USA > California > Mendocino County > History of Mendocino and Lake counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading, men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 63
USA > California > Lake County > History of Mendocino and Lake counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading, men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 63
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The houses were of logs, sixteen feet square, cabin joined to cabin in a long row. The roofs were of shakes (clapboards as they called them) weighted down with heavy logs, and the doors also were made of shakes. Each cabin had one small window. Though these little dwellings were humble they seemed very secure after the long journey in which sickness and death were added to their ordinary hardships, and the missionaries were eager to begin their work. A larger building was put up, the lower part for a schoolroom, the upper part for stores, which consisted chiefly of clothes for the Indian children, and after the latter were properly dressed they attended school in the same room as the children of the white people who had come out to help
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them. Mrs. Morris learned- to speak the Osage language just as well as English.
All of the mission party ate at the same table. Their "coffee" was made of parched wheat, sweetened with honey, as long as the meal lasted. At last their flour and meal gave out, and then they had two large iron kettles put up in an arch which served to boil their hominy in. It had to be boiled every day, to be sweet, and for six months they had nothing else to live on-not a morsel of bread in all that time. They used to say the mission ought to be called "Hominy" instead of Harmony. Nearly all the party became sick and help- less, suffering for want of proper food before they got relief and mills were built.
One day they heard of twin Indian babies being tied together and thrown into the bushes by the Redmen, and rescued them. The girl soon died, but the boy, whom they named Moses, lived for seven years afterward.
With all the disheartening experiences, there were some amusing incidents. Rev. Mr. Montgomery took a trip to the settlements, over one hundred miles away, and having nothing better mounted an ox, which bore him safely ; on his return it was whispered that he was in pursuit of a wife, but the narrative does not say how the matter turned out. In this connection it may be related that when it was learned at the Union Mission, among the Little Osage Indians some hundred miles to the south. that there were single ladies at Harmony, the men came up from there and married all but one, taking them to their own mission and leaving Harmony quite destitute of teachers. (Some years after- ward, while in charge of Boudinot Mission, Rev. Mr. Dodge returned to Ver- mont and brought out two more lady teachers for the latter mission, and they had been in the west only a short time when Dr. Leonard Dodge and Nathaniel Dodge, elder brothers of Mrs. Morris, married them.)
In 1827, the Indians being removed to Neosho county, in the southeastern part of Kansas, some sixty miles from Harmony, Rev. Mr. Dodge followed them and established the Boudinot Mission, near the Old Chouteau Agency on the Neosho river. His daughter Sally went with him. After their build- ings were completed the fencing around the dwellings had to be made secure against the Indians, with locks on every gate, for the savages would steal at every opportunity. At the Osage Agency, seven miles away from Boudinot, lived the government blacksmith (who did work for the Indians) with his family. One Sunday morning he left his gate unlocked, and up walked twenty Osage warriors, spears in hand. saying to him, "Don't you want to die?" He replied, "No, I've lived through the. cholera, and I don't want to die now." At that they ran their spears through him, and he staggered and fell into his wife's arms, expiring instantly. After she had lived two years in this danger- ous region, her father preaching and her brother Newell acting as interpreter, Sally Dodge broke down in health and her father sent her back to Harmony, to her married sister's, to recuperate. Remaining there three months, in the meantime she became acquainted with a young man named Milton Morris, just out from Tennessee, and when she returned to Boudinot he accompanied her home. The next day, after Mr. Dodge had preached, he married them, the ceremony taking place in the presence of the family, two hired men and some Indians, and it is presumed they were the first white couple ever married in what is now the state of Kansas.
