William Henry Blackmore
William Henry Blackmore (2 August 1827 – 12 April 1878) was an English lawyer who gained a fortune by exploiting a large social network as an investment promoter.
He used his fortune for philanthropy, primarily centred on his interest in Native Americans, but ended his life after a failed investment deal related to the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad.
[3] Through several maritime compensation cases Blackmore developed contacts with Americans and their representatives; as well as British and European, investors, business and political leaders.
An American lawyer, Cyrus Martin Fisher, showed Blackmore the large and immediate returns to assisting ventures to find capital.
He opened a second office in Founder's Court, Lothbury, London, had success in ventures in Europe and Africa and became well known in British and European investment circles.
[6] On his first trip to America, 1863, Blackmore met with investors in New York and they developed a plan for investments in lands in Virginia, headed to Washington, D.C. in early 1864 with letters of introduction to senators, congressmen and President Abraham Lincoln.
Blackmore made several trips to the United States to find investment opportunities, making additional deals with lands in Colorado and New Mexico and forming railway companies.
General William Jackson Palmer needed financing for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad which Blackmore placed primarily with a party of Dutch bankers.
West of Laramie, Wyoming, Blackmore and Bridges left the train to travel to Salt Lake City, Utah to make confidential reports to unidentified industrial leaders and the British Cabinet.
[10] From the mid-1840s, archaeologists Ephraim George Squier (1821–1888) and Edwin Hamilton Davis (1811–1888) excavated artefacts from mounds discovered in the Mississippi and Ohio valley, to form the so-called Squier-Davis collection.
In 1899, the eminent George Amos Dorsey (1868–1931) wrote; "The Blackmore Museum of Salisbury contains one of the best selected and arranged collections of man's prehistoric relics that I have ever seen.
"[13] Blackmore significantly sponsored the 1872 survey expedition of the Yellowstone region led by Ferdinand Hayden, also funding equipment for photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran.
[16] His brother, Humphrey Purnell Blackmore, a physician, surgeon and archaeologist was one of the founders of the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum which was primarily dedicated to local artefacts.
A world recession hit in 1873, investors became agitated, American partners were taking advantage of Blackmore's absence leading to a stressful situation for the promoter.
