Mining and Irrigation Developer, and Boise Founder John A. O’Farrell [otd 02/13]

John O'Farrell. H. T. French photo.

World traveler and Boise pioneer John Andrew O'Farrell was born February 13, 1823, in Ulster, Ireland. He went to sea after two years in a naval school: The round trip from London to Calcutta and back made O'Farrell a seasoned sailor at 16. He then became a crew member on an East India Company ship that sailed to Sydney, Australia, and widespread points in between.

O’Farrell remained in England for a year or so, qualifying as a shipyard worker. He then signed on with a ship that landed him in the United States in January 1843. Here, he worked in a shipyard for a time. During the Mexican War, Andrew served successively on a stores ship and then a mail packet.

After the annexation of California and the discovery of gold at Sutter's mill, he tried his hand at placer mining. When California was admitted to the Union in September 1850, all male residents over 21 years old – including O'Farrell – were granted U.S. citizenship.

O'Farrell returned to sea for a round trip voyage to New Zealand and Australia, with stops in Honolulu. After more mining, he worked ships between the Caribbean and England.

HMS Agamemnon. Magazine lithograph, 1857.

The Crimean War began in 1853, and O’Farrell shipped on the HMS Agamemnon, the first screw-powered British battleship. In November 1854, O'Farrell received a “Crimean Medal” for meritorious service in the siege of Sevastopol, where he was wounded.

He returned to the U.S. after the war and, in 1860, was among the early prospectors who discovered gold in the Pike's Peak area of Colorado. However, in late 1861, O’Farrell went East to Kentucky and got married. Two years later, he chose to put down roots in the Boise Valley.

Major Pinkney Lugenbeel’s troops were already in the Valley when O’Farrell arrived there in June. By coincidence or design, Andrew located his cabin within a quarter mile or so of where the Major finally sited (the new) Fort Boise. The log cabin O'Farrell built in what soon became Boise City is considered the first family home in the area. For many years, area Roman Catholics used his home as a place to hold services.

O'Farrell Cabin. City of Boise.

With his wife and growing family settled, O'Farrell promoted the development of the city and of the Boise Valley. Andrew eventually owned considerable Valley farm land as well as town real estate. Later, he helped fund and promote irrigation canals in the area. One of those projects included the New York Canal [blog June 20], of which he was one of the original promoters.

Yet he found time to travel extensively to oversee mining investments all over the west, from Washington and Montana south to Arizona and New Mexico.  O’Farrell was also known to be bright and inventive (his father was a military engineer). In 1897, he exhibited a patented rail-car coupler designed so the operator did not have to go between the cars, the largest single cause of railway accidents in that era. However, his mechanism was in competition with many others, and was never adopted.

O’Farrell’s wife of almost forty years, Mary Ann, died in May 1900. Together, they had raised four children of their own (three others died in infancy), plus seven adopted orphans. John survived his wife by a bit over five months.

Boise still has an Ofarrell Street. The original cabin, although relocated by a couple hundred feet, has been restored and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
                                                                                 

References: [Brit], [French], [Illust-State]

“A Car Coupler,” Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho (October 17, 1897).

"O'Farrell Cabin," CityofBoise.org web site.

Carolyn Thomas Foreman, “Colonel Pinkney Lugenbeel,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 24, No. 4, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City (1946).

Pioneer Camas Prairie Physician John W. Turner, M. D. [otd 02/12]

Camas Prairie and Cottonwood, Idaho physician John Wesley Turner was born February 12, 1861, while his parents were visiting relatives and friends in Indiana. Afterwards, the family returned to their home in Kansas and John grew up in an area about forty miles south of Kansas City. As a young man, he worked at a drug store for two years before beginning classes at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati.

