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Archie E. Garden Family Tree

This letter was received by the members of the Garden family in Iowa from George Thissell and Samuel and Isaac Harris who were in the gold fields of California, having left in the spring of 1850. The latter two men were Louisa Harris Garden’s brothers.  I think the “1850″, written on the top of the page (in the copy of the original) was put there years later.  It isn’t logical that the men could have left in the spring of 1850, be in California two or three months later, and have the experiences written about in this letter.  So the year was perhaps 1851 or later.

Gold Field Letter

(This document is reproduced to be as near the original as possible — layout, misspellings and all.  The (    ) indicate words that we were unable to decipher.)

Hangtown or Placerville         June 24

Dear Sir

I imbrace this opertunity of sending you a few lines.  I am well at present and hope this few lines will find you and yours injoying the same blessing.  I have often thought of you when I was al alone and in a foren land but James (we believe this refers to Robert Garden’s son, Augustus James who was born in 1830 and died in 1905– Robert Garden was Archie’s great-grandfather who left for the gold fields and was never located) dont think that I have forgotten you.  I would like to see you al once more.  I am glad that you did not come to California to get gold for it is hard to get though there is plenty of it here but James I dont want you to come here for I would bea sory to sea you in this heathen land whor there is so many bad men and indians. They kill heap of men for there many here and then they hang on a tree till they are (       ) dead and (        ).  Well James and Benjamin and al the rest of the boys I will tell you al something of California and how we all get along here     it is verry warm here now in the day time and cold in the night. There is verry high mountain here with snow on them till it covers the trees up so you cant see them atall.  we had to sleep on the snow when we was crossing the mountains it was verry cold then though it was in august.   then we sean hard timez boyes to get here indead but we are all well and doing well.  I am (          ) bording house and Isaac and Samuel are bording with mea now and they are making money fast they are making five dolarz a day      Isaack and samuel wants you al to bea good boys to (       ) mother till they come home an they will fetch them a nice peace of gold for a (        ) and a ring to war when you get maried but they dont   want you to get maried till they come but you must take good care of the girls til we al come for then we will have plenty of mony to take care of them our selves so James mind and tell them not to bea in a hurry to get maried for the California boys is the best of boys tell Eli ___   that I am well and I would like to sea them al         I have wrote three leters to him and got no answer yet I think hard of him for not writing to me      I would like to hear from you al bea sure and wright to mea as soon as this comes to hand if you please. Benjamin must help James write to me and Samuel and isaack for we are lone.

Here Bob Smith wrote home that Samuel and isaack was in a suffering condition but that was al (         ) for we have plenty of money and plenty friends to and plenty of grub to eat        but we have no fine looking girls out here and that is why we dont want to stay we havt heard of your father for som time he was in sackrimento he was not able to work he had his arm hurt but I dont know how bad nor how he got it done but I hope it ant bad tell mr chambers family that he is well and doing well at this time      we will al bea home in the spring if we have our health and make our piles whitch I hope we will Dyrect you leters to hang town California so farwel till we sea you agin.

George F Thissel. samuel hares and Isaack

hares

See Jesse’s Civil War discharge below.  Key points: He enlisted June 8, 1861 to serve three years.  He was discharged June 18, 1864 at Davenport, Iowa.

Other points:  Was born in Washington County, Ohio.  Is twenty five years of age.  Five feet, ten inches high.  Light complexion, black eyes, brown hair.  By occupation, when enrolled, a farmer.

Below is a photo of the famous Civil War bullet that hit Jesse McClure. The caption, in the handwriting of Zoe Garden, Jesse’s daughter, reads:
“This bullet was received in the head of J. McClure Sept. 17, 1861 at Blue Mills, Mo.”

