Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 054-1 - January 2000 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 8 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-05 08:29:48 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:01 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:01

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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Memories of Penn Valley by Helen Beatrice Marie Horton Anderson (Helen Anderson was the daughter of Frederick Aaron and Mary Jones Horton and the sister of Ed Horton. This was written by the mother-in-law of Mrs. Barbara Anderson of Rosewell, Georgia.) EWIS HORTON SETTLED in the Penn Valley area. In 1866 he went back to Ohio and brought Fred Aaron Horton and Malinda Horton, children of Zenas Horton, to Penn Valley. Their mother, Zenas, had died when they were children and when their father died, he, Lewis, did not leave them with their stepmother. Their other sister, Helen, had married John Bartholomew in Ohio and died when her daughter, Flora, was born. Flora later married a Clark and had one daughter. When I was five or six, she came to the creamery to visit. The daughter was then about twenty. That was the only one of my cousins that I ever saw. My father, Fred Aaron Horton, came to California in 1866 and first worked in the lima bean fields around Ventura. He came to Nevada County and drove freight wagons in the mountains. He talked about the bells on the teams. The only story that I remember of those times was about a dream he had while sleeping alongside his wagon on a trip. He dreamed that he was in a livery stable and a team came in, so he got his blanket to put on the horses. Then he realized where he was and his horses had somehow gotten loose and were going over a bridge near his camp. He lived on a place half way between the Penn Valley The interior of the creamery as pictured in a Nevada County promotional booklet published in about 1915. (> Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin VOLUME 54 NUMBER1 JANUARY 2000 de creamery and Indian Springs. Aunt Mary Potter and her son lived with him or near. They are buried in the Indian Springs cemetery. In the 1890s James H. Jones, a Methodist preacher, stayed in the parsonage where Guy V. Robinson’s home is now. The preacher’s daughter, Mary (mother of Helen Anderson) was a teacher and spent summers in Penn Valley. There she met Fred Horton. They were married in Pacific Grove in 1901. By this time my grandfather had died and Grandmother Louisa C. Jones was living in a small house in Pacific Grove. Both Ed and I were born in Pacific Grove, as my mother went down there for the births. My mother and father lived in Penn Valley, first in the house at the end of Horton Avenue (or Street), then in the creamery house, which I remember. My father was the butter maker there for several years. The cream was brought there in 5 and 10 gallon cans by farmers in the area. Those in Penn Valley, Indian Springs and Pleasant Valley brought the cream there in wagons. They usually took home buttermilk. The farmers in Smartsville and Mooney Flat sent their cans up on the horse-drawn stage that traveled daily between Marysville and Nevada City. On the way up it went by the creamery, but on the way down it turned off at Casey’s Corners and went down by Indian Springs. It left the mail at the post office at a place called Fernley. The post office was in a part of the lower big room in the “old” Robinson house. That house was replaced in 1920 by the present old Robinson house. The first house had a long addition where the school teacher usually lived. Mrs, Nile, Mrs, Robinson’s mother, quite often drove there from the Nile place (Peacock Ranch) to teach Sunday School. Butter making was done in a big wooden churn. The cream was held in long vats. At first ice was put directly into the vats of cream to cool the cream to the proper temperature in hot weather. I do not know what they did in 1