Biographies

The Henry M. Rives Collection includes papers from four different early Nevada families: Golden, Morris, Raycraft, and Rives. In order to make their relationships clearer, the biographical information is divided into brief sketches of the following six major figures: (1) Frank Golden, (2) James Morris, (3) Madge (Morris) Raycraft, (4) James A. Raycraft,  (5) Marguerite (Raycraft) Rives, and (6) Henry M. Rives. 

FRANK (FRANCIS BERNARD) GOLDEN, 1862(?)-1911, came from Ireland shortly before 1880, and went into the jewelry business in Virginia City. He enjoyed considerable success, with ventures later in Tonopah, Carson City, and Reno. In 1891 he married Mary Louise (Mamie) Morris, sister of Madge (Morris) Raycraft. Frank Golden and Madge's husband James Raycraft were friends and occasional business partners. 

JAMES MORRIS, 1826(?)-1900, came from Ireland to New York before 1848, and soon went to California to make a small fortune in the gold rush. Returning to the East Coast, he married Margaret Muldoon, 1831(?)-1893 in Massachusetts in 1854. The couple returned west to Coloma, California about 1861, and finally settled in Empire City, Nevada, in Ormsby County just east of Carson City. There James became County Commissioner and Justice of the Peace and raised a large family, including Madge, Mary Louise, Francine, Anne, and Arthur. 

MADGE (MARGARET THERESA MORRIS) RAYCRAFT, 1864-1943, was born to James A. and Margaret (Muldoon) Morris in Empire City, Nevada where she spent most of her first nineteen years. Her sisters included Mary Louise (Mamie), who married Frank Golden; Anne, who married Rauswell Smith; and Francine (Fanny), who became a nun with the Sisters of Notre Dame. Of her four brothers, three died in infancy while the fourth, Arthur Wood Morris, 1862-1902, became Nevada's Assistant Secretary of State. Madge became a schoolteacher, moving several times within Nevada until mid-1886, when she married James A. Raycraft and settled in Carson City. After her husband's death in 1913 she again taught school in Carson City, Gardnerville, and Wichman, until at least 1930. 

JAMES ANDREW (JIM, JIMMY) RAYCRAFT, 1862-1913, was born in Missouri, the seventh of eight sons plus three daughters born to Joseph and Ellen (Quinlan) Raycraft. The family reached Genoa, Nevada by 1863, and set up an early store and hotel. James and his older brother Joseph began a successful livery stable business, which eventually included the U.S. Mail, express stages, automobile repair, and real estate in Genoa, Carson City and elsewhere in western Nevada.  In 1886 he married Madge Morris, and they raised five sons and two daughters, mostly in Carson City. In 1908 he was elected Democratic Assemblyman from Ormsby County. About 1910 he began a lingering series of illnesses during which most of his business assets including the, Raycraft Realty Co., were turned over to his wife. 

MARGUERITE (JEANETTE HONEY RAYCRAFT) RIVES, 1893-, was born in 1893 to James A. and Madge (Morris) Raycraft, and spent her childhood in Carson City. She became a dance instructor, and in 1916 married Henry M. Rives. They lived primarily in Reno, and had three children: Marguerite (Daisy Rives) Moore, Jeannette (Rives) Connolly, and Benjamin Allen Rives IV. 

HENRY MACON RIVES, 1883-1952, was born in Pioche, Nevada to George Townes Rives and May (Miller) Rives. George was a mine operator, and his brother Henry (uncle and namesake to Henry Macon Rives) was a judge in eastern Nevada. The younger Henry was raised in the mining and legal worlds of his father and uncle. After attending the University of California at Berkeley for just one term at the turn of the century, he went to work in turn for a California gas company, the U.S. Geologic Survey (1905), a Tonopah law firm, and as the secretary to Nevada Congressman George Bartlett in Washington D.C., (1907-1908). He then returned to the legal side of the mining business, which occupied the remainder of his life. In 1915 he became the secretary of the Nevada Mine Operators Association, which post he retained for some 37 years. He served on various other association boards, including the American Mining Congress, the American Silver Producers Association and American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering. 

