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# The Rich Man Died. James C. Flood, the bonanza king, died at Heidelberg, Germany, according to a dispatch received by members of his family in San Francisco. Mr. Flood was born in Ireland in 1825 and went to California in 1851. He received a plain common school education. How his time was occupied between his school days and his majority is not known, but when about twenty-three years of age, in 1849, he sailed for California, making the long journey around the Horn. With $3,000 he returned to New York, but resided in that city only a year. Back again at the Pacific coast, like all the adventurers of the period, Mr. Flood had troublesome times, dissapointments and failures and plenty of hard work. In 1854 we find him emerging from obscurity and becoming known as the leading partner in the firm of Flood & O'Brien. The partners made money keeping a liquor saloon in San Francisco, which became a kind of exchange, much to the profit of its proprietors. In 1862 these men made their first investment in the Comstock lode, Nevada. John W. Mackay joined his fortunes with theirs the next year, and in 1869 James C. Fair became the fourth partner in the mining property owned by the firm. Whoever suffered by the collapse of the Comstock "boom" ten or eleven years ago, Flood and his associates came out ahead. It was Mr. Flood who projected the Nevada bank. He had for associates James C. Fair and John W. Mackay. After finishing the immense row of buildings called the Nevada block in San Francisco, and just before starting the Nevada bank, Flood made that heavy call on the California bank which led to its suspension and incidentally to the death of William C, Ralston, the popular Californian, whose fall and subsequent suicide were greatly deplored by the public.