A history of California and an extended history of its southern coast counties, also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I, Part 69

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1184

USA > California > A history of California and an extended history of its southern coast counties, also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I > Part 69

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

landed a party, well armed, to try and surprise the Spaniards and make some prisoners, but the next morning embarked without success. ,We then weighed and made sail along shore to the southward, two miles from shore; a great number of Spanish troops riding along the beach, at whom we fired several shots. In the evening of the 8th of December we were off the town and mission of St. Barbara, in latitude 3.13 36' N. and longitude 119° W. It falling calm, we hoisted the boats out to tow the ships into the bay, where we anchored, the town bearing N. by W. one mile, seemingly deserted. We fired a gun and hoisted the colors with a flag of truce, and sent a boat on shore to say if they would give up our men we would spare the town; to which the governor agreed, and accordingly, on the Ioth, we got our companions on board, weighed the anchor and made sail to the south- ward. We again ran into a snug bay, in latitude 33° 33' N., where we anchored under the flag of truce. The bay is well sheltered, with a most beautiful town and mission, about two leagues from the beach. The commodore sent his boats on shore, to say if they would give us an imme- diate supply of provisions we would spare their town; to which they replied that we might land if we pleased, and they would give us an imme- diate supply of powder and shot. The commo- dore was very much incensed at this answer and assembled all the officers to know what was best to be done. as the town was too far from the beach to derive any benefit from it. It was therefore agreed to land, and give it up to be pillaged and sacked.

"Next morning, before daylight, the commo- dore ordered me to land and bring him a sample of the powder and shot, which I accordingly did, with a party of 140 men, well armed, with two field-pieces. On our landing, a party of horsemen came down and fired a few shots at us, and ran towards the town. They made no stand, and we soon occupied the place. After break- fast the people commenced plundering ; we found the town well stocked with everything but money, and destroyed much wine and spirits, and all the public property ; set fire to the king's stores, barracks and governor's house, and about two o'clock we marched back, though not in the

+14

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

order we went, many of the men being intoxi- cated, and some were so much so that we had to lash them on the field-pieces and drag them to the beach, where, about six o'clock, we arrived with the loss of six men. Next morning we pun- ished about twenty men for getting drunk."

They cruised off San Blas for the Manila ships, but did not capture any. After much suffering from sickness and shortage of pro- vision, the Santa Rosa arrived at Valparaiso July 9, 1819; the Argentina arrived the 17th, having buried forty of her men. The ships were laid up and most of the crews entered on board Chilian fleet.

"I now applied to Captain Bouchard for my pay and prize money, and told him I was heart- ily sick of the service of the Independents, and that I intended to go to England in the first vessel that sailed for that country, the port be- ing then embargoed on account of the expedi- tion going against Peru ; he replied that he could not pay me unless I continued in the service and took the ship to Buenos Ayres, which I de- clined doing, and left her in charge of Mr. Woodburn, the first lieutenant."

I have introduced this long digression for sev- eral reasons-the chief of which is that all ac- counts of the event published in California his- tories are one sided. The privateer's story has never been told in any of these. Conrey's narra- tive bears upon its face the impress of truth. It contradicts many of the exaggerations derived from Spanish sources published in Bancroft's and Hittell's histories. The Spanish officers and soldiers who fought Bouchard, in their reports of their several contests with "the pirate Bouchard," as they called him, were inclined to magnify their achievements.

Governor Sola in his report claims that Bouchard landed 400 men at Monterey. The total complement of men on both ships, accord- ing to Captain Conrey, was only 360. Sola re- ported five of the insurgents killed and a num- ber wounded. Conrey reports three killed and three taken prisoners at the battle of Monterey. One of the three men captured, according to Ban- croft, was Joseph Chapman, the first native-born citizen of the United States to settle in Southern California. According to Sola's report, these

three men were sent ashore in response to a de- mand of the Spaniards, the Santa Rosa having lowered her flag in token of surrender. Sola, unable to obtain from these men anything but "lies and frivolous excuses," reports that he put them in the guard-house; a high-handed pro- ceeding, if he did it. Sola's refusal to surrender the men captured at Monterey, according to Captain Conrey, was the reason why Bouchard burned the town. The refusal of the Spaniard to give up the three men captured at Ortega's rancho was also the cause of Bouchard's burning the buildings there. His demand for their re- turn at Santa Barbara with a threat to burn the town brought the comandante of the presidio to terms at once. Whether this demand included the three men captured at Monterey, Conrey does not state.

