor. He told Nellie:

Day after tomorrow is our Thanksgiving Day and I am to dine with his majesty Gov. Blasdel. He is a tremendously big man — about six feet three in height and stalwart in proportion. Not fat, nor yet spindling. A man of moderate abilities, entirely honest and a very good friend of the editor of the Carson Appeal. And if he doesn’t furnish me with a good dinner, I’ll put him in the papers! 

By Christmas time of that first year, Harry had abandoned roommate Nightingill. He was living with a family named Johnson. Head of that household was a former California governor, J. Neely Johnson. In a Christmas day letter Mighels comments:

Mrs. Johnson made me a present this morning, of a beautiful silver napkin ring, engraved with my initials. Of course, as I told her upon accepting it, I shall keep it as part of my plate when I go to housekeeping.

That napkin ring is now in the possession of his grandson who keeps and uses the ring at his dinner table.

Kind words are, of course, a reasonable way to assess a person’s professional ability. Another way is to look at salaries’ employers are willing to pay for services. 

At the peak of his journalism career in California, Mighels was hired to take the helm of a San Francisco newspaper during a hot and heavy and particularly crucial political season, Mighels was paid $500 a week. Editors routinely earned $40 a week in these times. 

The story goes that Harry was being pestered to take the job and was urged to name his own salary. Hoping to put off the askers once and for all, he named the $500 figure. To Harry’s amazement they accepted, and Harry was then forced to hire an editor for the Appeal; something he had done several times at the Appeal when other interests called for his attention. 

A candid dialogue in C.C. Goodwin’s book, “The Comstock Club,” gives insight into the journalism profession as practiced in Nevada right after the Civil War and allows a brief but interesting glimpse of the Mighels personality. 

In the book, Alex Strong, a Comstock journalist, is talking with Col J.A. Savage, a local attorney. Both are members of the Comstock Club and are engaged in after-dinner parlor room talk. 

Strong, talking about the disheartening project of putting out a newspaper for an uncaring public observes: 

If for five days in the week, I make newspapers which my judgment tells me are passably good, it appears to me the only use that is made of them is for servant girls to kindle fires with, and do up their bangs in; but if, on the sixth day, my heart is heavy and my brain thick, and the paper the next morning is poor, it seems to me that everybody in the camp looks curiously at met as if to ascertain for a certainty, whether or not, I am in the early stages of brain softening. 

Savage: “A reasonable suspicion, I fancy, Alex; but what do you think of your brother editors of this coast as men and writers?” 

“Most of them are good fellows, and bright writers. If you knew under what conditions some of them work, you would take your hat off every time you met them… but as the eight notes of the scale, in their combinations, fill the world with music — or with discords — so the work of an editor covers all the subjects on which men have ever thought, or ever will think, and the best that any one editor can do is to handle a few subjects well. Among our coast editors there is one with more marked characteristics, more flashes of genius in certain directions, more contradictions and more pluck than any other one possesses. 

“That one is Harry Mighels, of Carson. I mention him because I fear that his work is finished. The last we heard of him was, that he was disputing with the surgeons in San Francisco, they telling him that he was fatally ill, and he offering to wager two to one that they were badly mistaken.” 

“Poor Harry,” mused the colonel; “he is a lucky man. I heard one of our rich men once try to get him to write something, or not to write something. I have forgotten which, and when Mighels declined to consent, the millionaire told him he was too poor to be so exceedingly independent. Here Mighels, in a low voice, which sounded to me like the purr of a tiger, said: ‘You are quite mistaken; you do not know how rich I am. I have that little printing office at Carson; paper enough to last me for a week or 10 days. I have a wife and three babies,’ and then suddenly raising his voice to the dangerous note and bringing his fist down on the table before him with a crash, he shouted, ‘and they are all mine!’”

“The rich man looked at him, and, smiling said: 

“Don’t talk like a fool, Mighels.” The old humor was back in Mighels’ face in an instant, as he replied “Was I talking like a fool, old man? What a sublime faculty I have of exactly gauging my conversation to the mental grasp of my listener!” 

The most entertaining and insightful profile of Harry Mighels this writer has found was written by Sam Davis shortly after Mighels’ death. At the time of the writing, Davis was working at the Virginia City Chronicle. The lengthy article was printed the first time in the San Francisco Argonaut Aug. 16, 1879, and in the second printing of Mighels’ book “Sage Brush Leaves.” 

Davis’ expert story-telling style captures glimpses of the Mighels’ personality: 

Calling upon him one Sunday afternoon the writer found him in his shirt sleeves, on his front doorstop explaining to his children the points of an ugly toad. The next two hours was spent listening to a lecture on toads, bugs, lizards, etc., delivered with immense effect to a group of youngsters, who invariably gathered from the neighboring yards on such occasions. Mighels was wont to amuse himself with these discourses, and they were replete with scientific fact, merry jest, or outrageous exaggeration as the spirit moved him. To keep one of these groups grinning and laughing was to him a source of immense recreation, and he once remarked that the only true road to earthly happiness was to erect a little cobbler’s shop at the crossroads of some country town and become the oracle of all the ragged children of the neighborhood. “I don’t care a rap for the opinions of men, but I will make children love me or know the reason why.” 

He lived in a little squat house of queer architectural proportions, which had the appearance of having been enlarged just in ratio that the family had increased. It was surrounded by fruit and shade trees of many varieties, together with rose and lilac bushes, and all planted without the slightest regard for form or order — two things which their owner held in the heartiest possible contempt. An apple tree had been trained to grow with its branches down; a cottonwood slanted up from the soil at an angle of 45 degrees; all sorts of plants and flowers were mixed together in the wildest confusion; and it was the owner’s boast that there wasn’t a plumb line or a right angle that he knew of about the premises. 

In the corner of the yard was a queer little rookery, which he always called his “den.” It was a little house about 10x10, filled with sketches in oil, fishing tackle, guns, books, etchings, printers’ material and all sorts of traps thrown together in uncleanliness and confusion. Here he wrote editorials and put them in type, manufactured artificial flies for fishing, and painted indefatigably. He brought down scores of sketches every year from the mountains and gave them away as fast as he put them upon canvas. These would bring good prices today if put on the market. He seemed to have more of a genuine liking for painting than anything else which he did, and each year when the heated season began, he was in the habit of packing up his paints and brushes, camp outfit and a light tent, and burying himself in the mountains for weeks. He generally took his children on these trips — the oldest but 12 — and in the fastness of the Sierra he fished, hunted, sketched and led a wild, vagabondish life, which any student of nature cannot help appreciating and enjoying. His return from one of these trips was indeed a sight, and the crowd homeward bound might easily be mistaken for a band of Paiutes or gypsies. 

During the last campaign in Nevada, he ran for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket, and what little life was enthused into the campaign was born in his ringing speeches. He had always been an aggressive and belligerent man in politics and journals and no sooner did his head show itself than it was a universal target. The principal weapon used against him was the back files of the Appeal, which had often bitter abuse of the foreign element, and especially the Cornish and Canadians. He believed that no class of men who lived on earth were the equals of native-born Americans, and he was never backward in expressing his opinion. The fight made against him on this score was a particularly bitter one. It was supposed by many that he would make some explanation upon the stump, but there was nothing of the “craw-fish” element in the man; and went squarely before the people, admitted that his sentiments had not been misquoted, and commended those who held different views to the society of the devil. On the eve of election, he made a speech to a crowded audience at Piper’s Opera House, Virginia City; and as it had been rumored about the town that Mighels would indulge in a square back down of his views and make the “amend honorable,” a large portion of the audience was composed of the men whose nationalities he had abused. Those who were best posted on the temper of the speaker, however, knew that there was no such thing as compromise in him. His language was, as near as I can recollect, as follows: 

“I have been informed that this evening I am expected to make certain retractions to the foreigners in this audience or be defeated at the polls. I won’t apologize or take anything back, as I prefer defeat to such a contemptible course.” Then shaking his finger defiantly at the gallery he continued, “I would not purchase my election at such a price if it were to save the souls of every mother’s son of you from everlasting perdition.” This is bold language for a pditical candidate to utter on the eve of election. He was beaten. 

His paper, the Morning Appeal, was never a newspaper, but rather a vehicle for his quaint fancies, happy conceits and original expressions. In addition, he was an educated man, and his English was of the purest. He was at times a remarkable coiner of words, but the metal he made them from was always up to the regular standard of fineness and the etymological dies true to a hair. He picked up odd subjects and extracted a vast amount of “nutriment” from them. He would preach a delightful sermon on a sausage-shop, and an old shirt fluttering on a clothesline would furnish inspiration for a humorous poem.

Personally, he was an odd mixture, possessing those qualities which belong to a roll of velvet and a crosscut saw. He was a most delightful companion to friends, but his dislikes he could never conceal, and he preferred to be insulting than hypocritical. This made him legions of bitter enemies and his combative, uncompromising temperament kept alive these animosities. 

A few days before his death the writer called to see him. He was coiled up in an easy chair, dreadfully worn out and haggard, with a cancer in his stomach grasping his vitals like an octopus. Neither spoke for several minutes, when the following conversation took place, he opening the ball:

“Are you sick?” 

“No.” 

“Have they sold your five shares of Pictou?” 

“Guess not.” 

“Then why the devil do you sit round here as solemncholy as an Egyptian mummy who couldn’t pay the rent for his cell in a catacomb?” 

The writer hinted in a mild way at the speaker’s approaching demise.

“Now, I’m the man who is to be buried and suppose you allow me to do the emotional. I wouldn’t feel as bad as you look for $50.” 

At this the writer concluded to indulge in a little jocularity, and remarked, “Oh, I’ll never ride behind your coffin.” At which the shattered and wasted invalid replied, with a merry laugh:

“Why you infernal fool do you propose to walk?” 

For the next hour he conversed about his forthcoming funeral in a style that showed the indomitable pluck of a man who was determined that he would not cringe at pain or look solemn upon the eve of death. He maintained this astonishing nerve to the end, and he died in the arms of his wife, who was his faithful attendant to the last. Just before passing away, he seemed to be relapsing into unconsciousness, and his wife, rousing him a little, said:

“Do you know me, Harry?” 

He opened his eyes and, looking up with a smile, replied: “I think we’ve met before.” 

In a few moments he was dead. 

He was buried the day before Decoration Day, and nearly every town in the state sent representatives to his funeral. Carson showed 100 flags at half mast, and the little Episcopal church, where the remains lay, could not accommodate the mourners. The next day his grave was so heaped with flowers that the original earth was covered from sight. By sunset, the blasts which sweep over the sagebrush had scattered these flowers far and wide, just as the blasts of calumny sweep away the good deeds of men. Mighels had plenty of faults, but their glaring was never veiled by hypocrisy; and with the soul of a poet, and the heart of a soldier in his breast, he died upon the spot which had witnessed the most crushing defeats and hardest fought triumphs of his life, laying aside a sword which — shattered though it was — he had taught his enemies to respect. 

Mighels died at his home at 11:30 p.m., May 27, 1879.