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Johnny Jackson Miller (Jack) was the son of Stephen Riley Miller and Julia Ann Simmons who crossed the plains from Kentucky in an ox drawn covered wagon, in 1861. They settled in Butte City where Jack was born in 1870. Later they moved to Paskenta, where he attended school. He did not finish the nine grades but started working to help support the family. They moved to Ono and Jack became an underground gold miner in the Midas Mine at Harrison Gulch; he built himself a three-room cabin.
Pearl Street was born in Vacaville to William Riley Street and Barsheba Pollard Street. William (Bill) came to the Mother Lode in Amador County during the Gold Rush; he returned home and married Barsheba. They came back to California, crossing the Isthmus of Panama on muleback. They lived in Jackson in Amador County and Vacaville where Pearl was born; from there they moved to Gas Point where they ran a turkey farm.
Pearl studied to become a teacher at a branch of Chico Normal School in Anderson. Her first teaching job was in the Ball's Ferry area where she boarded with the Giles Family. Her next school was Aiken Gulch in the Bald Hills: she was active in the social life of the community and met her husband Jack Miller at a dance.
Jack and Pearl were married in Redding, June 19, 1899; they lived in his cabin in Harrison Gulch, fifty miles southwest of Redding by the horse drawn stage. The lively town of 1500 people, was good living.
In June of 1900, their daughter Blaine was born at the Street home in Red Bluff. Three years later in August, Pearl went again to Red Bluff for the birth of their son Claude Jackson.
They were very happy in Harrison Gulch but left there in 1906 and moved to a ranch at Ono to care for his aging parents and handicapped sister. Jack was a laborer in hay fields, in the Sunny Hill Mine and on the roads, earning about $2.50 a day. Pearl went back to teaching at the Sunny Hill School, riding horseback five miles each way.
Pearl taught in Igo, Ono, and Bald Hills Schools; then in 1918 they moved to Anderson and she taught the Sacramento River School. But they bought the Graves home and store building in Ono where they lived from 1919 to 1945; Pearl taught the Ono School until her retirement.
Because of her failing health, they bought a home in Redding, but Pearl passed away in 1946 and Jack and his daughter lived there until his death in 1952. Jack was a member of the Free and Accepted Masons in Igo until that lodge merged with the Western Star Lodge in Shasta. Pearl was a member of the California Teachers Association and the Retired Teachers Association. She was an excellent teacher who loved and influenced hundreds of children in the twenty-six years that she taught.
Source: Shasta Historical Society
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