Herbert Bronson Enderton was born 21 Nov 1898 in Knob, Shasta County, California. He was named after both his father William Herbert and his grandfather Sherman Bronson Enderton. His father was a mining man, then working at Harrison Gulch (Knob Post office). In the photo of Harrison Gulch (with account of WHE), “x” marks the house where HBE and his brothers Otto (21 Apr 1897) and Clifton (died in infancy) were born. According to medical authorities HBE was too young at the time of Clifton’s death to remember about it later, but the fact remains that he remembers riding in a buckboard with an inside foot brake that Dad had borrowed or rented to drive the family to the funeral. Dad confirmed the details when HBE mentioned them years later.

The photo of the two boys in dresses, below to the right, was probably taken at Harrison Gulch. For a slightly later photo of them see the group picture in the account of WHE.
 

It was at this camp that the boys decided (Otto decided, and younger brother tagged along) to walk to Mill City and see a boy of about their age whom they had met once. Accompanied by their dog, they set out, without letting anyone know of their plan. After walking a couple of hours, HBE’s young legs got tired and he became a little frightened at the approaching dusk and distant howling of coyotes. He decided to stop. His parents, who had missed the boys and remembered Otto’s wish to go to Mill City, found HBE sitting whimpering under a bush; in the far distance they saw Otto and the dog still heading for Mill City. Dad caught up with him, and all returned home, HBE being carried part of the way, and both escaping any punishment.

Dad often said that he was sorry that he had to leave the dog behind when the family left for another mining area. For days before departure the dog seemed to sense what was going to happen. The people with whom the dog was left notified Dad by letter that when the dog heard the family’s train pull out he tried to tear down the door of the room in which he had been shut up.

And it was in another Nevada mining camp, probably near Lovelock, that the boys found out that it doesn’t pay to violate family rules. This camp must not have been far from the railroad, for "drifters", "bums", and other undesirable characters would pass through camp to get a free meal or whatever they might pick up. Dad had made the rule that the boys would not go anywhere with anyone they didn’t know. But one day a happy carefree "bum" came along and chatted with the boys. He must have had personality, for the boys joined him and followed him down the road as though he were the Pied Piper. A quarter of a mile from home they heard Dad’s shout. The "bum" ran; the boys hid behind walls of what once had been an adobe house. But they were easily found, and Dad, who was wearing leather slippers at the time, applied a slipper with vigor to their rears. On the way home he would stop about every 50 yards, again remove a slipper, and rewarm the boys’ behinds with it.

The family was traveling by wagon somewhere in northern California - destination not remembered by HBE - when they stopped at a friend’s or relative’s house to quench their thirst. Two little girls, about the boys’ ages, proudly took the boys into the outdoor cellar to show them the large barrel of beer their daddy had. They turned on the spigot, but couldn’t turn it off. With beer flowing all over the floor, the children made a hasty departure. They were most unpopular that day.

Gold mining took the family to Oregon. HBE remembers Beulah Mine in the wilds of eastern Oregon where the grouse were so plentiful that they were as tame as chickens. He had one walk between his legs, grabbed the bird, but let it go when the annoyed grouse flapped its wings. At that mine was a gentle mare on which the two boys would ride along the mountain trails without benefit of saddle, bridle, or halter. When the mare tired of her passengers she would turn, put her forelegs on the upper bank of the trail, and cause the boys to slide off over her tail. Dad had the custom of taking a nap after the noon meal. It was at this mine that Otto, encouraged by the miners, took a wide board and swatted Dad as he lay face down napping on the ground. Dad awoke with a jump and took out after Otto, whose barefoot dash along the mountain trail to escape punishment was cheered by those who had abetted the prank.

The family was at the Know Good Mine near Cornucopia (east of Baker) in eastern Oregon when HBE reached school age. (See photo at left). Dad had purchased his first home, a modest wood house painted white on Ash St (1855 Ash) in Baker City so that the boys could start their education at a good city school. Dad knew the importance of education; he had received his the hard way. After working all day he had studied late at night on ICS correspondence courses to qualify him in the many requisites of a good Mining Engineer. The boys, accustomed to mining cabins, thought the small house to be enormous in size. It had Regina cabinet music box with the largest size steel discs or records. Also there was a life-size photo of their grandma Sarah Cornelia Walling Wise hanging in the front room near the bay window. (Copy of it is below right). Her calm, contemplative gaze made one realize that the Indians must have had a hard time when they tried to harass the covered wagon in which she and Grandpa Wise came to California. Baker had wood sidewalks when the family lived there. Interesting, things fall through cracks between sidewalk boards, and only small boys are interested in fishing them out! HBE liked going to school, and he liked his teachers, especially Miss Edith Belton and Miss Moulton who had a mole with hair growing from it on her face.

The summers at Know Good mine remained very vivid in HBE’s memory. Geographically, the area was the Bavarian Alps of his childhood. It was rugged and beautiful and inviting. Pictures cannot show the charm which the mountain sides in summer held for two small boys. The picture below, of the neighboring "Last Chance" Mine, shows the ruggedness of the terrain of that area.

The "mill" of the Know Good, where the ore was stamped and the gold extracted, could be reached by wagon from the town of Cornucopia; but from the mill to the mine, where the Endertons lived, there was only a trail zig-zagging up the mountain side. Sometimes miners in going between the mine and mill would ride an inverted ore bucket of the gravity-operated aerial tram used to haul ore from the mine to the mill and food supplies from the mill to the mine. No beach concession ride could give the thrill of sitting astride a rounded bottom of a "bucket" as it made 40 foot dips and rises over ravines and trees hundreds of feet below. The swaying stopped only when the single moving cable passed over one of the tall pulley towers located on tops of ridges.