After their marriage the young couple remained with her father at Boudi- not about six months. leaving in the spring of 1832 for Little Osage, Mo.,
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where settlers were beginning to come in. They lived in that section of Missouri for nearly twenty years, during which time Mrs. Morris's brother Nathaniel was killed there by Indians, and her brother Newell wounded at the same battle, defending the settlers against an invasion of the Osages. As Mrs. Morris spoke Osage fluently she was often called upon to interpret when trouble arose between the whites and Indians. On one occasion she had to lead fifteen men to the camp of three hundred Osages to order the latter to leave the country. Another time, when her brother Dr. Dodge was in her house, a large warrior of the Osages entered, and drawing his butcher knife from the scabbard made for the Doctor. The latter took up a large fire poker and punched him out of the house, and he left for parts unknown. So they . lived in continual dread for years. There was no mill to grind their corn, and flour was unknown in many sections of the country. Frequently Mr. Morris had to go forty or fifty miles to mill, leaving his wife with only two little children. Often there would be no man about the farm. They lived near the river, and when the stream was swollen travelers would halt on the opposite bank and holloa. Mrs. Morris would cross with the canoe, help swim the horses and ferry the men over. Mr. Morris being in poor health half the time, they resorted to many expedients to make a living. They would take their two children in the canoe, hunt and cut bee trees, and gather nuts. Deer and wild turkey were plentiful until the country became settled. After the settle- ment had been established some time, during the hard period of the forties, there was one entire year in which Mr. and Mrs. Morris saw but one silver dollar, and this, their only piece of money, she earned by making a coat. Mr. Morris was sick most of that year, and Mrs. Morris made forty coats by hand, besides pants and vests, taking her pay in corn, pork, potatoes, jeans, home- made cotton cloth, etc. One year when money was scarce they camped out on the Big Osage bottom, where Mr. Morris cut down pecan trees, and Mrs. Morris and the children gathered the nuts until they had sixty bushels, which they sent to St. Louis and sold for goods, receiving one dollar a bushel. This was all their store bill for a year, and there were then nine in the family.
Toiling thus in sickness and poverty for a period of twenty years, they moved to the state of Iowa, bargaining there for the site upon which Council Bluffs is now located. It was then known as Cainsville. But after he had made the bargain Mr. Morris became alarmed at being in the midst of the Mormons and would not move onto his purchase, there being only about seven- teen Gentiles there among a population of between two thousand and three thousand Mormons. They remained two or three years in Iowa, among a population about half Mormon, and all the Gentile meetings of the settlement were held at their home, which was also the stopping place of the preachers, Mr. Morris having been in the active ministry for twelve or fifteen years. From the Otoe Indians they bought the right to move into Nebraska in 1854, and Mr. Morris was the first man to cross the Missouri river into Cass county, that state, in the year named. Here again, among the Otces, Pawnees and other tribes, Mrs. Morris was frequently left with five or six young children while her husband and older sons hauled corn, flour, bacon and other groceries over the Missouri river from Iowa to supply what was practically a free hotel, the Morrises never charging anything for accommodations, though they often had to make beds all over the floor for travelers. For the first two years the family lived in that section all the religious exercises held in the neighborhood were conducted at their home. There also the first quarterly meeting ever
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held in either Kansas or Nebraska was held (see "The Out Posts of Zion," by William H. Good). The Otoes spoke the Osage language well enough so Mrs. Morris could converse with them, and the chiefs from far and near used to come to talk with her. One morning when all the family were away except herself and her son William, then twelve or thirteen years old, and a child still younger, and the only other white person about was a neighbor boy the same age as her own, seven Pawnee warriors approached and wanted her to give them the household utensils. Mrs. Morris sat down in the doorway to prevent them entering, holding her younger child in her arms. The neighbor buy said, "Give them what they want and they will go off," but she refused to give them a thing. When they stepped back to their bows and arrows, and began to spring them as if making ready to shoot, she put down her child, took up a club and made after them. They all jumped the fence and ran from the place, going up near to what is now Plattsmouth, where they ran two white men unaccustomed to Indian ways off their claims.
