Autograph Letter Signed. 8pp. To “Pierce”, Sherbrooke [Canada], a fellow engineer who had worked with him in Mexico. With carte-de-visite of Thurston, looking every bit the bearded vagabond, dated on verso, Tampico, Mexico, May 10, 1881.
Thurston was a railroad engineer, laying out an extension of the Mexican Central Railroad westward from the east coast port of Tampico. He was working deep in the interior, under difficult conditions, “very rough running in the mountains”, and under the protection of the Mexican Army in these first years after Porfirio Diaz became the country’s dictator.
Hundreds of miles away from Thurston’s work site, in Tampico, the whole project was under the supervision of a former Confederate Artillery Captain and Alabama plantation owner. But the field manager, a lazy German, was a “terribly disagreeable…general rascal and big fool” with “strange ideas” who was living with his Mexican cook. Hearing a rumor that nearby banditos had “declared against the Gvernment” and were coming to rob and kill, the boss was “scared so badly” that he locked up his office, armed himself with pistols and a rifle and ran off to hide in the woods until a guard of five soldiers arrived to escort him to safety, leaving Thurston and his workers to their fate. The “revolutionaries”, it turned out, were a handful of thieves who had already been imprisoned. Difficult as these work conditions were, Thurston enjoyed the freedom and adventure, and had already persuaded a pretty young widow to live with him when he settled down as an American expatriate.