Helena/Julia

[Hinterlander]

This may be a beginner's question but... I've* been using the additional freetime that I seem to have nowadays to "go back to the basics" and reread both Sims Ely's book and the Bark Notes. Something that never really stood out to me before really caught my attention for some reason this time. On pages 87 & 88 of his book (my copy is the "Third Printing, April 1957"), Sims states "Helena Thomas (or Julia, as she is sometimes called in these apocryphal versions)" and "Helena was Mrs. Charles Thomas, not Mrs. J. E.". It had seemed to me that the common knowledge from everything else that I have read, including numerous books and posts on this and other forums, was that Julia was Julia who had been married to Emil W. Thomas. These men were contemporaries of Helena and interviewed her and Rheiny face to face multiple times to get to the facts of what Waltz had told them. It then hit me that if they couldn't get something as basic as her name and identity correct, what does that say for everything else in their books/manuscripts? Or, have we just skewed (and screwed) everything to fit our own narrative? Can anyone help enlighten me on this?

Sal

 

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[deducer]

Hi Sal, and welcome to the forum. That was a great post you wrote.

You are on target with your questions and have identified probably the two biggest nemesis of dutch-hunting, the sheer lack of accurate and objective research, and the temptation of many dutch-hunters to twist everything to fit their narrative (or location).

 

[Oroblanco]

Hinterlander wrote

This may be a beginner's question but... I've* been using the additional freetime that I seem to have nowadays to "go back to the basics" and reread both Sims Ely's book and the Bark Notes. Something that never really stood out to me before really caught my attention for some reason this time. On pages 87 & 88 of his book (my copy is the "Third Printing, April 1957"), Sims states "Helena Thomas (or Julia, as she is sometimes called in these apocryphal versions)" and "Helena was Mrs. Charles Thomas, not Mrs. J. E.". It had seemed to me that the common knowledge from everything else that I have read, including numerous books and posts on this and other forums, was that Julia was Julia who had been married to Emil W. Thomas. These men were contemporaries of Helena and interviewed her and Rheiny face to face multiple times to get to the facts of what Waltz had told them. It then hit me that if they couldn't get something as basic as her name and identity correct, what does that say for everything else in their books/manuscripts? Or, have we just skewed (and screwed) everything to fit our own narrative? Can anyone help enlighten me on this?

Ditto to what mi amigo Deducer said, Welcome to the forum Sal!

I have to qualify this but yes - while it is generally best to stick with the oldest/closest to events/persons type of sources for your information, it is also necessary to keep in mind there are some severe limitations in those sources. Sims Ely had been a newspaperman, and in that day there was NO such thing as an internet to check and cross-verify any kind of information. Plus the bulk of the information he and ALL the other 'first' Dutch hunters had obtained came from what is today considered the ultimate worst possible type of sources - they got it by talking to people! (The horrors! Shudder!) This kind of source information is fraught with the possibilities for errors, exaggerations, and worse, deliberately misleading information. Some folks call that LIES.

To confound the problems, neither Sims Ely nor Jim Bark the assumed author of the Bark Notes, were actually prospectors. They did not even notice that the various stories they were accumulating as solid information about the Lost Dutchman's mine, really can't all be talking about the same mine or the same place! The ore descriptions for starters - one source has it as a rose quartz, another as a white quartz, and Apache Jack's gold ore was described as "black quartz with spots of gold like stars in the sky". Clearly these are not the same ore or the same mine! Even worse, they didn't apparently know the difference between lode gold (hard rock - still in the matrix) and placer, because they included the tale of the Mexican woman who remembered her husband "winnowing the pieces of gold out of the dirt like grains of wheat". This is a quite accurate description of how to dry-process a placer gold deposit by simply tossing it into the air on a blanket or gold pan in a stiff breeze, allowing the wind to carry away the lighter stuff and the gold falls onto the blanket or gold pan. It has nothing to do with a hard rock gold mine as Jacob Waltz must have had. I say must have had because he was seen by multiple witnesses selling hard rock gold ore, and the only specimens we have today that remain are the 'jewelry' which is online in multiple places, and one small piece the size of a hickory nut of which the whereabouts today I have no idea.

