Part 25

I want to thank you for the copies of the Wetmore Spectator which you sent to me, which carry the life of father. Frank Williams had already given me one issue, which I have loaned to several of father’s friends, a few of whom are still alive. The new copies will be treasured by my brother, my sister, and myself.

Father died while I was still so young that I have been able to retain but few memories of him. However, I have gathered so many impressions from friends who knew him well, not to mention mother, that I feel that I have gained quite a true picture of him. In this connection it seems to me that your life of him is not only accurate, in its main for I know this to be true features, but that it goes deeper, and gives some of the spirit that animated him. And particularly do I like your last paragraph, and your reference “. . . . in whose heart there seems to have burned an inextinguishable desire for something that never came.”;

Sincerely yours,

Byram C. Campbell

In that same year, 1856, Isaiah Thomas, with his family, came here from Newton, Iowa. He had traveled all the way from Indiana to Iowa, thence here, with ox-team and covered wagon. Custom and bovine traits had caused him to walk alongside his oxen for practically all those wearying miles. Isaiah Thomas settled on a quarter of land north of that taken up by Green Campbell. His eldest boy, Elwood, was a lad of fifteen years, seven years younger than Green Campbell. The destinies of these two young men were to be subsequently linked together in gigantic enterprises in a still newer frontier environment.

Times were close for the Campbells. They were compelled, as were many early Kansas settlers, to pick up here and there a few extra dollars, as opportunity offered, while becoming established on the farm. Green Campbell found employment with the freighting firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, at Leavenworth. His work took him often into the West. When the Cherry creek gold excitement on the east slope of the Rocky mountains broke out in 1858, he joined the throngs in that mad rush. He cleaned up $60,000 from the placer mines, but had spent most of it before coming back to his homestead.

Then for a while Green worked his land while the boy Elwood grew up. Elwood was not to come into the picture, the gigantic doings, for some years yet. In the meantime his father, Isaiah Thomas, had gone to the war and had died in Arkansas. His mother, Martha Thomas, with her family of seven children, had moved over to the north part of the township and settled on forty acres a quarter mile east of Wetmore, which place has been, until a few months ago, the home of her son, Manning. Unmarried, and the last of that pioneer family, he died May 12, 1938. Though very young, Elwood Thomas also joined the Union ranks and was held prisoner of war at Tyler, Texas, for nearly a year. Shortly after returning from the war, he married Maria Adamson, of Holton. They had four children—three girls and a boy. Charley, the son, died at Beatty, Nevada, in August last year.

Five years after his first mining venture, in 1863, Green Campbell was again panning gold at Bannock, Montana. His take this time was $40,000. Then, after one more desultory try on the farm, he married Florence Oursler, of Circleville, in 1867. She was the daughter of Rufus Oursler, wealthy resident of Jackson County. She was a beautiful woman.

For a few years contentment reigned in the Campbell home. I remember going with my Uncle Nick Bristow one time when he visited in that home. We went in a covered wagon, a wagon that was little more than a ghost of the old “prairie schooner,” having all five of the bows still in place, with a tattered canvas over only the rear half. But my uncle walked all the way alongside his nigh ox. Uncle had a “log-wagon” for heavy hauling on the farm. He kept this one for special occasions and Sunday driving. He owned no horses.

Uncle Nick and Green Campbell had mined together in the Cherry creek diggings—and the fact that his host of the day had cleaned up big, while he himself brought home only alibis, and a cougar pelt, had not impaired a fine friendship. Conscious of Mr. Campbell’s mine-made money, it then seemed to me, a youngster, that the Campbells had everything—even a “hired” girl. That girl was Elizabeth Dittman, now Mrs. Ed. Keggin, living in Wetmore, who would tell you that everything was fine and lovely with them then, as it had every reason to be.

Then rumor of a new mining strike in the West changed everything. Green Campbell now found life irksome on his then none too productive acres down on the banks of Elk creek. And as he turned over the soil with his plow on a bright May day in 1871, he also turned things over in his mind. His brother John, he decided, could remain on the farm and keep up the fight against odds if he wanted to, but as for himself the Far West was calling. That call had struck the man of my story with all the force of a Kansas tornado, and it moved him from his anchorage on the farm with a suddenness that brought a protest from his relatives.

So it was that Green Campbell, with his family now shifted to Circleville, the home of his in-laws, went out again in quest of a third fortune. And though millions came into his coffers, one cannot be sure, after all these years and in the light of what followed, whether he profited or lost by that abrupt decision back here on that bright May morning sixty and seven years ago.

They called him a tenderfoot when he reached the end of the trail which led out into a sand-blown waste two hundred miles and more beyond rail transportation. Here, on the east slope of the San Francisco mountains, in southwest Utah—about thirty miles from Milford, on the San Pedro line—this man from the plains country, ripe for more adventure, was to have a try for a third mining fortune. It was his first hard-rock mining venture.

Green Campbell got the gold all right—millions of it — and distinguished himself by developing one of the greatest silver mines of the age. But that is only part of the story.

The great fortune was won by so close a margin that it hurt. Then there was, to some extent, the usual anti-climax — spiced with complicated domestic relations, growing out of an improvident situation.

But the name “tenderfoot,” as applied to Green Campbell, was not quite right. He had already taken $100,000 from the placers; certainly enough to lift him out of that classification. Even so, granting that he was a seasoned miner at the time he entered the Utah field, Green Campbell did, however, slip just a trifle.

The erroneous application of that appellation came about through a little misjudgment of the waters of that desert country—springs they are called. But the springs in that section, as in all other desert country, with few exceptions, are not the bubbling, sparkling, steady flow of waters generally visualized with the mention of springs. Rather, in most instances, they are only seepages of water which must be collected in ground reservoirs through a system of trenching the earth. Some of those springs supply what is termed on the desert as sweet water, while other springs—those issuing from volcanic rocks—are brackish and unfit for domestic use, or for steaming purposes. The first spring developed by Green Campbell was of the latter class.

Thus it was that when in later years Green Campbell went over into Nevada to establish a new camp, he first had the waters analyzed by a chemist, then very appropriately named his new camp Goodsprings. And it so remains on the map today—a gold, silver-lead-zinc, and vanadium mining camp down among the gentle slopes of the Spring mountain range in southern Nevada. The next two camps established by Green Campbell, in California, were named Vanderbilt and Providence. We may be sure the water there was good also.

Here, I want to interrupt my story to say that it was at Goodsprings where the writer was, some thirty-odd years ago, initiated into the mining game along with Campbell followers, and where much of the material for this narrative was picked up, first-hand. Here at Goodsprings were Elwood Thomas and his nephew, Frank Williams. Elwood Thomas had been Green Campbell’s right-hand man all through the latter’s colorful mining career, having gone out from the old home town in Kansas to join him in 1873. Frank Williams went direct from Wetmore to Mr. Campbell, at the age of twenty-one, and has spent forty-seven of his sixty-eight years on the Nevada desert. And perhaps I should say here that much of the information presented in this narrative was obtained from Mr. Thomas and Mr. Williams.

In the Utah field, then a new and isolated country, under conditions that tested the fiber of the man, Green Campbell prospected the hills of Beaver county for a while. Then, nearly five years later, his big opportunity came when he secured an option on a mining claim for which he agreed to pay $25,000. That claim was later developed into the famous Horn Silver mine, which, up to the time of my last visit nearly thirty years ago, had produced slightly in excess of twenty million dollars. The mine, owned now by New York interests, is still producing at great depth. Few metal mines there are that have had such long run of life.

