USA > California > Merced County > A history of Merced County, California : with a biographical review of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 14
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We have seen how J. M. Montgomery, easily the richest man of the county in 1857, with nearly 5000 head of stock, was assessed for only 640 acres of land-at one dollar an acre! We note that
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about three-quarters of this one section is located, and is the ranch, or part of it, now well-known as the Wolfsen Ranch. The balance was on Bear Creek, but otherwise undescribed. Old-timers remem- ber that Montgomery had a water-hole on Bear Creek just about where the city of Merced now stands, and it seems that he owned forty acres of land to control the water-hole. It is probable that the other three forties not described may be similarly accounted for. In 1862 he patented 240 acres where Merced now is.
With the taking up and claiming in actual ownership of land only along the creeks and the river, which we have already observed; with this taking up of the water-holes; with Henry Nelson's descrip- tion of the rodeo which he attended just below Montgomery's ranch about 1859, where there were 10,000 cattle; and with the cattle trains which we have seen John Ruddle and McPhatridge and others bringing across the plains, we have a fairly sound basis on which to reconstruct the order of things in those early times. We have seen that only townships and sections were surveyed in the fifties; and we have seen in the 1857 assessment roll that except along the river- and it is the Merced which in those days is " the river"-scarcely any land is described except by giving the names of the adjoining owners and the stream it is located on. Of Montgomery's 640 acres on Bear Creek about three-quarters is described by section, township, and range; but it is almost, if not quite, the only piece so described except the land on the Merced River. As early as 1857 the founda- tions are already well laid for the bitter war which was waged later between the cattle men, long monarchs of pretty much all they sur- veyed of this unsurveyed public land, and the new wheat-raisers who ten years later began to come into power. In fifteen years we shall see them strong enough to wrest the county seat from Snelling and put it in the new town on the new Central Pacific Railroad, and this too in a three-cornered race in which both Merced and Livingston re- ceived more votes than Snelling.
We must bear in mind, however, the fact that from the beginnings the settlements which crept down from the hills fell into two groups, the one along the river and the other centering around what was afterwards to be Plainsburg, along the creeks further to the south. That the settlements along the creeks counted up to a good deal is shown, perhaps as clearly as by anything else, by the fact that the line dividing the county into two townships was drawn, not with the river settlements constituting the whole of one township and the creek settlements the other, but half-way between Bear Creek and Mariposa Creek, with Bear and Burns Creeks at the least grouped with the river settlement. It seems easily possible, therefore, that had the first county seat been located somewhere near Plainsburg, as a lot of people think it was, instead of pretty well down to the west-
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ern edge of the creek settlements, there might never have been a second county seat at Snelling and a third at Merced.
There was no Plainsburg then; from the 1857 assessment we learn of town lots only in Snelling, and there were not many assessed even there. Merced Falls could not be called a town, Henry Nelson says; there were only about half a dozen families. There were the Nelsons, who ran their flour mill; there was Charles Murray, just above them, who had a ferry and later a bridge; above Murray was John Phillips, with the ferry which was taken as the point for the new county's boundary to cross the Merced River ; and on an acre of land on William Nelson's farm was R. B. Hall, the lawyer, with his family. Hopeton, at first called Forlorn Hope, consisted of seven or eight buildings, a church, a blacksmith shop, and about four dwell- ings-about as it is today. There was no town on the West Side, there was none on the railroad-and no railroad for it to be on, and not to be any for fifteen years.
The next towns which were to come into existence had hardly been thought of yet, and have been all but forgotten now. It is a reasonably safe guess that one couldn't find three pupils in the biggest geography class in the county today who ever even heard of Dover or Chester, and the name of Hill's Ferry is saved from as complete oblivion only by the fact that there is still a Hill's Ferry bridge. These little towns along the San Joaquin existed only for the period during which the river was an avenue of commerce; and that period did not begin until there was something bulky and heavy to trans- port, which meant almost entirely grain, and it ended when the East Side got its railroad in 1872 and the West Side its line in 1889. And that year 1889 was thirty-four years after the organization of the county and thirty-five before today.
Towns were extremely few and extremely small. Life was frugal to a degree with which we of the present day are not familiar, even the least wealthy of us. Two "miscellaneous libraries"-a term which appears to have been the classification for everything but lawyers' and doctors' libraries-are all that were assessed in 1857. Libraries are heavy to move by ox team in a six months' trip across the plains. We do learn from other sources that Samuel Scott had a considerable library in his fine place in the Merced River bottoms, but the date may well have been, and probably was, considerably later than 1857.
We have already commented on the very small assessments on household and kitchen furniture. They ran somewhere about the same as the usual assessment for firearms (scarcely more), which were most commonly six-shooters. And farming "utensils" were evidently very few and very simple, for the assessments on them are also exceedingly small. These "utensils" obviously did not include
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such large implements as reapers and threshing machines, for we find them separately assessed. At least three threshing machines at this date afford some basis on which to estimate the extent of grain-raising; Nelson's flour mill at Merced Falls, with its market in the mining country in the hills from Sonora to Coarse Gold, affords us another.
One who reads the assessment roll of 1857 can hardly fail to be struck with the fact that the names make a far different list from, say, the index to the last great register-different in the character of its names, that is. To be sure, many of the early names still per- sist, but it is in what is not on the early list rather than in what is on it that we find the difference. With the exception of a very few Spanish names-which the English-speaking new-comers sometimes wrestled with in vain, as we have seen-the names are practically all American of the sort that were brought from England. Swedish, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, and Japanese names, which we have now, are conspicuous by their absence. Even the Irish for the most part are missing; they came, most of the early ones, in the late sixties, when the country was beginning to bloom forth as a great grain field and the no-fence law was but a few years in the future. There was a Thornton on the roll, located on the Merced River, but County Clerk P. J. Thornton, whose father came here in the late sixties, does not know of him; he was of another family. For the most part, it may be said that the early pioneers were of the same stock which found the country east of the Appalachians crowded and unduly civilized at the time of the American Revolution, and sought elbow room in that other Far West two thousand miles to the eastward of this one along the Sierra foothills.
The liberal display of firearms on the 1857 assessment roll seems to have been necessary against both man and beast. Peter Fee records in his diary, under date of January 23, 1858: "Three men kild at Snellings. Snow"; and Henry Nelson was in Snelling when the shooting occurred, and recalls that Charles Bludworth, the first sheriff, was one of three whom three others attacked, and that the attackers lost two and the attacked one man. It is related of Dr. Joshua Griffith that he successfully defended himself against two Mexicans and shot them both. Judge E. N. Rector recalls hearing his father tell of a hunt for a grizzly near the Neil Ranch. A party of men were after a big bear with dogs, and routed him out of a tangle of briars. The bear came out cuffing right and left at the dogs, and the men retreated hurriedly before him-all but "Bill" Neil, who was mounted on a mule. It was not Bill, but the mule, which stood its ground. Neil was ready and anxious to get away from there; but the mule stood still before the oncoming bear and pointed his long ears at it. The mule was slower than its rider in
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reaching the conclusion that almost anywhere else was a better place than in front of that bear. When the mule did reach a conclusion, it agreed completely with the one his rider had already arrived at; and he turned and bolted, with Neil sticking earnestly in place.
We have seen how the assessment roll indicates the location of the bulk of the population near the Mariposa County line. We must bear in mind that the main avenue of travel north and south in those days was what is commonly called the old Millerton Road, which ran from Stockton out eastward to the foothills and then followed the edge of the hills down by way of Knight's Ferry, Merced Falls, and Newton's Crossing to Millerton. Millerton was the first county seat of Fresno County, and took its name from the early Fort Miller ; the location was where the San Joaquin debouches from the foot- hills, near the present little town of Friant. This old road was the boundary line between Merced and Mariposa Counties from Merced Falls to Newton's Crossing. It would scarcely be correct to say that this was the main avenue of travel up and down the San Joaquin Valley, for it was not to the Valley so much as to the foothills that travel was bound. Travel out across the Valley, what little there was of it, was difficult on account of sand, mud, and swollen streams. The obstacles offered by the streams tributary to the San Joaquin on the Sierra Nevada side, which Fremont had brought so forcibly to his attention in the spring of 1844, continued to be serious until the railroad came, at least. County Clerk P. J. Thornton relates that in the late sixties his father hauled the lumber from Stockton which was used in building the house, or a part of it, which still stands on the Alfarata Ranch, and that he went from Stockton to Banta and crossed to the West Side, and then came down that side of the San Joaquin where the road avoided the rivers of the East Side, and crossed back again at Dover above the mouth of the Merced.
It was with the foothill country that the people of the new county in the plains had most of their dealings. We have seen that Nelson's flour mill found most of the market for its product there, and we have seen also how W. L. Means earlier hunted elk and antelope in the vicinity of Robla and sold the meat at the mines. In addition we have found that many of those who were the earliest pioneers of this county came first to the mines of Mariposa, and down here later.
We have an interesting document of the first decade of the county's history in the diary of Peter Fee. Fee was a Norwegian by birth. We have seen his name in the list which the Merced Express published in 1880 of the then Merced County residents who had been in California since its admission to the Union on September 9, 1850; and we have Henry Nelson's recollection that Fee lived at Mt. Ophir in 1855. His diary covers the five years from 1858 to 1862 inclusive, and early in that period he moved to the Merced River a
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short distance above Snelling. We learn from Fee's statements in the diary that he himself was born in 1818. He refers several times to G. Fee, evidently his father, born in 1786, who clearly lived with Fee and his family. In one place he records that G. Fee built a fence around a haystack.
The incidents of Peter Fee's life, recorded from day to day dur- ing these five years, give us many glimpses of how and where people lived in the Merced County of that time, and in Mariposa also. It is the record of a man of untiring industry. He has a page of "Rules copied from the ancient Fee family journal" in the front of the book, the second of which reads, "Never be idle; if your hands can't be usefully employed, attend to the cultivation of your mind"; and he lived up to that maxim faithfully. The diary is too long to be given in anything like its entirety ; but it is well worth making generous selections from. He gives two pages to a month, and almost always merely one line to a day. At the top of each page is written the year and the month, and down the left the day of the month and the day of the week, the latter abbreviated.
