GEORGE WASHINGTON HARVEY - A famous scout, who participated in some of the glorious events of the Civil War, and who knew not only the principals in the great drama but some of the outlaw leaders of that and subsequent periods, is George Washington Harvey, proprietor of the general merchandise store at East Biggs, on the line of the Northern Electric twenty-three miles north of Marysville, and twenty-three miles south of Chico. He was born on April 14, 1845, in what is now Bates County, Mo., sixty miles south of Kansas City, the son of James Monroe Harvey, who was born in Tennessee, on a part of the site where Chattanooga stands. There his grandfather, John Harvey, took up the land. John Harvey was born in 1800, probably in North Carolina, and the great-grandfather, Captain Harvey, raised a company of men and fought at New Orleans under General Jackson, in the War of 1812. The first Harvey's came from England and settled at Jamestown. There were three brothers, and one of them soon went to Boston to live; another one made his home in Pennsylvania; and the third established his residence in Virginia. George Washington Harvey descended through the Virginia branch, his ancestors having drifted into North Carolina. The great-great-grandfather, also a Harvey, served under the "Swamp Fox," General Marion, throughout the entire Revolutionary War. John Harvey, the grandfather, moved over to Adams County, Ill.

The mother of the subject of this sketch was Lydia Scott before her marriage, and she was born in McMinn County, Tenn., and married Mr. Harvey in Missouri. Her grandfather Scott was an old Virginian, and her father was a Free Soiler who voted for Millard Fillmore in 1856. At that time the Kansas-Nebraska troubles agitated the country, and blood was frequently shed; and grandfather Samuel Scott was hanged by Dr. Jennison and his command. He had been the first sheriff of Bates County, was well-posted and a good talker, and was a pro-slavery man; and he had befriended Mrs. Wilkinson and was captain of the home guards.

James Monroe Harvey, the father, grew up with Jesse James and Bob and Cole Younger, in the northwest wilds of Missouri, at the time of the John Brown raid, and remembers the killing of ten men at Osawatomie, Kan., the home of Brown. He remembers the days of guerrilla warfare; and while he was a prisoner, in the fall of 1864, he was guarded by Jesse James. He enlisted in the Home Guards at Germantown in 1863, and after serving in the militia, was honorably discharged in the fall of 1865. He did guard duty, protecting the county records.

As a lad, or until he was seven or eight years old, George Harvey attended the subscription schools of his neighborhood, and also the first public school, at which, during the winter time, there was a free instruction for about three months each year. He turned the prairie sod of southwestern Missouri before the War; and on the last day of February, 1861, quit school. He went to work, but for four years he was also in the ranks as a soldier. Much of his service was in scouting; he was made a prisoner but was never wounded. He was in Sedalia when the scouts of Price's army killed Kidd and Gibbons at Otterville, and was in the battle line all night.

In 1864, Mr. Harvey married his first wife, Tryphena Linley, who was born near Maysville, in Lewis County, Ky., the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Linley, a practicing physician whose skill came to be known in Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas and California. In Bates County, Mo., Mr. and Mrs. Harvey and family continued to live until 1873, when the parents and their four children came west to California. The next year, however, they returned to Missouri, and going to Iowa, they passed the winter of 1874-75. Naturally not satisfied after they had once lived on the Coast, they again sought the unrivalled climate of the Golden State and located at Lodi. There Mr. Harvey worked out until the fall of 1878, when he went to Modoc County. He started in the cattle business, went north to Oregon for greater opportunities, but in the fall of 1880 came back to Butte County; and here he has been ever since. "There is no better place in the world," he says, with a smile.

At first he located at Cohasset, grubbed out a farm and planted some two thousand five hundred growing trees, with which he conducted a nursery. Then he teamed and worked in the lumber business, and gradually switched off into raising cattle and hogs, until he had forty-three head of cattle and one hundred head of hogs. This business he sold, and then he went to Chico. He bought a four-acre lot on Sacramento Avenue, and there he lived until his wife died, in 1908, aged sixty-one years, and the mother of eleven children.

Ten of these children grew to maturity, while one died in infancy. Lewis Benjamin is an automobile dealer at Stockton, and is widely known as the inventor of a new automobile wheel. Julian Arthur is a rancher near Biggs, and owns a farm of one hundred acres. George E. is a rice grower, rice buyer and a real estate broker at Biggs. Albert J. is in business at San Francisco. James Robert was accidentally killed, in 1901, by the discharge of a gun. Lydia May is the wife of William Eagleton, and resides at Chico. Minnie T. is the wife of F.J. Lucid, a fruit-grower at East Biggs. Grover Cleveland is a traveling salesman. Ivan L. is in the automobile business at Stockton, and Ray Everett is in the same line of business there.

In April, 1913, Mr. Harvey was married for a second time, his bride being Miss Olga Ketcheson, who was born in South Dakota and moved to North Dakota, and came to California a young lady, two and a half years before her marriage. By this second union, Mr. Harvey has had two children: James Henry and Nellie.

Mr. Harvey is the pioneer storekeeper at East Biggs, and deals in staple and fancy groceries, general merchandise, Standard Oil products and produce. The Northern Electric Railway started to operate cars on this line about 1906, and in November, 1911, Mr. Harvey built his store, and has built up an extensive and ever-increasing business. Source: "History of Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 718-721, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.