- Sadie Orchard, Stagecoach Driver
- Cobe Goins, Ox-Cart Freighter
- Alice Roberts, early prospector
Mrs. Sadie Orchard ran the Lake Valley, Hillsboro and Kingston Stage and Express Line, a stagecoach running between the three towns that comprise its title.
This personal account of her life in her own words is taken from the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress. It was written by Clay W. Vaden in 1936.
"I came to Kingston, famous mining town in Black Range District in Sierra County, in 1886. At that time Kingston was a mining town of about 5,000 population with a big silver boom going full sway. Dance halls and saloons did a rushing business almost day and night. Fortunes were made, and in some cases, lost over night.
"Mr. Orchard and I drove the stage line for 14 years. We had two Concord coaches and an express wagon. I drove four and six horses every day from Kingston to Lake Valley and sometimes as far as Nutt station.
"In those days we did not have the roads we can justly boast of in New Mexico today, and my trips were surely trying - especially thru picturesque Box Canyon between Kingston and Hillsboro.
"Many times I had for passengers some very famous people. Lillian Russel, stage star, as far as I know was never in Kingston, but members of her troupe were, and I had occasion to meet the actress. She was a guest at one time on a ranch West of Hillsboro, The Horseshoe ranch, I believe."
Cobe Goins
Mr. Cobe Goins was an ox-cart freighter in the Kingston area, and hauled ore from mines in Kingston to the railroad cars at Lake Valley.
This personal account of his life in his own words is taken from the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress. It was written by Clay W. Vaden.
"Ox teams were not so fast as the trucks used now to haul ore from the mines, but they got the ore out.
"There was danger in freighting such rich shipments and I always had a guard armed
with a double barreled shotgun and two six shooters on my wagons, until the ore was placed on the cars in Lake Valley."
Mrs. Alice Roberts
Mrs. Alice Roberts was the wife of a prospector and traveled around New Mexico with her husband and other families.
This personal account of her life in her own words is taken from the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress. It was written by Edith L. Crawford in March, 1938.
“From our stay on the Pecos our next stop was at Roswell New Mexico. Roswell consisted of one family, a commissary blacksmith shop. There were five big cotton wood trees. It was noon when we got there and that night there was the hardest rain that I ever saw fall. The thunder and lightning was terrible and we were all scared to death. The water rose to the hubs of our wagon wheels and we thought we would be washed away at any minute. The next stop was at the Casey Ranch on the Hondo River. We bought butter and eggs from them and they gave us a lot of milk. We traveled on up the Bonito River, which was a beautiful sight to us. We passed thro Lincoln and Fort Stanton and on over to Nogal Canyon. We stayed here two months and the men prospected for gold. While we were here a baby girl was born to Mrs. Irwin, one of the women in our crowd. We fixed her a bed under a big pine tree, of pine needles. We put her feather bed and some quilts on the pine needles and she was very comfortable. She named the little girl "New Mexico".
"We went from Nogal Canyon to Lake Valley which was not very far from Silver City. It was a mining town but we did not do any good there so we went on to Georgetown New Mexico, which was on the Mimbres River. We did not stay there very long and came on back to White Oaks, New Mexico, which was a small mining town at that time. We stayed there until April 1881 and Mr. Roberts decided to send the children and me back to Llano Texas while he scouted around looking for a place to locate. An old man by the name of John Duncan (we called him "Uncle Johnny" ) took us back to Texas in a covered wagon. We passed through Lincoln New Mexico the day Billy the Kid killed his guards and escaped. We went through there in the morning and he killed them at noon.
“We made our own candles out of beef tallow and wicks out of spun cotton thread. We had our own moulds. Our candles gave out before we reached New Mexico so we tore up old cotton rags and made what we called grease lamps by putting the rags in a tin can and pouring lard over them. They made a good light for one wagon and we depended on our camp fires for light before going to bed.
“I brought my Bible along with us and at night I would read my Bible and we all would sing sacred hymns. Sometimes the men would sing cowboy songs. Mr. Roberts went back to Lake Valley New Mexico, after he sent us back to Texas and staked out a mining claim and did his assessment work on the claim and waited around for awhile to see if he could sell his claim for big money. He got homesick and sold his claim for ten dollars and started out horseback for Texas. He made the entire trip to Llano Texas by horseback. We stayed in Texas for five years. When we returned to New Mexico at the end of that time we found that the claim Mr. Roberts had sold for ten dollars, turned out to be one of the richest which was struck at Lake Valley."
