###

John Morris never lived in Humboldt County. Two of his sisters, Harriet Tracy and Lucy Bartholomew, did. His first wife, Melissa Harmon, was a Eureka girl. John Morris was a traveling book agent for A. L. Bancroft. Humboldt County was part of his territory in 1871 and again in 1874.

Book selling was a lucrative job for a man willing to work hard and travel through unknown territory. Profits were high and expenses negligible, since he traveled on foot and frequently availed himself of the hospitality of settlers for his food and lodgings.

In the spring of 1871 he received word that Humboldt County was a fertile field for book sellers. His sisters, Lucy and Harriet, had joined Lucy’s husband, Mitchell Bartholomew, in Hydesville. This seemed like a good time to undertake a trip through the northern part of the state.

Times were not too good in the lumber industry that summer; his sales were limited to 20 books in Eureka. The cattle and dairy industries, however, were both on the rise, which meant good business for him in the Mattole region and the Eel River Valley.

As he traveled about Humboldt County he noted that the farmers had invested heavily and well in potatoes that year, putting as high as 400 acres in that crop. He was impressed by the diversity of the people of the county — the lumbermen from Maine and Canada, the Danes in the dairylands, the stockmen from the midwest and south, and the southern Europeans along the seacoast. He was impressed by the fact that all over the county he met rich and influential men — Judge Huestis, William Carson, George Williams, Jos. Russ and Captain Wasgatt.

He was warned that in the Mattole region most of the men had married Indian women and that neither the men nor their women could read. He tried anyway and came triumphantly back to Eureka with an order from every family in the Mattole. One man, he said was a graduate of Harvard and bought two books. Another, who could not read, bought a book when his hired man promised to read it to him.

Rohnerville was the most lucrative city in the county. There he sold 42 books in one day, the largest day’s sales he had ever achieved.

For the return trip to San Francisco he bought a horse and a revolver, loaded the horse with books, and started out from Hydesville overland.

He arrived at Garber’s on election day and found that little settlement crowded with ranchers in from the surrounding mountains to cast their votes. He listened to election speeches and sold most of his books to the men gathered there.

The next day he rode with the stockmen back to their mountain homes east of the Eel River. He described the Coyle place: “A small shanty, sides, roof and all of the roughest shakes I had ever seen. A nicely dressed, good looking young lady came out of the shake shanty. Mr. Coyle introduced me to his wife, asked me to get down and eat dinner with them. In 30 minutes we sat down to a sumptuous dinner cooked by this young wife: meats, fruits, preserves, everything good.”

That night it was on to the Beaumont Ranch, where he “found intelligent people. The Beaumont brothers were highly educated Frenchmen who could read the dead languages, and who had a fine library.” The next day he stopped at Armstrongs, where he sold three books.

All in all John Morris was very satisfied with his first visit to Humboldt County. He was impressed by the intelligence and resourcefulness of the settlers. He remarked, “Though like Coyle’s, the outside might look woeful rough, inside the house might be carpeted and have all the latest improved furniture, if only a man had money and pack-mules to get these improvements out to the ranches.”

###

In October of 1874, John Morris returned to Humboldt for another book canvass. This time he particularly had Eureka in mind, the city where he felt he had failed to gain the confidence of his customers in 1871.

On this trip to Humboldt he sailed on the steamer Humboldt, which he felt offered better accommodations then the old Pelican.

Landing in Eureka, he immediately sought out his old friends of Nebraska days, James Gardner and his wife and their two daughters. Prudence (Mrs. John) Dodge and Elizabeth (Mrs. Franklin) Ellis. These families had known each other not only during the days in the midwest, but also in the Trinity mines, where the Morris family owned the hotel at Minerville. Mr. Morris says that John Dodge at one time owned the “big ditch built by Lt. Governor Chellis in Trinity Co.” It was John Dodge who owned an extensive tract of land in Eureka in the area of J Street, where he employed both his brother-in-law. Franklin Ellis and his father-in-law, James Gardner.

Will Dodge, whom many old timers will remember in the old home on J Street, was a baby at this time. The story goes that old Mrs. Gardner often cared for Will, and to amuse him would hold him up to the window to watch his grandfather working in the garden. “Look, Willie,” she would say, “Watch Grandpa dig, dig.” And so the boy grew up calling his Grandfather, “Grandpa Dig-Dig.”

John Morris took a room at the Dodge’s for $5.00 a week, with board thrown in. “Prudence was a good cook,” he said. This time he found Eureka a booming community — lumber mills were running at capacity. Shipbuilding and shipping were in full swing, and a number of shingle mills were running. There were sidewalks made of thick redwood boards, which were a boon to walkers and made it easy to travel about town. He found churches thriving, naming the Congregational, Methodist, Episcopal and United Brethren.

The day he spent selling at Carson’s Mill was one of the highlights of his stay in Eureka. He tells the story this way:

Carson’s Mill at Eureka was the most desirable mill to sell books, but I could never sell a book to William Carson.

One day, on going to Carson’s Mill, I found the crew idle. The mill had stopped. When the owner came round I made a friendly remark, “You have a fine mill, Mr. Carson.”

“Sometimes I think so, sometimes I think not.” This was one of the days he thought not, no doubt, for after all hands who wished had signed for a book and I was sitting on a big log outside the mill, I heard a voice over my shoulder that nearly bounced me from my seat.

“I have one request of you,” he said, “That you don’t talk books to my men during mill hours.”

John Morris assured Mr. Carson that he would never bother the men while they were working, and Mr. Carson wandered off, satisfied.

It was during this three months’ canvass of Eureka that John Morris met and married the lovely Melissa Harmon. John described his first meeting with Melissa: “As I watched Melissa sewing that evening, stitch by stitch she wove the web of her beauty vividly into my mind’s eye. To see her was but to admire, to know her but to adore.”

They were married three months later, on January 27, 1875. There were 25 people crowded into the Harmon house for the occasion, but the man who stood out in John’s memory was the minister, Mr. Ed. I. Jones. Of him he said, “I did not like the preacher who officiated. He was so smart, having studied law, and had the swell-head terribly.”

John and Melissa lived for two months at he brother, Charles, home while John finished his work in Eureka and Humboldt County.

The farmers were not doing as well this year, so business feil off some. But out at Ferndale he felt pretty successful with the Russ family. The ladies of the Russ family, he said, had become interested in church affairs, and they eagerly looked through his list of religious books, purchasing one called “Our Father’s House.” Two more books of importance he sold to J. J. DeHaven.

Rohnerville, Hydesville and the Island were all quiet this year and not too remunerative. At Table Bluff he met Mr. Howard, who, he claimed, owned the bedstead upon which General Grant slept at Fort Humboldt, and also Seth Kinman, maker of chairs for presidents.

Despite the fact that business was slow in the farming communities, John Morris cleared $800 that winter, “beside the value of my wife,” he added.

A sad postscript to John Morris’s marriage awaited him when he returned to Eureka to take his bride to his parent’s home in Napa County. While he was gone she had consulted Dr. Schenk and Dr. Hostetter. Both confirmed that she was a victim of consumption and had only a few years to live.

Sadly, he took her south, where she bore him a son, Vincent, and five years later she died.

Mr. Morris continued selling books up and down California for several years before buying a ranch on Howell Mountain near St. Helena and turning to full time truck farming. He visited Humboldt occasionally in the years to follow and later Vincent was a frequent visitor at the home of his aunt and uncle, Joseph and Harriet Tracy.

###