At this location the family remained about two years, when Mr. Morris sold out to Mr. Cazad, the government surveyor, and in 1857, after burying their son Brown (who died at the age of sixteen years) on the farm. Mr. and Mrs. Morris set out with their belongings for California, crossing the plains with ox teams. They encountered the ordinary incidents and dangers of that trip and arrived in Trinity county in the fall of that year, for the two years follow- ing engaging in mining, hotel-keeping and farming there; they sold no intoxi- cants at their hotel, all the family being teetotalers. Subsequently they resided in Napa county for several years, and meantime, in 1864, the eldest son, Thomas, died at Trinity. It was after this that they went back east, again crossing the plains with ox teams, and spent some time in Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. during which time the second son, John, joined them in the Delaware reserve, in Kansas, and came out with them on their return to California, in the spring of 1867. Mr. and Mrs. Morris then settled in Napa county, where they lived principally from that time, about 1879 moving to Mores Creek, that county. She made one visit east by rail. Except for the lack of disturbance by the Indians her life here was as romantic and eventful as ever. After moving to the west she made a trip overland with her husband from the bay of San Francisco to Portland, Oregon, by team, journeyed considerably over the state of Nevada. and made a trip from Napa to Eureka, Humboldt county, Cal. From childhood she had been accustomed to hard work. While at the missions she had to milk ten cows morning and evening, besides helping her mother with the housework, and she considered it an everyday matter to work from morning till night and then sit up sewing until nine or ten o'clock. Except when she was actually bedfast she never kept a servant of any kind, and during all the years she made so many coats, vests and pants she had a family of seven children to care for as well, doing all her own house work. At the time she wrote the article from which these reminiscences are taken she was doing the housework for a family of four, washing, mending and cooking, though in her eighty-second year. She never weighed more than one hundred and thirteen pounds at any time in her life. Mr. Morris died February 4, 1891. when nearly eighty-four years old. With the exception of the memorable trip out to Harmony Mission from the east, his life was fully as eventful as that of his wife. For nearly fifty years he was a minister of the gospel.
William Morris, fifth son of Rev. Milton and Sarah (Dodge) Morris, was born in Bates county, Mo., May 3, 1841, and in his youth had such experiences
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as fall to the lot of few. Living on the frontier in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and western Iowa, he had more than one hair's-breadth escape from the cruel- ties and trickiness of the Indians, as well as the Mormons who were then very numerous in western Iowa, and he was but sixteen when he came out to the coast with his parents. For about two years they lived at Minersville, in Trinity county, in 1859 moving to near St. Helena, in Napa county, where he was engaged in farming until he returned to Minersville in the fall of 1862. There he followed mining, but when in the winter of 1862-63 Massachusetts received permission to enlist a battalion of cavalry in California he joined the organization, on February 16, 1863, becoming a member of Company E, Second Massachusetts Cavalry. The command was transported from San Francisco to Boston at once, by way of Panama, and immediately sent to the front, to the Department of Washington, being attached to the Army of the Potomac, under Colonel Lowell. It was in thirty-two engagements, the first of which was at Ashby Gap, Va., and saw such trying service, with severe losses, that recruits were constantly in demand to keep its ranks filled. Its operations were in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, keeping back Mosby's guerrillas. In August, 1863, Mr. Morris was captured, near Alexandria, Va., in sight of the dome of the capitol, by Mosby's men, was taken to Libby prison and thence over to Belle Isle, and becoming helpless after an attack of measles was carried back to the hospital at Libby. That year he was exchanged, help- less and speechless, and was moved to the hospital at Annapolis, where he improved steadily. When convalescent he received a special order to go to his regiment, which he rejoined at Poolesville, Md., in May; 1864. From that time until the close of the war he served under Sheridan, was discharged July 21, 1865, at Fairfax Court House, Virginia, and paid off at Boston, Massachusetts.
Immediately after receiving his honorable dismissal from the United States service Mr. Morris proceeded to Fremont county, Iowa, where he became a student at Tabor College, attending that institution four months. There he renewed his acquaintance with Miss Susanna Wilson, daughter of Samuel and Martha B. Wilson, of Tabor, Iowa, and they were married, con- tinuing to live in Fremont county until their removal to western Kansas, where Mr. Morris took up a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres, which, however, he subsequently abandoned. Thence they came to California, being accompanied by Mrs. Morris's father, and in the year 1891 settled at St. Helena, Napa county, where they made their home for three years. In 1894 they settled in Scotts valley, Lake county, Mr. Morris farming there very successfully until four years ago, when they moved to Lakeport to enjoy in comfortable retirement the rewards of a busy life. He built a substantial residence at the corner of Ninth and Forbes streets, and although he was in rather frail health in his earlier life he is in excellent condition now, well pre- served and attending actively to all his affairs. While living in Iowa he became interested in bees and bee culture, and the experience and knowledge he has gathered on this subject has won him considerable fame among apiarists, particularly through the numerous articles he has contributed to journals in various parts of the country. His advice on bee keeping published in the "American Bee Journal," of Chicago, Illinois ; the St. Helena (California) Star, and the Falls City (Nebraska) Journal ; and his popular articles to the Toledo Blade and to local papers, have made his name well and favorably known in more than one section of the country.
