Joseph Read

JOSEPH READ WAS BORN on Christmas Day, 1843, in Saratoga County, New York, the son of John and Mary Read, immigrants from England and Ireland. Little is known of his early life, or what first carried him west to Nevada, but like so many men of his generation, war and opportunity shaped the course of his years.

On December 17, 1864, at just twenty-one years old, Joseph enlisted in the 1st Nevada Cavalry Battalion—then known as the Nevada Territory Cavalry Volunteers. Rather than marching east to famous battlefields, his service kept him in the West, guarding frontier posts, protecting emigrant routes, and performing long, lonely scouting duties. He served faithfully until the end of the Civil War, mustering out at Camp Douglas on January 23, 1866.

Decades later, worn down by age and labor, Joseph applied for admission to the State Soldiers Home in Orting, Washington. He was sixty-one when he entered in November 1904, his occupation listed simply as “miner.” The call of mining camps still tugged at him, however, and before long he requested a six-month furlough. He headed south to Tonopah, where the silver boom was in full roar. A brief notice in the February 27, 1906 Carson City Daily Appeal records that he was working for the St. Clair interests and preparing to take a lease—still chasing one last stake.

Joseph died in Tonopah on April 3, 1908. The night before, he had gone to the Chinese washhouse near the West End No. 2 shaft to collect his laundry when he was suddenly taken ill. The proprietor, Wah Lee, offered him a bunk and suggested calling a doctor, but Joseph declined, choosing instead to lie down and rest. When the employees left for the evening, they assumed he was sleeping and covered him with a blanket, unaware that he was already dying. By morning, he was dead. An inquest held later that day determined the cause of death to be heart disease or a stroke.

With no known relatives, Judge Brissell contacted the Soldiers Home in Orting and was instructed to bury Joseph in Tonopah. Captain G. R. Bradley and E. A. Harman raised funds “to give Read the funeral to which he is entitled as a man who has served his country well and faithfully.” He was laid to rest on Sunday afternoon at two o’clock, with soldiers and Spanish-American War veterans respectfully invited to attend.

Joseph Read came west, served his country, followed the mines until the end—and, like so many others, found his final rest beneath Tonopah’s soil, far from where his life began, but among men who understood the road he traveled.