George Hearst (September 3, 1820-February 28, 1891) was a wealthy business-man and United States Senator, and the father of news-paper-man William Randolph Hearst.
George, of Scots-Irish origin, was born near Sullivan, Missouri, to William Hearst and Elizabeth Collins. Sullivan is a city that straddles the border of Franklin County and Craw-Ford County.
Franklin County is named after one of the founder fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin. The area was a center of the Native American Mississippian culture, which built numerous temple and residential earthwork mounds on both sides of the Mississippi River.
George was raised in a log cabin on his family's farm in rural Franklin County. His father operated 3 small farms (all mortgaged) with the help of slaves. William, the father, sold his products in his own local general store. George grew up before public education was widely accessible in Missouri, and so his elementary education was inconsistent and fragmented. He supplemented the gaps in his formal education by observing the local mines, and reading information about minerals and mining in his free time.
When his father died in 1846, he took over the care of his mother, brother and sister, at the age of 26. In addition, he did some mining and continuing running his father general store. He first heard of the discovery of gold in California in 1849. Before departing, he continued to read further news on the subject. In 1850, at the age of 30, as a member of a party of 16, he left for California. Using his self- mining education and experience in Missouri, he switched to quartz mines. After almost 10 years, George was making a decent living as a mineral prospector (physical labour involving traversing on foot or horse, panning, sifting and outcrop investigation, looking for signs of mineralization), and otherwise engaged in running a general store, raising livestock and farming in Nevada County, Sierra Nevada, California.
In the summer of 1859, at the age of 39, he learned of wonderful silver assays and hurried over to the Wa-Shoe District of Western Utah territory. There he arranged to buy a one-sixth interest in the Ophir mine there (now Virginia City). George then knew Marcus Daly from the Com-Stock Lode (deposit of ore embedded in a fissure or crack in a rock formation) work. A lode of silver was found under the Eastern slope of Mount David-Son, a peak in the Virginia Range in Nevada, then Utah Territory. It was the 1st major discovery of silver in the United States. After the discovery was made public in 1859, it sparked a silver rush of prospectors to the area, scrambling to stake their claims. It brought considerable excitement in California and throughout the United States. The greatest since the California Gold Rush in 1849.
That Winter of 1859, George Hearst and his partners managed to mine 38 tons of high-grade silver ore, packed it across the Sierra on mule-back, had it smelted in San Francisco, and made $91,000 profit (or roughly $3'550,000 in 2016 dollars). As a partner in the company that started in California in the 1850s and headed by San Francisco lawyer James Ben Ali Haggin and Lloyd Tevis, it grew to be the largest private firm of mine-owners in the United States. George acquired the reputation of being one of the most expert prospector and judge of mining property on the Pacific Coast, and contributed to the development of the modern processes of quartz and other kinds of mining. One of his biggest investments was in the Cerro de Pasco Silver mine in the central Highland Region of Peru, that became the biggest source of his fortune.
George returned to Missouri in 1860 in order to take care for his ailing mother and some legal disputes. During this time, he became reacquainted with a younger neighbor, a girl of 18, whom the 40-year-old George married on June 15, 1862, and moved to San Francisco. She gave birth to their only child, William Randolph Hearst, April 29,1863. He became member of the California State Assembly that lasted only a year, but open the door to be involved in the special Committee on Mines and Mining Interests. He unsuccessfully ran for Governor of california in 1882. George maintained a strong political relationship with Central Pacific Railroad, an important tool for the movement of his precious minerals. As a hobby he owned a thoroughbred horse racing stable. One of his better known horses was Jerome Handicap winner, Tournament. In 1895 he acquired Rancho Piedra Blanca at San Simeon, California. He later bought parts of adjoining ranchos, and this land became the site of the famed Hearst Castle, located on the Central coast of California. Invitations to the Hearst Castle were highly coveted during the 1920s and 1930s. The Hollywood and political elite often visited, usually flying into the estate's airfield or taking a private Hearst-owned train car from Los Angeles. The estate's theater screened films from Hearst's own movie studio, Cosmopolitan Productions.
George Hearst died at the age of 70 in Washington DC on February 28, 1891. He wife inherited all her husband's fortune. She donated a great deal of it to help found new libraries at several universities. The Hearst Memorial Mining Building on the Berkeley campus is dedicated to his memory.
In Film and Television the actor Barry Kelley portrayed George Hearst in the 1964 episode "The Paper Dynasty" of the syndicated western television series "Death Valley Days," hosted by Stanley Andrews. James Hampton played William Randolph Hearst and James Lanphier (1920-1969), Ambrose Bierce.
Gerald McRaney portrayed Hearst on the HBO television series Deadwood. He is depicted in season 3 as a ruthless and borderline socio-pathic robber baron.
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