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I'm writing a biography of John Calvert (1825-1897), Victorian gold miner extraordinary and co-founder, with Hiram Berdan (inventor of the Berdan Amalgamator) of the 1853-54 British gold rush. Calvert's contribution took several forms, from his 1853 book "The Gold Rocks of Great Britain...", a series of exhibitions of his collection of British and Australian gold, lectures to the British Association, to a series of letters to the Times, Mining Journal, etc., extolling the riches of British deposits. He had just returned from some 10 years in Australia and drew telling parallels between British and Australian deposits. Details of his activities after the failure of his British gold rush are fragmentary. He became involved in the Belstone Copper Mine which he managed for a several years, and was an associate of Thomas Readwin who worked several gold and copper mines in Wales. He is said to have visited many gold producing areas and explored in Africa. He made a huge collection of minerals, shells, ethnographia and antiquities and is said to have had a large and fine library. In 1890 he returned to Australia to chase a lost gold reef. He didn't find it. I have an immense amount of information on Calvert and his son ALbert, but although archives and publications from here to Australia have been turned inside out for data, like Calvert's gold fields, unexploited pockets must still exist. I'd be very interested to hear any thoughts on the subject by members of this group. I'm also particularly interested in any information or potential sources of information on Hiram Berdan, about whom very little is known. He appeared in London in late 1853, having patented his amalgamator in New York in 1852. About the time the British gold rush bubble broke, in the late Spring / early Summer of 1854, he returned to America and we lose sight of him. Thomas Readwin had bought the rights to the Berdan Amalgamator and set up a company to promote it. The company collapsed following the failure of the gold rush and the suspicions cast upon the Berdan machine and its operators, and Readwin was bankrupted. cheers Mick Cooper -- Michael P. Cooper * Mineralist * [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%