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.
Green Campbell would, of course, want to do something to perpetuate
the school that bore his name. But in his will he made the fatal
mistake—fatal for the school—of first taking care of his family with
the more tangible assets. He bequeathed $100,000 to Campbell University,
conditionally, however. It was to be paid out of the proceeds of two
mining properties, namely, his Vanderbilt and Goodsprings holdings.
A minimum price of $500,000 was placed on his Vanderbilt mine, and
$200,000 on his Goodsprings claims, and they were not to be offered for
less than the stipulated price for two years. The properties have
not yet been sold. While really promising properties, with the future
pledged, largely, by the terms of the will, there was no one to continue
developments to make them bring the price. Green Campbell had expended
something like a half million dollars in developing his gold mine at
Vanderbilt.
Secure in the fortune left them, the Campbell heirs — Green’s second
family—have risked no money in mining. Besides his various mining
interests Green Campbell owned, at death, a magnificent home on Brockton
Square, in Riverside, California; numerous tracts of California ranch
lands, and real-estate holdings in downtown Los Angeles. Also, a
substantial cash operating fund, and some income property in Salt Lake
City—notably, the Dooley block. Mr. Campbell often expressed his faith
in the future of Los Angeles. The fortune has largely been kept intact.
When last contacted a few years back, Mrs. Campbell was living at 705
Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, California. The two unmarried sons lived at
the same address. Caroline, the daughter, was married to a Los Angeles
banker, Leland T. Reeder, a son of the fiery and famous Congressman W.
A. Reeder, from the sixth Kansas district, back in the nineties.
Idle mining properties, or mines worked only spasmodically by lessees,
do not readily attract buyers, especially when filled with water, as in
the case of the Campbell mine at Vanderbilt. Incredible as it may seem,
there really is water deep down—in places—in that desert country, and
it even rises sometimes. The shaft at our own mine, in the very heart
of the desert, situated in a small depression on the mountain side, was
once filled to overflowing during a heavy rain.
Other bequests, principally to relatives, also were contingent upon the
sale of those two properties. And hope, tenacious hope, once bloomed so
very brightly but now devoid of sparkle, still lingers with heirs around
here.
Henry Campbell, a nephew, who was sheriff of Nemaha County for two terms
about the turn of the century, with his two sisters, Mary and Frances,
the son and daughters of John Campbell, all deceased now, were named
jointly for $100,000. The surviving heirs are: Emma Swarm Campbell, wife
of Henry, Bancroft, and two sons by a former marriage, living in
the West; George Cordon, husband of Mary, Ontario; Ray Drake, son of
Frances, Norton.
The heirs of Caroline Campbell, who married a Mr. Steele and went West,
and the heirs of Sally Ann Campbell, who married Henry Stanley and lived
near Circleville, were named jointly in the will for $100,000. William
and Edward Stanley and Laura Hart, all dead now, were children of Sally
Ann. William worked with his uncle in the mines and was named for an
extra $100,000.
Two daughters of Green Stanley, another son of Sally Ann, are married
to “Jack” and “Kid” Rudy, and live at Soldier. A daughter of Sally
Ann—Julia Alice Stanley — married Albert D. Chamberlin, now living in
Holton. Mrs. Chamberlin is dead. Her heirs are: Mrs. Lee Able, Holton;
Mrs. S. B. Moody, Centralia; Mrs. Ernest Hogg, Payette, Idaho; Mrs.
Mary Gaston and Nathaniel Chamberlin, Whitehall, Montana; and Charles
Chamberlin, Salt Lake City.
One small payment was received by the heirs here about two years back,
which revived interest in about the same degree of satisfaction as
that of a sprinkle of rain to a thirsty earth. Time was, though, George
Cordon tells me, when they could have accepted settlement at fifty cents
on the dollar.
It is probable that the inheritance of Charley Campbell was tied up in
this or by some other uncertain condition. Whatever the case, he settled
with the estate for $50,000. Crediting rumor afloat at the time, it
is my recollection that, in recognition of close—and perhaps
menacing—kinship, this was paid with money left by Green Campbell to his
second family.
Leaving an ex-wife and two sons, Allen and Robert, in the West, Charley
Campbell later returned to Circleville. There, in 1920, he married Laura
Deck. He is now living in or near Philadelphia.
His mother, Florence Campbell, did not marry again. She went to work.
And by the irony of Fate she became a teacher of art in the college
founded by her divorced husband, along about 1895. Later, years later,
when I saw her last she seemed merely to be waiting, in emptiness and
dead memories, for the end. She died in Pomona, California, about 1920.
Elwood Thomas was administrator for the Campbell estate—in Nevada. After
spending thirty-eight years on the desert and in the mines, without
receiving so much as a damaging scratch, Elwood was fatally injured in
a horse and buggy accident while back Here on a visit to his daughter,
Mrs. Maude Ralston, at Holton, in 1915. He died three days after the
accident. He was buried in the Wetmore cemetery. Elwood Thomas lived
apart from his family from the time he he went West in 1873. Family
ties, it seems, were not strong enough to bridge the distance between
them. Maybe it was the desert again.
Turning momentarily aside from the path that leads toward the rainbow’s
elusive end, let me here interpose a brief paragraph about John
Campbell, the brother whom Green had said could remain on the farm and
keep up the fight against odds if he wanted to. John did remain on the
farm; and kept up the fight—and won. He even elected to remain on the
farm after pressing invitations to join his brother in the land of gold.
He lived on the original homestead in Wetmore township until he died, in
1894. As the years became more seasonable for the production of grain,
John Campbell made a good living—and more—from his acres and his herds.
And, best of all, he found contentment and happiness with his wife and
three children on the farm. I think that in all my life I have never
known a more kindly, considerate, and contented person than was this
tall, slim, fine man.
Luck was a bit fickle with Green Campbell. It both smiled and frowned
on him in a few fleeting years. Alert, with a keen mind, he made good at
first on everything he touched — save, of course, that first water-hole.
Then, abruptly, as if a great cloud had obscured his vision, he lost his
charm. Two outstanding reverses followed in quick succession.
Irreparable damage is often done in the name of friendship. With
millions of dollars to the good, Green Campbell was picked by his
friends to turn the tide of politics in Utah, to break Mormon rule. He
was on the minority side, to be sure, but what did that matter? Clean
and ambitious, with bulging pockets, he would be a formidable figure in
bringing about the change so much desired—by the outs of course.
Thus, Green Campbell was launched upon the perilous sea of
politics—literally shoved off into its unfriendly waters, slightly, but
assuredly, beyond his depths. The warm and manifest enthusiasm of his
friends, so goes the story, inspired in him a feeling of confidence—and,
unschooled in the hard-played game of politics, he set sail upon the
turbid political waters with never a thought as to the many, many
wrecked political ships that mark the shores of Time.
Infectious enthusiasm had spread over the field. Voters and non-voters
alike cheered for him. The Italian colony piped, “Viva Campbell—bigga
man!” John Chinaman, it was related, yelled in badly Americanized
Cantonese, “Hoola Campbell! All-o-same-e, no like-e dlam Mormon
lenny-way!”
Deliverance, it seemed, was at hand. Still in the first flush of his
great financial triumph, Green Campbell spent money freely for the
cause, and incidentally tried for a seat in Congress. This experience
cost him a lot of money—just how much no one knows. Some said it was
nearly a million dollars.
Green Capbell was defeated for delegate to Congress by the Mormon
bishop, Cannon. But he contested the election upon the grounds that
Cannon, a Canadian, was not naturalized. In this he won, but not until
the two-year term was almost over. He went to Washington as the Hon.
Allen G. Campbell.
I shall not attempt to tell you his politics, because I don’t know—for
sure. But when I tell you his fine saddle horse was named Cleveland,
you can make your own deductions. It was a common sight to see Green
Campbell mounted on that spirited horse riding about the streets of
Vanderbilt, often with one of his little boys up in front of him or
riding behind, while his luxuriant white beard, always well groomed,
billowed gracefully in the desert breezes. Green Campbell was a large
man, about six feet tall and rather portly, though not really fat. He
always presented a prosperous, dignified appearance.
And now, while a million dollars, or whatever sum it really was, out of
one pocket was a lot of money wasted in priming the political pump, it
wouldn’t have been so bad for Green Campbell, seeing that he had obliged
his friends, had there not been other heavy and unexpected drains upon
his purse. It was a partnership with Jay Cooke and Company, a Washington
stock brokerage firm, at a most unfortunate time, that really hurt.
