History Of S.S. Foote & Cordelia Wilson Foote
As told by Samuel Stanley Foote
Samuel Seabury Foote was born 10 December 1846 in Hartford , Connecticut , and was schooled to the age of 17 by the Bishop of the Episcopal Church. His father, Asa Foote was a candlestick maker and Sam worked with him in this business.
His brother, Ebenezer Hale Foote, went to fight in the Civil War, but the parents wouldn't let Sam join. They did permit him to join what was like the present Merchant Marines, at the age of 17. He sailed around South America in 1863 and arrived at San Francisco six months after the war was over. It was the first Sam had heard of the war's end.
He then sailed to China and around the China Seas for the next two years. While tying the mast, in a Chinese harbor, Sam fell and broke his leg. Results were that his leg was two inches shorter and he limped for the rest of his life.
While docked in the Chinese harbor, the sailors would throw coins out to the Chinese children who would dive for them. In 1866, back in California , he wrote his father, Asa, who had moved to New Jersey , that he (Sam) was thrashing grain -netting as much in one hour as it had taken a week to do in Connecticut .
He went to Idaho in 1866 by way of Portland and on to Lewiston in 1867 and to Idaho City , then to the Bonanza Mines on the Salmon River . "We all laughed in the evening at the sight of a group of Chinamen with 40-pound packs going north, running dog trot. How funny they looked!" Sam later told his family.
In Middleton, Sam talked with a man about flour and agreed to go to California and learn how to grind flour. He was then 22 years old. In 1870, he returned to Middleton and worked at the mill. Six months later, Cap Parker, a retired river Captain, and Sam bought the mill from the Grange, and then two years later, 1873, Sam bought Cap out.
In July, 1873, Sam and John Grooms rode horseback to Corine , Utah . (Ten years before the railroad came to Idaho .) Then by train to Ohio where John stopped off to be married. Sam continued to New Jersey to visit his parents for the first time since leaving at the age of seventeen, in about 1863 and arrived in August, 1873. While there, his sister was killed by lightening, 3 August, 1873, while lying on the couch, indoors, watching the storm from the window. This upset Sam so much he only stayed a few days and then left for Middleton, never going back (his last visit home.)
In 1882, Sam wrote his father that he hoped the railroad would hit Middleton, not Boise , because of his mill, but instead it came through Caldwell . Sam didn't move the mill at that time because a man from Nampa , Ed Dewey, said he was going to bring the railroad through Middleton to Emmett. Sam deeded a right of way to Mr. Dewey through Middleton at this time. (This is the same Dewey as owned the old Dewey Palace in Nampa .)
In 1885, 29 July, he was married to Cordelia "Delia" Wilson in Penryn , California , a suburb of Sacramento , at her sister Sarah's (Aunt Sadie Parker) where she had gone to convalesce from an arm bone operation. The arm always bothered her in later years.
They had met two years earlier through Sarah's husband, Howard Parker (we don't know how the men knew each other.) Cordelia was born in Blue Island , Chicago , Illinois . Her family moved to Iowa where her father James Wilson was a Methodist minister. Her parents were both buried in Iowa and when the cemetery was moved because of water, her father's body had turned to stone in perfect form. However her mother's body had not been preserved.
When Cordelia's sister, Lucy Morris, who lived in Chicago needed her to come, she moved to live with Lucy for board and room and took care of Lucy's daughters, May and Olive, while Lucy worked. Lucy's husband, William King Morris, had been a policeman and once arrested Mrs. Abraham Lincoln who went insane over lace curtains; she had boxes of lace curtains, never unpacked, in her home. William went to England in World War I and there he died and was buried, 1915, because there wasn't enough ice to ship his body home for burial.
Sarah and Howard Parker, Cordelia's older sister and her new husband, left after marriage from Iowa by wagon train for California , however he got sick on the trip and appeared dead. They made a casket and during the funeral services someone noticed that his eyelid moved. He later said he couldn't move at all or speak to let them know he was alive, but he was scared to death of being buried alive and then was able to move a little. He lived another twenty years in good health. They settled in Penryn , California .