Captain Conrey reports the loss of six men at San Juan Capistrano. The Spanish authorities report the capture of four there. I am of the opinion that Joseph Chapman was captured at San Juan Capistrano, and not at Monterey, as stated in Bancroft's history. Stephen C. Foster gives a romantic account of Chapman's capture at Ortega's rancho, and his rescue by a daughter of Ortega from the doom decreed to him by the Spaniards-that of being dragged to death by wild horses. According to Foster, he married his rescuer a year later. Chapman was not cap- tured at Ortega's rancho. Foster's romantic story, except the marrying part of it, is pure fiction. The three men captured at Ortega's rancho were given up at Santa Barbara.

Joseph Chapman was the first citizen of the United States to permanently locate in Cali- fornia. He figured prominently in the history of Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. As the pio- neer American resident of California it would be interesting to know something of his early history and what induced him to leave his New England home and join the insurgents of South America. It is probable that he was one of the crew of the Santa Rosa. A number of his de- scendants are living in Santa Barbara and Ven- tura counties.

ORGANIZATION OF THE COUNTY.

Santa Barbara is one of the original twenty-

415

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

seven counties into which the state, or rather the territory, of California (for it had not yet been admitted as a state of the Union ) was divided by an act of the legislature, approved February 18, 1850.

Section 4 of that act created the county of Santa Barbara. The boundaries as given in the act are as follows: "Beginning on the seacoast at the mouth of the creek called Santa Maria and running up the middle of said creek to its source; thence due northeast to the summit of the Coast Range, the farm of Santa Maria fall- ing within Santa Barbara county ; thence follow- ing the summit of the Coast Range to the northi- west corner of Los Angeles county ; thence along the northwest boundary of said county to the ocean and three English miles therein; and thence in a northerly direction parallel with the coast to a point due west of the mouth of Santa Maria creek; thence due east to the mouth of said creek, which was the place of beginning; in- cluding the islands of Santa Barbara, San Nic- olas, San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz and others in the same vicinity. The seat of justice shall be at Santa Barbara." By an act of the legislature of 1851-52 the boundaries of the county were more clearly defined and some slight changes made in the lines.

The legislature passed acts creating county organizations and providing for the election of county officers. The old system of municipal government that had been in force under Span- ish and Mexican rule and under the American rule from the time of the conquest was swept out of existence. In place of ayuntamientos and courts of first, second and third instance, and of offices of alcaldes, prefects, sub-prefects, regi- dores and sindicos, were substituted district courts, courts of sessions, county courts, justices of the peace, common councils, mayors, sheriffs, district attorneys, treasurers, assessors, recorders, surveyors, coroners and constables. To the na- tives who had been reared under the simple forms of early years the American system of government was complicated and confusing. An election for county officers was ordered held throughout the state on the first Monday of April, 1850, and the machinery of county govern- ment was put into operation as speedily as pos-

sible. The transition from the old form to the new took place in Santa Barbara in August.

Henry A. Tefft was appointed judge of the second judicial district, which consisted of the counties of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. John M. Huddars acted as clerk of the court. At the April election Pablo de la Guerra, who had represented the Santa Barbara district in the constitutional convention, was chosen state sen- ator, and J. M. Covarrubias and Henry S. Cranes the first assemblymen.

Joaquin Carrillo was the first county judge, and by virtue of his office presiding justice of the court of sessions. This court consisted of the county judge and two justices of the peace, who acted as associate justices. Besides its judicial duties it also fulfilled the functions of county government now performed by boards of super- visors. The first meeting of the court of sessions was held October 21, 1850, and its first recorded act was the ordering of a county seal. The de- sign of the seal is described as follows. "Around the margin the words, county court of Santa Barbara county, with the following device in the center : A female figure holding in her right hand a balance and in her left a rod of justice; above, a figure of a rising sun; below, CAL." The associate justices of the first meeting of the court of sessions were Samuel Barney and Will- iam A. Streeter.

