The Final Chapter of an Argonaut and Indian War Veteran
James Camby, a pioneer who arrived in Thurston County in 1853 after a failed stint in the California gold fields, has died at 87.
James Camby, for fifty years a resident of Thurston County, is dead at his home in Tumwater at the age of 87. Mr. Camby was one of the argonauts who went to California soon after the discovery of gold. Fortune failed to smile upon him there, and in a few years he joined a company coming north, finally reaching Tumwater in 1853. The 'old Camby place' is one of the landmarks of Tumwater. When the Indian war broke out in 1855-56, Mr. Camby joined a company of volunteers and took an active part as long as it lasted. He was little given to talking of his exploits in pioneer days, and even his children heard him tell but little of those times. He was married in 1861 to Elizabeth Pierce Cornell, who died in the early '80s. Two sons survive him.
“He was little given to talking of his exploits in pioneer days, and even his children have heard him tell but little of Indian war times.”
Camby’s life trajectory—from the gold rush to the Indian Wars to settling in a small Washington community—reflects the common mid-19th-century pattern of westward migration that physically and demographically transformed the Pacific Northwest.
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