In 2026, the Silvery Slocan Historical Society received a thick folder of photocopied correspondence to Johnny Harris and the Reco Mining and Milling Co., dated 1896 and 1897. Wayne McCrory, who donated the papers, copied them from the late Phil Milburn in March 2005. Milburn died in 2019 and it is unclear if the originals survived. I have scanned the copies and made them available below to be downloaded as PDFs, either as a single package or in smaller bits.

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Almost all of the 430 pages consist of incoming correspondence. The few examples of outgoing correspondence survived only because the recipient wrote their reply on Johnny’s letter or because the letter was returned as undeliverable.

 

A lot of the letters are from various smelters that processed ore from the Reco mine (Chicago and Aurora Smelting and Refining of Aurora, Ill.; Denver Public Sampling Works Co.; Globe Smelting and Refining Co. of Denver; Omaha and Grant Smelting Co.; Tacoma Smelting & Refining Co., Puget Sound Reduction Co. of Everett, Wash., and United Smelting and Refining Co. of Great Falls, Mont.).

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There are also acknowledgements from shareholders of dividends, inquiries from brokers about Reco stock, and responses from mining supply and hardware companies about various pieces of equipment. Most of this is very dull reading. Often the letters are much more interesting for their letterheads than for their contents. But I have enumerated some of the more significant bits below.

 

• In The King of Sandon, p. 68-69, I discuss Reco and Mining and Milling’s proposed concentrator and tramway, neither of which materialized. A letter from the Kaslo and Slocan Railway reveals Johnny’s plan to build the concentrator on the company’s right-of-way was held up because of legal complications involving the CPR. 

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But a tramway still would have been useful without a concentrator. There is correspondence with the California Wire Works, Dominion Wire Rope Co., Ingersoll-Sergeant, Trenton Iron Company, and Washburn & Moen Mfg. Co., about the tramway but no indication why it wasn’t built. 

 

Samuel Prowse, a senator from Prince Edward Island and a Reco investor along with his sons, inquired about the tramway in November 1897:

 

Last spring at Ottawa you informed us that the company expected to open up a tramway from Sandon to the mine and have a concentrator erected by the 1st of September last when you would be enabled to ship the ore at a minimum of cost all the year round … I confess I was somewhat disappointed when in Sandon to find that nothing had been done on the works referred to except make the survey for the tramway … When do you propose opening up the tramway and building the contractor? Or is it postponed indefinitely?

 

Sadly, we don’t have Johnny’s reply, but we do have Prowse’s follow-up letter which expressed “much satisfaction” with whatever answer he received and added: “I am sure my sons will also be quite satisfied with your reasons for delay in building the improvements referred to.” 

 

• One of the brokers Johnny was in touch with was Sidney Norman, who went on to write Johnny’s obituary and sing his praises generally. But in one of the few revealing bits of correspondence, Reco Mining and Milling director Sam Wharton tells Johnny: “Sid Norman has called Reco at $1 every morning with no takers. And I don’t think he is the man to handle Reco, or any other stock broker here.” And again: “I don’t like your agent here and I don’t think he is a suitable person to handle Reco stock.”

 

• There’s a letter of resignation from Levi Smith as assistant manager of the Reco mine, “as I am confident that I shall not be able to satisfactorily discharge the duties of my position.” 

 

• Johnny’s business cards (presumably including one that I have in my collection, pictured in The King of Sandon on p. 73, and another that sold in 2026 on eBay) came from Thomson Stationery Co. of Nelson. In March 1897, Johnny was offered 3,000 cards for $18 or 5,000 for $25, but it is not clear which quantity he went with.

 

• Johnny hired Vancouver lithographer J.B. Grant to provide his cheques, letterheads, and envelopes. He also received cheques for Reco Mining and Milling from the Traders National Bank of Spokane. 