Dr. Turner. [Illust-North]

Eclectic medicine prided itself on selecting “whatever would help their patients,” even if it didn’t fit into standard medical practice. Standard treatments were heavily influenced by European methods and included drastic measures such as bloodletting, extreme purgation, and blister-inducing poultices of mustard and peppers. Mainstream “medicines” included concoctions based on mercury, arsenic or lead (all highly toxic), as well as creosote (a wood preservative) or naphtha (a flammable petroleum product). Eclectic practitioners leaned on botanical remedies, many of them derived from Native American usage. They also relied on a form of what is now called physical therapy.

In 1888, John followed his brother, Franklin, to the Camas Prairie. Franklin, a civil engineer, had settled near Grangeville in 1884 and was elected county surveyor a year later. John moved his family into a property in Cottonwood, probably because Grangeville already had two or three doctors. He then returned to the Institute and completed his medical studies in 1891.

The following year, Turner was elected to the first of several terms as Coroner for Idaho County. He would hold that position, off and on, for over a decade. In 1893, he was elected to a three-year term as trustee for the Cottonwood school district. Although he was not a Charter Member of the Idaho Medical Association [blog, September 12], he soon joined that organization.

In 1896, he and a partner opened a new drugstore in Cottonwood. With that, and his status as a classic “country doctor,” Turner became very well known and well-liked in the area. Thus, later in 1896, he was elected to a term in the state Senate. While there, he introduced a bill, matched in the House, to begin state regulation of the practice of medicine. The bill passed, but had to be revised. After that, Dr.  Turner served for a number years on the state Board of Medical Examiners.

Turner tried his best to keep up with the times. An item in a 1906 Idaho County Free Press mentions a visit to Grangeville on his motorcycle. Later, he would be one of the first on the Prairie to own an automobile. Also, once the railroad reached Cottonwood and Grangeville in 1908, we find him escorting patients to surgical specialists as far away as Portland, Oregon.

Cottonwood, ca 1900, Idaho County Free Press.

However, in 1910, a report sponsored by the American Medical Association faulted Eclectic Medicine for a lack of scientific rigor. And, indeed, the field did not adapt well to new knowledge about microorganisms as a cause for diseases. It also depended heavily upon anecdotal evidence and was weak on laboratory practice. Eclectic medicine began to fall out of favor.

It was probably no coincidence that, in 1911-1913, Dr. Turner invested in California farmland and began to spend more time there. In late 1916, he sold his property in Cottonwood and cut back his local practice. By 1920, the family was permanently settled on a fruit farm and vineyard about thirty miles south of Fresno. He spent the rest of his life in California, passing away in San Francisco in April, 1946.
                                                                                 

References: [Illust-North]

“[Dr. Turner News],” Idaho County Free Press, Grangeville, Idaho (October 19, 1888 – July 5, 1917).

M. Alfreda Elsensohn, Eugene F. Hoy (ed.), Pioneer Days in Idaho County, Caxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho (1951).

John S. Haller, Jr., Medical Protestants: The Eclectics in American Medicine, 1825-1939, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Illinois (1994).

“State Medical Board,” Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho (May 9, 1897).

Weiser Rancher, Merchant, and Developer Solomon Jeffreys [otd 02/11]

Solomon Jeffreys.
Illustrated History photo.

Solomon M. Jeffreys was born February 11, 1835, in Jackson County, Missouri, near Kansas City. Ten years later the family traveled the Oregon Trail as part of a large wagon train to Yamhill County, Oregon.

In 1849, Solomon, with father Thomas and brother John, joined the California gold rush. They did well in the gold fields, but the father died on the trip home.

With the stake they had earned, the sons expanded their farm holdings and Solomon started his own place. He later moved east of the Cascades and developed a considerable stock ranch. In 1862, he made a highly profitable cattle drive to the gold fields in Canada.

In 1864, Solomon’s brother Woodson moved to Idaho and took up land along the Weiser River. Apparently he made glowing reports back to Oregon because Solomon joined him the following year. The two partnered in the cattle business as the Jeffreys Brothers Cattle Company. Solomon eventually opened a small store a mile or so from the mouth of the Weiser, serving the stage line along the river.

