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Classification: Query
Message Board URL:
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Message Board Post:
I don't have much new information for you, except to clarify that your ancestor may
have come to Nevada in the early 1850s but he did not come to Virginia City, which was not
settled until the late 1850s. In 1849 gold was discovered down Gold Canon in what was to
become Dayton, Nevada. By 1851 Dayton was settled year-round, as a mining camp -- the
oldest settlement in Nevada. If Plunkett came seeking gold, he may have come to Gold
Canon, or to one of the other nearby mining camps that sprung up, such as Johnstown,
Ragtown, etc. If he came on an emigrant trail but not as a gold seeker he might have
settled in any one of the aforementioned areas or in Carson City or Mormon Station
(today's Genoa).
It was not until 1859 that the Comstock Silver Lode was discovered and Virginia City
sprang to life as the first industrial city in the West. It was at first a raucous 24-hour
mining camp, but the wealth of the Comstock later turned it into a town having Victorian
culture that rivaled that of San Francisco -- but most of that occured after
Plunkett's death..
As you no doubt know, according to Thompson and West's 1881 History of Nevada,
Plunkett was a resident of Virginia City in 1863 when he was a delegate to the
Constitutional Convention. Assuming that it is the same person, he is listed as "J.S.
Plunkett," Acting Adjutant of Infantry" as a field officer under Col. Hays in
the Washoe Regiment, organized in 1860. I find no Plunkett, or any name similar, in the
index to the 1860 Territorial Census, and I also do not find him or any other Plunkett in
"The First Directory of Nevada Territory" of 1860-61 -- perhaps in both cases
because he was off fighting with Col. Hays.