Butte County
Biographies
CHARLES EVERETT WESCOTT
CHARLES EVERETT
WESCOTT.—That the American nation will never forget its debt of gratitude
to its soldier-heroes is an agreeable truth that one need not tell to the
veteran, Charles Everett Wescott, for, without
ostentatious performance on either side, he has for years been the recipient of
so many expressions of esteem and good-will from his fellow citizens that he
could not for a moment have doubted that he lived, fought and suffered for the
best of causes. As might be assumed, he comes from the sturdiest of American
stock. His great-grandfather Wescott served in the
Revolutionary War on the side of the patriot colonists, and he was a descendant
from one of three brothers who came of good old English families, and who
founded the Wescott family here. His grandfather,
Josiah Wescott, who was born in Maine, was a soldier
in the War of 1812, and died at Burlington, N. H., while performing valiant
service for his country.
Alfred Wescott, the father of
Charles E., was born in Maine, in 1809, and as a young man enlisted in the
United States Navy, where he served for five years. After receiving his
honorable discharge, he followed the sea for many years, sailing to some of the
most important world-ports, and during that time rounding both the Cape of Good
Hope and the Horn. He finally entered the coastwise trade and became a mate on
coasters running between Bowdoinham, Maine, and Boston and New York. He also
served with bravery in the Civil War, enlisting in the Twenty-third Regiment of
Maine, Company E, of the Volunteer Infantry, and continuing in the service
through 1862 and 1863. After the war, he resided in Maine, and there he died.
Alfred Wescott’s wife was Harriet Moss before her
marriage, and she was a native of Norway, Me. She died in the same
county—Kennebec—in which her husband passed away. She was the mother of four
children, three of whom grew up, and the subject of this sketch was the second
child in the family.
Born in Maine, October 1, 1844, and brought up in Lewiston
and Lisbon, the same state, and educated in the public schools there, Charles
Everett Wescott volunteered for service in support of
the Union cause, enlisting in August, 1862 in Company I, of the Sixteenth Maine
Infantry; and from Augusta, where he was mustered in on the 8th of the month,
he was sent to Washington, then to Arlington Heights, and thence to the front,
where he participated in different skirmishes as well as in the Battle of
Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862. In that engagement the overcoat that he
wore was seven times pierced with bullets, and after the battle he was one of
two privates that answered to the roll call. He was taken sick soon afterward,
and was in the Division Hospital at Aqua Creek, from which he was sent to the
Washington Hospital and then to the Philadelphia Hospital, until he was
honorably discharged, on account of physical disability, on July 31, 1863.
After recuperating for a year, Mr. Wescott
went to work in a woolen mill at Lewiston, Maine, as a spinner, and later he
learned the carpenter trade, at which he worked during the summers, while he
returned to the mills in winter. He also worked as a wheelwright, and in 1875
he had a carriage shop. In 1876, however, he sold out his business in order to
come west, and started for the Black Hills mines, then so much talked of an
account of the gold excitement. Coming to Cheyenne on the train, he came by
horse-teams as far as Fort Laramie. Meeting so many prospectors, however, who
were coming back from the Black Hills discouraged, he returned to Cheyenne, and
concluded that whatever he did he would not go to the Black Hills.
Fortunately he decided to come to California, and started
first for Virginia City, in Nevada. From there he proceeded to Reno, and having
worked at his trade until July, he came on to Taylorsville, Cal., at which
point he arrived in August of the great Centennial year. He then moved to
Greenville, Cal., where he worked as a carpenter, and in the fall of 1877 he
started a carriage and wagon-shop there and ran it until 1880. Affected by the
Skagit mining excitement, he sold out in June, 1880. He traveled from Seattle
to Mount Vernon, on Skagit River, with three months’ stock of grub, then on up
the river a hundred miles, and then packed inland over eighty miles. Five thousand
people camped at Ruby City, in July, 1880, within ten miles of the British
Columbia line, and he found himself in one of the most civil mining communities
that he ever was in. Every one prospected, but no one ever found anything. The
fact of the matter was, that the sum total of the gold taken out there was
nothing as compared with that which had originally been found, so that the
whole affair seemed to be a gigantic “put-up job” to get people to come to the
north and so increase business there. Disappointed, but wiser, Mr. Wescott returned to San Francisco on the day before
Christmas, in 1880.
The next year he came to Chico, and
for a year engaged in the grocery business; but on account of impaired health
he sold out and spent a few months in the mountains. Then he went to Red Bluff,
and there reopened a grocery store, which he continued until 1892, when he
again sold out. While living in Tehama County, he had been honored by election
to the office of justice of the peace of Cottonwood Township, serving until he
resigned in June, 1892.
When he gave up the justiceship,
he came back to Butte County and went up in the mountains to the vicinity of
Chaparral House, where he engaged in drift mining. He bought out the claimants
of the South Philbrook Placer Mining Claim, and has
been operating it ever since. He has a track running seven hundred eighty-five
feet into a tunnel, and runs two tunnels, one of which is over five hundred
feet in length. Having found that he was up too high he sunk his tunnel until
he found the old channel, and discovered that this was twenty-four feet too
high, so he began again with a new tunnel. This time he got it just right,
seven hundred eighty-five feet in drifts. He brings the gravel out on cars and
sluices it where he has water. It yields coarse gold in paying quantities, and
he is able to employ four or five men a season. There he has good help, and
usually mines in summer, while he makes his home in Oroville in the winter—a
program he has followed for fifteen years. He has crossed the continent seven
different times.
Years ago Charles E. Wescott was
married in Lewiston, Maine, to Miss Etta Weymouth, who was born in Abbot,
Maine, and was mother of one child, Frank A. Wescott,
who resides in Brockton, Mass., and who is the father of three children, all
boys. She died on September 3, 1914, and since that time, with so much of his
joy and inspiration in life departed, this veteran
miner has not been so aggressive.
Always popular and rather widely known in circles of the G. A. R., Mr. Wescott belongs to the W. T. Sherman Post, No. 196, of Oroville, in which he is Past Post Commander.
Transcribed 1-15-08
Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 575-579, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
©
2008 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies