Charley Hutchison came here in 1870, and was about 21 years old—a modest, likeable young man. He spent most of his first year here, in town. He lived at the Hugh Fortner Hotel—and while rooming there, lost $500, which he had placed under his pillow. There was no bank here then.
When Charley loafed downtown—which was much of the time that first year—he made my father’s shoeshop his headquarters. The shop was on the north side of the main street, opposite John Clifton’s saloon on the south side. Charley was really trying to taper off in his drinking, and seldom entered the saloon. He tried to avoid the amenities of the drinking gentry. He would sometimes, when alone, take one drink, and then come across to the shoeshop.
Though not a relative of ours, John Clifton was the step-son of my Uncle Nick Bristow, and he often dropped in at the shoeshop. My mother worked with my father in the shop. She asked John Clifton to not encourage Charley in his drinking. Clifton said “Hutch” was really doing fine, and that he would help the boy all that he could.
Then a girl came down from the prairie country in the neighborhood of what is now Goff—”Pucker Brush” it was called then—to work in Peter Shuemaker’s new hotel. Anna Mackey was a nice looking girl—too nice looking, Charley said, to go out with the landlord’s “drunken” son. It really worried Charley. He said one day, “I believe I’ll try to stop it.” He did. He married Anna. And never again did he take a drink. My mother and Clifton both took credit for helping him over the hump. But I suspect it was the girl from the prairie country who had transformed him short off into an abstainer.
Charley Hutchison was the only one of several whom I knew that were sent out here from the east, when this country was new, for a like purpose, that made good. There was no finer man than Charley Hutchison—a conscientious, upright Christian gentleman. Compared to “Jersey” Campbell, a New Jersey drinking boy, located on the best half section of land south of Goff, Charley Hutchison’s performance was phenomenal. But then, maybe there never was an “Anna” in Jersey’s life. Charley Hutchison sold his land to Fred Shumaker, and moved to Wetmore in the early eighties. He built the home now owned by Mrs. James Grubb.