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All his life Mr. Morris has held progressive and advanced views on the leading questions of the day. It is a fact that he was only a boy when he prayed for the day when his mother and sister might have the right to vote, and he has lived to see this dream realized and is hoping for the realization of other cherished plans for the betterment of mankind generally. Personally he has never used tobacco in any form, or ever tasted an intoxicant of any kind, and he is a firm believer in total abstinence and an advocate of Prohibi- tion doctrines, looking forward to their ultimate triumph as his father worked for and held to his faith in abolition. Mr. Morris cast his first vote for Lincoln, his second presidential vote for Grant, and for some time he has voted with the Prohibition party. He advocates clean politics as well as right living in all the relations of life, and is ready to fight corruption wherever found. He and his wife and family are active members of the Methodist Episcopal Church (South) at Lakeport, and their influence is cast with all good movements.
Nine children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Morris: Sarah L. is the wife of LaFayette Hendricks, of Lake county, and they have a family of six children, Clarence Clifford, Emma V., Marion L., Etta Marie, Olive Irene and Elzada Louise ; Martha Louise married Homer Miner and died when twenty- one years old in Rawlins county, Kansas, leaving one child, which died in infancy ; Nellie S. is the wife of S. D. Abercrombie, of Lakeport, and has a family of five children, William (principal of the Middletown grammar school), Robert, Harold, Mabel and Irene; John W., a farmer in Scotts valley, married Ellen Simpson and has two children, Elbert and Eleanor ; Harriet Olive, who lives at home, is engaged as a telephone operator ; Marietta I. died at Redlands, California, when twenty-six years old, unmarried; Emma Rebecca, living at home, is also a telephone operator; Helen Mercedes, wife of J. W. Curdy, a carpenter, of Lakeport, has two children, James Winfred and Harriet Susanna ; Violet died in infancy. Mrs. Morris, the mother of this family, is a most estimable woman, highly thought of among her neighbors.
Samuel Wilson, father of Mrs. Morris, was born in Athens county, Ohio, and there married Martha B. Martin, also a native of that county. They moved west to lowa when their daughter Susanna (Mrs. Morris) was only nine years old, settling in Fremont county, where Mrs. Wilson died in the year 1877, at the age of sixty-four. A family of seven children was born to Mr. and Mrs. Wilson: James H., Joseph M., Elizabeth, Josiah B., Susanna, Olive and Marietta I. After their daughter Susanna married the parents lived with her, and as previously mentioned Mr. Wilson came with Mr. and Mrs. Morris to California.
JOHN FRANCIS GARNER .- Here in Lake County are few inen who have attempted agricultural pursuits on as extensive a scale as Mr. Garner, operations being carried on three-quarters of a mile south of Lower Lake. That Mr. Garner has exceptional business ability has been apparent from the outset of his business career, during which his active temperament has mani- fested itself in various directions, and at present he is combining numerous interests, mostly of an agricultural nature, but requiring adequate commercial knowledge and management for their complete success. Mr. Garner's mastery of the agricultural principles and details of his work is the more remarkable when it is known that he has acquired it all since he settled at his present place-only about ten years ago. The several important enterprises he has swung since would alone justify his being classed among the foremost factors
John F. Saucer
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in the prominence attained by Lake county as a producing region worthy of more than passing note.
John F. Garner is not the first of his family to win notice in this section for conspicuous business talent. His father, John R. Garner, now living at Upper Lake, is the head of a prosperous family, which has been well and favorably known since he established himself here in 1881, and they are the owners of the Garner Stock Farm at Arabella, in Long valley, Lake county, a very valuable property comprising two thousand acres, which they hold as a corporation, of which John F. Garner is treasurer. John R. Garner and his wife, Aramanta (Roberts) Garner, were both born in Missouri, and both came to California when young, Mr. Garner making the journey by ox teams. He was one of the first settlers in Napa valley, whence he removed to Lake county, which has since been his home. His wife died a year ago at the age of sixty-six years. Mr. and Mrs. Garner were married in California, and they became the parents of eleven children, eight of whom survive, viz .: Thomas, who lives at Ukiah; Joseph, of Santa Rosa; John F., our subject; Louis, a resident of Arizona: Fred, living on the Garner Stock Farm, Long valley, and Lloyd, Leland and Florence (Mrs. Woodson), all of Upper Lake.
