Portrait of William Sharon

People/financier, politician

William Sharon

William Sharon (1821–1885), financier, politician, from United States. Linked to silver, gold.

The lucky break

Sent by the Bank of California in 1864 to the Comstock during a slump. Lent at two per cent a month against rivals at three to five, then foreclosed on defaulting mines and mills.1,2

Legacy

Built a Comstock monopoly of mines, mills and the Virginia and Truckee Railroad.1,2

Story cards

Drag to turn the globe

Where next

Mines

OwnedComstock LodeThe banker who foreclosed his way into a monopoly of the Comstock.1

Sources

  1. William Sharon Online Nevada Encyclopedia
  2. File pages and licence metadata for portraits (via the Commons imageinfo/extmetadata API) Wikimedia Commons

Pictures on this page: William Sharon - Brady-Handy.jpg, Mathew Benjamin Brady / Levin Corbin Handy (Public domain).

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Pictures: South Africa: a crowd of people gathered outside The Goldfields offices in Johannesburg. 1896., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0); Gold prospectors constructing a long box with a filter for panning gold. Process print after H.M. Paget, 1899., Henry Marriott Paget (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Pangkalpinang. Mijn 3b. Een reeks koelies bezig met het transporteeren van grond, Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0).