Ritchie - Born in America
In 1838 Samuel J. Ritchie was born in Boston Township Ohio. His parents were recent Presbyterian immigrants from Northern Ireland. Samuel started his professional life as a school teacher then turned his attention to the business of railways and of lumbering. He then added carriage manufacturing to his interests and by 1867 he was well settled around Tallmadge, Ohio. Only a few years earlier Samuel Ritchie and Sophronia Hale of Bath, Ohio, had married. (
just a curiosity but what are the odds that the Batt sisters who marry the Chew brothers are products of Bath - it was a time when any American who was siding with the British loyalists went fleeing for safety in Upper Canada - a change of name might not be a bad idea - just a thought ).
In 1871 Ritchie was in the coal mining business and sewer pipe business after having sold his carriage manufacturing shop. Ritchie was the typical travelling salesman. Fire burnt down some of his and his associates business around 1878 and for Ritchie this would be yet another turning point in his career.
Meanwhile.........
McMullen brothers, Ritchie and Coe
George William McMullen originally from Picton, Ontario, Canada, and then based in Chicago, Illinois, USA, had been dealing in railways and had at one point been involved in the Canadian railway scandals that resulted in million dollar contracts going to the newly formed Canadian Pacific Railway Company for James Hill, Kennedy and others.....( Jekyll Island members ).
McMullen introduced Ritchie to iron mining in Hastings County, Ontario. (interesting note - the county thing was English and in my opinion a concept pushed by the oligarchies who ruled trade in Upper and Lower Canada - Chateau Clique and Family Compact -
Districts was the common way territories came to be known later ).
In 1880 Samuel Ritchie was in the railway business again with the McMullen brothers and the Picton to Trenton line, aka Prince Edward County Railroad.
The trio took on a partner and bought rights to several thousand acres around Hastings. That partner was William Coe of Madoc.
US - Cleveland Smelters - didn't know that there was a Cleveland in England also associated to smelting in the early 1800's!!!
The US Cleveland was named after General Moses Cleaveland in 1796. At that time the steel industry hardly existed because steel was too expensive to produce. The custom was to produce wrought or cast iron products until the mid 1850's when processes of
manipulating pig iron came into play.
After 1815 when the Europeans had subdued the original inhabitants of this part of the American continent and had built a frontier republic for themselves they went further in their pursuit of wealth and built a canal between the Hudson river and Lake Erie. They also built the Ohio canal. That project started around 1825.
"The furnaces were built and operated for the purpose of extracting iron from the native iron ores." Quote from http://www.oldeforester.com/ironintr.htm#Evolution where the smelting story is told.
Back to .....
Samuel Ritchie and his journey towards Canadian Copper Company
In 1882 the four partners established the Central Ontario Railway. At the same time the Coe Hill Mining Company (incorporated 1880) came into being when they transfered the lands at Hastings to this company. Ritchie was a major financial backer in Coe Hill Mining and when the ore under the Hastings lands proved unworkable he was on the verge of bankruptcy. (
again we could delve into conspiracy if we thought that Hill in Coe Hill was an association to James Hill but the accepted story of Coe Hill states that Harry Johnson had discovered iron ore in a hill in the Hastings area - James Hill was a silent partner in many a deals but was he in this deal ????).
Samuel Ritchie set his sails toward New Ontario in 1885 and stepped off at Canadian Pacific Railway's Sudbury Junction. The bait that brought him to northern Ontario was the same as it was for many wealth seekers. Sudbury was the place to be for start up mining companies looking to strike a mother lode. If I am not mistaking, Ritchie used up some of his COR assets to back up his purchase of mining rights in the north.
However he wasn't completely in control of Central Ontario Railway. He had creditors and financial associates and they didn't agree on the position Ritchie took and the risk it posed to COR.
They, Cornell, Burke, Payne, must have trusted Ritchie. They formed two new companies in 1886 and named Ritchie president of one; Canadian Copper Company. The other: the Anglo-American Iron Company. They named Ritchie VP of that company.
