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When did Johnny Harris arrive in Wallace?
In The King of Sandon, I stated that Johnny Harris changed his name from Davis to Harris “by mid-1886” (page 111) and that as of July 1887, he had been in Wallace, Idaho “about a year” (page 114).
Both of these statements were based on an ad Johnny took out in the Coeur d’Alene Miner of June 14, 1890, seen here, that began “Having been a resident of Wallace nearly four years ….” I presumed that corresponded to an arrival date of mid-1886 and that Johnny was calling himself Harris by the time he got there.
So I was surprised to discover a source that puts that date in doubt. Johnny was a witness in Edwin D. Carter vs. Charles Ruddy, et. al., a case stemming from a land jumping spree at Wallace in February 1889. The case was originally tried in 1891 and made its way to the US Supreme Court by 1896. We needn’t get into the particulars, but the case file is available at archive.org.
Johnny’s testimony included several interesting details. First and foremost, he said he had been living in Wallace since March 1887, not 1886. Given that the 1887 date was provided under oath and that Johnny repeated it twice, I’m much more inclined to accept it as correct. Johnny had therefore only been in Wallace for about three years and three months when he took out his ad, requiring some heavy-duty rounding to come close to “nearly four years.” (Being in Wallace for four years at that point probably qualified you for old-timer status, hence Johnny’s exaggeration.)
Johnny’s whereabouts prior to his arrival in Wallace remain a mystery. On the 1881 census, he was at home in Virginia, but I have no idea where he was in the intervening five-plus years. Nor do I know exactly when he started calling himself Harris, although I think it’s still safe to say that it was upon his arrival in Wallace, if not sooner.
The court file revealed a few other noteworthy things. While I knew Johnny had tried many things to make a living in Wallace, from painting houses to selling ice and pianos to running an opera house, he testified that in the summer of 1887, he was working in E.D. Carter’s sawmill. He didn’t say exactly what he was doing there, but his position gave him a chance to view a disputed property that was part of Carter’s lawsuit. Furthermore, as of 1891, he said he was “deputy recorder of the town of Wallace,” which was news to me, although I knew that he had been named a notary public for Shoshone County.
The re-staking frenzy of 1889 that led to Carter’s lawsuit also appears to have turbocharged Johnny’s career as a real estate agent. He said that when the incident began, “Everybody, with the exception of five men, perhaps, in the town, were all out that night … They were locating lots, I saw about 150 people at that business … The jumping commenced about eight or nine o’clock at night, and continued until 11 or 12 o’clock.”
Johnny said that prior to that night, he had sold “150 to 200 lots.” Afterward, he sold “30 or 40 of the relocated lots a week, sometimes. I have sold some of them perhaps ten or 12 times; the most of them were relocated property.” He had jumped some properties himself, but didn’t say which.
Johnny left Wallace in March 1892 for the Slocan, although he returned to Idaho many times in the ensuing years and as late as 1897, he was described (erroneously) in the Vancouver Daily World as a Wallace resident.
His full testimony can be found at bottom (click on each page to zoom in). For all of my Wallace-related source notes, click here. For a photo gallery from Wallace, click here.
