CENTARIAN DIES AT CONCONULLY
A man whose life almost spanned the history of civilization in
North Central Washington died last
Friday at Conconully. He was Henry
Livingston who died at the age of
108 years, four months and 19 days.
He had been taken to Conconully
on the previous Sunday when he
became ill. He had made his home
at Tonasket for over 70 years, being
there long before the town was
started.
Followed Gold Rush
As a young man Mr. Livingston
followed the gold rushes of the then
new West and it was the first
rush into the Okanogan county that
brought him here. After participating in the California Gold rush
following the forty-niners, he came
north with a group of miners on the
Cariboo gold rush on 1857. He told
of panning $100 a day in gold in British Columbia and in 1858 saw
the comet that passed the earth in that year and threw the Indians
into panic, thinking that the end of the world was at hand.
He came down to the Columbia
river at a time when many Chinamen were in this part of the state.
He used to tell of finding a $100
nugget in the Columbia that was stolen from him at the place where
Okanogan now stands.
Came to Ruby
Mr. Livingston was one of the
first miners to reach Ruby, the first
boom town in the county. When the
strike took place at Loomis he went
there and was later in the rush to
Republic in Perry county.
He visited in Seattle in 1853 when
that city had only 10 people. Later
at one time he worked in Yesler's
sawmill, Seattle's first industry.
Knew Indians
Through his long association with
the West he came to know the
Indians intimately and in early
days had many encounters with
them, both friendly and as enemies.
As an ambassador from the whites
he once conferred with Chief Tonasket. He related how on one occasion, he had gone to try to
pacify a warlike group of the Indians who had camped at the mouth
of Aeneas creek.
Arriving at the Indian camp he
found them hungry. He had brought
a stick of dynamite with him and
lighting this he threw it into the
Okanogan river, the explosion bringing enough dead fish to the surface
to feed the whole tribe. The dynamite had been brought in from El-