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Nathaniel Thomas Lupton was born near Winchester, Virginia on Dec. 19th, l830, son of Daniel and Elizabeth Lupton. He was graduated from Dickinson College at the young age of 18, and began to study law before finally devoting his time to the study of chemistry. Lupton taught chemistry at several female colleges before accepting the chair of chemistry at Randolph-Macon College in l857, and was appointed to the same chair in l858 at the new Southern University in Greensboro, Alabama. The University was not opened until l859 and Lupton spent the intervening months studying chemistry under the famous Professor Bunsen in Heidelberg, Germany. Lupton remained at Southern for 12 years, where he also worked as a chemist for the Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau during the Civil War. From l871 - 1874, Lupton served as President of the University of Alabama, and in 1874 he accepted appointment as the professor of chemistry at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. With twelve months leave between jobs, Lupton again went to Germany to study with Bunsen.
During his tenure at Vanderbilt, Lupton befriended a
local dentist and entrepeneur, William H. Morgan, who would later come
to occupy the chair of dentistry at Vanderbilt. Morgan was a
bear of a man, a devout Methodist, born
Mexico in the late l870's and l880's sustained a "silver rush" of sorts from American mining companies, with speculators seeking to become rich from formerly inaccessible ore deposits in the old mines of Mexico. Many of the older Mexican mines had become flooded with groundwater, and American technology, particularly pumps designed to remove water from mining shafts, was thought to be the savior. Lupton's job was to assay ores and ascertain if it was economically feasible to exploit certain mines or veins.
Lupton's first foray into Mexico
may have been in l878, for the l878-79 Register of Vanderbilt University
lists a gift from Lupton to the school museum of "silver ore" from the
Mexican state of Chihuahua. In the 1879-80 volume, the
Register reported another donation of "silver ore" from Lupton,
this one from Coahuila. On June 8th of the same year, the
Nashville Daily American reported that Morgan and Lupton were leaving
the next day for Mexico (via El Paso) to visit the Santa Gertrudis
mines in Coahuila. Travel at the time was slow and difficult, and there were
no passenger trains in southwest Texas nor in northern Chihuahua or Coahuila. Thus connections south and |
into comparative poverty, with
an honest pride to be the best at whatever he undertook. In the late
l870's, Morgan was President of the Santa Gertrudis Silver Mining
Company, a Nashville firm which came to specialize in speculation of
mines in Mexico. In May of 1879 Morgan hired Lupton to assay ore at
a silver mine near Santa Rosa in Coahuila, Mexico.
west of San Antonio were by stagecoach. Why Lupton was
first going to El Paso is unknown. El Paso was about 7 days west of
San Antonio via stagecoach in l879, and the route to the Santa Gertrudis
mines was through Eagle Pass, which was about 36 hours due south via stage
from San Antonio. Perhaps Lupton and
Morgan traveled to El Paso to examine some mines in New Mexico. In
any event, to reach Santa Gertrudis in Coahuila they would have
backtracked to enter Mexico via Eagle Pass. They did reach
Coahuila in l879, as Lupton published a short
article in 1880 about meteoric iron from Coahuila, noting that he viewed the
meteorite in Santa Rosa, Coahuila, about 120 miles south of Eagle Pass,
Texas, "while on a visit to Mexico in July, l879." Santa Rosa was
the largest town of any consequence near the Santa Gertrudis mine.