The Montana Ore Purchasing Company was incorporated in Butte, Montana, in March 1893. Major stockholders included Fredrick Augustus Heinze, who held 51% of the stock; John MacGinnis, with 2% of the stock; and the remainder held primarily by Heinze's brothers, Otto Charles Heinze and Arthur Heinze. The company was capitalized at $2,500,000. In 1894, Montana Ore Purchasing Company opened a highly sophisticated smelter in Meaderville, a Butte suburb. This allowed the company to offer low-priced custom smelting work to small mining companies and placed Heinze in direct competition with the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Originally, Montana Ore Purchasing Company had to lease mines as well as secure ore from independent companies in order to keep operating at an efficient capacity. However, F. Augustus Heinze was able to locate and purchase rich ore bodies in seemingly lackluster mines. For example, the Rarus Mine, purchased in 1895 for $300,000, turned out to be one of Butte's premier mining properties. In the years 1893-1897, Montana Ore Purchasing Company employed 700 men and reduced 25,000,000 pounds of copper ore per year. In addition to the Montana holdings, the company also moved into the Kootenay Mining District of British Columbia. These interests were sold in 1898. In 1906, after a decade of mining war with the Anaconda Company and the Amalgamated Copper Company, Heinze was forced to sell the bulk of his Montana properties, including Montana Ore Purchasing Company, to the Butte Coalition Mining Company, a division of Amalgamated. John MacGinnis, a vice president of Montana Ore Purchasing Company, was also president of the Silver Bow National Bank and mayor of Butte (1905-1906). He held copper and coal mining interests in Montana, Mexico, and British Columbia. MacGinnis was also an officer in the Butte Plumbing Company, a general contracting firm for plumbing, steam, and gas fittings. Others involved with the company included David J. Fitzgerald and S.A. Waters. Butte Plumbing Company went out of business in 1904.
Collection includes incoming correspondence (1900-1910), two letterpress books of outgoing correspondence (Sept. 1905-April, 1906), court papers, daily smelter reports (Aug. 1905), two account journals (May-Oct. 1905), an order book (May 1905-Jan. 1906), legal documents (1900, 1906), and miscellaneous materials. In addition, there is a subgroup for Butte Plumbing Company including scattered general and interoffice correspondence (1902-1903).
by series and subgroup
available upon request
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the Montana Historical Society Archives catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search under these terms.
The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection