By far the most swashbuckling figure in the history of the Mexican mining industry was “Colonel” William C. Greene. While the Guggenheims built an empire founded on financial acumen and sound metallurgical practice, Greene built an empire founded on prospectuses and sheer bluff. Greene, in his time, controlled the largest copper ore body in all Mexico, yet he drove his company into bankruptcy. The story of his opening of the Cananea copper deposit is fantastic—stranger than fiction.

Hersey, Staples and Company was organized by eastern men in 1854 to carry on a business in Stillwater, leading lumber town in Minnesota Territory. Bringing to this business venture on the energy, experience lumbering acquired in Maine, knowledge of the mercantile trade, and capital from Maine and Massachusetts, the four partners of Hersey, Staples and Company initiated an enterprise that gained the attention of businessmen throughout the Territory. The firm became the largest owner of pinelands in the St. Croix Delta, a leading producer of logs and lumber in an area that ranked first in lumber exportation in Minnesota, operator of the finest mill in the Territory, wholesaler and retailer of logs and lumber, part owner in boom companies, dam companies, and a general store, and later, promoter of railroads and banks. Although only one partner became a resident of Minnesota, the others were favorably known in the community in which their business was located. Few of the records of the company are extant, but the history of operations that can be discovered illuminate the general problems of running a lumber business in the West in the 'fifties.

Jonathan Ware, an ironmaster from Lynn, Massachusetts, settled in central Alabama in 1825 and was for some years active in the iron business. In the 1840's his son, Horace Ware, established the Shelby Iron Company and with the financial help of a friendly planter erected a blast furnace at the village of Shelby, in Shelby County. The furnace was put in blast late in the decade and operated for a number of years without benefit of rail transportation.

Although the Beverly Cotton Manufactory and its records disappeared without a trace more than a century ago, it has received an honored place in almost all the subsequent histories of manufacturing. The reason for this interest is suggested by the title of the most complete account of the Manufactory, Robert S. Rantoul's “The First Cotton Mill in America.” The present writer is more interested in how the mill came into being and how it functioned, than in the controversy as to whether Beverly, or Worcester, or Philadelphia, or South Carolina is entitled to claim the earliest cotton mill; however, as a native of Beverly he will have something to say on this subject at the end of the article. Recent discoveries at the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Massachusetts State Archives, and the Beverly City Hall help to fill out the basic documents used by Rantoul and all subsequent writers. The most significant of these basic documents relates to the incorporation of the Manufactory in 1789 and the succeeding petitions to the State Legislature for aid.