The Overland Stage to California.

DAVID STREET,
Paymaster of the Overland Stage Line,
the Holladay Overland Mail and Express Company,
and the Wells, Fargo & Co. Express.
Page 460.

CHAPTER XX.

SOME OF THE OLD PIONEERS.

OR more than three-quarters of a century ALEXANDER MAJORS was on the frontier, and for many years was one of the most conspicuous of the Western pioneers. He was born in Kentucky in 1814, but crossed the Mississippi when a little boy, and visited St. Louis in 1818, then a city of only 4000 inhabitants. Fond of adventure, as he grew up he desired to see something of the great West, and, at an early day, he crossed the plains and got his first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains when a young man. For years he was a member of the well-known freighting firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell, who owned a vast number of oxen, mules and horses and many thousands of wagons, which were utilized in the overland traffic. To this firm, in 1857-'59, was let by the Government the largest contract ever given out by "Uncle Sam" for overland transportation by wagons from the Missouri river to the military posts in the West as far out as Salt Lake City, Utah. For the year 1858, the freight contracted by the Government aggregated 16,000,000 pounds, requiring from 3500 to 4000 wagons, near 40,000 oxen, 1000 mules, and between 4000 and 5000 men. Besides the Government freight, they transported a great deal of freight for post traders and mercantile firms in Salt Lake City and, later on, in Denver.
For years before railroads on the plains, the firm did an immense business freighting for Government from Fort Leavenworth, having transported Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston's army across the country to Utah in 1857-'58. For nearly fifty years, his name west of the Missouri river was as familiar as household words. For four decades he was a very intimate friend of Col. Wm. F. Cody ("Buffalo Bill"), whom he took into his employ when a mere boy, and before he had reached his teens.
Mr. Majors's early association with the overland mail; the part he took in establishing the Leavenworth & Pike's Peak Express; his prominence in operating the California pony express; his connection with the great overland freighting business on the

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The Overland Stage to California.

plains, and his romantic and exciting experiences in the West are interwoven with events full of thrilling interest.
   Before he was five years old his father moved to Missouri and settled on a tract of land in the wilderness. Alexander Majors quit ranch life after he married, and then began the plan for the establishment of the gigantic freighting business from the Mi souri river across the "Great American Desert" to the New Mexican capital, on the old Santa Fe trail. This traffic steadily increased and grew to be immense, extending from Fort Leavenworth to the Pacific slope, over the old Salt Lake trail. In his employ often there was an army of 5000 men and the number of oxen and mules reached far into the thousands.
   It was a hazardous business--freighting--in those early days, on account of the Indians. The firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell had famous scouts of their own; such well-known men as Kit Carson, Bill Comstock and California Joe being in their employ. While the vast-business kept Mr. Majors on the plains much of the time forty to fifty years ago, young Cody rode as a "boy extra" messenger, going into the service of the firm when only eleven years old. He carried dispatches from the office in Leavenworth to the trains en route. As soon as a wagon-train was loaded it pulled out for its long journey, the wagon-master being told that his train-book (covering the accounts of his men, inventory of his outfit, equipment, and supplies, and manifest, or duplicate bill of lading and instructions) would be sent to him before he was many days out by special messenger.
   Mr. Majors was always a man of sterling convictions and unusual public spirit. He made many trips across the plains and the so-called "Great American Desert" long before Denver was ever dreamed of. He saw the Colorado metropolis and capital

ALEXANDER MAJORS.

Alexander Majors.

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city of the Centennial state grow from a small mining camp of a few log shanties and tents to a magnificent city with a population of more than 150,000. He saw the arid lands between western Kansas and the Rocky Mountains "blossom as the rose" and practically become a land "flowing with milk and honey." The greater part of his life after he first saw the West was spent on the frontier. He lived for some years in Leavenworth, where the noted firm with which he was so long connected had its headquarters; he also lived in Kansas City, and in California. In his last years his home was in Denver.
   After railroads came, the vocation of the firm of which Mr. Majors was a member ended. His last years were spent on the ranch and in writing, mining and other enterprises. In 1893 he published an entertaining book, entitled "Seventy Years on the Frontier," which has had an extensive sale.
   In the early part of winter in 1899 he went to Chicago to visit some friends, and while there contracted pneumonia, and never recovered. His old and so long intimate friend, Colonel Cody, spent several days with the aged pioneer in his last illness, being at his bedside when he breathed his last, December 15, 1899. Two grandchildren of the octogenarian, R. D. Simpson and Miss Grace Poteet, of Kansas City, were also with him when he passed from earth to the "great beyond." His remains were taken to Kansas City, where he had spent so many years of his life when the now great commercial metropolis at the mouth of of the Kaw was a little town of only a few log shanties.
   Thomas M. Patterson, editor of the daily Rocky Mountain News, of Denver, Colo., in the issue of January 24, 1900, printed the following tribute to the memory of his departed friend:

    "When ALEXANDER MAJORS, as a child, crossed the Mississippi at St. Louis in an old scow, that place was a mere frontier village. He lived to see it become a great commercial city; to see the great river spanned by a splendid bridge and crossed daily by hundreds of railway-trains; to see civilization advance from the Mississippi to the Missouri, from the Missouri to the mountains, and thence to the Pacific; in brief, to see the frontier wiped out and the continent become a chain of states from ocean to ocean.
   "In the progress of the last half-century Alexander Majors was a prominent and influential factor. He had a natural genius for transportation. He was early on the Santa Fe trail as a freighter, and he became a pioneer in the carrying trade of Colorado and the territories beyond. The pony express and the overland stage lines originated in his active brain, and these were the forerunners of the Union and Central Pacific roads. When steel

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rails spanned the continent, the triumph was due not less to Alexander Majors than to the financial daring and enterprise of those who actually constructed the roads. Majors had made the trails and demonstrated the feasibility of overland traffic.
   With the era of railroads and telegraphs Alexander Majors passed out of the public vision, but he lost none of his interest in the progress of the West. He took an honest pride in the part he had played as a pioneer. A man of great vigor and vitality, and of a cheerful disposition, he took a happy view of life, although he knew that because of advancing years his work was done. Few men enjoyed more largely the confidence of all classes with whom he was associated in business, and few have ever more thoroughly deserved it. He was honest, upright, energetic, enterprising, and far-sighted, and these qualities, as they were actually displayed, will place his name high among those who have carried westward the flag of the republic and planted the germs of civilization in the nation's Rocky Mountain empire."
   It seems fitting, and it is doubtless as gratifying to his relatives as it is to his army of friends and admirers, scattered far and wide, to learn that, through the efforts of Joseph A. Thatcher, president of the Denver National Bank, Henry M. Porter, David Street, and a number of others who had known him so long, a picture in stained glass, to perpetuate the memory of the remarkable pioneer and aged plainsman and esteemed citizen, is placed in the dome of the new Colorado state capitol, at Denver.

   GEN. BELA M. HUGHES, for a third of a century an eminent lawyer in Denver, was, most of the time during the '60's, one of the prominent men associated with the great stage line. When residing in St. Joseph he became president and general counsel for the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company, in March, 1861, having succeeded Mr. William H. Russell, its former president. When the line was sold under a mortgage foreclosure to Ben. Holladay, early in 1862, at Atchison, a reorganization was at once effected and General Hughes became its general counsel. The name of the enterprise, however, was changed by Holladay to the "Overland Stage Line." General Hughes was continued as the general counsel for the newly organized company, and served in this capacity until the line had been purchased, in the later '60's, by Wells, Fargo & Co. This noted express company retained him, and continued to operate the line until a railroad was built across the plains. Thus General Hughes held this important position until the pioneer transcontinental railway took the place of the old Concord stage,

BELA M. HUGHES,
General Counsel for the Overland Stage Line.

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The Overland Stage to California.

which ran so many years between the Missouri river and Denver, Salt Lake, and California, when he resumed the general practice of law at Denver. He was elected the first president and general counsel of the Denver & Pacific railway (the first railway to enter Denver), in July, 1870. Later he was general counsel for the Denver & South Park railroad and a member of the last territorial legislature.
   General Hughes was born in Kentucky, educated at Augusta College, and removed with his parents at an early date to Liberty, Mo. He was a member of the Missouri legislature, prosecuting attorney, and receiver of the United States land-office at Plattsburg, Mo., locating thereafter at St. Joseph, Mo., and, while living there, was engaged in the practice of law with Governor Woodson. In his early youth he was a soldier in the Black Hawk war, serving with the Missouri volunteers.
   In the early '60's he was a resident of Atchison, so long the headquarters and eastern starting-point of the overland stage line. He took up his residence in Denver in the later '60's, going there when the city had less than 5000 inhabitants. Since he cast his lot in Denver and became a citizen of Colorado he has been thoroughly identified with the unparalleled growth of his adopted state and of the great city at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, which he has seen rise from a few shanties to one of the most metropolitan places of its size in the country. In the summer of 1899 General Hughes and his second wife celebrated, in Denver, the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage. The general is now (1901) eighty-four years old, and, for one of his advanced age, in pretty good health. It is the wish of his hosts of friends scattered all over the country that he may live to celebrate his century birthday.

    DAVID STREET was one of the most prominent men on the overland line. He was born at Prairie du Chien, Wis., May 24, 1837. His father, Gen. Joseph M. Street, was a Virginian by birth, who at an early age removed to Frankfort, Ky., and there, in 1806, edited and published the eleventh newspaper established in Kentucky, and was prominently connected with the stirring events of the Burr conspiracy, taking sides against Burr, and denouncing him in his paper as a conspirator. General Street was afterwards appointed agent for the Winnebagoes and

David Street.

461

Sac and Fox tribes, located on the upper Mississippi river at Fort Crawford, near Prairie du Chien, and later removed the Sac and Fox Indians to Iowa. He established the agency near the Des Moines river, in what afterwards became Wapello county, and removed his family to that agency and continued as agent for the Sac and Fox Indians until his death, in 1840.
   After the removal of the Indians to the Raccoon agency, where Des Moines is now located, the Street family remained in Wapello county, David's brothers locating lands and engaging in mercantile and other pursuits. David Street's boyhood was passed in that section at school, and later on as a clerk in his brothers' stores, for his brothers had a line of stores--four in all--in that and adjoining counties.
   It was customary in those days for the merchants to buy the hogs of the farmers on foot and drive them to the Mississippi river, where they were marketed; and every fall, generally late in November or early in December, the droves were collected and driven to the Mississippi river at Keokuk. They drove from 3000 to 4000 hogs in a season. Although a boy in his teens, he assisted in weighing up and paying for the hogs, and at other times collected for the different stores, going from one store to another on business rounds, sometimes in a buggy but generally on horseback, so that he had an early experience of active business and frontier life. He said after he became the paymaster for the overland mail line that his early experience in Iowa was very useful to him in performing the duties of paymaster.
   He left Iowa in 1857 and went to Jackson county, Missouri, and, in the spring of 1858, was employed by Alexander Majors (of the firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell) as bookkeeper to go to Camp Floyd, Utah, where the immense supplies that the firm transported for the Utah expedition were delivered. It was at Camp Floyd, in connection with some of the large business transactions of the firm, that he made the acquaintance of Ben. Holladay, who recognized his business qualifications and soon after appointed him paymaster of the overland stage line. For over three years he held this position, and was afterwards paymaster and general agent of the Holladay Overland Mail and Express Company until that company sold out to Wells, Fargo & Co. This firm retained him in the same position until the line was wiped out by the completion of the Union and Central Pacific

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railroads. He was the best known of all the army of employee, on the great stage line. He was a pioneer in Kansas, coming while it was a territory.
   He crossed the plains from Fort Leavenworth to Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858, when about twenty-one years old. Among those going along were the general agent for the company and several clerks and other attaches, who formed a considerable party. They traveled with ambulances and saddle animals and had some three or four weeks the start of him. Going by steam-boat up the Missouri river from Fort Leavenworth to Nebraska City, he there procured pack animals for the journey overland. Taking one man, he started out across the country to overtake and join the general agent and party. He made the trip of 650 miles from Nebraska City to Fort Laramie in thirteen days, without change of animals. There he overtook the general agent and party, and proceeded with them to Camp Floyd (forty miles south of Salt Lake), the headquarters of the army in Utah, under command of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, where also were the headquarters of the Government contractors.
   On the 1st of May, 1862, he was employed by Ben. Holladay, who some time previous had recognized his abilities. At Salt Lake, on June 17, 1862, Mr. Holladay appointed him paymaster of the overland stage line, and from that time until the completion of the Pacific railroad he was constantly on the road and the busiest man on the stage route. His duties required his presence on the line almost continually. Four times a year, at the end of each quarter, he had to pass over the entire system--mail line and branches, from Atchison to California, and to Idaho, Montana, and Oregon--making the usual settlements. During all the Indian troubles and at all seasons these quarterly trips and payments were promptly made by the paymaster.
   There was not another man in the employ of the stage company who had ridden over the line so much as David Street. As an employee he was capable, efficient, and honest. His task was a laborious and difficult one. Notwithstanding he had a number of narrow escapes, he was always at his post and never shirked a duty. If he had an enemy on the line no one ever knew it. No man employed was better fitted for the trying work be so long and faithfully performed. In fact, there was no position on the great stage line that he was not in every way qualified for filling.