John F. Garner was born at Oakville, Napa county, on the 25th of July, 1871, and passed his early life in that region, coming with the family to Lake county in the year 1881. He was given an excellent public school education, graduating from the Arabella grammar school, and until he started out on his own account was employed in assisting with the numerous duties about the home ranch, a valuable preparation for any line of work. About 1897, some five years prior to his marriage, he started a butcher business at Lower Lake, and continued it for seven years, until he came to this large ranch about two years following his marriage. The butcher business was a profit- able experience for him, growing and prospering steadily under his manage- ment, and he made a name for executive ability and good judgment which gained him the confidence of those with whom he had dealings. Though he has not since been actively engaged in this line, he still retains an interest in it, being a heavy stockholder in the corporation known as the Lake County Meat and Produce Company, and acting as one of the directors of that concern.
Mr. Garner gave up the butcher business to take charge of the five- thousand-acre ranch just south of Lower Lake, which he leases from G. E. B. Wrey, of London, well known in Lake county, of which he was formerly a resident. Ever since he undertook operations here Mr. Garner has displayed a degree of enterprise which would insure results in any field of endeavor. Through his well-directed efforts he has become one of the most extensive farmers and stockmen in the county, and his work has not only been of value to him, but has helped to elevate all local interests and give this vicinity prestige and reputation. Beginning with no special knowledge of the require- ments for successful orchard and vineyard work, he has studied while he planted and gathered, has adapted the best of others' methods and invented many of his own, and he is now considered a first-class farmer, vineyardist and horticulturist. He has gone beyond the production of fruit, and has become a manufacturer of wine, in which he has established a business of extensive proportions. The apple orchard covers one hundred acres, his vineyard forty acres, and from their yield he produces twenty-four thousand gallons annually of two popular brands of wine, Zinfindel and Golden Shasta.
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Eight thousand cases of apples were shipped in the year 1912, while in 1914 the yield is thirty thousand sacks, which will be dried. For the purpose a new dryer has been built, in which a process of artificial sulphuring and drying is carried on, its capacity being fifty thousand pounds of green fruit per week.
Mr. Garner's record has attracted attention and proved an incentive to a number of ambitions growers. Besides his orchard and vineyard, Mr. Garner has two hundred and fifty acres under cultivation in general farm crops, leaving forty-six hundred acres for range land. His stock usually consists of about two hundred head of cattle, one hundred hogs, forty head of horses and mules, two hundred sheep and a large flock of poultry. As above noted, Mr. Garner is treasurer of the corporation which owns and runs the Garner Stock Farm, and which was organized about eighteen years ago
It may readily be judged that with all his private interests Mr. Garner lias had little time for public concerns, and though he is deeply solicitous in such matters, whether they affect the home locality or the welfare of the nation, he confines his activity to supporting the men he considers best fitted to handle them. Office holding has no attraction for him personally. He has been a Republican in political sentiment. For some time he has held membership in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in whose work he has taken an active part, and he is very popular in the fraternity; with his wife he also belongs to the Rebekah degree of the order.
Mr. Garner's marriage to Miss Clara Graham took place at Lower Lake, March 30, 1902, and they have had a family of four children: Irvin, who is now ten years old; Roy, nine years old; a child which died in infancy, and Carroll, three years old. The three boys are sturdy, promising lads. Mrs. Garner's pleasant personality has won her many friends in the vicinity. She is a native of Melvern, Osage county. Kans., and was three years old when lier parents, Samuel and Augusta Booth Graham, natives of Canada and lowa, respectively, came to California some thirty years ago. Their first location was at Guerneville, but they soon came to Lake county, in 1883, farming here until their return to Santa Rosa, where they are now residing. They had a family of five children : Ireton, whose headquarters are in Santa Rosa ; Clara, Mrs. John F. Garner ; Hazel, Mrs. Young of Hopland ; Grace, of Oakland, and Lloyd, the last named deceased.
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