But, as I have already stated, chance played a big hand in this game of millions. At that time Green Campbell had all his funds tied up in other properties. He was then operating the Hickory mine at Newhouse. Green Campbell turned to his friend, August Byram, of Atchison, Kansas, for financial assistance. Byram and Campbell had become acquainted while they were both in the employ of that major freighting firm. Byram had already spent some money at the suggestion of Campbell without results, in the Star district, close by. After considerable correspondence, Byram decided to take another chance at the game, promising to come through with the funds to take over the Horn Silver claim before the expiration of the ninety-day option. Byram was to advance the full amount, half of it as a loan to Campbell, and they were to own the property on a fifty-fifty basis.

But here caution stepped in and robbed those two men of exactly one-half of an immense fortune—a fortune in the making. After the agreement had been made Byram wrote and asked Campbell to see if he could find someone to take a quarter interest in the risk. Campbell found two men, Matt Cullen and Dennis Ryan, who would come in for a quarter interest. But Byram still thought he was taking too great a chance, and wrote a second time asking Campbell to try induce those two men to take a half interest. It was so arranged.

Green Campbell then settled down to a game of waiting. Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the times, he told himself—and rightly, too—that he had only to await the coming of Byram to jump in and win. But, without further word from Byram and the final day of the option drawing near, he became very nervous. New developments had caused the owners to look for some chance to void the option, and Campbell sensed danger in delay. Then came the awful blow that set all his emotions to working at high speed.

August Byram, on his way out to the mine, had stopped over in Salt Lake City and there he was discouraged by designing individuals who wanted to pluck the mine for themselves. Developments had increased, its value fourfold. But this fact was kept from Byram by his Salt Lake acquaintances—indeed, they stressed the fact that the claim had but recently been optioned for $1,500, and that the option had been allowed to lapse. The result was August sent word to Green that he would have nothing more to do with it.

However, Campbell managed somehow to get Byram over to the property on the last day of the option, but up to the eleventh hour he was filled to the brim with nerve-wracking suspense. For hours he had kept his gaze constantly fixed on the sage-fringed road leading out across the broad valley to the east, where was open to the eye a twenty mile sweep of sun-baked waste, looking for that distant dust cloud which might mean that relief for his tired nerves was on the way. Then, late in the afternoon, as the last golden tints lingered along the ragged edges of the mountains, the stage bearing Byram, full four hours late, was sighted far out on the road—a mere speck in a great cloud of dust.

There was yet time for speedy action. For a brief ten minutes the two men faced each other—Campbell full of words, Byram deep in meditation. It could hardly be expected that after floundering in a bog of indecision and doubt for so long, that understanding would come to Byram in a flash. But Campbell’s great anxiety in the matter caused him to believe, for the moment, that Byram’s resolutions were still wavering, while his own thoughts whirled like leaves in an autumn blast. Byram’s final words, however, kept Campbell’s spirits from suffering further.

I was not there at that particular time, of course, but this minute accounting, the reactions of those men, is as I caught it from Elwood Thomas. “If it hadn’t been such a serious matter with Green,” said Elwood, amid chuckles that sent ripples all over the old miner’s weathered face, “it would have been downright amusing.”

The transfer of the Horn Silver claim took place in the shadow of the mountain as the sun dropped out of sight on February 17, 1876. And it was a joyous occasion for the little group of interested men—except, possibly, the two original locators who were now beginning to realize the true worth of that little piece of ground. Fate dealt a mean hand to the locators of the Horn Silver claim. After sinking a shaft thirty feet on ore, Samuel Hawkes and James Ryan bartered away millions on the belief that the ore would not last.

And I might say here that the Horn Silver lode, the main ore body, was found by sheer accident. Jimmy Calvering, a young Irishman employed to do the location work, following the custom of the shiftless miner, went away a considerable distance from the outcrop to find “soft ground” in which to dig his ten-foot hole, as required by law. Jimmy was not looking for ore, but in doing that ten foot of work he opened up the main lode. And nowhere else did it come that near the surface. Jimmy was ever after that proclaimed “A man with a great nose for ore.”

