Note 103 — REMINISCENCES OF VILLAGE LIFE AND OF PANAMA AND CALIFORNIA. 1840-1850.

Edmund B. Birch, a brother of Albert G. Birch of Unadilla, went to California in 1849, making the overland trip by way of Council Bluffs. Lyman Birch, another brother, started by the Panama route, but engaged to work for the railroad at Panama, then offering large inducements to labor which was scarce. Mr. Birch was taken ill with fever and returned home.

Other names might be added to show the extent to which the gold fever reached this part of the Susquehanna Valley. Some twenty-five or thirty men in the neighborhood of Oneonta besought Collis P. Huntington to accept the leadership of a company formed by them to go into the mines, but Mr. Huntington—wise man that he was—declined the offer and shipped a load of goods instead, realizing handsome profits on them.