Both Miner and Timmins maternally descend from several early French-Canadian settler families, include Boucher, Langlois, Guyon, Gagné, Gaudry, Merlot, Proulx and Martin.
Fred La Rose, a blacksmith, while working for brothers Duncan and John McMartin in the construction of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (T&NO) at Mile 103 from North Bay, Ontario– where he had built a small cabin –there chanced upon Erythrite, often an indication of associated cobalt and native silver.
Noah cabled Henry, who was in Montreal at the time and immediately set out for Hull, where he met with La Rose and offered him $3,500 for a quarter share of the claim, effectively partnering with the McMartin brothers.
The foursome soon added a friend of the Timmins brothers, attorney David Alexander Dunlap (1863–1924)– for whom the David Dunlap Observatory was named –as a full fifth partner, after he had won a case lodged by then former Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway Commissioner M.J. O'Brien, who had bought out adjacent claimant, Neal A.
Noah had first sent his nephew Alphonse "Al" Paré, then a geology engineering student, to assess the Hollinger mine's potential.