The Horn Silver mine was operated by Campbell, Cullen & Co., for three years, with a gross production of nearly three million dollars. The mine was then sold in 1879 for six million dollars, and title passed to the Horn Silver Mining Co. An interest equivalent to about one-sixth of the mine previously had been given to an eastern promoter for securing a railroad to the mine.

Green Campbell had other interests at Frisco, the camp which had sprung up about the Horn Silver mine. It was a town peopled with all kinds of characters known to frontier life. It had all the mining-camp trappings—dance halls, saloons, and what not. This camp had caught the overflow from the older mining camp of Pioche, in Nevada, where the boast was, “A man for breakfast every morning!” And in lawlessness Frisco flourished like the green bay tree! Life at the high tide was almost as cheap as water! But Green Campbell’s personality was such as to keep him out of harm’s way. Green was a good mixer. He drank some, but in moderation. In no sense was he a dissipated man. And here at Frisco he made more money! Lots of it! The Carbonate mine alone gave him five hundred thousand dollars in profits! He was classed with other mining moguls of that day. Hearst, Tabor, Walsh—he knew them all.

Green Campbell’s rise in the financial world was spectacular. Within the brief span of a few years he could have returned to his old home and to his family with enough money to live in luxury. But friend Green had other notions. Like the noble beast of burden of the Sahara bearing his name, Campbell was now a permanent fixture of the desert.

Man’s ambition is seldom satisfied. Visions of greater wealth and the thrills that go with the making held Green Campbell with a vise-like grip. He willed to stay in the West.

His wife preferred to stay in Kansas with her people, at Circleville. Or, maybe, it was decided that the untamed West, the desert with its sizzling summer suns and unbridled winds, was no place for Florence Oursler Campbell and her little boy Charley. Anyhow the situation brought about an estrangement and, finally, a separation. Ofttimes men, too much absorbed in chasing the pot of gold, unconsciously make this supreme sacrifice.

Clouds began to appear on Green Campbell’s marital horizon soon after he went West, but the storm did not break until he was virtually in the big money. He was enormously engrossed with his mining operations, while back here at home, because of his continued absence, a growing resentment was piling up against him day by day. The time was coming, if he would see it, when he must give up either his mines, or his family. He heeded not the signals, seriously. Like his royal highness across the Atlantic—the self-deposed king—until disaster was upon him, he proposed to keep them both.

Florence Campbell filed her petition for divorce and alimony in the Jackson County court at Holton. Case Broderick of Holton and Judge Stillings of Leavenworth were her attorneys. Green Campbell was represented by Hayden & Hayden of Holton and Colonel Everest of Atchison. The stage was set for a spirited legal battle. The whole country buzzed with gossip. Because of the prominence of the Campbells and the Ourslers people traveled for miles on horseback and in wagons to attend the hearings.

The plaintiff and her witnesses occupied the stage for a day and a half. Then the defense attorneys armed with depositions and a liberal line-up of witnesses, told the court what they had up their sleeves. But the judge, being somewhat of a sleuth, had already detected that something was wrong with the plaintiff’s legal machinery. Gears didn’t mesh. The charge was out of alignment with the facts as adduced by the plaintiff and her own witnesses. In short, her lawyers had experienced embarrassment in their endeavor to twist a prolonged absence from Campbell’s fireside — and whatever else that was offered—into “extreme cruelty.”

There had to be a “charge,” to be sure, but it would appear that the plaintiff’s attorneys might have more profitably selected for their client, out of their cabinet of ready-made complaints, something more reasonable, something less galling to the fine sensibilities of the man. Judge John T. Morton said that inasmuch as the plaintiff had failed to prove her case, defense testimony would not be heard. Moreover, he said Mrs. Campbell would get no alimony.

There was not, as one might suspect, another man in the case—not a breath of scandal. Mrs. Campbell was too fine for that. It was her unalterable conviction that she and her child were being unduly neglected. It was “blue” blood in revolt—indignant, regrettable rebellion.

