Sol Star
1840-1917. Merchant, postmaster, longtime mayor of Deadwood
Solomon Star was born on December 20, 1840, in Bavaria, and his family moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, when he was about ten. He went on to Helena, Montana, where he held territorial office and partnered with Seth Bullock in a hardware business.
Into the gulch
The two reached Deadwood in August 1876, the day after Hickok’s death by one account, and opened as “Star and Bullock, Auctioneers and Commission Merchants.” HBO’s Deadwood brought his name to a wide audience alongside Bullock’s, though the real partnership was built on commerce and public office far more than drama.
Public life
He was elected to the first town council in 1876 and became postmaster in 1877. In 1880 he helped found the Deadwood Flouring Mill Company. He was first elected mayor in 1884, and sources count his service differently: one reports ten terms totalling about fourteen years, while HistoryNet says five terms. He was still in the office in May 1899, when he petitioned the Navy for a bronze cannon captured in the Spanish-American War; it arrived that July.
He also spent about twenty years, until his death, as Lawrence County’s clerk of courts. The one blot on his career came during his time as postmaster, when he resigned over a misappropriation scandal and was later acquitted.
Partnership
His business life and Bullock’s ran together for decades. Beyond the store they operated the S-B stock ranch on the Belle Fourche and Redwater rivers. After the fire of March 1894, the two built the Bullock Hotel inside their surviving warehouse.
The end
Star died on October 10, 1917, in Deadwood. He never married. A funeral was held in town, but he is not among the famous graves on the hill: his body was taken to St. Louis and buried in New Mount Sinai Cemetery. Visitors looking for him at Mount Moriah will not find him there.