Karl Eilers drafted this unfinished autobiography three months prior to his death in August of 1941.

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My earliest recollection of where my parents [Ed Note: Anton & Elizabeth Eilers] lived about New York were in Harlem, not far from where the Third Avenue Street Car came to an end, at the Harlem Bridge. We lived in a two-story, two-family house, with Grandmother Eilers [Elizabeth Dielmann] and her daughter Emma [Ed Note: Anton’s sister, not his daughter the painter] on the top floor and father’s small family on the first floor.
To the south and east were unoccupied lands, which at times in the summer served for circuses.

In Virginia my earliest recollection were of a trip with Else and some grown lady a short distance from the house towards Wytheville. All along, the ground was covered with tall willow trees and other vegetation in which I became lost from the other two and of course, was terrified.

Another recollection was on the trip from New York to Virginia. Stopping at the hotel in going through Washington, where leaning out of the window, running in and out of the trees, I saw a monster which frightened me terribly, evidently a switch engine. In Virginia another recollection is of the time when it became necessary to slaughter a few hogs for food and the squealing of those hogs still is strong in my memory. My sister Lu was born here and father always spoke of her as belonging to the F. F. V. [Ed Note: Possibly the First Families of Virginia]. Else was born in Grandfather Emrich’s house, 156th Street, South Melrose. I, as related above, was born near Marietta, Ohio. Annie again in New York. Now Lu in Virginia and Emma in 1870 in New York. Meta in 1875 also in New York.

On returning from some of these trips to the mines we lived first in Morrisania then in Tremont and finally in a more pretentious place in [Ed Note: just a big blank line, apparently didn’t know or remember the answer].

Else and I went to school with Minnie Emrich [Karl’s mother’s youngest half sister], south from Grandfather Emrich’s house a little way on Third Avenue and my memory is strong of a large woods, “Bathgate’s Woods”, the famlly name being retained even today in “Bathgate Avenue”.

About 1875 Dr. Rossiter W. Raymond gave up his position as U. S. Commissioner of Mining Statistics and Anton Eilers had an offer to take charge of a mine and small smelter at Sts. John near Chihuahua above Grays Peak, Colorado. Because there were no dwellings for the family at this mine, the family was installed in Denver in a little house on the northeast corner of Lincoln and 16th Avenue. This was not a very well-built house and had many rodents .

Mr. Anton Eilers had purchased for himself a Morgan mayer “Vic” of which he was very proud also a morgan saddle. During that summer Anton Eilers took me on a trip by stage to Georgetown and above on horse back to the Montezuma properties at Sts. John. Here Anton Eilers was assisted by Franz Fohr and a civil engineer, Franz Cazin who for many years did the engineering work for Anton Eilers. Cazin was an ardent skier and here I had my first sight of skiing. The mountains on both sides of the creek were very steep and high, my imagination indicated probably 1000 feet above the valley. During the summer one afternoon we had a tremendous rainstorm, lasting for several hours. Towards evening the rain stopped and the skies were clear. There was a tremendous noise and as we went out in front of the house, we saw a tremendous landslide coming down the side of that one mountain with blocks of rock as large as any of our then houses, rolling before this slide. We all were of course, tremendously thrilled and watched this slide of mud and rock come first down the hill slope and then down along the creek bed. The mud seemed to be at least 10 feet thick and as it rolled on down it came finally to a little wooden bridge across the stream, which of course gave way. We were afraid that this mud might overwhelm the smelter but fortunately after breaking down the bridge it stopped, not a 100 feet from the first of the smelter buildings.

It happened that before 1870, Germans in New York had started a smelting plant, the “Germanla” about 6 miles south of Salt Lake. Hagen and Billing (F. W. Billing [older brother of Gustav Billing]) were the bankers. Otto Witte was one of the partners. Their bank offices were on the ground floor of No. l Wall Street Southeast corner of Broadway, where the Irving Trust Company Building now stands. This company did not succeed, but Mr. Billing had a younger brother Gustav Billing who had been a cavalry officer in our Civil War and he with a number of other friends obtained a lease on the Germania smelter. Gustav came to Denver in the fall of 1876 and asked Anton Eilers to become part owner and manager of this Germania smelter There were little round 5 foot diameter furnaces which Anton Eilers took over and ran on the basis of his studies at Clausthal and what he had seen in Nevada, especially about Eureka. These two, Gustav Billing and Anton Eilers, were quite successful so that by the end of the first year or two they had a profit of over $l00,000.00. Then Gustav Billing left, he wanted to return for a vacation to his old home in Germany, “Cassel”. He left the financial dealings for the company in the hands of his brother F. W. who in the meantime had come to Salt Lake. While Gustav was away the price of lead suddenly dropped and inasmuch as F. W. Billing refused to sell the lead, the Germania smelter firm found itself in bankruptcy with large debts.

When we went to Salt Lake in the fall of 1876 Mr. Anton Eilers ensconced his family in a little house belonging to the company, without any facilities excepting water from the kitchen, pumped up from the Cotton Wood Creek which ran below the Germania slag dump. We lived here for almost two years. I, in the meantime being sent to the St. Marks School in Salt Lake and lived there in the home of Admiral Wilks, who had three children, a girl near my age and two boy a little older than I.