The area grew slowly, although it did acquire a post office called “Weiser Ranch” in 1866. Woodson Jeffreys and the brother’s friend, Thomas Galloway [blog, June 6], were among the early postmasters. However the “office” was just a drawer in the Jeffreys’ store and the 1870 census found less than 250 residents in what would become Washington County.

In fact, not until 1879 were there enough people to create the new county. Solomon was among those appointed to a temporary Board of Commissioners, tasked with setting up county operations. The fledgling political unit faced one small problem: It contained virtually no towns, not even so much as a hamlet. Thus, two areas faced off for the honor of being county seat – Upper Valley (now Salubria) and Weiser Bridge (now Weiser). Weiser won … aided by some ballot box stuffing and other chicanery, according to local pioneer and historian Judge Frank Harris.

At first, officers ran county business out of their homes, or borrowed space where they could find it. Finally, Solomon Jeffreys gave the county five acres of land near his store. Weiser City began with the sale of lots from the donated acreage. The town did not really grow until the railroad approached. Then, in 1882, the village center moved somewhat closer to the railroad right-of-way near the Snake River.

Western train station, 1884. Glenbow Museum photo.

Solomon’s brother and ranching partner, Woodson, had died the year before. Apparently seeing no future for the cattle business in the area, Solomon had the herd sold off. Thereafter, he joined with several other pioneers to form an irrigation company. Unfortunately, the project was severely under-capitalized and years passed – and the company dissolved and reformed a couple of times – before enough water could be delivered to all who needed it.

A major change hit Weiser in 1890, when a huge fire wiped out the main business district. During the next two or three years of rebuilding, the center of town moved even further west, close to the railroad station. Through all this, Solomon continued to play a substantial role in the Weiser City business community.

Besides a term in the Territorial legislature (1872-1874), Jeffreys also served as a county commissioner, county treasurer, and member of the city council. He died in October 1904.
                                                                                 

References: [Hawley], [Illust-State.]

Frank Harris, “History of Washington County and Adams County,” Weiser Signal (1940s).

Inventor, Atomic Bomb Witness, and University Professor Larry Johnston [otd 02/11]

Larry Johnston, ca 1945. U. S. Army.

Physicist Lawrence Harding “Larry” Johnston was born February 11, 1918, in Shantung (Shandong) Province, China. His parents were missionaries, who returned to the U. S. in 1923, probably to avoid Nationalistic unrest in the area. By 1930, his father held a position as a Presbyterian pastor in Santa Maria, California.

Like many boys of that era, Larry was fascinated by electricity. That led him to a B.S. degree in physics from the University of California at Berkeley. One of his professors was Luis W. Alvarez, later a Nobel Prize winner, but then a newly-minted Ph.D. and faculty member.

The U.S. had not yet entered World War II when Larry graduated in 1940. He began graduate school on schedule, intending to work for Alvarez. However, the professor took a leave of absence to consult at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The “temporary” assignment soon lengthened, and Alvarez drafted Johnston to help. Larry arrived at MIT in January of 1941.

Much of the work there sought to improve the relatively new technology of radar. Soon, Alvarez made Larry the Project Engineer for what became a Ground Control Approach (GCA) radar system. The system provides precise data on a plane’s altitude, and its track versus the runway centerline. A ground controller uses that information to “talk the pilot down.”

Trinity Test Blast. National Archives.

Then Robert Oppenheimer recruited Alvarez for the atomic bomb project, working out of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Alvarez, in turn, brought along Larry. The details are beyond the scope of this blog, but Johnston tackled, and solved, the detonation trigger array for the plutonium-239 atomic bomb (“Fat Man”). In the summer of 1945, he witnessed the first atomic detonation in history at the Trinity site near Alamogordo.

A few days later, Johnston and his team were ordered to Tinian Island. From there, Larry rode an observation plane and witnessed the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. He was the only person known to have seen all three of those first atomic explosions. They had also seen the enormous supply of coffins stockpiled in case the Allies had to physically invade Japan. A deeply religious man, Johnston later wrote that he and the bomber crews “had come to terms with the inevitable loss of life. We hoped for an early end to the War and its heavy drain of human life and potential.”

The terrible destruction gave the Japanese a face-saving way to avoid a fight to the death, something they were, indeed, prepared to do. Less than a week after the second bomb, they surrendered. After matters settled down, Johnston went back to graduate school at UC-Berkeley.

GCA Radar Console.
National Air and Space Museum.

During the winter of 1948, the GCA system he and Alcarez had pioneered made possible one of the most dramatic peacetime campaigns of the Twentieth Century: the Berlin Airlift. With ground controllers – the “unsung heroes” – talking them down through bad weather, determined pilots flew a steady stream of supply planes into blockaded Berlin. The Soviets finally gave up their unexpectedly-futile obstruction.

After receiving his doctorate in 1950, Johnston taught for over a decade at the University of Minnesota. He then worked back in California before becoming a physics professor at the University of Idaho in 1967. Some of his research results are still considered the definitive works in his field, and he was renowned as a teacher and mentor. After his retirement in 1978, Larry stayed active, including enthusiastic support of Christian ministries in Moscow.

He passed away in late 2011.
                                                                                 

References: [Brit]

David Bergamini, Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, William Morrow & Company, New York (1971).

Lawrence Johnston, “The War Years,” Discovering Alvarez, W. Peter Tower (ed.), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1987).

Sandra L. Lee, “Idaho Man Witness to 3 Atomic Blasts,” Lewiston Tribune, Lewiston, Idaho (November 19, 2011).

“Obituary: Lawrence H. 'Larry' Johnston, 93,” Moscow-Pullman Daily News, Moscow, Idaho (December 7, 2011).

Stewart M. Powell, “The Berlin Airlift,” Air Force Magazine, The Air force Association, Arlington, Virginia (June 1998).

Arthur Pence: Stockman, Legislator, and Hot Springs Owner [otd 02/10]

Senator Pence. H. T. French photo.

Idaho rancher Arthur Lee Pence was born February 10, 1847, near Des Moines, Iowa. He chose to make his own way at an early age. In 1864, his brother-in-law and sister Martha decided to move to the West. Arthur examined his prospects in Iowa, and then found himself a job driving an ox team for a wagon train. The column disbanded at Boise City, so Arthur drove a load of hay to Idaho City.

Pence briefly tried his hand at prospecting but soon turned back to freighting instead. For three years, he bullwhacked trains from Umatilla  to Boise City, and sometimes on into Idaho city. He spent one season on a homestead in the Boise Valley, but then began driving a stagecoach that served the new gold camps in northern Nevada. Contacts there soon led to a blacksmith job at a camp ten miles or so south of the Idaho border.

The stage road from Nevada passed near where the Bruneau River joins the Snake, which led Arthur to explore that part of the country. Encouraged, in April 1869 he filed on some hot springs at the upper end of the Bruneau Valley - the springs still bear the name “Pence Hot Springs.”

Arthur and a brother ran cattle in the Bruneau area for about a decade. By then, Idaho stockmen were exporting tens of thousands of cattle out of state. The brothers may have decided the market was too glutted to be profitable, so they sold off their herds and went into vegetable farming. They did a fine business selling produce in the mining camps until about 1885.

Western sheep herding. Library of Congress.

At that time, the Oregon Short Line had completed its rails across Idaho, which made sheep raising a more attractive alternative. Thus, the Pence brothers ran sheep together as partners for about four years, and then they divided the business. Arthur prospered in the sheep business: The H. T. French History (1914) observed that Pence was “still one of the large factors in that industry in the southern half of the state.”

Pence helped organize the Bruneau State Bank in 1905, and also went into politics. He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1901, and to the state Senate in 1903 and again in 1907. During his first term, the legislature authorized a reform school to be built in Fremont County.  During the second, they funded the first fish hatchery created in the state. Pence helped create a school district in the Bruneau Valley and became almost a permanent member of the school board.