 

• A letter from the International Navigation and Trading Co., pushed back on Johnny’s complaint that his ore shipments via the company’s sternwheelers had been mixed with shipments from other mines:

 

I wish to inform you that your last shipment … your sacks were in such condition that we had to resack 26 sacks, and used Ruth sacks in place of your own, which were so rotten that they could not be handled on this car, and your ore was delayed in one day in consequence … In future we do not propose to take such trouble at our own expense, and shall leave the ore here until it is sacked in such a manner as to enable us to handle it without loss.

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• My favourite letterhead is one from a short-lived Kaslo newspaper, the British Columbia News: “Circulated More Extensively Among Mining Men Than Any Paper Coming into or Published in West Kootenay.” 

 

• There’s a letter from a J.M. Davis of Chicago to an H.S. Wilson over a stock transfer. J.M. Davis was Johnny’s birth name, but this appears to be just a coincidence.

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• There are a series of dividend acknowledgements from Johnny’s relatives in Vernon Mills, including Henry, George Sr., George Jr., Clarence, Warren, and Clinton Davis.

 

• There is a letter from Judge William Ward Spinks accepting the offer to sit as a director of the Reco Mining and Milling Co. Spinks had ruled against Johnny in a court case, and I initially wondered if bringing him on board was an attempt to hedge against further unfavourable rullings. But by the time he joined the board, Spinks had been transferred to Vernon, making it unlikely he would have run into any further cases regarding Slocan mines.

 

• One letter indicates Johnny filed a claim with the Employers’ Liability Assurance Corp. Ltd. after Hugh McLellan was injured at the Reco mine, but I don’t know if they paid out.

 

• In 1897, Johnny received a quote from the London and Lancashire Fire Insurance Co. for coverage of “the hotel, office buildings and livery barn at Sandon.” There is no sign that he took out a policy. When Sandon burned in 1900, none of Johnny’s buildings were insured.

 

• One of the most interesting letters is from Randall H. Kemp, a journalist and self-proclaimed mining expert who wrote to Fred Kelly to complain about how Johnny owed him $50 for work completed two years earlier. He was “now so in need of the money, I appeal to your sense of right and justice to interest yourself in seeing that it is paid.” Based on a postcard sent a couple of weeks later, it appears he was indeed paid: “I am very much obliged for the inclosure [sic], it came in handy.” 

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• Among other semi-regular correspondents: surveyor Arthur Farwell; Wallace, Idaho civil and mining engineer George Trask; and longtime Ontario member of parliament George Foster, who was an investor in the Reco mine and at one time considered buying it.

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• Moster, Bahmann & Co. of Cincinnati indicated Johnny had ordered a safe from them: “Mr. Garretson said that you would send us a special picture for the outside, which up to this time has not come to hand.” In the same month, he was corresponding with the Maxwell Photo Co. of Spokane, about some photos, of what I don’t know. The same company advertised “Portraits in India Ink, Water Colors, Crayon, Pastel and Sepia/Full Sets of Views of Surrounding Country always on hand.”

 

• My favourite thing of all is correspondence with the Matthews-Northrup Co. of Buffalo about the creation of the Reco Mining and Milling Co. prospectus. Why did Johnny go so far afield to have it done? I’m guessing he saw another mining prospectus that he liked and learned that Matthews-Northrup had created it. Johnny originally ordered 5,000 copies, but apparently was so pleased with the results that he increased the order to 10,000, which cost $1,275. Also provided were 2,500 envelopes to send them in. At least a handful of copies of the prospectus survive (including one in my collection) but I’ve never seen one of the envelopes. Also, it turns out half of the booklets were produced in gold ink (like mine) and the other half in black ink. 

 

• There is also some non-Johnny correspondence from January 1952 between the local manager of Cody-Reco Mines Ltd. and his boss in Toronto. There’s an interesting letter about their difficulties securing a cook and how, out of desperation, they started hiring women. They didn’t spell out why they felt this was such an unfortunate development.