Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2011, All Rights Reserved USGenNet. Data Repository Please read USGenNet Data Repository Copyright Statement on this page: SOURCE: California State Library, Small Manuscript Collection Submitted by William (Rick) Bisbee on August 25, 2011 [Bisbee Family Connection Genealogy Website] For inclusion in the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org =========================================================================== From Timothy Bisbee to his parents Text inside [-brackets-] was struck through =========================================================================== Pine Grove Sierra Co. Cala. May 13th 1860 Dear Father; Yours of March 25th was duly received. It appears that you have had a long winter which has -- as is too often the case with Eastern farmers -- caused you to be short of that material which is so closely connected with their prosperity --hay. It is bad to be thus situated for it hardly pays to buy it and it hardly pays to starve. The first takes all the profits out of the pocket and the later allows them never to enter it from the fact that it takes them so long after to go to grass to recruit and get to the point they should be when first turned out that young cattle do not get so large a groth and old cattle do not get as fat as they otherwise would and conqencely do not bring so large a price. By this I presume your feeding is over exept working cattle and you and Mr. Morrell (must Mr. all married men) are making "buisness ache". I am yet at work in the tunnel. The air is good now. You think it best to take down a bucket of water --he? When the air was poorest I had all the water I wanted without taking any down. It came down itself right onto a fellow, too. It isn't wet now over head though there is a strates near the bed rock that is very wet but it hurts nothing as the tunnel takes it all out. We are working time shifts in the tunnel now. I work the afternoon shift commencing at between 12 and 1 o'clock and working until about 9 o'clock pm. We have come to the conclution to run it back as quick as we can convieniently and then commence work like men and see if cant make something. Eight men have been working in the claims now nearly a year and have taken out only about ten thousand (10,000) dollars. We commenced washing our tailings two weeks ago but owing to the storm have not finished. The prospect is that they will pay very well, proberly $1000. Perhaps you do not understand about our wash tailings. We wash our dirt twice. The first time we wash it into a correll ie. a dam built around a hollow like on a side hill, that will hold all the dirt we take out in 4 or 5 months after it has been once washed. The dirt being in the correll slackens and conquencely pays well for washing the second time. We have had two snow storms this month. Yesterday morning there was a foot of new snow. Last night water froze one half inch. I have not drawn a map of our digings yet for you but guess I will sometime though I dont know as you would be able to form a very correct idea from [-the-] one of my drawings. Perhaps what I wrote Maria about Amasa caused you to feel uneasy about him. The affair I presume is now forever settled. Casker(?) has been to his woman and confessed that he was wrong etc and she has gone to live with him again. You must say nothing about this for if Am should find out that I had writen any thing about it he might not like it. Hoping that you and your hired hand may get along pleasantly and well with your work I close and write a few lines to Mother. From your son Timothy H. Bisbee Sunday May 13th /60 Kind Mother I will now try and write a few lines to you to let you know that I am well and hope this may find you and my friends in the East enjoying the same blessing. You say that our folks think that you are not in earnest about my coming home. Well I suppose they have a better chance to know whether you are or not than I do consequentially I shall be obliged to allow them their opinion whether it is right or wrong. Well mother the way I put up is that you have taken that coarse to asertain my view of subject whether it be so or not I give [-them-] it in part. As far as I am individually concerned or in other words for my own financial benefit I hardly think I have any particular desire to live at home but should it become actual necessary for the comfort and happiness of my parents I might do so. But let us reason the matter a little. What are you going to do with Lewis? I should think he would be the one to live at home. Hope he has a better disposition than I have. It is true that he is not old enough to go a great deal yet but he is growing evry year and will almost before we know it be able to do a mans work. Perhaps you may say that he will want to go away to that I would say I am already away and have seen enough of the world to believe there is a better place than Maine though I think I could live there better contented than I could before went away from home. If I could been placed back about six months after I let I presume I should been very quiet for a while. You say hired help wants some one to pick up the ends. I don't know as my coming home would lighten your work much for I dont know as I should be so unspeakable happy as to be able to take any one along with me to work even two days in a week for their board. Barrows has a pan of dough. He think he make two and a half bushels of doughnuts. He says he is cooking for the army. You ought to see him pitch in and roll them out with a bottle. I suppose you would like to know what I think of the mines. I think there are about nine chances against a fellow and one for him. There is one thing about it when one gets anything it is in cash but take the miners as a class they would do better on a long run I think farming than they do in the mines. But as long as now and then one can make money fast and nearly all make something there will be plenty willing to take the chances. The mines of California are not as many suppose nearly exausted neither will they be in the next fifty years. Quartz mining is destined to become one of the greatest sources of welth in the country. The silver ore at Washo East of the Sierra Nevado is eciting considerable attention. They are supposed to be the richest silver mines in the world. Claims are selling as high [-and even higher-] as one thousand (1000) dolars per foot and even higher. There is a quartz lead bearing gold in Southern Oregon which is called the richest in the world. In fact the mineral wealth of the Pacific coast is not yet one half prespected etc. My respect to all write often T.H. Bisbee [on side, page one] Barrows wants me to ask you if you know of another place where a man and woman can hire out. [on side, page three] How is grandmother. Give my respects to her, I was somewhat surprised to learn that she had been to Paris while it was cold weather. T.H.B.