In 1911, Governor James H. Hawley [blog, January 17] appointed Pence to the state Livestock Sanitary Board. That board served to promote the livestock industry and to protect it from losses due to theft or disease. Thus, they appointed the State Veterinarian, approved the registry of purebred stock, compiled reports about infectious diseases, and much more. Pence spent six years on the board, part of that time as its president.

Arthur and his wife, the former Mary Sydney Wells, remained life-long fixtures in Bruneau society. According to local historian Adelaide Hawes, who knew them personally, Mrs. Pence was universally known as “Aunt Sydney.” Pence Hot Springs, which they left open to all, also became a social center. Hawes wrote, “Every Sunday from early morn till evening the people came.”

Arthur passed away in 1935 and Sydney three years later. They are interred in the Hot Springs Cemetery.
                                                                                 

References: [French], [Hawley]

Adelaide Hawes, Valley of Tall Grass, Caxton Printers, CaIdwell, Idaho (1950).

“[Pence News],” Idaho Statesman, Boise (January 8, 1911 – April 18, 1917).

Attorney and Legal Scholar Colonel Edwin G. Davis, D.S.M. [otd 02/09]

Colonel Davis. H. T. French photo.

Colonel Edwin G. Davis was born on February 9, 1873, at Samaria, Idaho, near Malad City. An early interest in teaching led him to a year as school principal in Utah, followed by a year as a principal in Malad. Then, in 1896, a member of the U. S. House of Representatives from Idaho secured him an appointment to the Military Academy.

Davis graduated from West Point in June 1900. Three months later, he found himself in the Philippine, where the Army was trying to suppress Filipino independence forces. The following May, Davis was reassigned from the infantry to the artillery. He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant less than two months later. He left the Philippines at the end of 1901, and was stationed at Fort Walla Walla for about fifteen months. In 1903, he became an Instructor of Law and History at West Point.

Davis apparently anticipated retirement and a return to Idaho in 1906, and let it be known that he planned to run for Congress in that year's election. His notion was not well received. While conceding his good qualities, pundits observed (Idaho Register, Idaho Falls, March 2, 1906) that after his long absence from the state, "he ought to at least get slightly acquainted with the people before he asks to be rewarded with so important an office."

Perhaps discourage by the reaction, Davis remained in the service. Promoted to captain in early 1907, he was transferred to a post near San Francisco, California, later that year. Nagged by a "physical disability incurred in the line of duty," he applied for a disability retirement, which was granted in 1910. Davis then returned to Idaho and opened a law practice in Malad. That fall, Oneida County voters elected him to the state House of Representatives for the term starting in 1911.

That legislative session was particularly busy, including the promulgation of eight constitutional amendments to be voted on in the next general election. Yet even with that, Governor James H. Hawley had to call a Special Session to correct a revenue Act that was “deficient in several important provisions.” During that Session, Davis served as Floor Leader for the Republican majority in the House.

DSM. U. S. Army

Comparing his prospects in the capital versus those in Southeast Idaho, Davis moved his home to Boise in 1911.

Besides his regular practice, Davis also contributed well-reasoned papers to various legal journals. As an instructor at the Academy, he authored a textbook on constitutional law. A knowledgeable reviewer said of it: “He has accomplished a good work, and not only the Military Academy will be benefited by his labors, but his work is ample for much that the ordinary practicing State lawyer will require.”

He continued to serve in state government, as well as handling a private law practice, until he joined the Judge Advocate General's office during World War I. In July 1918, Colonel Davis received the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal "for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services ... in the administration of military justice during the war."

Davis returned to his Boise legal practice after the war for a time, and also served as a U.S. Attorney General for Idaho in 1921-1925. In 1928, he handled national-scope cases out of Washington, D.C. He died in July 1934 and is buried at West Point.
                                                                                 

References: [French], [Hawley]

“Book Review: Law Books at the Military Academy,” Journal of the U. S. Cavalry Association, Vol. XVIII, Leavenworth, Kansas (July 1907-April 1908).

George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S Military Academy, Supplement, Vol. V, Sherman & Peters, Printers, Saginaw, Michigan (1910).