Oskaloosa — May 15,1905

Mr. Eugene Clinton

Dear Cousin,

Your letter to my brother Simon was handed me yesterday. Simon is suffering from a paralysis of one eye which made it impossible for him to write and he requested me to write for him.  I do it with great pleasure & think it more for myself than him as I have wanted so badly to hear and see some of Mother’s people.  I was but six months old when my people left N.Y. but how I have longed to see the place they talked of so much.  We used to get letters from Uncle Elias.  My sister Ellen got to doing the writing and she moved to Nebraska — and we never heard of his death which must have occurred several years ago.  We didn’t know the address of any of his children or any of Mother’s folks.  I have often remarked that I might be neighbor to an own cousin & not know it.  Then Father’s folks are almost as unknown to us.  His only brother and family coming west, they were the only ones we ever knew.

Some twenty five years ago one Doty wrote
Ellen — saying he was getting up a family history and wished some items of our family.  She told him she would like to have the book if he succeeded but we never heard of it again.  So you may know your letter was more than a “treat”.  Now I will acknowledge that I have a foolish pride, perhaps in knowing that I have some of the blue blood [it must be blue] of the Mayflower crowd in my veins — was always given credit for much persistency.   Now I think I know where it comes from.  My children think I have “Heredity” on the brain — but I tell them if they live in one locality for over sixty years they will know “blood tells”.   And I shall feel proud of that drop, mayhap that has come to me from the Mayflower.

I expect I shall tire you with my long letter but I’m a woman and not a Lawyer and cannot condense.  Simon, Eunice & I would like to have the book of the history of our line very much if you can send it with out too much trouble we would be truly glad.  And will you tell us of Aunt Polly’s children Uncle Elias’s.  Didn’t Mother have a brother Joel[?] Simon is quite forgetful & says he cannot remember.  I thought he was the oldest next to Mother & your Father the youngest.  In the last two letters we had from Uncle Elias were some things that made us think his mind was weakening.

Our family have all gone to the “great beyond”, except us three.  Simon aged 76 in Jan last.  Eunice 70 Oct last and myself Sara C. McClure aged 66 March last.  Our youngest sister Ellen died four years ago last October.  She quite lost her mind the last year of her life & died from exhaustion of the vital forces.  Simon & I are the only ones of our family who married.  Eunice & Ellen lived in Neb. some 18 years, after Ellen’s death Eunice came back and lives in Oskaloosa.  Simon rented his farm to his children and moved to Oskaloosa some five years ago.  A year ago in April his wife dropped dead from heart disease, since then he has lived with his sons or with Eunice. Both have been in very poor health –neither will be here long I think.  Simon’s three living children are married & have families, his daughter, Mary Grey has 9 children from 7 to 27 years old.  Arthur has 7 the oldest not yet 9.  Judd has 4 the oldest 6.  They all live on his 370 acre farm.  I have four children living, one “over the river” my youngest, he left us when most 16 eight years ago.  My husband Jesse McClure passed away the 10th of last Jan — he had been a soldier and his health was very poor at all times.  He was sick but 10 days.

My oldest son Ernest C. McClure is a Graduate of Iowa City Medical College & is practicing medicine in Bussey — 5 miles from our place.  My next is Maud C. McClure who is working in the bookkeeping department of a store in a big mining town. Fay my other son Graduated from Ames College as a Civil Engineer and is now employed at Washington D. C. by the Gov good roads department.  My youngest Zoe Garden lives on my farm has been married most two years.  Her one boy three weeks old — my first Grandchild (Note: Archie!). My health is quite bad owing to lung trouble. Last winter my two sons and son-in-law had Typhoid fever in its worst form at home, for over two months we were daily expecting death to one or both, during that time Mr. McClure passed away.  The continual anxiety broke me down completely & have not rallied yet enough to be of much force.

I have made this letter very long but Simon said “Now tell him everything”.  And I have not had so much pleasure for a long time as your letter gave me.  Write to Simon at Oskaloosa or to me at Bussey, R. F. D. No. 2.