Rives also maintained his interest in politics, winning election to the Nevada Assembly on the Democratic ticket from Esmeralda County in 1914, serving on the Nevada Industrial Commission in 1915, and representing mining on the Nevada Tax Commission from 1927 until his death in 1952. He counted among his friends Nevada Senators Key Pittman and Tasker L. Oddie, as well as their fellow Democrat and occasional nemesis Pat McCarran.

 

Scope And Content 

The Henry M. Rives Papers, 1876-1965, comprise 1.3 cubic feet of material in two boxes, plus six folders of photographs. The greatest bulk of the material is from the 1880s and the 1910s. Four different early Nevada families--Rives, Raycraft, Morris, and Golden--are represented over four generations, and the collection is divided into four subgroups to reflect these families. A fifth subgroup of photographs has been transferred to the photo archives. 

The Raycraft and Rives family subgroups comprise the bulk of the material, and are further subdivided into series of papers collected by individual family members. The largest series are personal correspondence between family members and friends; and personal, financial, and legal documents.

The families of Madge (Margaret Morris) Raycraft, 1864-1943, and the James Andrew Raycraft, 1862-1913, each came to western Nevada during the middle of the Civil War. The two sweethearts had separate careers under way when they married in 1886 to form the nucleus of the Raycraft family. Their papers show the lives of a school teacher (Madge) and a livery stable owner (James) during the second generation of Nevada statehood, primarily from 1880-1910. Places involved include Empire City, St. Clair Station (two towns which no longer exist), Genoa, Carson City, Virginia City, Lake Tahoe, and Gardnerville in Nevada, plus trips to San Francisco and Placerville in California. Around the turn of the century the family began branching out into real estate and mining stock speculation, as recorded in various deeds, certificates, and agreements. 

In 1916 James and Madge's daughter Marguerite Jeanette (Honey Raycraft) Rives,  1893-,  a well educated dance instructor, married Henry Macon Rives, 1883-1952, a mining businessman, and formed the nucleus of the Rives family. Letters collected by Marguerite beginning in 1914 include a group from Fred Searls, Jr., a travelling mining geologist, who tells of conditions in Tonopah, Alaska, and Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. 

Henry Rives was important in Nevada mining politics from 1907 until his death in 1952, but this collection contains little official correspondence. Some information on political occurrences in Carson City, Reno, and Washington D.C. can be gleaned from Rives' brief, cryptic diaries from 1936-37 and 1940-51. However, the bulk of the diary space is taken up with health (Rives had gout and other afflictions), weather, and gambling results. Various legal and financial documents show Henry Rives as holder of numerous state positions, member of lodges, duck hunter, occasional philanthropist, and speculator in mining stock.

 

Processed By: Jack Shipley November 1987

This collection is divided into the following subgroups:

Subgroup I.	Golden Family
Subgroup II.	Morris Family
Subgroup III.	Raycraft Family
Subgroup IV.	Rives Family
Subgroup V.	Photographs

 

Subgroup I.  Golden Family.  1891-1911.

Includes mining stock certificates and loan agreements of Frank Golden, wedding announcement of Frank and Mamie Golden, and a newspaper clipping.

Box 1	Folders 1-2

 

Subgroup II.  Morris Family.  1888-1927; 1957.

Includes correspondence from relatives in England, Ireland and America, and a telegram regarding Fanny Morris' resignation from a convent; typed history of the Morris and Golden families; mortuary receipt for James A. Morris' funeral; and Mrs. James Morris' name card.

Box 1	Folders 3-4

 

Subgroup III.  Raycraft Family.  1885-1924.

Series 1.  James A. Raycraft.  1885-1924.

The James A. Raycraft papers include correspondence, financial, and legal documents. Correspondence is from family members, especially Madge (Morris) Raycraft. (For James' return letters to Madge, see the Madge Morris Raycraft series, folders 14-18). The legal and financial documents include bills, receipts, bank and loan statements, stock and bond certificates, insurance policies, real estate indentures, and business agreements. Also included are incorporation and later papers of the Raycraft Realty Co. Seven folders; all are chronologically arranged. 

