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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his horse took off for home. We finally got to the creamery and Papa had to take Tom Casey home. The new preacher came to stay in the parsonage at Indian Springs. He and his wife and a boy about our age must have come to the creamery on the stage. While dinner was being prepared, Ed and I undertook to visit with the boy. We took him all over the fields and to our special trees and creeks. When we got back to the house, his mother was quite upset by the worn-out child. We got a scolding. I went into the dining room and sat down at the table. Mama came in and said that that chair was for the visiting child. That was the last straw. I got up, crawled under the house and stayed there until dinner was over and Mama had taken the visitors to the parsonage. She told me that there was some chicken left in the kitchen for me. I had a little table out in the yard, so I decided to eat there. I put the chicken on the table and went back into the house after something. When I came back the chicken was gone. Smokey, our dog, had beaten me to it. Ed and I started to school when we were still at the creamery. Ed was six in December of 1909, and we started that next February, in 1910. We had two miles to walk, so I waited until Ed was old enough to go with me. Papa taught me to read at home. That morning Papa hitched up the buggy and took us around by Horton’s Corner to the school. School had begun when we got there, and Papa put us on the porch and drove away. Miss Vineyard, the teacher, asked us when we went in if we were visiting or coming to school. After that we walked and I remember it, two miles each way. Can’t remember much about the early years in school except games of “ante-over” and taking home black walnuts in our lunch pails in the fall. There was a big walnut tree across from the school. That summer we moved into the Middle Place. Papa hauled the butter then, going to Grass Valley on Mondays and Fridays and to Nevada City on Wednesdays. Then he got home late. I went once or twice in the summer and can remember Celios, a general store, in Nevada City. We came down the Martel Grade, and that night was so dark that we couldn’t see the lead horse, Susie (she was black). Papa used three horses some of the time—two on the wheel and one ahead. NOTE: The Union 8/5/1981 page 3: “Man cannot live by bread alone,” as an 1898 newspaper account made known that a creamery was being built, housing a boiler and engine room, manufacturing room and an office. The Creamery, known as the “Buttermakers Cottage” was powered by steam and capable of processing 1300 Ibs. of milk per hour and, as reported, produced quality butter. The 28 x 38 foot building was reconstructed in 1978 and now stands quietly beneath majestic oaks in the Western Gateway Park. NCHS Bulletin January 2000 Pioneers by Edwin Tyson (We continue with more of the material that Ed Tyson presented at the Society's dinner in 1999.) Herschel Henderson HERE ARE A SERIES OF LETTERS, mostly to his wife, dated from September 21, 1850, to June 8, 1855. The first nine letters are from the town of Jefferson. In his first letter he is in good health and is working for $100 a month plus board, but anticipates a move to a sawmill, where he will be paid $200 a month plus board. His description of the country: ... very rough and mountainous. I am living on the banks of the south Yuba. From one to ten rods from the bank you begin to go uphill and the hills are so steep that they cannot get up them with a wagon and two miles high. Snow falls sometimes in the valley for a foot or so and on top of the hills from six to nine feet, sometimes even to 25 or 30 feet. Below here, from all that I can gather, it is a beautiful country and one of the greatest countries in the world for vegetables and particularly for that one you are so fond of—onions. He tells his wife that he would like to leave California and acquire property in Utah Territory, which he saw on his journey west. There he would raise cattle, sheep, horses and mules “as they are all going to command a high price in this market.” In 1852 the snow in Jefferson was two feet deep and “on top of the mountains five feet deep.” Henderson was the first person to break a road through to Nevada City. With a team of pack mules, it took him two days. In a letter to his wife dated December 16, 1853, he writes that on the first of October he and his partners made a pretty big strike in their diggings on the river, so that after all expenses were paid he had $5,000, and of this $4,300 was in a carpet bag along with $3,800 that belonged to his partner, Hallet. It was his intention to sell all other mining claims and start for home about November 1. But on the night of October 5, one of the company by the name of Hastings took French leave and took my carpet bag and contents with him. He had been gone some fourteen hours before any suspicions were aroused and then we missed our money. Mr. Hallet and I then started in pursuit, each taking a different route. I crossed the river, went to Poorman’s Creek and from there north across the Middle Yuba on to the North Yuba at Downieville. There I got track of a man answering the description, but no one knew which way he had gone from there. I finally decided that he had crossed the mountains and was making his way to Salt Lake. I then crossed the 3