There was communication between mine and mill by telephone - a dry cell phone at each end of the wire. Much turning, of the ringing crank was required to attract attention at the other end. While the telephone was usually reserved for official business, some evenings the Endertons would use it to listen to violin music played by a member of the Ross family down at the mill. H.L. Ross was the mill superintendent.

It is believed that the two boys never said "What can we do? We don't have anything to do!", as did the next generation. There were no other children at the mine, but that didn't matter. The five senses and imagination kept then busy. What did they do?

They felt the slipperiness of dry pine needles that covered a slope as they slid down it on skis (usually on one ski each, as a pair was about all that could be borrowed). They felt the granular coolness of a protected snowdrift which even In July was deep enough so that a covered pail of ice cream mixture could be frozen by rotating the pail back and forth in the snow.

They smelled frying bacon in the crisp early morning air, the warm earthy smell as the sun steamed out the hillside after a rain, the sweet and delicate perfume of wild flowers, the pungent odor of pines.

There were sights and sounds galore. They heard music in the blacksmith shop as the blacksmith's hammer beat a rhythm on the anvil while sharpening a drill. - Short drills, medium length drills, and long drills - all hand drills that a miner used successively as with his "single jack" (hammer)he pounded a round hole in the face of a tunnel - one of many holes in which sticks of dynamite with embedded copper detonating cap and long fuse for a safe "get away" would be placed. They saw rhythm and coordinated teamwork as two miners using "double jacks" (requiring both hands) would pound the same drill while a third member of the team held and rotated the drill by raising and turning it after every blow. (With the later introduction of compressed air drills, it is doubted whether hand drilling exists any longer in mines). Usually on the 4th of July or on Labor Day there was a drilling contest among miners from different camps. The team that drilled the deepest hole in the specified time received as much glory as any World Champions team. The competition was held outdoors in the town of Cornucopia, and was well attended by spectators and "rooters" from the Know Good, Last Chance, Union Companion and other mines entering teams in the contest. A large outcropping of uniformly hard rock was selected as the drilling site, and a platform was usually built around the exposed rock on which the competing teams stood. Dad, the mine Superintendent, was usually asked to "sharpen the steel" for the Know Good team. (Louis Boyer, Dad’s mine foreman at the Know Good and later at Fortuna in Arizona, often was a member of the drilling team). Members of the selected team and the two boys would stand by and watch as the red-hot end of each drill was carefully hammered into proper shape and carefully gauged for diameter. And when a drill was being tempered they would watch the flow of rainbow colors on the steel until, when the exact moment was reached, Dad would plunge the drill into the oily water tank or barrel to cool, accompanied by sizzling and a cloud of steam. Exact temper was most important; if too soft, the drill would dull quickly and not cut; if too hard, the drill bit would break from brittleness, and valuable time would be lost spooning or scooping the broken fragment from the hole before another drill could be used. The blacksmith shop was a good school for learning pride in workmanship - a quality in the individual which regrettably seems to have disappeared with the advent of assembly line and "speedy" production.

Coordination of hand and eye was made easy at Know Good; there were so many rocks to throw and so many things at which to throw them. The boys became expert, and HBE was proud when he knocked a grouse out of a tall pine tree and the family had fried grouse for supper. But he remembers that he was sorry when his aim killed a small song bird. He dug a grave for the bird and suffered pangs of remorse with accompanying tears at its secret burial.

It was at the Know Good that the boys developed what perhaps was the first "singing commercial" for tobacco. The hillside by the bunk house was well strewn with discarded pocket-size tobacco tins. Of the various brands on the cans, that of "Lucky Strike" somehow impressed the boys. (Maybe it was because other mines in that area had names like "Last Chance","Lucky Strike" etc.). The words of the tune they sang went something like this: "Lucky Strike, Lucky Strike - is the tobacco that’s just right".

At Know Good mine the boys had their second unusual pet. This one was perhaps a common alley cat, but certainly not an ordinary one. Evidencing true affection, she would not allow anyone to hurt the boys. If a miner were to grab one of them and pretend to shake him up, the cat would jump at the miner’s face with claws flying. Dad would have to shut the cat from the room when he had occasion to punish either of his sons. She played "hide and seek" with the boys and understood the game perfectly. First the boys would hide - sometimes behind timbers in a dark tunnel - and in a few minutes the cat would find them. Immediately she would dash off to hide and would remain motionless in her hiding place until found by the boys.

One winter the boys boarded at the Peale's in Baker in order to attend school. The Peales were old friends of the family, and had two daughters who were like older sisters to the boys: Frances, later Mrs Jim Kirkpatrick, and Edith (Ede), later the wife of Lt Col H.R. (Ray) Finley. When the boys would receive a dime each in the mail from their parents to spend as they wished, they would buy a box of cookies, share it with one of the sisters (HBE with Ede) and go to extreme lengths to hide it from the brother and the other sister. It became a game from which all profited equally. Ede visited the family one summer for a short while at the Know Good Mine. Their paths crossed many times in later years. Frances, in 1960, lives in San Jose California; Ede lived in nearby Palo Alto until her death. Ray then went to live with his daughter, now in Oregon.

Editor’s note: The above is an excerpt from an early edition of the Enderton Family History written by my late father, Col. Herbert B. Enderton, in about 1960. Except for correcting a couple of spelling errors, and the descriptions of photo locations, I have not edited the excerpt, and it contains some language and comments which may not be "politically correct." It includes the fullest description of his fond memories of summers at the Know Good mine near Cornucopia, Oregon. He spoke to me in his late 80s or early 90s about the vividness of his Cornucopia memories. As a very old man, all his senses of that favorite childhood place remained strong. You may contact me with any questions about this document, or with any request to reproduce it, at mainberg@att.net. This material is copyrighted and all rights are reserved.