Sara C. McClure
Bussey, Iowa

E. Clinton

Is this a wonderful picture below or what?!!
Lois called this “pulling the colt”
She was 4 or 5 here.

Wayne, age about 3 or 4, trying to “lead” one of Star’s colts.  Note Star watching in the background.

This below photoquite accurately pictures the natural curiosity of a colt and the mutual attraction with a small child — Lois again.

Star’s Intelligence

The most outstanding characteristic of Star was her intelligence.  Just one example was the time, on the way to school, she stuck her foot in a hole in the south dirt road and went down.  I woke up in the ditch to one side, groggy and not able to see clearly.  I finally made out Star standing there waiting for me.  I literally crawled to her and pulled myself up into the saddle. She took me the quarter of a mile home, dragging the reins (I was merely holding on to the saddle horn) and holding her head to the side to keep from stepping on the loose reins.  In keeping with the times, Mom merely waited until my vision cleared up — an hour or so — and sent Star and me back to school. 

Another example of Star’s intelligence was going to the field at evening where the young chickens were “out on the range.”  Sometimes visitors would watch at dusk the following:  I would go into the “chicken yard” directly south of the old house and whistle.  Star would come to me.  Without bridle or saddle, I would jump on her back.  Guided only by my knee pressure, Star would race across the yard, jump off the bank into the driveway and run as fast as she could go down the road.  We would go into the field where young chickens were in “summer shelters”.  These summer shelters needed to be shut at dark to keep foxes and dogs from killing the chickens at night.  Star, without any guidance from me, would sidle up to the summer shelter doors, allowing me to unwind the baling wire holding the door open.  Then she would move to where I could latch the door shut, all without leaving her back or without any signal from me. Then we would race home.

Still another example of her intelligence was her willingness to jump into the back of the pickup for transport.  Dad would back the pickup against a bank of the yard and Star would jump in.  When we reached our destination, Dad would find a bank of some sort and Star would jump out.  When Dad had his arm resting on the driver’s window, Star would sometimes reach from the back of the pickup and nuzzle his arm or seemingly rest her head on his arm out the window — just like she was saying, “All is well with the world”.  Interesting. 

A Saddle for Star

Shortly after we got Star and knew she was a winner, Grandma Garden bought a saddle for Star.  It is difficult to understand now how big a thing that was — to spend that precious money for a saddle was huge!  The saddle, even in 1940 dollars, cost almost as much as Dad paid for Star!

Although we have not been able to confirm it, we believe that Sarah Covey McClure (Zoe Garden’s mother) once taught at the Old Fairview.  We do know that Grandma Garden (Zoe) attended the Old Fairview.

In the next generation, both Archie and Merrill Garden attended Fairview.  Also, all of that Vanderhorst generation attended — Evelyn, Luella, Jeanette, Raymond and Merle. 

In the third generation, Dale Garden attended Fairview through the 7th Grade. His first two years included the last two years that his Uncle Merle Vanderhorst was there.  Mary Ann Garden also attended Fairview briefly.  Don and Karen Vanderhorst, Raymond Vanderhorst’s children also attended Fairview.

Other than going to school, winter days were dominated by “chores”.  In the late 1930s and early 1940s, chores meant taking care of the animals which meant, primarily, feeding and watering them.  We had cattle, hogs, sheep and chickens were the primary animals, plus one or two milking cows.

Chickens – 400 to 500 laying hens

Three chicken houses had 400 to 500 laying hens.  Pumping water at the house pump and carrying it to the chicken houses three times a day was the major chore.  One needed to keep the small flame burners under the watering tanks filled with kerosene so that the water did not freeze.  Carrying mash to the chicken feeders was a twice a day task.  Checking other feeders for sufficient grit and oyster shell was a once a day task.  In the early morning, we scattered oats and in the late afternoon, we scattered shelled corn on the chicken house floors for the chickens to eat.  And, of course, eggs were collected at least twice a day, cleaned as necessary, weighed for size classification and placed in an egg crate for transport to town on Saturday.

