GEORGE MINEHART

MINEHART

Posted By: Sheila Federspiel (email)
Date: 2/7/2008 at 19:41:54

GEORGE WASHINGTON MINEHART
BY: Jay Hart Rosdall
Submitted by: Sheila Federspiel

George Washington was born June 11,1829 in Fairfield County. He came to Linn County in 1850, remained until November of the following year and then sought adventure in other fields. The winter of 51 was spent in St. Louis and the following one found him in Kansas, Jackson County, Missouri, working for a dollar a day. Dissatisfied with this and lured by stories of gold discovered by the “Forty Niners”, he made his way westward. On the road he happened to camp with a tribe of Indians, George codded a very pretty Indian girl, saying that he was going to make his squaw. The dusky eyed maiden was not adverse it seems to teaming up with the handsome young white adventurer and the next morning when the latter started out he found her by his side. It is not known how our hero escaped from his embarrassment.

Another time a member of George’s party shot a squaw, sitting on a bank fishing. The Indians, later caught up with them and threatened to shoot the entire party, if they didn’t tell the culprit. They took the scalped the latter. The party came to a hot spring one time and the dogs plunged in and were cooked. (PLEASE, IS THIS BELIEVABLE)

George Minehart, was a blacksmith by trade and when his funds ran out, he stopped and worked. Arriving in California, he took up the search for gold. In a letter to his brother, John, from Nevada City, Nevada County, California, dated Feb. 8, 1855, he tells of the country and his mining operations. He writes, that he has been in better health “since leaving the state” due to the nice, pleasant weather and healthy climate of the lofty mountains. In the preceding five months he and his partner had procured upward of $4,000.00 in gold dust. The biggest half of this however, went for expenses. Men were paid four dollars a day and the two partners employed five. Water cost 50 cents per inch and they used 20 inches per day. Sluice timber $40.00 to $50.00 per thousand and they had used 3,000 feet to construct a sluice ¼ mile in length which they wished to lengthen.

One lump of quartz the size of a man’s hand had been found, as well as a lump of pur gold the size of a hen’s egg, which weighed 5 ounces. Also a pure gold ring with which George was married. However most of the gold was as fine as sand, a great deal as fine as flour and some superfine. Not withstanding the fact that $1,100 was stolen from the place he had cached it. George returned in the fall of 1855 via Cape Town and New York, with enough money to purchase 200 acres of land in Section 22, Buffalo Township. He bought it from a gentleman named Ogden and paid for it in gold. On June 27, 1856, he married Christena Bruner, daughter of John Lewis Bruner and Hannah Hall. The reader is again referred to “The Bruner Family History”. The young couple went to Ohio on a visit shortly after their marriage. The trip was made in a lynchpin wagon which George made himself and which afterwards sold to John Birk. After the birth of the three oldest children, Matt Finn, was hired to build a large frame house to replace the log cabin. Christena, died Oct. 26, 1868, aged thirty four years, one month and thirteen days. George died April 2, 1880, aged fifty years, three months and twenty one days, from injuries received when he fell from a buggy. Both are buried in Boulder Cemetery.

MINEHART
 

Linn Biographies maintained by Cindy Booth Maher.
WebBBS 4.33 Genealogy Modification Package by WebJourneymen