Cactusjumper wrote
Roy,
There is no evidence that Dr. Thorne was ever assigned to a military installation. Without that, I am hard pressed to give the story, as it is told, much credence.
Take care,
Joe -Thorn did not reach his destination to become listed as an Army doctor, he was captured en route. How would he be listed if he had been captured on the way there, and after his release did not join the Army after all?
Do you hold that the STORY of Dr Thorn's lost mine does not predate the death of Jacob Waltz? The fact that the story was in circulation prior to Waltz's death, in fact at least as early as 1869 (I have older accounts but cannot locate them at the moment) and that he was hunting the Four Peaks-Superstition Mts area. We also have a documented Dr Abraham Thorn living in Limitar New Mexico, circa 1870; he is listed in an 1869 newspaper account, which does not go into great details but includes that he was then on an expedition to search for his lost mine and got turned back by friendly Indians. If this were not Dr Thorn then it was someone going by that name.
A quick search on Ancestry dot com turns up several Abraham Thorn's; one from Orange county NY, which NY state is listed on the 1870 census as the place of birth for Dr Thorn. He is listed in the US Army Draft rolls as living in Pennsylvania in 1863 and IS drafted that year. Then we have Abraham Thorn, mustered out in 1864 in Spotsylvania, VA, Enlisted in Company B, Pennsylvania 183rd Infantry Regiment on 09 Feb 1864.Mustered out on 10 May 1864 at Spotsylvania Court House, VA. Sources: History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1866
Is it not possible that Thorn had been a soldier during the Civil War, and after the war became a doctor, headed west to start his trade? The story of his being an Army doctor at a fort (usually McDowell, but also Ft Reno) makes the story about his getting captured questionable, for an Army doctor at a post would almost always be surrounded by other soldiers. Would it not be much more difficult for hostile Apaches to capture a post doctor, than a doctor traveling through their country to get to a fort?
The fact that the Dr Thorn story predates Waltz, really should put to rest the idea that there is NOTHING prior to his death. We have in fact a story of a lost rich gold deposit, with Four Peaks as a landmark (one version includes Weavers Needle as well) and the very same spring named in the "trail" to the mine of Waltz. There are striking parallels or "coincidences" whether you give credence to the LDM or Dr Thorn, which realy point to the possibility that they are the same mine, and that it is truth. If you can't admit this, it could be a bit of denial on your part.
To all; As to the LDM being "on a mountain" while Thorn was in a canyon, do you not recall one of the more prominent clues for the LDM - that it is located in a "north trending canyon"? A canyon can run very high up on a mountain side, and thus fit with the Deering statement about having to go down to get to it, yet you must go high up as well. Also, Thorn was led to the site on horseback, the Weiser story has them with mules at the mine, and in the supposed attempt by Waltz to take his friends Julia and Reiney to the mine, they camped at the Verde river, and he told them they could be at the mine the next day. He told them to wear old clothes due to the brush, but nothing like climbing ropes or special boots for scampering up mountain cliffs. Thorn also said that the vein went up the sides of the canyon, not just in the very bottom of it. Now recall what we see in the Holmes version where he tells Dick Holmes that the ore vein crops out down in the canyon below the mine, and he covered that up. Even in the third, unpopular version of the Lost Dutchman, from the Pioneer Interviews, the mine is located in a side canyon.
In the canyon are the key words, a place you could take mules into, which while the equine family is very off-road capable, they won't climb cliffs.
To point this up further, take a look at a map of the known gold mines and notice how many are IN CANYONS - there is a very good geological reason for this too, for the action of nature tends to erode away, crack and uplift the rock, exposing veins of quartz (and many other minerals) in canyons especially along the walls but also along the bottoms where the actions of water wearing down into the rock helps expose it. Not that a mine can't be anywhere, even on the very peak of a mountain, but it is quite common for such deposits to be found in canyons for nature helps man by exposing them there.
Thank you all again, I hope you have a very pleasant evening.
Roy ~ Oroblanco
