Butte County
Biographies
EDWARD MORRIS SCOTT.--Good judgment, a cool head and a steady hand are indispensable in one who successfully operates a band saw. In Edward Morris Scott, the head sawyer for the Diamond Match Company at Stirling City mill, is found an exemplification of these necessary qualifications. One of the leading sawyers in California, he has operated a band saw for the last quarter of a century, and in that time has sawed half a billion feet of lumber, never yet sending a man to the hospital. He was born in Ralls County, Mo., three and one half miles south of Hannibal, November 26, 1871. His father, Harvey Milton Scott, a native of Indiana, died in 1906, twelve years ago. His mother, Luella (Truitt) Scott, married again is now Mrs. Rosser of Hannibal, Mo. Of the eight children by her first marriage, five boys and three girls, all living, Edward Morris is the only one in California.
Edward Morris was brought up on a farm near Parkerville, Kans., to which his father moved from Missouri. He received a public school education and at the early age of thirteen began to depend upon his own exertions for a livelihood, working for a while on a farm in Kansas, afterwards returning to his native state, where he continued farm work for a year, then went to work in the planing mill for the A. J. Cruickshank Company, at Hannibal, Mo., driving teams and hauling lumber. He afterward worked for the Delaney people, wholesale dealers in lumber at Hannibal, and in 1890 went to Quincy, Ill., where he worked for the Gem City Lumber Company, driving team for them three years, after which he began working under J. R. Wisdom, the company’s manager, on the carriage as dogger. He worked his way up to setter, and after working on the carriage six years rose to the position of sawyer, in 1900, running a circular and a band saw. He has continued in this branch of the business ever since. From Quincy, Ill., he went to Stillwater, Minn., where he worked for the Eclipse Lumber Company at South Stillwater, from there coming to California, where he worked under J. R. Wisdom, who built the new plant and remodeled the old saw mill at McCloud, Cal., for the McCloud River Company in Siskiyou County.
In 1904, he came to Stirling City, where, on September 9 of that year, he sawed the first board ever dropped at the Stirling City mill. In the spring of 1907 he went to Eureka and worked for the Bayside Lumber Company as sawyer, remaining with them until February, 1908, when he came back to the Diamond Match Company, working as sawyer at their Lyonsville mill in Tehama County, known as the Champion Ridge Mill. In February, 1910, he again came to Stirling City, where he has been head sawyer ever since.
Mr. Scott was married at Quincy, Ill., to Miss Clara Rachel Van Horn, a native of Ohio and a sister of William Van Horn, car-repairer at the Stirling Mill. Two children were born of their union: Merl Morris died an infant of thirty days; Harold E. is a student in high school at Sacramento, where Mr. Scott’s family are living.
Mr. Scott is justly popular with those who know him, his rare good nature and manly, generous-hearted ways endearing him to all. He is a member of Stirling City Lodge, I. O. O. F., of which he is Past Noble Grand.
Transcribed
by Roseann Kerby.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1097-1098, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Roseann Kerby.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies