An Interesting Letter
From B. Porter Van Horne, a Former
Resident of Bainbridge [Chenango Co. NY]
Bainbridge Republican & Express, May 8, 1902
Chico Park Co., Montana, April 20, 1902
Editor Republican-Express:
Dear Sir: Thinking that the few left of my old acquaintances in your town might like to know how I am getting along and now that I am beginning on my 75th year, I write you.
I am on a homestead that I took up six years ago, situated on a large stream, Mill Creek, that is well supplied with fine mountain trout and the surrounding country is full of wild game of all kinds. Two miles above my place are find Appolonaris springs. Am twelve miles from Chico hot springs which is now quite a summer resort, the water being beneficial to people who are afflicted with rheumatism and other trouble. I am six miles from any traveled road, and the six miles have to be made on foot or horseback to my place. It is seventeen miles from the railroad station "Emigrant," on the park branch of the Northern Pacific which starts at Livingston, the county seat, a city of 4,000 people; so I am forty miles from that city. I have been in the habit of going on foot to Chico, my post-office, every two weeks after my mail, and have had good health so that it has been no hardship for me.
I have always a good garden and raise all the vegetables I need, and manage to get my groceries, so that I live and enjoy life first-rate. I have one neighbor one mile from me. Sometimes several weeks pass that I do not see any one, still I never get lonesome nor down-hearted. Have plenty of reading matter and pass away considerable time reading.. It is quite a place about here for hunters, and so occasionally get a piece of deer or elk meat, which mixed in with the trout makes me a good living. The soil here is adapted to the raising of small fruits. I raise strawberries in plenty, gooseberries and currants, and in the season can get huckleberries in short distance. I salted down seventy-five pounds of fine trout last fall for winter use.
When I left Bainbridge in 1883, I sold and gave away what property I had there. I owned the foundry and machine shop, feed mill and saw mill which I sold to D.A. Gilbert for less than the machinery inventoried. I sold the brick store where C.M. Priest is, to him, and gave the house and lot that I built at the lower end of South Main street to my wife, and the adjoining house and lot I sold to Oliver Clark. I once owned the lot where the Prince block is, but sold it to Dr. Prince.
My father came to Bennettsville in 1837 and conducted a store there till his death in 1863. Dexter Newell and Evans Owens were the merchants there in Bainbridge. Henry A. Clark and W.S. Sayre were the lawyers. The bridge across the river was a toll-bridge at that time. I see that most all the men that I knew there are gone, but few are left: H.A. Clark, C.M. Priest, Mr. Butts, J.M. Roberts and a few more are all that were then when I left nineteen years ago. Time will fetch us all. I am real well and can stand the fishing and hunting trips first-rate, and it tires out some of the younger ones to follow me all day. There is considerable mining going on in this vicinity and I expect to strike it rich some day. I enjoy reading the Republican vastly.
Yours Truly, B.P. VanHorne
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