Remembering Tuolumne…..

By Joseph Celentano, TCMM Research Committee.

Internet E-mail: Research@TuolumneMuseum.org

The following handwritten letter was found in the archives of the TCMM museum during a research study. It is postmarked December 27, 1955, Fresno, Calif. (before ZIP codes), with a three-cent U.S. Postage Stamp. It is addressed to simply

Mrs. Sarah Carter, Tuolumne, Tuolumne Co. California

and dated December 23, 1955. (There is no return address.) The letter is quoted, with misspellings, exactly as follows:

"Dear Mrs. Carter, I received your nice card and the greetings for the season. I want to write a few lines to tell you of a Christmas many years ago, 1883, to be exact. I was just a boy in my teens. I was at the Bucannan Mine 15 miles east of Carters, or Summersville, or as it is called now, Tuolumne. Your beloved husband, Woody Carter was also a teenager boy, and was his father's main delivery boy in carrying supply's to the different mining camps in that part of the county. The delivery's were made mostly by pack trains. I have seen him at the mine in the late afternoon and by the time he was ready to start home it would be near night fall, and sometimes he would have as many as 8 pack animals. They were trained to follow the lead animal. It would be midnight by the time he reached home. I always thought he sure was a very brave boy to be out in that wild country after night.

"I was working in the timber cutting wood for the Bucannan Mine and just after Christmas my cabin caught fire and destroyed most everything I had. I had to live at the mine until Woody brought me a new supply and I got a new cabin built. I got real well aquainted with Woody during that winter. I left Carters in the Spring and did not go back there until 1896. I had a wife and two small boys. I worked the Marlow Mine and in the Grizzley Mine during all my ___?___.

"Groceries were bought from Woody at his father's store. My wife and a young man by the name of Ross Booth started the first meetings of the Seventh Day Adventist or domination belief in Tuolumne. We were living in Mrs. Kingman's house on Turnback at that time. They got a minister to come up here from Oakland and he put up a tent and held meetings in it. Mrs. Charley Holland accepted the Seventh Day belief and was baptized.

"Well, I guess there a few of the old timers will remember those days.

"Well, Mrs. Carter, I will close before I tire you out. My daughter, Ruthie Schweiler joins me in sending very best wishes to you. May God bless and keep you.

"Signed…John A. Cole."

And, thus another page turns in the history of Remembering Tuolumne.