Clark County
WAGenWeb
Battle Ground, Wash., Nov 1890
I will write you a letter that my
friends may know how "we’uns" are getting along. I left old high Henry [Henry
Co, Iowa] Oct. 23rd for Portland, Oregon, over the N.P.R. Ry. and was fifteen
days on the way. We went through fire, steam and water and still live. I had an
emigrant car loaded with three horses, two cows, three hogs, four doz. chickens
besides a full outfit of furniture. Somewhere out on the run we had a collision.
Two freight trains came together ker-chug, smashing two engines and nine cars
all to flinders, the tender of our engine landing on top of the cars behind it.
My car was not smashed and strange to say nobody was badly hurt. I came out with
the crazy bone of my elbow knocked to one side and it is all I can do to write
now as there is a sensation running from my elbow to the ends of my fingers. I
also got a crack on my head that raised a young knot-maul. At times I hardly
know whether it is Mickey or not, so if my old chums see any links out of my
letter they will know the cause.
It would take a long time to tell all
about my trip out here, so many things of interest. One place we ran through a
tunnel three and a-half miles long, lit up by three hundred and sixty-two
electric lights. This was in the Cascade mountains and as we came out on the
west side it was raining.
We came on to Vancouver the next day after
landing at Portland. John Huston rented us a house but the door was too small to
get our goods into, so Mr. Bigham, formerly of Henry county, gave us his
wood-house to store them in and then I came out north of Vancouver fifteen miles
and bought a ranch of a hundred and sixty acres, with about four thousand stumps
on it. I always loved to work in timber so I bounced an old log in front of my
house and have been working on it for a week with ax, saw and fire and it is not
half consumed yet. I am losing faith in myself, or rather my love for being a
timber rat. This country is all timber and evergreens are a nuisance.
There has been four thousand lies told about this country so I must be careful
what I say, as out here half the truth is one big lie. When I was here
thirty-six years ago I was a miner; now I am a farmer, so it may appear
different to me.
We have plenty of fruit on the ranch, apples,
pears, prunes, peaches and small fruit. The hogs here are like tooth-picks,
sharp at both ends. I brought one of Wm Crawford’s Poland-chinas with me and the
people say "O, what a pretty hog! But it won’t do here." They want a hog that
can go down two feet for a grub worm. You see our corn crop has a prefix (acorn)
and what is good can be shocked on a stump.
They say this is a very
healthy country, but I notice everyone has a cough in the throat. But this may
be only a scare with me. We had some rain when we first came but most of the
time it has been lovely. Some frost but warm days. We look for the rainy season
at any time. I will not say hurrah for Washington until I see more of it.
I will turn my attention mostly to hay as it is worth $20 a ton in Vancouver
and is liable to continue at that price for some time. Cows usually require feed
about five months in the year. I expect to see grass up fine in May and June as
then is when it does its best growing. I don’t think we will starve but may go
in rags most of the time.
My boys stand back and look at the big logs as
though they don’t care to wade into them. There is a lack of sociability here
and men will pass by without saying a word. There was a load passed by the other
day without even a nod, and I yelled "Hello! You don’t know anybody who wants to
hire anybody to do nothing, you?" and they said nothing. Give our love to
enquiring friends until we write again. John M. Mickey
Battle Ground, Washington, Feb. 15, 1892
Dear Friends and Beacon
readers:
It is with a trembling hand that I write. Yes, I have the blues
bad. It is on account of too much hard labor. I just thought I could get away
with this timber easy by fire and powder. These old logs get so water soaked it
takes all summer to dry them out. There is but a short time one has to burn it.
It takes from 50 to 75 cents worth of powder to blow one of these stumps out of
the ground; then you have a great big thing that you can’t handle and too wet to
burn. The blues don’t express it to a man that wants to do something.
My
brother-in-law, David Herrold, and son, have taken two acres of land for me to
clear up so I can plow the ground. I pay them $150 for the job. In my first
letter I said there were 4000 [stumps] on my ranch, but I find twice as many. It
is no use trying to hunt up words to express this stump arrangement. If I had my
farm all cleared off I would not trade it for any farm in Iowa and Iowa is hard
to beat.
I find this country very spotted; some places the soil is very
thin and lots gravel. It is a great mystery to me how the farmers out here make
a living. What little time they have they are digging out stumps.
The
outside range is all eaten out and we have to feed our cows 7 months in the
year. Last November and December was very rainy; the last 7 weeks have been very
nice. We have had no winter as yet, have had no freezing and only a little frost
in the mornings. There are lots of potatoes out here that are not dug yet and
they are sound as a dollar. Potatoes are no price this year, apples ditto. I
have 40 bushels of apples in my orchard. I have set out three hundred prunes and
expect to put out as many more as soon as I can get the stumps off my ground;
also apples, pears and cherries. My how the strawberries grow here! Women and
roses do well here. Women look better than men; they are not out in the rain as
much as men. The moss does not grow on their backs.
We do not have as
much fog here as they do on the Sound about Tacoma. When we are on the side-walk
we don’t have to carry a fog horn; but we have some bad roads in the winter as
the stumps interfere in working them.
Those nice hogs I brought out here
don’t take. I sold one pig and the man fed him on potato peelings but the pig
took sick and died. We lack the corn to make the stock on hogs. I would have
been better off it I had not brought stock with me. It takes so long for them to
become acclimated. It was 6 months before our old rooster thought of crowing,
but now he crows and fights like those bantams do in Winfield.
It is hard
to tell what this country will be yet. The towns are away ahead of the farming
country. In a great part of eastern Wash. and Ore. the bunch grass is all eaten
up and the other grass will not grow and the ground is wearing out. As my boy
and John Chrissinger came through last fall they saw lots of farms deserted. No
soil. We have lots of men coming in from the eastern part of this state hunting
farms. Say friends, write.
John M. Mickey
Contributed by Sharon (Mickey) Norton, Great-granddaughter of John M. Mickey
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07/28/2026