Return to the El Dorado County Page Return to El Dorado County TalesWritten by Joanne Burkett from research taken from Paolo Sioli's History of El Dorado County California, from El Dorado Co. birth, marriage, death and land records and often from interviews.
Henry Warren Russell was another easterner lured to California for the gold, but discovering that the real gold was in the building of a farm, a life and a family.
The birth of Henry Warren Russell made an even dozen the number of babies born to Massachusetts farmer Joel Russell and his wife Sallie Curtis Russell. The couple would add one more child to their family before they were through, raising them on the family farm that had been home to seven generations of Russells before them.
The family's roots spread back to the founding of Andover, Mass. was a city of around 4,000, located in Essex County, 21 miles north of Boston, when Henry was born there on Oct. 20, 1829. Just two years later, the town would earn recognition as the place where Samuel Francis Smith wrote the anthem, "America." It was also the home of an earlier incarnation of the elite boarding school, Phillips Academy, better known as Andover. George Bush Sr. and John Kennedy Jr. would become alumni, as well as famed actor Humphrey Bogart.
When Henry was 18, he trained in the machinists trade. That training would serve him well, both for the next few years he remained in Massachusetts, and after his arrival in California in 1852.
Arriving in San Francisco, Henry went to work running a steam engine. He worked at this trade for the next three years before he journeyed to El Dorado County to try his hand at gold mining.
Settling in Garden Valley in 1855, he began his mining venture at a place called Happy Flat. From Garden Valley, it is only three miles to Coloma and four miles to Georgetown, in the area known as the Georgetown Divide.
Henry was a tireless laborer, working an area measuring two miles in length. After he had exhausted the area, he improved it for agricultural purposes, developing a fine farm of 170 acres on the same property.
Whether this was in the same place that he mined in partnership with Daniel Fox, and called the Rosekrans mine, is unclear. Nevertheless, he and Fox later sold the mine, in 1879, to Placerville resident, H.L. Robinson.
The 1860s, though, were still filled with the passion and competition of discovery. On the morning of April 30, 1866, two men brought tragedy to Garden Valley.
Joseph Eaton and Alexander Gladden had been drinking together for hours. Their camaraderie gradually turned to quarreling. Someone threw a punch. Gladden pulled a knife, slashing and wounding Eaton several times and ultimately cutting off part of Eaton's nose. Eaton retaliated, slashing back violently and, in the words of a bystander, Eaton was guilty of "slicing him up." The wounds were devastating, resulting in Gladden's death.
This violent tragedy must have placed a terrible pall across the hills but, in time, life went on in Garden Valley.
Eight months later, on Christmas Day, Henry married Amanda E. Treat, a young woman about 20 years of age from Michigan. Two children were born and taken by death, but Inez, who was born on March 28, 1871, would survive to become the family's oldest living child.
The following year, Henry, who was settling into life as a prominent rancher of some esteem, ran for county assessor and tax collector. However, he lost the vote to Tom Galt, who would win and re-win the office for more than 10 years.
Land records show that Henry purchased several pieces of property in 1875 and again in 1887.
On Aug. 8, 1875, Warren, named for his father, was born. Four years later, on Feb. 23, 1879, Amanda gave birth to a set of fraternal twins, Edith, known as Eda, and Edgar.
In politics, Henry counted himself as a Republican and in religion, as a Protestant.
A joiner, Henry became a member of the Masonic Lodge in Georgetown as well as in the Masons' Royal Chapter in Placerville.
In 1934, a student named Warren Russell said that there were 35 students in the Garden Valley school. He was one of them. This Warren was no doubt a grandson of Henry.
Permission is granted by the author to use or republish this article, but proper attribution to the author -- Joanne Burkett -- is requested.
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Last Updated on: 11 January 2004