William Bell Frue
United States
Date of Birth: 1830 — 1881
William Bell Frue, emigrated, at a young age, from Ireland to the United States. His mining career began in 1853 when he worked for the Pewabic copper mine in Michigan. With the discovery of the rich silver deposit on Silver Islet in the Canadian waters of Lake Superior, he was hired by the...
Noah A. Timmins
Canada
Date of Birth: 1867 — 1936
Noah Anthony Timmins (March 31, 1867 – January 22, 1936) was a Canadian mining financier and developer who is now counted among the founding fathers of Canada's mining industry.
Noah Timmins partnered with his older brother Henry in 1903 to buy into the La Rose silver claim in Cobalt, Ontario...
Horace Tabor
United States
Date of Birth: 1830 — 1899
Horace Tabor's life story is a testament to hard work but also a great anecdote about short-sightedness. From a simple stone-cutter, he would grow to become one of the country's wealthiest men, only to lose his riches after spending lavishly and investing poorly.
Born in Vermont in 1830, Horace...
Augusta Tabor
United States
Date of Birth: 1833 — 1895
As the first woman in the California Gulch district, Augusta Louise Tabor, fondly remembered as "The First Lady of Leadville," spent much of her life in helping make Leadville a great mining camp.
She was born in Maine and, in 1857, married the now famous mining magnate, Horace Tabor, who was...
Antonio Siraumea
Mexico
Date of Birth: 1710 — 1760
Antonio Siraumea, a Yaqui, was likely a resident of the rancheria Arizonac, a real, or small mining camp at the edge of the northern frontier of the Spanish colonies of New Spain.
In October 1736, Siraumea found what appeared to be a number of massive pieces of native silver that were eventually...
Giovanni Battista Serpieri
Italy
Date of Birth: 1832 — 1897
Giovanni Battista Serpieri was the first foreign "mega-entrepreneur" to invest in Greece. He was demonized almost immediately after he had invested fifteen million drachmas to gain the concession to re-open the Lavrion Mines, the same mines that had made ancient Athens an economic powerhouse....
Paul Sarnoff
United States
Date of Birth: 1918 — 1999
Paul Sarnoff was, in addition to being a career commodities trader, a prolific writer. His 30-some titles include "Silver Bulls: The Great Silver Boom and Bust," covering the seven months leading up to the rise and fall of silver during 1979 and 1980. It is a constructive and contrarian...
Robert A. Quartermain
Canada
Date of Birth: 1955 — -
Inducted into the Silver Hall of Fame in 2017
Robert A. Quartermain has extensive global experience in geology, exploration and development. Over his 40-year career in the resource industry, he has established a solid track record in building shareholder value in the field of precious metals...
Dan O'Connor
Canada
Date of Birth: 1864 — 1933
Daniel O'Connor (31 January 1864 – 30 March 1933) was a Canadian politician, businessman and prospector from Pembroke, Ontario. In the late 1880s, O'Connor moved to Sudbury where he became associated with economy, life and industry, becoming the town's second mayor in 1894. Inn and Ronnoco...
Willett G. Miller
Canada
Date of Birth: 1866 — 1925
Dr. Willet G. Miller, a world-renowned geologist, had an enormous influence on the scientific advancement and mineral development of Canada, and particularly Ontario, in the early decades of the 20th century. His memory has been perpetuated by such practical tokens as a bronze plaque on a cairn...
James J. McKinley
Canada
James H. McKinley and Ernest J. Darragh were contractors providing lumber for a railway being pushed north through the thick Ontario bush. On August 7, 1903 the two partners were walking the right of way scouting for trees suitable for railway ties. As they passed through a rock cut on the banks...
Elizabeth McCourt
United States
Date of Birth: 1854 — 1935
Elizabeth 'Baby Doe' McCourt Tabor: Colorado's Silver Queen
Elizabeth McCourt Tabor (1854 March 7, 1935), better known as Baby Doe, was the second wife of pioneer Colorado businessman Horace Tabor. Her rags-to-riches and back to rags again story made her a well-known figure in her own day and...
Eduardo Luna
Mexico
Inducted into the Silver Hall of Fame in 2017
Mr. Luna is currently (2017) Director, President and CEO of Rochester Resources Ltd., a junior natural resources company. Mr. Luna recently joined the board of DynaResource, Inc., which has appointed him as special advisor to the president of its...
Jaime Lomelin
Mexico
Inducted into the Silver Hall of Fame in 2017
Mr Lomelin spent 36 years at Peñoles where he served as Group Vice President of the metals and chemicals division for four years and subsequently held the position as CEO for 21 years. He brings to the board an invaluable wealth of senior...
Alfred LaRose
Canada
Date of Birth: 1870 — 1940
Alfred LaRose, was a blacksmith working as a contractor on the railway being pushed through northern Ontario near Mile 103. About two weeks after Alfred McKinley and Ernest Darragh had made their discovery, LaRose noticed erythrite (red cobalt/cobalt bloom) along the tracks. LaRose noted "One...
Alan Kulan
Canada
Date of Birth: 1921 — 1977
Credited with the discovery of several sizeable lead-zinc-silver deposits in Yukon, most notably the renowned Faro deposit, Alan Kulan was a compassionate and pioneering prospector with an independent, entrepreneurial spirit. His successes spawned other ventures such as prospecting syndicates...