I have a recollection of an occasion during this period when Mr. Anton Eilers with August Raht and one or two others took an ordinary McClellan wagon with two horses, right up to a point several miles above the Germania nearer Salt Lake, where all was still prairie and sage brush to hunt jack rabbits. They had some success, but not great and late in the afternoon it began to snow. We found ourselves on the prairie in the gathering darkness and had lost our way. As so frequently happens on such occasion, suddenly in the gloom we found another wagon trail ourselves only to realize soon as many had done before in similar cases, that we had been traveling in circles. The Jordan River to the West and the R.R. tracks East indicated our going to far off the track. When I awoke the next morning I was at home at the Germania. Mr. Anton Eilers also took an interest in mining to the south and in the Wasatch Mountains and for a time was consulting engineer for some of these properties. One of these mines had sufficient ore so that they built a tram some miles long which brought the ore down the American Fork to a little town called “Sandy”
on the railroad where it was loaded into railroad cars and hauled North to the Germania.

During the end of 1877 we moved to a large adobe house, now Roland Hall, to the north of Brigham Street, which apricot orchard and some other fruit trees. Here we lived for two years until about 1879 we again moved to Denver, this time to a much better house on the northeast corner of Sherman and Colfax Avenues. Else and I for a few years went first to the Broadway School about 14th and Broadway and later to the Arapahoe High School. The streets in that part of Denver were then not paved. When going to Arapahoe High School we were taken in the carriage and in the winter time when the ruts were all frozen, this was quite a bumpy ride. The reason for Mr. Anton Eilers going to Denver this second time, was that lead ore had in 1878 been discovered in Leadville. The Germania plant was very greatly in debt and when Gustav Billing returned from Europe he made an arrangement with his brother F. W. Billing, that the latter would take over the Germania Smelter with all its debts, leaving Anton Eilers and Gustava Billing free, for other fields. They found a place where they wanted to build a smelter west of Leadville towards Malta, very close to another smelter, the American Smelter, which was also to treat the same class of ores. The two, Gustav Billing and Anton Eilers went to New York to consult J. & W. Seligman who had been handling the bullion for them for the Germania smelter. At that time the lead refineries were in the east and the lead from the smelters had to be shipped there to be refined and have the gold and silver taken out.

In New York J. & W. Seligman agreed to advance Gustav Billing and Anton Eilers $20,000 with which to build a new smelter and they agreed also to finance the ore purchases and bullion shipments. The new smelter was promptly built and had hardly started when one evening, one of the numerous forest fires appeared very close to this smelter and for several days every man had to work very hard to keep the fire from destroying that new plant, but they succeeded. At this time there must have been 10 or 15 lead smelting plants in and about Leadville. Anton Eilers experience at Germania led him to feel that a Raschette furnace could handle these lead ores to much better advantage than the small round 5 foot Piltz furnace. The novelty at first did not appeal to the other smelting operators, they feared that the hearth of this larger furnace would be frozen up with sous, that is, reduced iron, arsenic and sulphur which filled in the hearth and prevented the lead from going below the matte and speiss so that it could not be taken up through the lead well on the side of the furnace; but ran out with the matte and slag where it was largely lost. However, this new Raschette furnace roughly 3 feet across and 4 foot long did work very successfully.

In 1881 in the summer, with two classmates from the Broadway School, I rode up from Denver to Leadville. The railroads had not yet been completed and the only way of arriving was either by stage from Buena Vista or by riding over the “Mosquito pass”. We chose the latter. This ride took us two days and was a most interesting experience. Both at the Germania, south of Salt Lake and at the new Billing & Eilers soon called by local inhabitants, the “Utah Plant”, I had the run of the plant and at first in the carpenter shops and blacksmith shops and later in the rest of the plant I had valuable experience and was there thought manufacture my first bow gun.

Early in 1882 Mr. Gustav Billing again became restless and wished to dissolve the partnership, so he proposed to Mr. Anton Eilers, that either one should buy over or sell to the other his interest in the plant. Anton Eilers preferred to sell and received for his interest $83,000.

Anton Eilers then wished to have a little rest and renew his acquaintance with the family in Germany, which he did, leaving the rest of the family in Denver and he going with my sister Else to the relatives in the German Hartz Mountains.

Upon his return Mr. Anton Eilers had an offer to take over and run a small smelting plant that had been built for the ores of the Madonna Mine at Monarch, Colorado, some 20 odd miles from Salida. Gentlemen from Iowa, General Davis, C. B. Richards and others owned the mine and had erected a small furnace at the foot of the mountain with a bucket tram to bring the ore down 1000 feet from the upper levels of the mine to the point where the furnace was on Monarch Creek. Mr. Anton Eilers soon saw that this furnace was too small for the ore bodies which he foresaw as being present in the Madonna Mine. He made an arrangement with the owners of the mine that if they would put in the mine $100,000 he would raise another $100,000 to build a smelter at the point where the Arkansas River came out from the mountains to the plains at Pueblo. Mr. Anton Eilers then returned to New York, to his friend Dr. Rossiter W. Raymond and with the latter arranged for the raising of this $100,000 and in 1883 the Colorado Smelting Company was formed with capital of $200,000. Mr. Anton Eilers was the president and besides the previous owners of the mine he arranged a dictorate with Dr. Rossiter W. Raymond, Abraham S. Hewitt, Walter S. Gurnee and others.

[This is where Karl ended]