Hogs – 80 to 100 Head

We dipped buckets into the cattle water tank and carried water to the hog waterer a 100 yards away twice a day.  One had to check for the need to clean out mud from the “cup” from which the hogs drank.  In the coldest weather, we checked to keep the burner under the water tank going so that the water didn’t freeze.  Hogs were fed ears of corn on the ground twice a day.  Preparatory to this feeding was the ritual of calling the hogs (immortalized in later-day hog-calling contests).  Also there was a hog feeder with supplemental feed to be kept filled.

Sheep – 80 to 100 Head

In the early evening, we rounded up the sheep from a corn field where they were scavenging corn left on the ground from harvesting.  Again, twice a day we dipped buckets into the cattle water tank and carried them 100 yards to the sheep waterer in the sheep shed.  Again, the burner to keep the water from freezing needed to be checked.  The sheep were fed twice a day a ground corn mixture in feeding troughs.  Also, chopped hay was forked down from the upper story of the sheep shed into slanted feeders. 

Cattle – 50 to 75 Head

Cattle drank water from the water tank from which we carried water to the hogs and the sheep.  This water tank was filled by the windmill, early from wind power, later with an electric pump.  The water tank was built from upright planks of wood, tightly fitted into each other.  It was quite old, likely built late in the 19^th Century or early in the 20^th Century.  In the coldest weather, we fired up a tank heater, a kerosene stove of sorts, to keep the water from freezing. 

Cattle were fed three basic items: hay, corn, and supplement.  Hay was fed by forking down the hay from the hayloft of the barn into the hay mangers on the ground floor of the barn accessible to the cattle.  Later it meant removing the baling wire from bales of hay, breaking it into smaller pieces and dropping it into the mangers below.  Supplement was the term used for feed ingredients to help the cattle more efficiently use the corn they ate so that they put on weight faster.  The supplement was poured over the corn in the bunks.  There were three bunks, each with a containment area of 2 and ½ feet by 10 feet and a little less than waist high for easy cattle access.  They were made of planks of wood, probably 2 by 10s, with 4 by 6s for legs. The earliest cattle feeding involved the three of us – Mom, Dad and I would take ears of corn and break each ear into two or three pieces to facilitate the cattle’s eating – cattle eating a whole ear of corn had a tendency to chew on a part of the ear and drop a part into the mud, thereby wasting it.

Before concrete slabs were added, the joke was that one had to be careful or the mixture of mud and manure would be deep enough to go over one’s 5-buckle overshoes.  Later, a change was made to feeding ground corn, which meant racing (so as to not get stuck in the mud) a pickup truck from one concrete slab by the barn to the other concrete slab on which the bunks sat. 

Milk Cows — One or Two

We had one or two cows for the milk and cream.  Dad, to say the least, didn’t like milk cows.  In the early years, Mom did the milking.  Soon, I was assigned the milking chore.

Typical Day – Summer

As in winter, chores dominated mornings and evenings.  Usually, there were no sheep in the summer time.  However, in addition to the old chickens in the chicken houses, there were young chickens out on the range, meaning they were out in a field in so-called summer shelters.  Summer shelters were build on skids (so they could be pulled by a tractor) with a framework of chicken wire for walls, a thicker wire for the floors and roosts (poles on a platform) for the chickens to sleep on at night.  Out in the field, they had to be fed and watered twice a day and the doors shut at night to keep out predatory foxes, raccoons, and dogs. 

In the late 30s and early 40s, before the days of fertilizers, crop rotation was modern farming.  That meant to add growth-enhancing nitrogen to the soil, farmers typically used a three or four year rotation of oats, clover and/or alfalfa hay, beans and corn.  Early in the year, usually April, oats was planted with clover seed included.  Early on, a team of horses pulled a two-wheeled cart with a spreader on the back that turned off the wheel rotation and sprayed the seed behind for a width of 15 to 20 feet.  The first year oats was harvested and the second year hay was grown.  Again early on, corn was planted with a horse-drawn two-row corn planter kept in straight lines with a wire staked at each end of a field, to be moved at the end of a row’s planting for next row. 

