Morrison Family History, Part 2

Continued from last week...

In Sierra City, George was involved with mining operations and also had a thriving potato field across the river from the Yuba River Inn property. To get to the field, he built the wagon road which is the (closed off) eastern extension of Lake Street, and crossed the river with his team and wagon at a shallow place always known as “The Ford.” Joseph and Sanford migrated to Sierra Valley, where they helped with haying on the ranches. From some pages of notes left by our great-grandfather George, my brother Cal Cartwright wrote an account of a grisly incident in which Sanford had taken a courageous part. The account, which Cal called “The Tragedy of Hamlin’s Canyon,” relates that during the winter of 1874–75, when Sanford shared Sam Berry’s cabin in Hamlin’s Canyon, the two men saw fresh tracks large enough to belong to a grizzly. On the morning of November 29, 1874, Sam set off into the canyon to check on a number of traps he had there. When he had not returned by late afternoon, Sanford became alarmed, but early darkness hindered him from searching for his friend. The following morning he came in to Sattley to raise the alarm, and about two hundred men set out to search Hamlin’s Canyon for Sam. Finally the group heard the signal shot. One of the searchers had found Sam Berry’s mangled and bloody body; his head lay about three feet away. A trail of the same large bear prints they had seen earlier led off toward the south range.

Sam Berry’s cabin is very likely the spot where Joseph and Sanford themselves met their end. We know that during a particularly harsh winter in the 1880s they did not come down from their cabin in a canyon on the south wall of Sierra Valley above the Turner ranch. When searchers broke through the massive drifts in the spring, they discovered the long-dead bodies of the brothers. The searchers buried them there in the canyon, where they had starved or frozen to death, trapped in their cabin during a prolonged blizzard.

The three children of George and Lydia took divergent paths as adults. Young George had an avid, intellectually curious mind. His attention turned early to mining and to the native plants of our area. During his life he obtained a number of claims, among them a property that came to be known as the American Exchange, in Hog Canyon above the Primrose Mine; the George G. and George H. Morrison claims; the Realty, known as the Realty Extension; and the Middle Placer. When he was about eighteen, George G. hit a rich vein and took out a considerable amount of gold. With some of the money from this strike, he decided to pursue his early interests more seriously and went down the mountain to U.C. Berkeley to study mining engineering and botany. He married Laura Kennedy, who was born on the Kennedy ranch at Goodyear’s Bar. George and Laura had four children: George Raymond, born in 1895, who was always known as “Ray”; Arthur, born in 1897; Alice Laurel, born in 1902; and Clarence, who died in 1914 when he only five years old. Alice Laurel also died tragically, from pneumonia in Berkeley when she was eighteen or nineteen after playing tennis and becoming chilled. In her short lifetime, Alice showed an exceptional artistic talent that has continued to surface in succeeding generations of our family.

Uncle George, as my part of the family remembers him, was an extraordinary character. He was a voracious reader and inveterate story-teller. Another Morrison trait seems to be an encyclopedic memory for names, dates, and incidents. My mother, Mabel, was well-known for hers. Stacks of at least fifty years of issues of the National Geographic magazine climbed the walls in both his Sierra City house, directly above the cemetery, and in his large drafty cabin at the American Exchange mine. Always delighted to share his experience, he was an endless fund of knowledge on our mountain wildflowers and on the local mining lore. Even into his late seventies, Uncle George walked the ten steep miles of the Sierra Buttes Road back and forth from his house in town to his two-story cabin in Hog Canyon, and until his death in 1946, he was still prospecting. His two remaining children, Ray and Arthur, who were both flyers during World War II, kept up an interest in his claims during their lifetimes.

Mountain Springs can be purchased at the Downieville Historical Museum, Sierra Country Store in Sierra City, Bassett’s Station, Graeagle Store, or directly by emailing lcrosen@yahoo.com.