JAMES CARSON JAMISON
ARCHIVES
The Chronicles of Oklahoma
Volume XXI
March. 1943
Number 1
JAMES CARSON JAMISON
1830-1916
By Robert L. Williams
James Carson Jamison, born near village of Paynesville, Pike
County, Mo., Sept. 30, 1830, died at Guthrie, Okla., Nov. 19, 1916,
with interment at Clarksville, Mo., was son of John Cowden Jamison, of Scotch-Irish descent, and his wife, Margaret Jamison, a
distant relative. His father, from Mecklenburg County, N. C, in
1827, settled on a tract of wild land on south side of Guinn's
Creek, three miles southeast of Paynesville, in what was known
as the "Jamison Settlement." An uncle, whose name was also
James Carson Jamison, and his sons, John, Adam, Samuel, Joseph
and James took up practically all the wild land on both sides of
the creek from Smith's Mill to the south where it spread over
the prairie. AVhen five years old, his father acquired and moved
to a tract of land on Sulphur Creek near Louisville, Mo.
After the death of the father and mother,, the children gave
up the farm-, each finding a home as best they could. When 14
years old, a eousin by the name of J. Carson Jamison offered him
a home with him and there he lived, three miles east of Paynesville, attending the district school in winter and working on the
farm in spring and summer until 1848.
In the spring of 1849 he left for California with the James
Brown party, consisting of Brown and wife, son and daughter,
and a colored boy and girl, and Enoch Emerson, Jeff Huntsman,
Alfred Jamison, Thomas Morris, a man named Sperry, and James
(Rockey) McPike, author of the expression, "I'm bound for California, if the rope don't break," and himself. The party crossed
the Missouri river five miles above St. Joseph on April 5, 1849,
and he arrived in Sacramento on October 9, 1849, having at Fort
Kearney left the Brown party and joined the Wisconsin Star Company, which was under the leadership of Capt. W. C. Monroe, a
Missouri River steamboat man, and a nephew of Rev. Andrew
Monroe, and among whom was Lucius Fairchild1, later a general
in the U. S. Army during the Civil War, and Governor of the
state of Wisconsin, and Victor Seaman, the skipper who commanded
the vessel upon which Meiggs, after defaulting as comptroller of
the city of San Francisco, escaped to South America.
James Carson Jamison in 1850 was in the mining camps in
California of "Rough and Ready," in Nevada County, and at
Todd's Valley, in Placer County, in the summer and fall, and
1 History of Oklahoma, p. 239, by Foreman.
