Some Reminiscences of Early Trinity [pp. 17-32]

Some Reminiscences of Early Irinity.
planted his fields to potatoes, turnips,onions,
cabbage, and other vegetables, and when fall
set in, his log store houses were well filled.
He lived with his family on the ranch-indeed his wife was one of the pioneer women
of Trinity River. Of heavy frame and iron
constitution, Lathrop was endowed with unlimited energy as well, and had made other
investments in the county besides the ranch
on which he lived. One of these was the
building of a saw mill on the river, three or
four miles above his house, with a view to
supplying the local demand for lumber, by
the miners of the river bars, from the fine
body of timber which clothed the mountain
sides above. The mill was built, its race
dug, and its dam completed, when he conceived the idea of crossing the river with a
portion of the water of the mill race to supply it to a crowd of miners who were working a bar about a mile below. The ditch
and flume were duly completed and water
turned in; when lo! after running down the
bar a little way, the flow down the river
stopped, the water began to pour over the
flume, and Lathrop realized the sad fact that
in laying out the ditch the triangle used had
been turned the wrong way and the ditch dug
on tIn up hill grade the entire distance.
It had to be resurveyed and -dug its full
length, and the second labor was much
greater than the first, ias the dirt thrown
out from the first, ditch had to be removed
before work could be done on the line of the
new one. Labor at that time commanded
high prices, and as a logical result, with a
great outlay and little income, Lathrop became heavily involved, and it was freely prophecied that he would not be able to pull
through; his liabilities being fixed by the quid
nuncs at between twenty and thirty thousand
dollars. But when winter was fairly set in,
things began to "chop." Flour rose every day
without the aid of Preston & Merrill's yeast
powder (that delight of the miners); and as
flour climbed up the financial scale it carried
everything else up with it. Lathrop's crop
of potatoes, cabbages, onions, squash, and
so on, began to leave the store houses in
immense quantities and at immense prices.
The twenty-odd thousand of indebtedness
disappeared before the potato pile gave out
and the draft on the less nourishing turnip
and cabbage began.
It was amusing to me to hear Personette,
who lived about a mile away, describe the
experience his company had that winter.
"We would go to Lathrop's when the river
was low enough to cross safely," he said,
"and each of us come back with a sack of
cabbage, which we dug out of the frozen
snow and paid three bits a pound for. A
kettle full of it would be boiled, and we
would all eat as long as we could get the cabbage down, then get up, feeling more hungry than ever. When we were nearly starved
on that diet, we begged Lathrop again to
spare us some potatoes; but he had none
left except a lot of little ones, some not bigger than bullets, which had been laid aside
for hog feed; and we bought them for two
bits a pound —cheap. I ate sixty-nine of
them for breakfast next morning, and then
wanted potatoes worse than ever,"
Apropos of potatoes I think of a little incident in the mining days of "the three
M's," Marshall, Mason, and Miller. Marshall and Mason still live here, honored and
useful citizens; the first one now county
assessor, the other chairman of the board of
supervisors. Miller, who was as inveterate
a joker as the original Joe Miller himself,
after reaping a goodly share of the harvest
of the land went East to enjoy it, and
where he is now I do not know. The three
worthies mined on West Weaver with very
indifferent success. Even in the palmiest
days of the mines, there were not wanting
instances in which Dame Fortune seemed to
withhold her favors from the deserving, to
bestow them on others less worthy. One
day the trio heard tbat the first potatoes of
the season had been brought to town; and
having been on a bean diet for a long time,
Ii
26
[Jan.