One clue as to the house’s age was the fact that it had lighting rods, certainly a 19th Century item.  Other clues we discovered in tearing the old house down preparatory to building the “new house.”  There were square-headed nails and wooden pegs used in the house frame.  Also, there were the hand-hewn timbers in the frame.

The House Structure

The house was a two-story rectangular box, perhaps 32 feet by 26 feet for its outside dimensions.  The roof was steeply pitched, resulting in upstairs rooms with ceilings partially horizontal and partially slanted.  There were four rooms downstairs and five rooms upstairs.

The downstairs included a kitchen on the southwest and a living room on the southeast (with an open doorway from the kitchen to the living room.).  There was a bedroom on the northeast for Mom and Dad and baby beds, and a room on the northwest aptly referred to as “The Cold Room” which sometimes served as another bedroom. 

Upstairs there were two main rooms.  There was also a small room and two other very small rooms.  The room above the living room (southeast) was a bedroom.  The other main room was used for storage, play and whatnot.  One very small room was called “The Dark Room” because it was dark – no windows!  The small room was mostly for storage and the two very small rooms were basically not used – no real walls and too many mice!

There was a basement, never used.  It was always full of water and was a hodge-podge of timbers, dirt and concrete.  There was an entrance on the north side of the house but no one ever went into the basement. 

The Kitchen

The key components of the kitchen were: the kerosene stove on which cooking was done, the wood-burning stove (wood in the sense of its fuel), the kitchen cabinet, the water bucket and wash basin, the on-the-wall telephone, the round kitchen table and when we purchased one later, the refrigerator.  The kitchen had a closed-off outside door on the south side and windows on the south and west.  There was also a closed-off door to the unused basement behind the wood stove.  As mentioned earlier, the main entrance to the house was the kitchen door on the northwest corner of the room and an open door to the living room to the east.  Immediately inside the door was a closet where everyone kept winter coats and the like, most of which were hung on nails on the outside of the closet.  There was a closed door to the “Cold Room” on the north. 

The Living Room

The key elements of the living room were: the heating stove (using mostly coal), the davenport, Dad’s “big chair”, the small radio (purchased a year or so after we moved in, not immediately) and a couple of stray chairs.  In the northwest corner of the living room, behind the stove, was the door to the stairway upstairs.  The stairway was both steep and narrow.  Later, as a teen-ager who might have come home a little late once or twice, I knew which stair step would squeak — I believe it was about the fifth one.

Winters and Heating

The only two rooms that were heated all day and night were the living room and the kitchen.  The primary source of heat was a coal burning “heating stove” in the living room.  This required another daily chore of keeping the coal bucket full (from a “coal house” to the immediate north of the cave) and collecting the “cinders” from burned coal to throw away.  There was a special talent to “bank” the fire (pile coal chunks together), thereby ensuring that the fire would not go out during the night.  There was also a wood-burning stove in the kitchen.  Associated with this stove was another chore – keeping the wood box filled and the ashes removed.  Later, Dad cut a hole in the living room ceiling and installed a “heat register” which I was allowed to open (in the winter) shortly before I went to bed so that my bedroom would warm a little.

Interestingly, the heating stove and wood stove were taken out to the garage for the summer.  Planks were inserted under the stoves and they were lifted and carried.  This gave us a little more precious space in the living room and the kitchen. 

When the winter wind blew, one could hold a hand near the floor and feel the air move.  The house was not, to say the least, an air-tight house nor did it have insulation.  Actually, it did have a sort of insulation.  After a year or so, the intelligent decision was made to fabricate a sort of insulation by placing bales of straw around the house and then stuff loose straw between the bales and the house.  It wasn’t very decorative, but it was functional.