If you are serious about a search, yes DO turn back to the basics, and please also learn something of how to prospect for gold, look at as many different kinds of gold ore as you can, learn to pan (it is useful even for hard rock because you can crush the rock and pan out the gold) and some basic geology. Gold can occur almost anywhere (literally) but it is mostly found in certain kinds of rock - like quartz. Quartz is a secondary mineral, it is formed by superheated water that has lots of dissolved minerals in the water, that fills the cracks and voids in the rock that already existed in place. Hence the tendency for it to be found in 'veins' because of the similarity to veins, and some other rare forms like the 'chimney'. Anyway just keep in mind that while the oldest sources tend to be the best, you must keep the limitations in mind as well. Clearly several different lost mines have gotten mixed up together into an impossible legend of a gold mine, with an entrance like a giant funnel shaped pit, and an entrance hole no bigger than a barrel. It can't be both of those!

Good luck and good hunting Sal, I hope I have not discouraged you in any way.
Oroblanco

Coffee?

 

[Hinterlander]

Hello Oroblanco,

Thank you for the response and the welcome. Although I am new to posting, I've been a "lurking" member for quite some time. I've also been interested in the LDM since moving to Mesa 45 years ago. This was really just taking the opportunity to reread some books that I haven't read in a number of years and the question dawned on me. I am not one that puts a lot of weight into any of the clues, as they have morphed and changed with each book or retelling. But, like I said, this just really struck me that either Sims and Bark, who knew Helena/Julia firsthand were so far off that they couldn't even get that part of the story right, or we have so skewed the story in the last 100 years that we don't even have the most basic of information right anymore. Obviously, there is the possibility of an alternate explanation, (i.e. Helena was a nickname, Emil was known as Charles, both Sims and Bark were so old when writing their manuscripts they just got it wrong, etc.) but that seems really slim to me.

Thanks again for the info,

Sal

 

[azdave35]

Hello Oroblanco,

Thank you for the response and the welcome. Although I am new to posting, I've been a "lurking" member for quite some time. I've also been interested in the LDM since moving to Mesa 45 years ago. This was really just taking the opportunity to reread some books that I haven't read in a number of years and the question dawned on me. I am not one that puts a lot of weight into any of the clues, as they have morphed and changed with each book or retelling. But, like I said, this just really struck me that either Sims and Bark, who knew Helena/Julia firsthand were so far off that they couldn't even get that part of the story right, or we have so skewed the story in the last 100 years that we don't even have the most basic of information right anymore. Obviously, there is the possibility of an alternate explanation, (i.e. Helena was a nickname, Emil was known as Charles, both Sims and Bark were so old when writing their manuscripts they just got it wrong, etc.) but that seems really slim to me.

Thanks again for the info,

Sal

sal...in all probability ely and bark fudged the story a bit to throw people off....you cant believe everything you read in a book...you are relying on the author to tell the truth and as most of us know that rarely happens

 

[PotBelly Jim]

The Helena/Julia problem MIGHT be due to her religious beliefs. She styled herself a "Priestess Helena", or someone who is devoted to St. Helena of Constantinople. It could be that neither Bark nor Ely actually knew her first name (she could have been known simply as "Mrs. Thomas" or later "Mrs. Schaeffer") and were as confused as anyone as to what her first name actually was...Julia or Helena...or perhaps some people just called her Helena as an honorific...I don't think it was because they didn't actually know her.

EDIT: I wouldn't be surprised also, if Bark couldn't remember Emil Thomas's first name. Emil wasn't in Phoenix very long (3 years or so I think, just shooting from the hip) and I'm almost positive Ely never met him. So getting his first name wrong could be something as simple as a research error.

 

[deducer]

It then hit me that if they couldn't get something as basic as her name and identity correct, what does that say for everything else in their books/manuscripts? Or, have we just skewed (and screwed) everything to fit our own narrative? Can anyone help enlighten me on this?

