Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas
John Locke · en
Bill and Ben Porter, who came here first in 1856—left, and came again in
1858, drove oxen for a transport company hauling Government supplies. On
one trip, the company feed supplies ran short out in Wyoming and most of
the stock died. The train was hauling corn to the northwest forts, but
it could not be used, even in emergencies like that. A guard was left
with the train while waiting for fresh oxen to move it. The weak cattle,
still able to travel, were taken back to Leavenworth. It was a bitter
cold winter. The drivers protected themselves as best they could from
the Arctic blasts in snow drifts.
Wagon trains of the larger outfits consisted of twenty-five wagons, five
yoke of oxen and a driver for each wagon — with wagon-boss, assistant
boss, and herder.
My Uncle Nick Bristow and Green Campbell took a turn at bull-whacking
for that major freighting firm—Russell, Majors, and Waddell. But imbued
with the spirit of the times, they forsook the bulls for the more
exciting business of panning gold. My uncle’s exploits have been
mentioned. In other articles I have referred, with no little degree of
pride, to the Campbell mining success—he having gone from here into the
West in company with my uncle—and then, too, he “schooled” one connected
with my own efforts in the mining game. That we failed to duplicate his
enviable success was no reflection on that able tutor.
This, however, has never been in print. Green Campbell made his first
money at mining in the Cherry creek diggings — $60,000. He spent most of
it while in that camp. He told my mining partner, Frank Williams, that
he spent his money rather too freely, in the customary way of that
period, at old Auraria. It was money he very much needed later. With
only $1,500 of his stake remaining, he went to the Alder Gulch diggings
in Montana. At Bannock he and a partner, Mart Walsh, located claims
which sold for $80,000. Walsh, a merchant at Muscotah in the early days,
at one time owned 600 acres of land north of that town. He died in a
county home in Oklahoma, penniless. He was a brother-in-law of Mrs.
William Maxwell, of Wetmore.
Later, Green Campbell made his big fortune, millions, in lode mining in
Utah and Nevada, which, since his death has, largely, been kept intact
by his wife and two sons, Allen and Byram — his second family — now
living at 705 Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, California. The first boy was
named for his father, who, in the halls of Congress, was the Honorable
Allen G. Campbell. The other boy was named for Campbell’s partner in
the famous Horn Silver mine—August Byram, of Atchison. There was a girl,
Caroline.