John (Jan) II Dobry, John the Good - Duke of Opole
Poland
Date of Birth: 1460 — 1532
In 1526 Tarnowskie Góry in Silesia (southern Poland) was awarded the status of a free mining town, and in 1528, John II the Good, Duke of Opole, issued an ordinance known as the Ordunek Górny, granting the town a series of mining privileges. At the same time a mining authority was also...
Kamiya Jutel
Korea
Date of Birth: 16th C
In 1526 Kamiya Jutei, a wealthy merchant from Hakata, founded the Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine in Ōda. In 1533 he introduced a Korean method of silver refining to the mine, which became the Hai-Fuki-Ho method.
Historians compared the Hai-Fuki-Ho method to the Medieval European seigerprozess [de] of...
Tom Herbert
Canada
Tom Herbert was a French-Canadian working on the railroad being pushed through northern Ontario in the early 1900s. He discovered a vein in the face of a cliff and prevailed on the geologist William Miller to examine it. Miller, Ontario's first government geologist, was in the area looking into...
George Hearst
United States
Date of Birth: 1820 — 1891
George Hearst, of Scots-Irish origin, was born near present-day Sullivan, Missouri, to William G. Hearst and Elizabeth Collins. Hearst was raised in a log cabin on his family's farm in rural Franklin County. His father operated three small farms, all of which were mortgaged, with slave labor....
Alvinza Hayward
United States
Date of Birth: 1822 — 1904
Born in Vermont, Hayward moved to Canton, New York early in his life. He studied law in New York, but also pursued lumber and lead mining interests. His experience in Michigan vein mining proved invaluable after his move to California in the Gold Rush of 1850. After buying an interest in the...
Meyer Guggenheim
United States
Date of Birth: 1828 — 1905
Meyer Guggenheim was born in Lengnau, Aargau, Switzerland on February 1, 1828. He was of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry and emigrated to the United States in 1847. He started out in the importing business, but made his and his family's fortune (which was one of the largest fortunes of the 19th...
Daniel Guggenheim
United States
Date of Birth: 1856 — 1930
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Daniel Guggenheim was sent to Switzerland as a young man to study the Swiss lace and embroidery business, and to serve as a buyer for his father's import firm. The discovery of high-grade silver-lead ore in the Guggenheim mines in Leadville, Colorado in 1881...
Diego Gualpa
Peru
Date of Birth: 16th C
The Spanish conquest of South America led to the discovery of Peruvian mountains rich in gold and silver. In April, 1545, high up in the Andes, an Indian named Diego Gualapa climbed a distinctively shaped conical peak in search of a rumoured Indian shrine. Such shrines frequently contained some...
Juan Godoy
Chile
Date of Birth: 1800 — 1842
Juan Godoy (1801-1842) was a Chilean prospector who made significant contributions to Chile's mining industry. He was born in the small town of Copiapó and grew up in a family of miners. Juan Godoy inherited his father's passion for mining and began working in the industry at a young...
Charles Englehard, Jr.
United States
Date of Birth: 1917 — 1971
Charles W. Engelhard Jr. (February 15, 1917 – March 2, 1971 was an American businessman who controlled an international mining and metals conglomerate, as well as a major owner in Thoroughbred horse racing.
Engelhard made his fortune in the precious metals industry, where he operated a...
Ed Schieffelin
United States
Date of Birth: 1847 — 1897
Edward Lawrence Schieffelin was an American prospector and Indian fighter best known for discovering the Tombstone silver mine in Arizona. He was born on May 7, 1847, in Aurora, Illinois, and was the son of a prominent family. However, he was interested in something other than following in his...
Charles Dow
United States
Date of Birth: 1851 — 1902
The Dow of Dow-Jones is Charles Henry Dow, born Nov. 5, 1851, in Connecticut. He went into journalism, working for New England newspapers. His work impressed Charles Danielson, editor of the Providence (R.I.) Journal, and so in 1879 he assigned Dow to join a group of bankers and reporters who...
Henry Lawrence Vincent Day
United States
Date of Birth: 1902 — 1985
Hank Day (1902-1985) was born in in Spokane, Washington, to Helen Dwyer and Harry Lawrence Day, and grew up in Burke, Idaho, site of the great Hercules mine. In 1905, the family moved to Wallace, Idaho where he remained with the exceptions of when he attended the University of California where,...
Marcus Daly
United States
Date of Birth: 1841 — 1900
Marcus Daly (December 5, 1841 – November 12, 1900) was an Irish-born American businessman known as one of the three "Copper Kings" of Butte, Montana, United States. Prior to his copper career, Daly gained experience in the silver mines of the Comstock mines under the direction of John William...
Bonanza Kings - Mackay, Fair, Flood, O'Brien
United States
John Mackay, James Fair, James Flood, William O'Brien
In 1871, Irish-Americans John William Mackay, James Graham Fair, James Clair Flood and William S. O'Brien, organized the Consolidated Virginia Silver Mine near Virginia City, Nevada, from a number of smaller claims on the Comstock Lode and...
Ross J. Beaty, C.M.
Canada
Date of Birth: 1951 — -
Throughout his 48-year career, Ross Beaty has been a leader in the international mining and renewable energy industries, making a significant and lasting impact in BC and around the world.
After graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1979 in geology and law, Ross began a...
Bartolomé de Medina
Spain
Date of Birth: 1497 — 1585
Bartolome de Medina was a successful Spanish merchant who became fascinated with the problem of decreasing silver yields from ores mined in Spanish America. By the mid-sixteenth century, it was well known in Spain that American silver production was in decline due to the depletion of high-grade...