While in Chicago , Cordelia got a bone disease and had to have an operation. She needed care so she moved to Penryn to live with her sister Sarah. There she met and married Samuel Seabury Foote, 29 July, 1885. She was thirty years old and he was forty years old. After marriage they went to Middleton where Sam was in the flour business. Even though they were well to do, it was quite an adjustment for Cordelia. She was used to city life and this country was new and there were many Indians, some good and some bad. Migrants came north in the spring and went south in the fall. They camped out of town, At the mill, some Indians used to work for just two handfuls of grain each for their day's work. Sam told children later that many Indian boys would line up on their horses to go rabbit hunting and ride together across the prairie. When they came to the rabbit they'd all drop down together and always one came up with the rabbit. This was their meat. The renegade Indians wouldn't let the settlers know which farms they were attacking (by building fires) but they did inhuman acts to livestock to cause their deaths.
Cordelia had her own Sunday School and a few years later with the help of Dr. Boone, the Presbyterian minister from the College of Idaho , started the Baptist, where he also preached.
In 1899 Sam moved the mill to Caldwell because Dewey hadn't brought the railroad through Middleton. Regretfully, six months after moving the mill to Caldwell , Mr. Dewey brought the railroad through Middleton. In June, 1905, the mill burned down and $75,000.00 was lost that day. It was arson by gasoline. Whoever started it first got the firemen drunk and they never made it to the fire. Son, Samuel Stanley Foote, was almost eight years old at the time of the fire and he helped by saving the records and money from the safe before the fire got to the office. The fire was started in a shed next to the mill. Father Samuel Seabury had just bought his partner out and had mortgaged the upper place in Star to buy seven carloads of hard wheat from Montana . All was lost of the stored grain.
Sam named one flour "Joy Flour" after his daughter Joy Foote Corn. Father had wanted to name Joy after an old girl friend , Sally Lord, but Mother wouldn't let him.
All children were born in the bedroom -- now the dining room -- of the old Foote home -- Georgia and Harold in Ada County, Joy and Samuel in the newly named Canyon County. All children graduated from the College of Idaho Academy.
In September, 1905, the family moved back to Middleton where Sam went into the real estate business with Mr. Long. Foote-Long Real Estate. Also bought cash groceries with H. E. Wallace and they hired a manager to run -the store.
In 1911, Sam (father) had a stroke and the doctor recommended going to the coast. So Father, Mother and son Sam went there by train -- to Portland , riverboat to Astoria , railroad to river outlet for several weeks convalescence.
Also each summer the family went to the mountains with the team and wagon. Watermans and Footes went to Long Valley also. Watermans were good friends.
The ranch was operated by renting and then hired help. They raised pigs and once butchered ninety-nine hogs, which took three days. They cured the meat with apple wood.
Father Sam owned four hundred acres in Middleton and divided twenty acres into blocks -- streets and lets, and sold them. Middleton was organized as a village and Sam was the first mayor. Then in 1898, he ran on the Republican ticket and served a 2-year term as Canyon County Commissioner.
Daughter Joy had been married less than a month when on July 20, 1918, Father had a stroke. Early on the morning of 7 August, he went into a coma and died the next morning (8 August 1918.) The funeral was held Sunday, 11 August, 1918 and Mrs. Waterman, Blanche and Lloyd's mother, came and stayed at the home when Father died and took care of the meals and work until after the funeral.
Mother, Cordelia, continued at home. She was a very active woman in church and civic affairs. She was one of three women starting the Caldwell library, later called the Carnegie after a generous gift from the philanthropist. She was in ill health her last year, passing away, 15 May, 1936. The funeral was held at the Middleton Baptist Church with Dr. Boone presiding. He passed away one month later.