Marshall Latham Bond

Marshall Latham Bond was one of two brothers who were Jack London's landlords and among his employers during the autumn of 1897 and the spring of 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush. They were the owners of the dog that London fictionalized as Buck in his 1903 novel The Call of the Wild.

Marshall Latham Bond was born at Mayhurst Plantation in Orange, Virginia in March 1867 and died in Seattle, Washington in 1941. He was the son of Judge Hiram Bond and Laura Ann Higgins. Marshall Bond was a mining engineer, stockbroker, real estate broker, cowboy and outdoor guide.

Early life and education

In 1872 Judge Hiram Bond purchased a quarter section 160-acre (0.65 km²) ranch named Villa Park near Denver, Colorado. The land is now a neighborhood of Denver. Hiram Bond's brother-in-law was Latham Higgins, a Harvard-educated attorney, who owned a larger ranch further out of Denver. As he was growing up Marshall Bond and his older brother Louis were given increasing responsibilities on his father's and uncle's ranches. By the time they were at Yale University, during their summer vacations they were participating in buying trips and cattle drives as far away as New Mexico and Chihuahua, Mexico.

He was educated at Denver Public Elementary Schools,

Marshall Bond went to Pampanga in the Philippines with a shipment of horses for the United States Cavalry. By that time there was not much action but a group of soldiers in the United States Occupation he was part of were sniped at and returned fire on Philippine Rebels.

Business visits to Europe

The Bonds attempted to organize mining claims holders to establish a

Marshall Bond worked in 1901 and 1902 as an executive for the American Mechanical Cashier Company, of which his father was president and a major shareholder. Among those people who Marshall Bond tried to bring in as an investor was a friend from his time at St. Paul School, John Jacob Astor IV. Despite the candy eating contest with school roommate Marion Ward Chanler, an Astor relation in 1883 which turned fatal (or perhaps because of it), the Chanlers and Astors remained friendly with the Bonds.

Assistance to Boer refugee colony

In 1902 Vice President

Seattle

Marshall Bond's father, the mining investor Judge Hiram Bond, became active in the state of

While living in Seattle Marshall met and married Amy Louise Burnett, the daughter of Seattle pioneer

Since the Bonds established a presence in Seattle in 1891 to invest in Washington, they had also been active in British Columbia. They were involved in the mining in the Ruby Creek district in the early 1890s. Among the local business leaders they were involved with were the James Dunsmuir Group and Count Gustav Konstantin von Alvensleben, known as Alvo. Marshall Bond also went camping, hunting and fishing in British Columbia many times. A book on the Tsimshian tribe of Hartley Bay recounts Bond's hiring an Indian chief for an excursion. A particular sojourn was made with British travelogue writer, explorer Warburton Pike along the Stikine River Valley in 1911.

Among the people that Bond and Pike met there at

In 1917 a lieutenant of Pancho Villa kidnapped a group of American mining engineers working in Mexico from a train. When they tried to escape they were killed, and it became difficult to recruit mining engineers for work in Mexico. As a consequence the compensation offered to the mining engineers went up. Among those who took advantage of the opportunity was Marshall Bond, who took a consultancy with the Alvarado Mining & Milling Company, founded by Americans working with the heirs of Mexican mining magnate Pedro Alvarado, owner of a mine named La Palmilla near Parral, Chihuahua in 1918. Pedro Alvarado, Sr. had been friendly with Villa before his death, but Villa's men tried kidnapping Bond to hold him for ransom. The Villistas were unable to find Bond because instead of hiding in town he joined a group who fortified and supplied a nearby cave including a cannon.

International counter intelligence agent

During the