Joseph Raphael De Lamar was born in Amsterdam, Holland, September 2, 1843. His father, a banker in Amsterdam, died when he was six years of age, and the lad in love of adventure went aboard a Dutch vessel that plied to the West Indies. When the young stowaway was discovered, he was put to work as assistant to the cook without wages.
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He worked as a seaman until he was twenty, when he became master of a ship, and three years later received a captain's command. He visited almost every port in the world and acquired a wonderful education through his observations in foreign countries. His alert mind was attracted to submarine work, which was profitable, owing to the American Civil War, and, with characteristic energy, he abandoned the merchant service and became a submarine contractor, with headquarters at Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, operating along the entire coast to the West Indies.
He received several contracts for raising sunken ships, and was very successful. In 1872 he raised the "Charlotte," a transatlantic steamship loaded with Italian marble that had foundered off the Bermudas, and which had baffled the attempts of three previous wrecking companies. His experience, which nearly cost him his life, at Martha's Vineyard, going down in his diving suit to examine personally the damage to the Steamer "William Tibbitts," in which he was imprisoned for thirty-six hours, led Captain De Lamar to relinquish submarine work.
He then studied the opportunities of trade with Africa; trading companies had confined their operations to the Coast, the natives from the interior bringing their goods to the Coast on the shoulders of negroes at considerable expense. Captain De Lamar decided to do trading in the interior. He equipped a small vessel, capable of navigating the African rivers, stocked with goods and armed with four small cannon, a dozen blunderbusses, rifles and ammunition. He pushed on to the interior, exercising constant vigilance to prevent attacks from hostile tribes. His venture was crowned with complete success. He traded principally on the Gambia and Great Jeba Rivers. After three successful years he gave up this trade on account of the climate so many of his crew died every year of African fever. He sold his outfit to an English company.
In 1878 he came to New York, and when the gold fever struck Leadville, Colorado, he went West and bought several claims, and the same year took a private course in chemistry and metallurgy under a professor from Chicago University. He returned to the mining fields and purchased the Terrible lead mine in Custer County, Colorado, which he sold to the Omaha & Grant Smelting and Refining Company at a handsome profit. He then obtained control of a mountain six miles west of Silver City, Idaho. Many large veins of gold and silver were discovered on the property and he sold a half interest, after he had taken $1,500,000 from the mine to the De Lamar Mining Company of England for $2,000,000.
In July 1899 Captain De Lamar purchased the Bully Hill mines, California, and financed the big copper smelter, which was operating near there. A railroad project was installed to connect level 3 of the mine with the smelter, and the project became informally known as the DeLamar Railroad, which became part of the Sacramento Valley and Eastern Railway.
Captain De Lamar invested in several other mines in Colorado, California, Nevada and Idaho. Three former mining cities, ghost tows nowadays, Delamar, Nevada, De Lamar, Idaho, and Delamar, California, were renamed after him, the last mining town is now under water of Shasta Lake.
The Delamar Mountains, a mountain range in Lincoln County, Nevada, as well a mountain summit in San Bernardino County, California, were named after him. Delamar Mountain in California climbs to 8,376 feet (2,553.00 meters) above sea level, located at latitude N 34.290839, longitude W -116.945034 coordinates. For his gold mining activities in Nevada and Colorado, Captain De Lamar, together with others, organized companies for starting barrel-chlorination of the telluride gold ores.
The chlorination plant at Delamar, Nevada did not operate long time. At the Delamar Mine, Nevada, the barrel-chlorinating process was installed in 1895 and soon later discarded in favour of fine grinding and cyaniding.[1]
A chlorination plant was built in 1893 by Edward Holden at the small town of Lawrence which at one time adjoined the town of Victor, Colorado.[2] Captain De Lamar, together with Edward Holden, Charles M. MacNeill and George W. Peirce (of the Golden Fleece Mine (Colorado)), had organized a company for starting the first barrel-chlorination plant in Colorado, and were about to rehabilitate an old stamp-mill some little distance below Victor, known as the Lawrence plant.[3] The conventional stamp mill in which the ore was crushed and the gold amalgamated with mercury was almost useless in refining Cripple Creek ore. At first, the process didn't work well, but it was refined by Daniel C. Jackling under the surveillance of Charles MacNeill, until it produced very good results. In December 1895, the chlorination mill at Lawrence burned to the ground.[4]
In February 1894, De Lamar sold the Lawrence plant to Edward Holden, the mill expert who had lured the Guggenheims into the smelting business at Leadville.[5]
He was the sole owner of the Utah Mines and Smelting Company, of Colorado. He was one of the most noted traders in Wall Street for over twenty years, and one of the leading financiers of the country. He was president of the Dome Mine Company, Porcupine, Canada; president of the Delta Beet Sugar Company; vice-president of the International Nickel Company; a director of the American Bank Note Company, Coronate Phosphate Company, the Canadian Mining and Exploration Company, American Sumatra Tobacco Company, Manhattan Sugar Company, the National Conduit and Cable Company and the Western Power Company.
In 1891 he served as State Senator in the first Legislature of Idaho, and occupied the Chairmanship on Finance, Railroads and Constitutional Amendments. He was offered the highest honours in the gift of the State, but declined to continue in politics and removed to New York.
He was known in Wall Street as "the man of mystery." He never talked much, his intimate friends say, but was uniformly successful in his transactions. He made millions out of his deal in the Nipissing Gold Mine in 1906.
He married, May 8, 1893, Nellie Virginia Sands, a direct descendant of John Quincy Adams, and had one daughter, Alice A. De Lamar. Captain De Lamar was a member of the Lotus, and the New York Yacht, Larchmont and Columbia Yacht Clubs. He was the owner of the yacht "May" and "Sagitta," the fastest power boat on the Sound. He was a great believer in aerial navigation and devoted considerable time to the study of the subject.
He was also an art connoisseur, a collector of fine paintings, statuary and other art objects. He was also a great lover of music, but his greatest delight was in the gathering of rare plants and flowers, of which he possessed a wonderful collection. He left a large sum to the Harvard University Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University for research into the causes of disease and for the promulgation through lectures, publications, and otherwise of the principles of correct living.
His house on Madison Avenue is a New York landmark building today.
He died December 1, 1918. His life was full of well directed energy and splendid achievement. A man of large vision, nothing was too vast for him to undertake to perform.
Joseph and Alice De Lamar's lives were the subject of the In Search of... season 4 episode,"The Missing Heirs.".[6]