Horton JW01

Waupaca Record

December 24, 1908

VETERAN OF CIVIL WAR

J.W. Horton Tells of His Experiences

J.W. Horton of Chelan, Wash., is visiting the families of Harry S. Horton, his nephew, and G.P. Persons. Mr. Horton is a veteran of the civil war, serving over four years under Grant and Sherman, being a volunteer from the celebrated Eagle regiment of Wisconsin, the bald eagle, “Old Abe”, being captured near Mr. Horton’s old home in Waupaca county, and kept in camp with the soldiers. He was in twenty-one noted battles, and the sieges of Corinth, Vicksburg and Mobile. For over twenty years he has been at the head of that grandly beautiful lake Chelan, where he is popularly known as “Twisp, the hermit guide of the mountains”, having been the first man to push his way thru the jungle and stick his take as a settler at the head of the lake. In order to do this he was obliged to pay one of the two solitary trappers at the foot of the lake a saddle horse, five dollars and supplies to secure his services and boat, pulling one pair of oars himself.

Upon seeing Paul Clagstone’s name in the Northern Idaho News, he told of the many thrilling adventures they had had hunting mountain goat up the precipitous slopes which rise over 7,000 feet in three miles. Upon one of these trips where points rose 2,000 feet above glacier beds, Paul Clagstone’s saddle horse plunged over the cliff 500 feet landing between two huge boulders upon his back. They were gone fourteen days, reaching the summit, camping and subsisting for five days upon flour and water “bannocks”, which Clagstone gleefully declared to beat “Delmonico’s best”. He was at this time camped at Canada Point, working his mines on the north fork of Bridge Creek. Mr. Horton will visit later in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Luis Obispo, California. – Northern Idaho News (Sandpoint, Idaho)

Mr. Horton is the youngest of three surviving sons of Cyrus Horton, who was one of the first to push his way thru the Indian forests of Wisconsin in the year 1837 and to Waupaca in 1854. A.J. Horton, “Jack”, is now 77 years of age, residing in Hope, Idaho. Russel A. Horton, 72 years, lives in San Luis Obispo, Cal., and the subject of this sketch will be 75 years old in March. The early history of Waupaca county is inseparable from these brothers, who in true Kit Carson style hunted and trapped and explored where the feet of white men seldom ventured. Such men as Judge Ware, Judge Ogden, the father of Judge Scott, Capt. Redfield, Capt. Sessions and many more were closely linked with the “Horton boys” in transforming the forest into a prosperous town.