Sincerely yours,
Byram C. Campbell
In that same year, 1856, Isaiah Thomas, with his family, came here from Newton, Iowa. He had traveled all the way from Indiana to Iowa, thence here, with ox-team and covered wagon. Custom and bovine traits had caused him to walk alongside his oxen for practically all those wearying miles. Isaiah Thomas settled on a quarter of land north of that taken up by Green Campbell. His eldest boy, Elwood, was a lad of fifteen years, seven years younger than Green Campbell. The destinies of these two young men were to be subsequently linked together in gigantic enterprises in a still newer frontier environment.
Times were close for the Campbells. They were compelled, as were many early Kansas settlers, to pick up here and there a few extra dollars, as opportunity offered, while becoming established on the farm. Green Campbell found employment with the freighting firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, at Leavenworth. His work took him often into the West. When the Cherry creek gold excitement on the east slope of the Rocky mountains broke out in 1858, he joined the throngs in that mad rush. He cleaned up $60,000 from the placer mines, but had spent most of it before coming back to his homestead.
Then for a while Green worked his land while the boy Elwood grew up. Elwood was not to come into the picture, the gigantic doings, for some years yet. In the meantime his father, Isaiah Thomas, had gone to the war and had died in Arkansas. His mother, Martha Thomas, with her family of seven children, had moved over to the north part of the township and settled on forty acres a quarter mile east of Wetmore, which place has been, until a few months ago, the home of her son, Manning. Unmarried, and the last of that pioneer family, he died May 12, 1938. Though very young, Elwood Thomas also joined the Union ranks and was held prisoner of war at Tyler, Texas, for nearly a year. Shortly after returning from the war, he married Maria Adamson, of Holton. They had four children—three girls and a boy. Charley, the son, died at Beatty, Nevada, in August last year.
Five years after his first mining venture, in 1863, Green Campbell was again panning gold at Bannock, Montana. His take this time was $40,000. Then, after one more desultory try on the farm, he married Florence Oursler, of Circleville, in 1867. She was the daughter of Rufus Oursler, wealthy resident of Jackson County. She was a beautiful woman.
For a few years contentment reigned in the Campbell home. I remember going with my Uncle Nick Bristow one time when he visited in that home. We went in a covered wagon, a wagon that was little more than a ghost of the old “prairie schooner,” having all five of the bows still in place, with a tattered canvas over only the rear half. But my uncle walked all the way alongside his nigh ox. Uncle had a “log-wagon” for heavy hauling on the farm. He kept this one for special occasions and Sunday driving. He owned no horses.
Uncle Nick and Green Campbell had mined together in the Cherry creek diggings—and the fact that his host of the day had cleaned up big, while he himself brought home only alibis, and a cougar pelt, had not impaired a fine friendship. Conscious of Mr. Campbell’s mine-made money, it then seemed to me, a youngster, that the Campbells had everything—even a “hired” girl. That girl was Elizabeth Dittman, now Mrs. Ed. Keggin, living in Wetmore, who would tell you that everything was fine and lovely with them then, as it had every reason to be.
Then rumor of a new mining strike in the West changed everything. Green Campbell now found life irksome on his then none too productive acres down on the banks of Elk creek. And as he turned over the soil with his plow on a bright May day in 1871, he also turned things over in his mind. His brother John, he decided, could remain on the farm and keep up the fight against odds if he wanted to, but as for himself the Far West was calling. That call had struck the man of my story with all the force of a Kansas tornado, and it moved him from his anchorage on the farm with a suddenness that brought a protest from his relatives.
So it was that Green Campbell, with his family now shifted to Circleville, the home of his in-laws, went out again in quest of a third fortune. And though millions came into his coffers, one cannot be sure, after all these years and in the light of what followed, whether he profited or lost by that abrupt decision back here on that bright May morning sixty and seven years ago.