Charles Washington Merrill

Who was Charles Washington Merrill?

Charles Washington Merrill was an American mining metallurgist. He was born in Concord, New Hampshire to Sylvester and Clara L. Merrill. He attended elementary and high school in Alameda, California and then attended the College of Mining of the University of California, where he received a Bachelor of Science in 1891. After his graduation he was first connected with the noted old Standard Consolidated mine in Bodie, California, and from there went to the Harqua Hala mine in Arizona, thence to the Montana Mining Company in Marysville, California. In 1899, he became affiliated with the widely known Homestake Mining Company of South Dakota as a metallurgist, and in this capacity he manifested the brilliant talents which became the foundation of his future career. He became extensively known by his work, and acquired material prosperity, and his creation of new methods, particularly in the process of extracting gold from ore, brought to him wide fame. It is an established fact that he added to the value of the effective reserve in the ore property of the Homestake mine alone approximately twenty million dollars.