Jay Cooke was perhaps the foremost broker of that day. Hard luck
bankrupted him. His brokerage houses in three eastern cities collapsed
in 1873, causing one of the greatest financial panics of all time. He
was financing the building of the Northern Pacific railroad and had made
too many advances. But Jay Cooke was still the promoter par-excellence.
He was the promoter previously mentioned as having received an interest
in the Horn Silver mine for securing a railroad to the camp.
Jay Cooke was heavily involved when Green Campbell became a member of
the firm, and through an oversight a protecting clause was omitted. With
new money in the firm, Cooke’s old creditors forced their demands. Green
Campbell’s first check was drawn for nine hundred thousand dollars! And
that was by no means the end of enforced payments. However, much of this
loss was salvaged through securities turned over to Campbell by Cooke.
It was not at all strange that at some time in his financial career,
after climbing up to the heights, that Green Campbell should take his
turn on the toboggan. Nobody ever wins every step in life. But these
two reverses, falling so swiftly and so heavily as to make them the high
points of the drama, cut a jagged gash in the fabric of his dreams.
And while the hand of Fate continued, for a time at least, to carry the
Campbell fortune steadily downward, he did not lose all. Far from it!
There was no time after selling the Horn Silver mine that he was not a
rich man!
But the winds of adversity, mighty dream-wrecking gales though
they were, had not swept away the flame of hope. Back to his mines,
unflagging in his efforts to do it all over again, Green Campbell was
full of plans for the future when he died rather suddenly of pneumonia,
in 1902. Thus, the call of the desert, the lure of the mining game, held
him until the last.
And this is the true story of Green Campbell—gentleman, miner, and
great wealth-builder, in whose heart there seems to have burned an
inextinguishable desire for something that never came.
DESERT CHIVALRY Published in Wetmore Spectator,
March 13, 1931.
By John T. Bristow
There were not conveyances enough to handle the influx of gold-seekers
when I got off the train at Nipton, California, and a long walk across
a dry sun baked waste lay ahead of me. I was on my way to the new mining
camp of Crescent, just over the line in Nevada, and on my way to a
fortune—maybe. Rainbow visions began to rise before me, and hot though
it was I did not mind that six-mile walk one bit. I was not alone. She
was young, slender — and pretty. And Elsie was a “gold-digger” too.
There were others.
With Frank Williams, a former Wetmore boy, as partner, I was in from the
start at the “hell-roaring” mining camp back in 1907. Born overnight, it
was a stampede mining camp, growing from nothing to a tented city of
one thousand people in a few weeks time—followed quickly with saloons,
dance-halls, and whatnots.
image7
Crescent was wild, mad, wide open.
When the big news broke, I beat it for Nevada. Frank and I and
associates owned three claims in the very heart of the Crescent
district. Also, I personally owned an adjoining claim on which Frank had
caused one of his men, Paul Stahmer, to do the required ten feet of work
to hold it for one year, at a cost to me of $100. The work was done on a
$544 gold showing.
Having operated with Frank rather disappointedly in the
lead-zinc-vanadium camp of Goodsprings, thirty miles away, through the
years since 1904, I believed that here at last—at Crescent—I was about
to pounce, in one fell swoop upon the legendary pot of gold. It was a
fantastic notion, of course—but oh, the magic thrill of it!
Charles M. Schwab, Pennsylvania multi-millionaire steel magnate, who
held mining interests in Nevada, lent encouragement with an on-the-spot
pronouncement: “In the past the great fortunes have been made in
manufacturing, but henceforth the really big money will be made in
mining.” Also, operators from Goldfield, the Nevada camp that gave
George Wingfield, a lowly cowhand, twenty million dollars almost in a
jiffy—men in the big money up there said in my presence, “If we had such
surface showings at Goldfield as you have at Crescent, any old claim
would sell for a fortune.” I don’t mind telling you that I had fed
rather too optimistically upon the glorious prospect of grabbing a quick
fortune at Crescent. But the unveiling of facts there proved a solvent
for the nightmare in which a lot of us had been living for months.
With fabulously rich surface showings — high assays, $500 to $20,000 to
the ton reported almost everywhere — Crescent proved, in the end,
the greatest bubble of them all. Countless thousands of dollars were
expended, over a period of two years, in a frantic effort to bring out a
profitable producer. But if there ever was as much as a shirt-tail full
of ore shipped from that camp, I don’t know it. And though I never had
the time nor the inclination to compare notes, I’ll bet Elsie had better
pickings than any of the hopeful miners who wore pants.
