Butte County
Biographies
JOHN PRICE
JOHN PRICE.--An honored pioneer of the Golden State, John Price made his advent into Butte County in June, 1858, having previously arrived in Plumas County, Cal., in September, 1857, where he remained over winter and engaged in farming. He was for a short time in the vicinity of Oroville, and then moved into Colusa County, and leased land on the Parrott Grant.
The career of John Price, the subject of this review, dates back to October 18, 1840, when he was born in Giles County, Tenn., a son of John and Winifred (Taylor) Price, who were natives of North Carolina. He received such education as was possible in the pioneer school of his community, where the teacher was paid by subscription. At the age of sixteen, he accompanied a party of forty persons across the plains, setting out from a point thirty miles from Fort Smith, Ark. They traveled with the slow-going ox teams and took a drove of cattle to Salt Lake City. The journey was completed in five months and eighteen days.
Upon his arrival in California, Mr. Price had but one dollar and fifty cents as the sum total of his cash assets; but, possessed of a large supply of self confidence, a stout heart, and a firm determination to succeed, he has by industrious habits and strict integrity of character won for himself a large measure of success, and the high esteem of all his neighbors and friends. When he settled in Northern California, it was an undeveloped wilderness of mount and plain, and he has been an interested witness of and participator in its marvelous growth and prosperity. In 1860 he engaged in mining on Little Butte Creek, at Dogtown, now called Magalia. Like many other early pioneers who engaged in mining, he did not meet with a big success; so he abandoned the uncertainties of searching for “pay dirt” for the more certain revenues to be secured from freighting supplies and merchandise to Lovelock and the Forks of the Butte, eight miles above Dogtown, as also from Marysville to the Forks of the Butte and on to Meadow Valley, Plumas County. He followed this line of business until 1863, when he put in a crop on the Parrott grant, at Grizzly Bend, using ox teams to do the work; but owing to a dry season the crop was a failure and he had to return to working for others. Undaunted by adversity, he began again; and by 1866 he had saved sufficient money to purchase an outfit and a span of horses. He leased land on the Parrott grant and there farmed until 1872, when he bought his present place, three miles southeast of Butte City, where he now has a ranch of five hundred fifty-one acres and is engaged in farming and stock-raising.
In the fall of 1874, John Price was united in marriage with Lydia (Bassett) Anderson. Of this union five children were born. Three of his sons are now operating the home ranch, using a seventy-five-horse-power caterpillar engine, in marked contrast with the mode of farming in the early days when their father bound grain by hand after it had been cut with a cradle.
Mr.
Price is a Democrat in national politics; but in local matters, in which he
takes an especial interest, he supports the man he thinks best qualified for
the office, regardless of party affiliations. Mrs. Price is a member of the
Christian Church at Butte City.
Transcribed by Vicky
Walker, 1/2/08.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 597-598, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2007 Vicky
Walker.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies