Philip Arnold was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky in 1829. Enlisting in the US Army at the outbreak of the Mexican-American War to escape poverty as much as for any sense of patriotism or adventure, Arnold got lucky enough to earn a decent sum as a 49’er in the subsequent California Gold Rush. He returned to Elizabethtown, fell in love, bought a farm, and started a family.

Sadly the turmoil of the Civil War and a run of bad harvests led to hardship, so Arnold headed to Colorado during the 1870 Silver Rush to score another payday to save hearth and home. It went badly. On a cold night in 1870, having been abandoned by his bosses and desperate to return home to his family, he hatched an insanely audacious plan. Collecting scrap diamonds left over from jewelry making, and trading with Native Americans for a handful of gemstones, Arnold prepared a dummy diamond mine he ultimately showed to Charles Tiffany, of the world famous Tiffany & Co. jewelry store. Tiffany and a cabal of DC politicians and Manhattan bankers paid Arnold the modern equivalent of $14.3 million dollars for his “mine” in 1872.

Arnold promptly went back home to Kentucky, bought hundreds of acres of land and his own bank, deeded it all to his wife Mary, and when Charles Tiffany’s lawyers rolled up to sue and seize assets, he honestly told them he was a penniless farmer married to a very wealthy woman, and had nothing for them to take.

And that’s how an illiterate Kentucky miner fleeced Charles Tiffany out of $14,000,000.

I’ve always loved that story, and Jesse Donaldson talks about it in his book “On Homesickness.” If you’re at all a fan of well-written prose or, like me and Jesse Donaldson, a misplaced native of the Commonwealth, it’s so very, very worth the read.

The ECBP B520 is here to remind all of us that 1) Kentucky has a long history of producing greatness in unassuming forms, and 2) in 1872 it was diamonds, in 2022 it’s Pappy — either way don’t fall for it.

Image courtesy of Jon who also writes on Low Class & High Proof.

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