Sal

Now that I've had time to think about this- the likely explanation is that, and I don't know if you know this, but Ely published his book around 50 years after the fact (he wrote it in the hospital, basing a good deal of it on Bark's notes). And even then, at the insistence of the Bark family, still had to change things and take out information (they were still actively searching). And if that wasn't bad enough, Jim Bark himself was known to be cagey in his interview notes.

By that time, Julia Thomas was known as Ms Schaffer. After marrying Albert, she and Albert joined a religious cult around or in 1900. Hence the name changes. The interesting thing is that she only started selling maps to the LDM after she had married Albert.

 

[PotBelly Jim]

Juila was listed on the 1900 census as living in the Jackson St. home, and as the wife of, Albert Schaeffer, i.e. "Julia Schaeffer". They were married on 26 July 1893.

On the 1910 census, they were listed as "A. S. Israel" and wife, "Zien" (possibly an attempt to spell "Zion", but who knows?)

On her death certificate in 1917, she was named "Julia Schaffer Iseral" (Both Schaeffer and Israel are misspelled)

After her death, in the 1920 census, and also voter rolls, Albert is back to calling himself "Albert Schaeffer", and this was the name on his death certificate.

I don't blame anyone for being confused about her name.

EDIT: Albert's name was in fact spelled "Schafer" on his death certificate:

 

[Matthew Roberts]

Rhinehart Petrasch mother's name was Helena and she lived in Phoenix for about 5 years in the mid 1880s and would have known Ely and probably Bark also. There is a story that Rhinehart was the adopted son of Julia. Possibly Ely got Rhineharts real mothers name mixed up with Julia when he wrote his manuscript in 1952. Or, when Bruce Bliven transcribed Elys manuscript for Morrow and Co. he mixed the names.

 

[PotBelly Jim]

I've often wondered about that "coincidence". Rhiney had a grandmother named Helena Kagler and his mother's name was Suzanne Helen (Grosser) Petrasch. When his mother died, she was living with his sister Pauline in Indiana, and his sister informed the coroner that her mother's name was "Helena" Petrasch. She's also on a few censuses as "Helena" or Hellen".

If that's the case, that there was some confusion between Rhiney's mother "Helena" and his "adoptive" mother Julia Thomas, I would say it started with Bark, and perhaps Ely just took it from there:


Whatever is the case, it does seem strange that both Bark and Ely would have called her "Helena" when she was so well known around town due to her religious antics. She was in the paper many, many times...also at a time when Ely was the editor of that paper...We can't be certain, but it seems likely they both knew her name was Julia. Another oddity is they always refer to her as "Thomas" vice "Schaffer". Was Bark trying obscure the identity of their primary source? Because Julia Schaffer was considered "highly eccentric" by the locals (putting it nicely), so he used the name Helena Thomas? I don't know, but I wonder.

It was Milton Rose that said she called herself a "Priestess Helena"...not sure where he dug that up, I always have seen her referred to as "Zion". But Rose had a way of digging up things and he was close to the events. The whole Helena/Julia thing is just one of those mysteries, I guess.

 

[Hinterlander]

That is the problem that I have with it. Both Bark and Sims supposedly met with Helena and Rheiny face to face numerous times to interview them (supposedly with 40 questions) regarding what Waltz told them. And Sims specifically says in his book that her name is Helena and not Julia as had been written elsewhere. It is hard to believe, in the face of that, that he was confused. A cover up? Possibly. But I'm not buying confused. I could also understand an error by someone transcribing the manuscript, but the Bark Notes also say that her name is Helena. Was the transcriber using the Bark Notes to fill in some gaps? It's also possible. Just really strikes me as odd.

 

[PotBelly Jim]

Ely did use the Bark notes as a reference. What's even more odd, is that Julia Thomas's name had been used in many newspaper articles about the LDM long prior to Ely's book being written. So her name was already out there as "Julia Thomas" and I see no reason at that point (Bark and Julia were deceased) for anyone to continue to use "Helena". I still wonder why she wasn't called Julia Schaffer in these stories as she remarried in 1893, and was known by that name for the next 24 years. Here are a couple of newspaper articles (with her name as Schaffer), there were more stories than just these...I'm sure almost everyone in the small town of Phoenix knew exactly who she was:

View attachment Julia Schaeffer 1900.pdf

View attachment Julia Schaeffer 1903.pdf

 

[deducer]

Strange, yes. But other than Bark, I don't think anyone was being surreptitious or underhanded.

IMO, Ely set out to write a story more than anything else, so I don't quite think he was striving for historical accuracy as much as to write an entertaining story. As he wrote, it was "time to turn it over to the younger prospectors" so there wouldn't have been a reason for him to continue any sort of deception.

I don't think he for a moment imagined that his book would be picked apart to the extent that it has been. It is after all, if I'm not wrong, listed as fiction.

But this is not to say that Ely didn't do the best he could to produce an objective story at the time he was actively involved. Both he and Bark were quite intelligent- a standard tactic of theirs was that one of them would interview someone involved, and then the other would do a follow up interview after some time- and then they would compare notes. On that note, believe it or not, Julia was found to be more or less "reliable."

Helena? Julia? It could just be that it didn't matter to him at the time he began to compile the manuscript.

 

[PotBelly Jim]

You may be right and I'm inclined to agree that neither Bark nor Ely was being underhanded. I think both men knew the value of telling the truth, and knew that their written words would be read and judged by people they respected. Even if it was considered fiction, and that it's OK to pull the leg of a greenhorn

Here are 8 more pages of newspaper articles on Julia and Albert Schaffer. I didn't even copy all of them, I stopped out of sheer frustration, every time I thought I was done another one would pop up.

View attachment Schaffer Stories.pdf

Just looking at these examples, I would say that both Julia and Albert Schaffer were about as well known as one could get in a small town like Phoenix. Too bad their house isn't there any more, I would liked to have seen it. It served as a store, a place to rent rooms, their home, and their "temple"...has me wondering just how big this place was. I guess all we can do now is walk over the spot when going to see a hockey game

 

[Gregory E. Davis]

Good evening Potbelly Jim: Nice Research. What source did you use to locate these stories, IE was it Newspapers.com"? If so, what title did you use to research the items? Cordially, Gregory E. Davis

 

[PotBelly Jim]

Hi Greg. Yes, I primarily use newspapers.com and newspaperarchive.com. To search, I'll use several different spellings of a name or keyword (each in its own separate search), will also select the state I'm looking in, and provide a date range. Unfortunately, it doesn't end there, as I've found that many more articles exist than will usually show up in a search. So for each research topic I will usually sit down and read through every newspaper in a given date range (I do a few each morning, using about as much time as a cup of coffee lasts Luckily the old newspapers are only a few pages long) If you're using newspapers.com and something isn't clicking or making sense, just let me know and I'll give you a call. Take care, Jim

 

[Gregory E. Davis]

Thanks Jim: Greg

 

[Matthew Roberts]

Good evening Potbelly Jim: Nice Research. What source did you use to locate these stories, IE was it Newspapers.com"? If so, what title did you use to research the items? Cordially, Gregory E. Davis

Gregory,

The last story about the TW Chaimberlin Lumber yard fire is the Chaimberlin who searched the Superstitions with Ben Edward's in the early part of the century and the Chaimberlain descendant that has the Patterson arms revolver today.

 

[BlackLine]

I think her name is Julia Thomas. in my opinion they used the name Helena just because of the patronage from Flavia Julia Helena.

Patronage: Frankfurt am Main, Pesaro and Ascoli (Italy); Dioceses of Bamberg, Trier, Basel; the dyer, needles (needle manufacturers), nail smiths, treasure hunters, mines; against lightning and fire; for the detection of theft and recovery of lost objects

Albert Schafer is called in german "Schäfer" its named by the shepherd. its a typical often used german name