José A. Rodriguez, the first sheriff of the county, was killed in the fall of 1850 on the present site of the oil wells of Summerland, while leading a party in pursuit of the murderers of the Reed family at San Miguel Mission. Rodri- guez was recklessly brave. The murderers had been surrounded. The members of the sheriff's posse hesitated to close in on them. Rodriguez, to inspire his men with courage, rushed in upon the murderers, and seizing one of them, pulled him from his horse. In the scuffle the fellow shot and killed the sheriff. One of the desperadoes, endeavoring to escape, swam to sea and was drowned. Three of them, Lynch, Raymond and Quin, were captured, taken to Santa Barbara and shot.

Gen. W. T. Sherman in an article, "Old Times in California," published in the North American Review of March, 1889, gives an entirely dif-

416

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ferent version of the capture of the murderers of the Reed family. Jim Beckworth, who was car- rying the mail from Monterey to Dana's rancho, stopping at the Mission San Miguel, which Reed had fitted up for a hotel, found the bodies of Reed, his wife and children. They had recently

been murdered. Beckworth, on arriving at Monterey, reported to Lieutenant Sherman the story of the murder. Sherman, who was acting adjutant general, reported it to Col. R. B. Ma- of the common council. He held six distinct

son. Mason ordered Lieut. E. O. C. Ord to take a detachment of soldiers and "pursue the mur- derers to the death." Lieutenant Ord with his detachment found the trail of the assassins, which led south by Santa Inez, back of Santa Bar- bara, and at Rincon below Santa Barbara he over- took the party, who proved to be four deserters from the sloop-of-war Warren, lying in the har- bor of Monterey. They had a running fight in which Ord lost one of his men, killed the ring- leader and captured the other three men. They were taken back to Santa Barbara and delivered to the alcalde, Lewis Dent, brother of Mrs. Gen- eral Grant. They all made full confessions, were tried, condemned to death and shot. This oc- curred in October, 1848.

The first assessment of property was made by Lewis T. Burton, county assessor. The total value of all property in the county, real and per- sonal, was placed at $992,676. Cattle were as- sessed at $8 per liead, shcep at $3 per head and land at twenty-five cents per acre. The assess- ment list of Don José de la Guerra y Noriega is a good illustration of how lands of the county had been monopolized by a few men. Noriega owned the Conejo rancho, which contained 53,- 880 acres; the Simi, containing 108,000 acres; Las Posas, containing 26,640 acres ; San Julian, 20,000 ; the Salsipuedes, 35,200 acres ; a total of 243,120 acres; the assessed value of which was about $60,000.

It took the new officers some time to become acquainted with the duties of the several offices. There was a disposition to mix American and Mexican law .. In the county as in the city gov- crnment there were frequent resignations, and the officers changed from one official position to another. County officers held city offices and vice versa, sometimes by appointment and some-

times by election. Joaquin Carrillo, in 1852, was county judge and mayor of Santa Barbara city at the same time. J. W. Burroughs breaks the record as champion officeholder. He was elected sheriff in 1857; appointed recorder Sep- tember 3, 1851; justice of the peace September 16, 1857 ; acted as county clerk January 23, 1852, and was appointed treasurer April 14, 1852. January 29, 1851, he had been elected a member offices within a little more than a year.

The frequent recurrence of the same family name in the lists of city and county officials might give rise to the charge of nepotism or a family political ring. The de la Guerras and the Carrillos were ruling families in Santa Bar- bara before the conquest and they continued to be for some time after. The first mayor of the city was a de la Guerra (Francisco). The first state senator was also a de la Guerra (Pablo). Don Pablo, although a bitter opponent to the Americans during the war, after the conquest became thoroughly Americanized. He held many offices. He was a member of the constitutional convention, state senator, acting lieutenant-gov- crnor, mayor of Santa Barbara, council man, supervisor and district judge. At a meeting of the court of sessions December 6, 1852, the judges of the court were Joaquin Carrillo, county judge; Pedro Carrillo and José Carrillo, asso- ciate justices.