“People of Sioux County, Neb., vs National Surety Co.,” Case 276 U. S. 238, United States Supreme Court (1928).

C. Douglas Sterner (Ed.), Citations for Awards of the Army Distinguished Service Medal, Volume 1 (1862-1942), HomeOfHeroes.com (2008).

U.S. Veterans Gravesites, ca. 1775-2006, National Cemetery Administration.

Idaho U. S. Senator, Lawyer and Judge Kirkland I. Perky [otd 02/08]

U. S. Senator from Idaho Kirtland Irving Perky was born on February 8, 1867 in Smithville, Ohio, about 22 miles southwest of Akron. The family surname is generally considered an Americanization of the Swiss and south-German name “Bürki.” His physician father had contracted health problems serving during the Civil War and died when Kirtland was about five years old.

Lawyer Kirtland Perky. [Hawley]

His widowed mother moved the family to Lincoln, Nebraska in 1880 and then to a small town north of Lincoln four years later. Perky went back to study at Ohio Northern University and attained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1888. There, he also met his future wife, whom he married three years after graduation.

Kirkland next studied law as a clerk in the Lincoln office of William Jennings Bryan, later famous in national politics. To expand his education, Perky then did an intense stint at the University of Iowa Law School. He was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1890, but returned to Nebraska to open a practice in the town where his mother still lived. In 1894, Perky followed two friends in the legal community to Idaho. He opened a practice in Albion, then the county seat of Cassia County.

During the 1897 murder trial of “Diamondfield Jack” Davis, defense attorney James Henry Hawley hired Perky to provide essential knowledge of the local situation. Despite their best efforts, Davis was convicted … but would be exonerated and (eventually) released. [Blogs, January 17, December 17, and several others.]

In the fall of 1898, Perky moved to Mountain Home, the county seat of Elmore County. Then, in January 1901, he was appointed a district judge to serve the remaining term of Judge Charles O. Stockslager [blog, this day], who had been elected to the state Supreme Court. However, Kirkland chose not to run for re-election when his term expired. He moved to Boise in the spring of 1903 to open a practice there.

News reports show that Perky handled cases all over the state … as far north as Coeur d’Alene and into the southeast at Montpelier. In keeping with the times, local prosecutors often hired him to help present the state’s case. But he also had many cases as defense attorney. He was so busy that, despite strong support, he refused to run for the position of Boise mayor in 1907.

That same year, and the following, he aided the defense for officials of the Western Federation of Miners, accused in the assassination of ex-Governor Frank Steunenberg [blog, December 30]. In the process, he became a personal friend of famous attorney Clarence Darrow.

In November, 1912, then-Governor James Hawley appointed him to fill the unexpired term of U. S. Senator Weldon B. Heyburn, who had died in office. Again, Perky declined to run for a term of his own.

Protest Meeting, before 1923. Library of Congress.

By this time, it can be inferred that Kirtland’s refusals to run for public office were, at least in part, his “anti-establishment” politics. Thus, he often found himself at odds with the policies of both major parties. They were entirely to blame, he asserted, for the post-war depression and the failure to improve the lot of farmers and other “ordinary people.”

Perky’s wife died in the summer of 1921 and by 1924 he had moved his law practice to Long Beach, California. Most of his cases that made the news had him defending “unpopular” defendants. In the late Twenties, Perky moved to Huntington Park, south of Los Angeles, but continued to practice law. He passed away there in January 1939, after a brief illness.
                                                                                 

References: [Hawley]

Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York (1932).

David H. Grover, Diamondfield Jack: A Study in Frontier Justice, University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada (1968).

Patrick Hanks, Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, New York (2003).

“[Perky News],” Elmore Bulletin, Mountain Home; Idaho Statesman, Boise; Twin Falls News; Lewiston Tribune; Idaho (August 1892 – January 1939).

Albert Watkins, Illustrated History of Nebraska, Vol. III, Western Publishing and Engraving Company, Lincoln, Nebraska (1913).