With two of the most important industries that have contributed to the development and prosperity of the northwest, mining and stock rasing, John Strode has long been identified. He became a resident of California in 1852, ten years later went to Oregon, and since 1863 has made his home in Idaho. His birth occurred in Tennessee, on the 6th of February 1833, and he is of English, German and Welsh descent but the original ancestors, who came from England Wales and Germany, found homes in America at an early period in her history and were pioneer settlers of Kentucky. John Strode, the father of our subject, was born and reared in Kentucky and Miss Nancy Evans, of Ohio, became his wife. Thirteen children were born of this union, five of whom are yet living. The father departed this life in the sixty-third year of his age, and his wife passed away in her sixty-seventh year.
During his childhood John Strode accompanied his parents on their removal to Missouri, where he remained until nineteen years of age, when he drove an ox-team across the plains to California. The dangers and hardships of such a journey can scarcely be imagined, much less realized in this age of parlorcar transportation. The company of which Mr. Strode was a member were four months and eight days upon the wav but though they endured many discomforts, they escaped death through disease or at the hands of treacherous savages, yet many newmade graves marked the route, the last resting places of those who had hopefully started out to seek fortune in the Golden state. After arriving on the Pacific slope, Mr. Strode engaged in mining for a short time and then conducted a ranch in Contra Costa County. Subsequently he went to Siskiyou County, where he engaged in placer mining until his removal to Auburn, Baker County. He was very successful in his mining operations there, often taking out gold to the value of fifty or sixty dollars per day. In Siskiyou County he dug out a nugget worth three thousand and thirty-three dollars! He also carried on mining at Independence, but in 1862 left California for Oregon, and the following year came to Boise. He engaged in mining in the Boise basin, at Atlanta Gulch, and in 1865 secured a nugget worth three hundred and thirty-three dollars. He was interested in the Monarch mine, which proved to be a very rich one. He sold some of his stock for fifteen thousand dollars cash, but retained stock to the value of fifty thousand dollars. After his removal to Boise, Mr. Strode began stock-raising, which he has followed with excellent success, and is now the owner of seven hundred and fifty-two acres of valuable land in Idaho, a farm of one hundred and sixty acres in Oregon, and two grape vineyards in Sonoma county, California. He has also a thirty-acre orchard at Nampa, and a fine residence and fruit farm one mile west of the center of Boise, and there he makes his home.
In 1869 Mr. Strode was united in marriage to Miss Sophia Youst, and to them were born seven children, namely: Harvey Lee, John, Sophia, William, James, Charles and George. The mother died in 1886, and eight years later ^Ir. Strode married Mrs. Flora A. Deeds, a native of Indiana. In all his business relations he has commanded the confidence and good will of his fellow men by his honorable and systematic methods, his fairness and his enterprise. He carries forward to successful completion whatever he undertakes, and as the result of his sound judgment and unfaltering industry he is now accounted one of the wealthy farmers and stock-raisers of his adopted state.