INDEX TO
BIOGRAPHIES
EDWARD BOYD METZ
| "The world was young in those days", and being young it was beautiful and fresh and attractive and it ever beckoned on to new scenes the courageous souls who became acquainted with it. No wonder the wanderlust possessed so many, urging them on to new experiences and new conquests. We thought we had found the prize winner in Mrs. Shattuck of Pleasanton, who crossed the western half of the continent twice before the famous Ezra Meeker got started, but now we have found a strong contender for the championship. In the early "fifties" (probably 1854 or 1855) then about twenty years old, there came from his birthplace at Chambersburg, Pike county, Illinois, Edward Boyd Metz. He was a pioneer by experience, as his father Benjamin Blackford Metz had gone from New York State in those very early days, as his son Edward Boyd was born there in 1835 and at the age of twenty had married Emily Chambers Middaugh (or Gilbert, as there seems to be some confusion and uncertainty as to her family name) and they came to Linn County and took a full part in all that was going on. I don't find any trace of him in the Territorial days but in the troubled times of 1863 he was sheriff of Linn County, one incident of his term being the capture and trial and conviction and hanging by the neck until dead of one Griffith as a member of the crowd of thirty-two cutthroats who committed the Marais des Cygnes Massacre. That was a tremendous incident in a little frontier settlement during the feverish anxiety of the Civil War, and in addition to his work as sheriff this young fellow only twenty -eight years old was enlisting Company M for service in the Fifteenth Regiment, of which company he was elected captain. This regiment did important service out on the plains, acting as convoy to wagon trains and in punishing renegade bands of Indians. For a time Jennison was colonel of the Fifteenth, but got into difficulty and was cashiered. There were a lot of men in that regiment who later came to Linn County, among them Martin Funk, many years a citizen of La Cygne. Ben F. Simpson was captain of Company C. Henry M. Doud and his brother E. S. Doud of New Lancaster, afterward well known in Linn. Lee Mayfield at the age of seventeen, Oscar F. Dunlap was captain of Company H (and in 1870 built the present bridge at Trading Post), and in Metz's own Company M there were Calvin T. Bell, Jere Johnson, and Isaac A. Davis of Moneka, Francis Askens, Taylor W. Swaney, C. M. Tompkins of Twin Springs, William M. Bell, Ambrose Craft, John A. Craft, Alfred J. Pointer, James Arnett, Emmual Arnold, William H. Ayres, Justin N. Ayres, Francis Askens, A. B. Byram, Irvin R. Ball, Luther Bacon, Calvin Barnard, James D. Critcher, Levi Dickinson, Andrew Gore, John Hall, Phillip C. Hill, William Hendricks, David C. HafFord, Thomas S. Inman, Ephraim James, John C. Keller, Jacob Keitle, Eli Lamb, John T. Lindsay, John Morrison, Martin Morris, Simon L. Morgan, James H. Martin, Alfred J. Pointer, John C. Quinn, Samuel W. Rowcraft, Mathew Robinson, Charles Reynolds, Temple Shockman, George A. Shadier, William F. Shadier, James M. Symonds, John W. Symonds, Samuel V. Sands, Caius M. Tompkins, and Joseph D. Tippie. These were nearly all young men, many only boys of sixteen to eighteen years old up to John C. Quinn who was forty-five. These were the type of men in Company M who elected Edward Boyd Metz to be their captain. After the war the family lived in a "large two-story white house facing the main road, with a lot of wild strawberries on the hill back of the house", and later on at the "Woy" farm from where they moved to Pleasanton, and of course that was at least after 1871. But here is where the wanderlust starts again. They went to Colorado, where they visited Aunt Ruth Danford an daughter Lily. On the way west they saw great herds buffalo and antelope. There were three of the Metz child now, Alice born in 1863,-Benjamin Blackford born 1865, Eva bom 1868, all natives of Linn County. They lived in Canon City two years and Eva died there. The old spirit urged them on and they went to Southern Cr" New Mexico. They were well equipped and all weather, loitering along in the beautiful till they got to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where they "settled down" for two years, and then went back to the father's old home at Chambersburg, Illinois, and three years later went back to the "delectable mountains" of Colorado, and tried to get rich mining at Leadville and other camps. All this time the boy Benjamin Blackford Metz was growing into* manhood and followed mining up to about 1907 when he married Jennie Marvin and they have four children, William B. nineteen years old, Alice L. fifteen, Charles Benjamin thirteen and Edward Henry nine, and now where do you think they are? Their home is on the north end of Chickagoff Island in Southeastern Alaska, probably a hundred miles west of Juneau, the capital. From their home they look across Glacier Bay and have a beautiful view of Muir Glacier, with a magnificent background framed by the Fairweather Range of mountains.
(History of Linnn County, by William Ansel Mitchell, 1928, Pages 361-362) |