The decree was given the defendant, Green Campbell, on February 23, 1878. Custody of the little boy, Charles R. Campbell, was given to the mother. Mr. Campbell was required to pay $250 a year for the boy’s “keep and education,” with a lien on the northeast quarter of 22-6-14. Two hundred and fifty dollars a year from a potential millionaire to keep and educate his son! All right then, perhaps, but it sounds like parsimony now.

Henry C. DeForest, pioneer merchant of Wetmore, was made custodian of the impounded land. He also acted as agent for Mrs. Campbell. The allowance for the boy was not held down strictly to the court order. Indeed, Mr. Campbell did much more for his son. It is alleged that, after the separation, the boy would meet the train on occasions of his father’s infrequent trips in from the West, and that Mr. Campbell would fill his son’s hat with gold coins. And in time Charley was given the impounded land, together with several other valuable tracts of Jackson County land. Green Campbell still kept his Nemaha County homestead.

No property settlement appears of record—leastwise my investigator does not report any—though, I believe, there was a private settlement. Little enough it was, no doubt, if any, but the disillusioned Mr. Campbell was not niggardly with his money, as the plaintiff and her kin backers, and all who listened in on the trial were soon to know.

As if in preparation to carry out the educational phase of the court mandate handsomely, Green Campbell endowed a college right in the boy’s door-yard, so to speak. Work began on Campbell University at Holton in 1880, and the school opened on September 2, 1882, with Prof. J. H. Miller, president. For a small-town school it became quite noted. After a successful run of nearly a score of years, it fell into decay and finally ceased to exist. The old stone building standing on an eminence at the northwest corner of Holton, long in disuse as a college, was razed in 1931 to make room for a new $139,000 brick high school building.

It would be interesting in this connection to know what Green Campbell’s reactions really were, what motivated that splendid school? With a knowing smile on his weathered face and without amplifying his surprising assertion, Elwood Thomas once told me that had there been no divorce there would have been no Campbell University. And did the boy Charley actually “finish off” at Campbell University? I think not. A recent casual inquiry at Circleville told me nothing in that particular. While yet quite young, he married Kate McColough. He went West—and, backed by his father, tried his hand at mining at Providence, California, with little or no success.

With his marital differences adjusted in the divorce court, Green Campbell now, like as not, a morose misogynist, went back to his beloved golden West and in the immediate years which followed was as grim and silent, on one very ticklish subject, as the barren peaks of the mountains about him. In his mine, Mr. Campbell had encountered and conquered some extremely refractory ore. He had hauled in cord-wood from as far as sixty miles to roast that stubborn ore in outdoor fires, to make it amenable to the smelter. But in marriage, a bit of clay—he had no workable method for that.

Green Campbell came back to his old home only a few times after the separation. But Kansas still claimed him — claimed him until he went to Congress for Utah, claimed him until he sold his homestead here to Bill Hayden. He was Nemaha County’s first millionaire!

Green Campbell, first of all, was a miner. Close attention to business, as has been pointed out, brought him great riches—and a dilemma! The memory of this last named acquisition persisted, ghost-like, to haunt him for long years. But it did not haunt him for all time.

In the mining game, a hope never fades that another doesn’t bloom brightly in its place. Likewise, generally speaking, it is so in matters of the heart, only the flowering is not always so spontaneous. Sometimes, not infrequently, after the romantic love of other days has passed, the withering love-instinct must be carefully cultivated for years if it is to flower again.

Fourteen years and fourteen hundred miles lay between Green Campbell and the subject of his marital woes when at the age of sixty or thereabout, after he had reached the peak of his financial flight and experienced some setbacks, and after he had grown a fine flowing snow-white beard and become quite bald, it bloomed for him again.

This time the bride was Eleanor Young, a reporter on a Salt Lake City newspaper. She was a daughter-in-law of the famous old Brigham Young. And the stork, that industrious old bird of world-wide habitat, at home on the desert as in the oasis, brought the Campbell’s three fine children—Allen, Byram and Caroline.