It was with reluctance that we pulled out of Crescent. It’s most
fascinating, this thing of prospecting for gold — like participating
in a big-game hunt. Were I full-handed, even now, I would go back to
Crescent and give our Shreve-port group another try. Someday, somebody
is going to find the “mother lode” there.
There was honest effort—a lot of honest effort—as well as the usual
faking, at Crescent. A $20,000 gold strike was reported near the summit,
between our claims and Crescent. The first day out there, I was all
for seeing this strike right away. My partner said, “Oh, wait until
tomorrow—we’ll be going past it when we go over to Crescent.”
The next day, starting from our claims by way of a perfectly good wagon
road down the canyon a ways, Frank took me by a tortuous climb, off the
road, to near the top of the mountain. He pointed out the spot where the
assay had been obtained. When I began to examine the shallow trench, he
said, quickly, “It took all the ore in sight to make the assay.” Twenty
steps farther on we reached the summit where we could look down on
Crescent a mile below. And then we stepped out onto a very good wagon
road. On inquiry, he said, “It’s the same road we left back there in the
canyon.” I asked him how come we made that rough climb? Frank said, “You
know, it’s about as much as a man’s life is worth to be caught showing
up that strike to a tenderfoot.”
This was an eye-opener—the first clear signpost on a long and uncertain
road.
At another time, later, Frank and I paid a saloon keeper in Nipton, the
railroad station, twenty dollars to drive us over the Crescent
district, for the full day. We visited our claims first, got dinner
in Crescent—then to a saloon where drinks were 50 cents each, whether
whiskey, beer, or water. The bartender simply counted noses or glasses,
as it were, and summed up the charge. There were about twenty saloons in
the camp, and our “host” deemed it his duty to visit them all. I am sure
he dumped the $10 I paid him on twenty glasses of water for me. It was a
spot where you couldn’t afford to shake your head and say, “No thanks.”
When asked to drink, it was wise to call your drink.
The main object of the drive—on my part, anyway — the thing we had paid
twenty dollars for, was to visit a highly newspaper publicized mine two
miles south of Crescent, where it was shamefully claimed immense bodies
of rich gold ore running into the millions, were blocked out. But the
desert twilight caught us still drinking Adam’s ale and the Indian’s
“fire water.” Our driver knew his business all right—and I suspect Frank
knew from the start that we would never fetch up at that mine. Nothing,
absolutely nothing—but the truth—was barred in that camp.
I shall now leave the desert momentarily, and write candidly about my
earlier “mining” experience. This, and other notations here—until we get
back to Crescent—are throw-ins, kindred situations not contained in the
printed’ article.
With our townsman Green Campbell’s enviable mining success as an
incentive, it has ever been my hope that I might someday also strike
it rich—and mining seemed to offer the best lure. I therefore joined a
group of Wetmore and Horton men in an effort to rejuvenate a gold mine
at Whitepine, Colorado, twenty miles north of Sargent on the narrow
gauge branch of the Denver & Rio Grande railroad. With the Wetmore
group—Dr. Augustus Philip Lapham and wife Elzina Brown-Lapham; Jay
Wellington Powers and wife Helen Hoyt-Powers; Charles Samuel Locknane
and wife Coral Hutchison-Locknane; and Mr. C. A. Mann, the owner, backed
by Scott Hopkins, Horton banker, and other moneyed men of that city, I
spent a week at White pine looking things over.
The mine was really six miles up the canyon from White pine—just beyond
the abandoned town of Tomichi, not far from the “Top of the World.”
Tomichi had been hit by a snow slide which wrecked a number of houses,
killing several people. The residents, numbering about 1,000, had
abandoned their homes and places of business, leaving the buildings
intact—a true “Ghost Town.” Thinking in terms of the present, one might
wonder why had the buildings been left to rot down? A mill had sawed the
lumber on the site — and in that out-of-the-way place, the material was
not worth salvaging.
The tunnel of the Mann mine was about 150 feet up-slope from the wagon
road on the floor of the canyon, which road was also Main Street in
Tomichi. To get up to the tunnel, the trail started several hundred feet
up the gulch and then swung back around a projecting ledge where the
footing was rather insecure. To negotiate it the men would use the lines
off the harness. The women could remain at the wagon and watch the men
fall, if such might be the case.