Box 1	Folder No.
5-6	Correspondence, 1885-1898, 1911, and n.d.
7-8	Financial Documents, 1890-1917.
9-11	Legal Documents, 1886-1924.

 

Series 2.  Madge (Morris) Raycraft.  1878-1932.

The papers of Madge Raycraft include correspondence from family and friends, especially James Raycraft, a real estate indenture, fire insurance policies, teaching records, bills, receipts, bank statements, two poems, a high school paper on Indians, an autograph book with verse and signatures (1878-1884), report cards, recital programs, name cards, and unidentified surveyor's notes. (Records of the Raycraft Realty Co., controlled primarily by Madge after Oct. 1910, will be found in the James Raycraft series, folders 1:8, 1:10-11). Eleven folders; all are chronological.

Box 1	Folder No.
12	Family Record Book - births and deaths, 1886-1932.
13-18	Correspondence, 1883-1918, 1927.
19	Financial Documents, 1905-1914.
20	Legal Documents, 1906-1929.
21	Literary Productions (High School).
22	Miscellaneous

 

Series 3.  Miscellaneous Raycraft Family Members.  1901-1965.

Papers of Raycrafts other that James and Madge are collected in this series. It includes two unidentified diary fragments, five letters, the school records of Kenneth and Dorothy Raycraft and others, nomination and election certificates for Hubert Raycraft's successful run for Nevada assembly in 1932, his draft and discharge notice (1917), Arthur R. Raycraft's military insurance (1918), wedding announcements and other memorabilia, and miscellaneous newspapers and clippings. Eight folders, part chronological, part by name of person. 

Box 1	Folder No.
23	Diary Fragments, n.d.
24	Correspondence, 1918, 1927, and n.d.
25-26	School Records, Dorothy and Kenneth Raycraft, 1909-20, arranged chronologically.
27	Legal Documents, arranged by name of person.
28	Memorabilia.
29	Newspapers, 1903-1965.
30	Newspaper clippings, 1901-1932, n.d.

 

Subgroup IV.  Rives Family

Series 1.  Henry M. Rives.  1876-1951.

The papers of Henry M. Rives include four diaries, three of which were re-used one or more times, covering the years 1936-37 and 1940-1951. They are comprised of brief notes on political, professional, personal and health matters. There follows a small folder of correspondence, mostly on financial matters, but including a letter from E.T. White with a Rives family history. Following that are mining stock certificates, a large 1876 mortgage bond for the Eureka & Palisade Railway, cancelled checks to Vail Pittman, organizational dues statements, loan agreements, a 1916 charity receipt, certificate of election to the Nevada Assembly (1914), a 1937 driver's license, appointments to various state and honorary positions, a life insurance policy, newspaper clippings (mostly his obituaries), and memorabilia. Seven folders.

Box 1	Folder No.
31-32	Diaries, 1936-1951.

 

Box 2	Folder No.
1	Correspondence, 1925-1949, n.d.
2	Financial Documents, 1876, 1908-1935, arranged by type.
3	Legal Documents, 1914-1949, n.d; chronological.
4	Clippings, 1939, 1942, 1952.
5	Memorabilia.

Series 2.  Miscellaneous Rives Family Members.  1914-1937.

The papers of members of the Rives family other than Henry M. are comprised solely of correspondence. Included are letters from mining geologist Fred Searls, Jr. to Marguerite(Raycraft) Rives, other letters to the latter, and letters to various relatives. Four folders, all chronological. 

Box 2	Folder No.
10	Misc. Rives Family Correspondence, 1926, 1932, n.d.

 

Subgroup V.  Photographs.

Photographs from this collection have been transferred to the photo archives.

Manuscripts | Special Collections

Please direct questions to Jacquelyn Sundstrand
Updated August 12, 2008