In early days politics had very little to do with the selection of county officers. Fitness and family (particularly family) were the chief qualifications. It was urged against Don Pablo de la Guerra when he was a candidate for dis- trict judge that in a great many cases which would come before him if elected he would be barred from sitting as judge because about half of the population of Santa Barbara county was related to him by blood or marriage. In 1852 District Judge Henry A. Tefft was drowned at Port San Luis while attempting to land from the steamer to hold court at San Luis Obispo. Joaquin Carrillo was clected district judge to fill the vacancy. He held office by appointment and election fourteen years. He did not under- stand English and all the business of the court was conducted in the Spanish language. Al-

417

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

though not a lawyer his decisions were seldom overruled by the higher courts. Charles Fer- nald was appointed county judge to fill the va- cancy caused by the promotion of Joaquin Car- rillo. The first county building, a jail, was com- pleted December 1, 1853. In 1853 the county was divided into three townships of about equal area. Township No. I, elections held at San Buenaventura ; No. 2 at Santa Barbara, and No. 3 at Santa Ynez. By act of the legislature of 1852-53 a board of supervisors was created for each county. This relieved the court of sessions of the legislative part of its duties. The first board of supervisors of Santa Barbara consisted of Pablo de la Guerra, Fernando Pico and Ramon Malo.

Up to 1856 Santa Barbara was solidly Denio- cratic in politics. The Whig party seems not to have gained a foothold. In local politics, fam- ily, as I have said before, was one of the chief requisites. So one-sided was the county polit- ically that at the state election of 1855 the su- pervisors in canvassing the vote recorded only the Democratic. The opposition vote seems not to have risen to the dignity of scattering.

November 27, 1855, the supervisors purchased the house of John Kays for a court house, pay- ing for it and the ground $6,000. The county was now equipped with a court house and jail. The prisoners, who were mostly Indians, were not doomed to solitary confinement. The jail was not capacious enough to hold them. They were given employment outside. We find among the proceedings of the board of supervisors in 1856 an order to the sheriff to sell the adobes made by the prisoners at the county jail at not less than $2.50 per hundred.

CRIME AND CRIMINALS.

During the early '50s the coast counties were the scenes of many deeds of violence. The Ar- gonauts who came to the state by the southern routes and the Sonoran migration traveled the coast road on their way to the mines. The cattle buyers coming south to the cow counties to buy stock came by this route. The long stretches of unsettled country in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties gave the banditti who in-

fested the trail an opportunity to rob and mur- der with but little fear of detection.

The Solomon Pico band of outlaws was the first organized gang that terrorized the coast counties. Their victims were mostly cattle buy- ers. This gang was finally hunted down and most of them died "with their boots on." Some of the remnants of this gang that escaped jus- tice and others of the same kind were gathered up by Jack Powers, who became the recognized leader of a band of robbers and desperadoes. Powers came to the coast as a member of Stev- enson's regiment. After his discharge from serv- ice he turned gambler and robber. Although it was known that he was implicated in a number of robberies and several murders, he escaped punishment. He was arrested in 1856 when the vigilance committee was disposing of his kind. Although he was released he felt safer to be beyond the jurisdiction of the committee. He went to Sonora. Mexico, where he stocked a ranch with stolen cattle. In a quarrel with one of his men he was shot and killed. His body, when found, was half eaten by hogs.

Fear of the vigilance committee drove out of San Francisco in 1856 a number of undesirable citizens. Among those who fled from the city was Ned McGowan, a notorious and disreput- able politician, who, with several others of his kind, had been indicted by the grand jury of San Francisco county as accessory before the fact of the murder of James King of William. McGowan made his escape to Santa Barbara, where he was assisted and befriended by Jack Powers and some others whose sympathies were with the criminal element. The vigilantes char- tered a vessel and sent thirty of their men, under the command of one of their captains, to capture him. McGowan's Santa Barbara friends, some of whom were wealthy and influential, kept him concealed until the vigilantes left. After the disbanding of the vigilance committee McGow- an's friends in the legislature secured the pas- sage of a bill giving him a change of venue from San Francisco to Napa county. He was tried and acquitted mainly on the evidence of one of the twenty-two doctors who attended King after he was shot. This physician testi-

418

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

fied that King was killed by the doctors and not by Casey.