Porches

On the west side of the house there was a utilitarian concrete slab-type porch, perhaps 10 by 20 feet in size.  One stepped up to the porch and through the west kitchen door, the normal house entrance.  One significant aspect of the porch was the “summer kitchen” immediately on the west of the porch.

There was an open wooden “front porch” on the east side of the house.  Curiously, for a house obviously built to very basic specifications, it had a small amount of decorative finishing called wooden lace.  However, it had a strictly down-to-earth roof covered by tar paper. 

Originally, in bygone days, the summer kitchen was just that – a separate wooden structure about 10 by 15 feet used as a kitchen in the summer, thereby keeping the cooking heat out of the house.  If my parents used it for a kitchen at any time, it was only the first year or two there when it might have been using for “canning’.  Before we had a refrigerator – only a year or so – the ice box was kept there.  The summer kitchen was soon converted into a “feed house” containing oil barrels reborn as feed containers (but it never lost its name as the “summer kitchen”).  The feed was for chickens and consisted mainly of shelled corn, oats and “mash”, a name for ground-up feed with added ingredients.  Later the summer kitchen was moved about 100 feet to the west.

The Cave

The cave was an interesting phenomenon.  Like the old house, no one knew when it was constructed.  Logically, it would have been shortly after the house was built and the owner-builders discovered that they could not keep water out of the basement.  It was located to the west, just north of the summer kitchen location.  It is no doubt still there, in some form or shape.

The cave’s construction included a large curved mound of earth above ground.  The entrance was covered by a slanted door, replaced in later years, and included concrete steps down into the cave itself.  There was a ventilation tube from the middle of the cave to the middle of the mound above the cave.  That ventilation tube was distinguished by a misshapen length of tubing extending from the earth into the air – it looked as if it had been beaten on with a hammer many times over the years.  Down inside the cave, the curved walls and ceiling were made of a sort of “plastered concrete”.

In many ways, the cave was a replacement for a basement.  It was definitely cooler down there.  Milk and cream were kept there because they did not spoil in the cooler temperatures.  Eggs were cleaned and stored there temporarily before being taken to town for sale.  “Canned” fruit and vegetables were stacked on shelves.  We kept our root vegetables there — potatoes, carrots and onions — and also apples and pears.

Sometimes, if the spring rains were particularly heavy, the cave would partially fill with water.  Once or twice, it almost completely filled.  Once that filling process started, it was difficult to empty it of the water until it stopped raining.

In the summer, if the sky turned almost black and the radio warned of high winds and possible tornados, we would go the cave where, underground, we would be safe.

The Pump

On the west side of the concrete porch opposite the kitchen door was the pump, our primary source of water for personal use.  We drank it because we were “used to it”, although to others it tasted horrible because it was so “hard”.  (It was also the source of water that we carried by hand to the chicken houses two or three times a day.)  One of the continuing daily tasks was to fill the “water bucket” for inside-the-house hand washing and drinking.  The pump had a long handle for “pumping”.  There were times when one had to “prime the pump” by pouring water to wet the mechanism down through the top of the pump.  Also, most of the time, there was a sugar sack tied around the pump nozzle to catch small pieces of sediment that we obviously didn’t want to drink.  This was obviously before the age of worrying a lot about purity!  To our knowledge, we never got sick from the water. 

The Rain Barrel

On the north side of the house at the west end was a rain barrel.  It collected rain from the roof through the eave trough and the down spout.  The rain collected and was allowed to “settle” so that the sediment was at the bottom.  Rain water was prized as “soft” water for washing hair, especially because the pump water was very “hard” water. 

Improvements

Because the thought was that a new house would be built someday, there were few improvements made to the house.  Actually, the only improvement was to wire it for electricity.  It was never painted in the 12 years or so we lived there – an expense thought not to be justified because of the contemplated new house — which was built it 1949.