William Dallam Armes.



Tennessee's Partner



I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it
certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in
1854 most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were
derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of "Dungaree
Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in "Saleratus Bill,"
so called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread;
or from some unlucky slip, as exhibited in "The Iron Pirate," a mild,
inoffensive man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate
mispronunciation of the term "iron pyrites." Perhaps this may have been
the beginning of a rude heraldry; but I am constrained to think that it
was because a man's real name in that day rested solely upon his own
unsupported statement. "Call yourself Clifford, do you?" said Boston,
addressing a timid newcomer with infinite scorn; "hell is full of such
Cliffords! "He then introduced the unfortunate man, whose name happened
to be really Clifford, as "Jaybird Charley," - an unhallowed
inspiration of the moment that clung to him ever after.

But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any other
than this relative title; that he had ever existed as a separate and
distinct individuality we only learned later. It seems that in 1853 he
left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He