Ritchie took an office in the village of Sudbury ( not incorporated as a city until much later ) and worked the Canadian Copper Company for the next few years. He used all of his sales tactics to lure in labor, land and industry. In other words Samuel Ritchie was the "factor" behind the early success of the Canadian Copper Company. As a copper company they came looking for copper but stayed for the nickel.
Robert M. Thompson
Orford Copper Company of New Jersey had been operating for some time and Ritchie, who was many things but not a metallurgist, looked to Thompson's Orford CC for help. Ritchie sent samples of his ores to Thompson. (
still researching if there is a connection between this Thompson and the owner of the Thompson sawmill in Larchwood )
Within a few years Copper Cliff had taken shape with the help of Ritchie and Canadian Copper Company. Ritchie knew that he had plenty of ore he could stock but he and his company didn't really have a market to sell it. Ritchie took to the road and went on a sales journey.
In 1890, if the letter I found here is accurate,
Cornell was now President of Canadian Copper Company. (
another source says he was made President in 1887 )
Creighton and the Copper Cliff Smelter
A smelter was blown in at Copper Cliff in 1888.
Cornell, as states the 1890 letter, was looking for a headquarter for Canadian Copper Company and the name Mount Tracy came to mind. Tracy was a US navy guy while the navy needed a good alloy in their ship building projects. Ritchie sold Tracy. By 1991 CCC and the US Navy were bonded by contracts and CCC was in the money. At about the same time Ritchie, the early factor ( imo, pawn ), was slowly being pushed out of the CCC environment and inner circle of trust. The Ritchie story, if true, goes that he was zigging when the other execs were zagging. He was putting them ( the major financial guys ) at undue risk. COR, CCC, and AAIC fought it out in court for many years.
Meanwhile Cornell and Canadian Copper Co built Creighton.
Interestingly, by 1900, a lumberjack named Charles Augustus Sanders had come to work in Copper Cliff. Charles had come to northern Ontario with his relative, the Chew brothers. They had operated a sawmill in Chelmsford ( Balfour Township ) for a few years in the early 1890's and then the Chews and their nephew moved to Pembroke. They then visited Petawawa where the Chews had relatives. While in Petawawa, Charles Sanders married Elizabeth Kennedy. The Chews supposedly went to BC while Charles and Elizabeth returned north.
Charles spent some 5 years building houses for CCC then returned to live in Balfour Township next door to Treadwell Yukon's Bradleyville ( Bradyll's pit imo ;) ) .
Again, we could point this into the realm of conspiracy, but the reality of it all is not conspiratorial as much as it is the basic nature of humanity. All of these events are simply part of the "factor" game where the distribution of wealth is the end result of the control of land, industry, labor. If one group controls a single one of these factors then they can almost control all of them. ( That's how you do it in the game Monopoly ).
The more dangerous thing about this factor effect is that any right minded investor would never attempt to own 100 percent of any thing. The magic of the game, imo, is that a control interest of 51 % of anything is enough to control it all. That is a story in itself and not necessarily part of the Canadian Copper Company story.
Canadian Copper Company was merged into International Nickel Company Ltd in 1902 along with Orford Copper and American Nickel Works.
It is interesting to note that the Errington mine and the Little Vermillion mine which were and are in the virtual backyard where the Sanders played went on to be part of the Falconbridge project which was the main competitor of INCO.
Even more interesting is the fact that in 2013 when Errington and Vermillion mines are being re opened there is talk of merger between the two giants who have now become Vale and Glencore Xstrata.
_________
A preacher once made a comment about the struggle between Ritchie and his associates or enemies which described these enemies as a,
tribe of bastard lawyers, Ishmaelites, sons of the bond woman. . . . who . . . tend themselves to a systematic blackmailing of the successful man
Canadian Copper Company was just another event in the ongoing " factor effect " game of life. IMO
