Off to the Nevada Mines
Uncle Billy Rodgers, from Peoria, Ill., was a fellow passenger of mine when crossing the plains in 1849 in the first division of the “Turner, Allen & Co. Pioneer Mule Train,” consisting of 40 wagons, 150 mules and 150 passengers. He was a gambler before he left home and he gambled all the way across the plains. Many people think that a gambler has no heart but this man was all heart. I knew him on one occasion, after visiting a sick man in camp, to take off his shirt and give it to the sick man and go about camp for an hour to find one for himself.
We arrived in California on September 10, 1849. We parted about that time and I saw no more of him until the winter of ’68 and ’69 when I was on my way to White Pine in Nevada. We had to lay over a few days at Elko, Nevada, in order to get passage in the stage. As we had saddles and bridles we made an effort to get some horses and furnish our own transportation, and we had partly made arrangements with a man by the name of Murphy. The day previous to this I overheard a conversation between two gentlemen sitting at the opposite end of a red hot stove. After they parted I approached the one left and said, “Is this Uncle Billy?” He said, “Yes, everybody calls me ‘Uncle Billy’ but I do not know you.” I gave him my name and he was as glad to see me as I was to see him. We had a long and very pleasant chat.
Now to take up the line of march where I left off, I said, “Hold on boys a little while I go and see a friend of mine.” “All right,” said they. I called on Uncle Billy and told him what we were doing and asked him what kind of a man Murphy was, and his answer was, “He’s a very good blacksmith,” and repeated it two or three times, then said, “I am in a wild country and never say anything against anybody.” I said, “That’s enough Uncle Billy, I understand you thoroughly.” I parted with him and we took the stage for Hamilton and Treasure Hill. The last I heard of Uncle Billy was that he went north as an escort to some party and died there. Uncle Billy was a gambler all his life but not a drinker. His heart, his hand and his pocket were ever open and ready to respond to the relief of the distress of others. The writing of the above calls to mind another meeting with Uncle Billy of which I had lost sight, the date of which I cannot fix. I think it was in the first half of ’60 I met him on the street in San Francisco and our meeting was most cordial. We had a very pleasant street visit and he said to me, “Woolley, I am going home, I shall take the next steamer for New York.” I said to him, “How are you fixed, Uncle Billy?” He said, “I have eleven thousand dollars and I am going home.” I congratulated him for his courage and good luck and wished him a pleasant voyage and a happy reunion with his old friends. About a week later I met Uncle Billy on the street again and said to him, “How is this Uncle Billy, I thought you were going home on the last steamer?”
“Yes,” said he, “I thought so too; at the same time, I thought I would just step into a faro bank and win just enough to pay my passage home so that I would have even money when I got home. But instead of that I lost every dollar I had and I am going back into the mountains again. My readers know the rest.”
My friends this is only one of thousands who had the same experience.
In 1868 “the girl I left behind me” went East on a visit of six months, taking with her our two children.
In the fall of that year (1868) I went to White Pine in Nevada. It was a very cold trip for me and I came home in June “thawed out,” sold out my grocery business and went into the produce commission business and followed it for ten years.