Local vigilance committees, between 1855 and 1860, in Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Monte- rey and Santa Cruz to a considerable extent purified the moral atmosphere of these coast counties; but Santa Barbara, judging from a grand jury report made to the court of sessions in 1859, seems to have been immune from out- breaks of vigilantes. Says this report: "Thieves and villains of every grade have been from time to time upheld, respected, fostered and pampered by our influential citizens, and, if need be, aided and assisted in escaping from merited punish- * ment due their crimes. * Offenses, thefts and villainies in defiance of the law, of every grade and character, from the horse and cattle thief to the highway robber and midnight assassin, have dwelt, to our knowledge, for the last five years in our very midst."

THE DOWNFALL OF THE CATTLE KINGS.

For a decade and a half after the discovery of gold in California the owners of the great . ranchos of Santa Barbara continued, as they had been in the past, the feudal lords of the land. Their herds were more profitable than gold mines and their army of retainers gave them unlimited political power, which they did not always use wisely or well.

The high price of cattle, the abundant rainfall of the years 1860-61-62 and the consequent lux- uriant growth of grass led to an overstocking of the cattle ranges. When the terrible dry years of 1863 and 1864 came, the stockmen were in no condition to carry their numerous herds through the drought. "The county assessment roll of 1863 showed over 200,000 head of cattle in Santa Barbara county. This probably was 100,000 less than the true number. When grass started in the winter of 1864-65 less than 5,000 head were alive. The great herds were gone, and the shepherd kings were kings no more, for their ranchos were mortgaged beyond redemp- tion. and in the next five years passed entirely out of their hands."

The downfall of these feudal lords was in- deed pathetic. For nearly a century their an-

cestors and they themselves had ruled the land. The transition of the country from the domina- tion of Spain to that of Mexico had not affected their rule. The conquering Saxon had come, but his advent had only increased their wealth without lessening their power; at least such was the case in the coast counties. The famine years and their own improvidence had at last undone them. In the days of their affluence they had spent lavishly. If money was needed, it was easy to negotiate a loan on their broad acres. Rates of interest in early times were usurious, ruinous. Five, ten and even fifteen per cent a month were no uncommon rates. Present needs were pressing and pay day was manaña (to- morrow). The mortgage, with its cancerous in- terest, was made and the money spent. So when the "famine years" swept away the herds and flocks there was nothing to sell or mortgage to pay interest and the end came quickly. It was with the stoicism of fatalists that the great ranch owners viewed their ruin. They had besought the intercession of their patron saints for the needed rain. Their prayers had been unanswered. It was the will of God, why complain? Thus do Faith and Fatalism often meet on a common plane.

During the next four or five years several of the great ranchos were subdivided, or segregated portions cut up into small tracts. When immi- gration began to drift into the coast counties in the early '7os many of these small tracts in Santa Barbara were bought by eastern immi- grants and the transition from cattle-raising to grain-growing and fruit culture wrought a great change, not only in the character of the products, but in the character of the population as well. .

The write-up of the climate and agricultural possibilities of the coast counties by Nordhoff and others, the judicious advertising of the re- sources of the county by J. A. Johnson, editor of the Santa Barbara Press (a paper established in 1868), increased steamer communication, and the prospects of a railroad down the coast, all combined, attracted settlers from Northern Cali- fornia and the eastern states. The price of land advanced and in 1874 the city and the county experienced their first boom. The dry year of 1876-77 checked the rising wave of prosperity,

*Mason's History of Santa Barbara.

419

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and disastrously affected the sheep industry, which since the "famine years" had to a con- siderable extent taken the place of cattle-raising. Business revived in the carly 'Sos; and the county made good progress. The completion to Santa Barbara in 1887 of the southern end of the Southern Pacific Coast Railroad, and the prospect of an early closing of the gap between the northern and southern ends of that road gave the city and county their second boom. Real estate values went up like a rocket. In 1886 the county assessment roll footed up $8,- 585,485; in 1887 it went up to $15,035,982, an increase of seventy-five per cent in one year.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

A history of California and an extended history of its southern coast counties, also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I, Part 69

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company Number of Pages: 1184

Author: Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1184