"On "Januari 1, F., P. Fee & Forbes went to Mariposa. 2, Sa., Fee went to Mersede and back. Frbs Barly 200 1b. 3, S., Fee wisit Mt. Ophir. Forbes left. 4, M., Fee left for Coltervill, staid at Youngs." This is the whole of the first four days. He was necessarily brief; he abbreviated. His spelling indicates a man who learned English after he was grown up.
The "Mersede" which he refers to here he mentions a number of times; of course it could not be the present town, for this was something like fourteen years before the town came into existence. He clearly means the river, and in one place he has it: "Went to the Mersede at Young's." Young's is also frequently referred to. Young had a ferry across the Merced River. Henry Nelson remembers it and the sign which directed travelers from the road between Merced Falls and Snelling to it. It was located about a mile and a half below Merced Falls, just about where the Merced Irrigation District diverting dam, formerly part of the Crocker-Huffman sys- tem, is now. The sign was at a point on the S. K. Spears Ranch where the road forked, and read "T. W. T. Young's Ferry. Nearest and Best Road to All Parts of the Mines South of the River Merced." The sign was there for a number of years. The building of bridges later put the ferries out of business. In the early minutes of the board of supervisors there are rather numerous references to Young's and Phillips' ferries and Murray's bridge; their rivalry is recorded in the attempts made by each to prevent his competitors from getting their licenses to operate. The board heard them all and granted them all licenses, in spite of the imposing array of counsel with which
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they came before the county fathers-granted them all licenses and set the amount of the bonds they had to give, and also fixed the rates they were allowed to charge. Phillips's Ferry we have already heard of as the place where the county boundary line crossed the Merced River; Murray's was only a short distance below Phillips's; both were above Young's.
We'll follow Peter Fee right through the month of January, 1858. The first four days have been given. On the 5th "Fee & Forbes campt at Newyears diggins." On the 6th, "do. & do. do. on the Colterville Turnpike." On the 7th, "do. & do. staid at the mill. comensed loading." On the 8th, "do. & do. campt at pino blanco." On the 9th, "do. & do. do. at the Ducth Range." On the 10th (which was Sunday), "do. & do. laid by." On Monday the 11th, "Forbes turned over. campt on a mountain." The next day "Fee & Forbes hunted cattle campt in the snow." On the 13th they "campt on the Newyears diggens," obviously on their way home again. They went back after the freight left the next day, and the day after "staid at Young's." On Saturday the 16th they "campt at Texas Tent." Texas Tent, or the Texas Ranch, was the home ranch of the Givens family towards Indian Gulch from Hornitos. On the 17th they "turned out at Corbitts T. went home. This was Sunday. The next day they "brought the loads home." Apparently Fee still lived at Mt. Ophir. He refers early in the diary to the Norwegian Tent, where he lived, and there are numerous references'to a lawsuit with Star & Grimshaw, which he won, and which was about the place on the Merced River; and he soon moves down to this place.
On the 19th "rested the chattle," and then there is a little picture writing, a small rectangle with diagonals, which we come to learn means a letter. This was a letter "from Mckinley." On January 20 we read "G. Fee 72 years." On the 21st it "raind ould day." It frequently rains "ould nite." These entries are given verbatim, not with any idea of making fun of Fee's spelling, but rather as thus retaining better the atmosphere of the times which makes them of interest. That generation, which had not always learned to spell, laid the foundations of the schools which gave their children and grandchildren more educational advantages. On the 22nd "Fee & Forbes brought their load of castings to Dr. Granvoinet. Rained and snow." On the 23rd is the item already quoted: "Three men kild at Snellings. Snow." Henry Nelson says : "I was at Snelling one day when three men were killed. Dr. Goodin, who lived at Fitz- hugh's Ranch, was killed on one side and two others on the other." On the 24th Fee "drove the chattle to the Valley & home." On the 25th, "Fee workt on the Wagon wheels." On the 26th, "do. do. & went to Mposa." For the remaining days of the month there are a lot of ditto abbreviations-referring to the wagon wheels, and on
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the 31st the additional entry (it was Sunday), "Fee & Forbes wisit Mount Ophir."
There is a great deal of mention of places up through the hills. On the very next day after Fee and Forbes went to Mount Ophir, we read that they went to Sebastopol, which is the more modern Boot- jack. Mormon Bar, Bear Valley, Princeton, are frequently men- tioned, Lewis further south every now and then, Chowchilla occasion- ally, Sonora, Knight's Ferry now and then. All through the country where the bulk of the population then lived and the bulk of the bus- iness was carried on, Fee went with his team. Largely the animals were oxen ; whether altogether, we can hardly tell from the diary. He had horses, and he had a buggy; his horses may have been only for riding and buggy use.
The diary records various steps in a lawsuit which Fee had with Star and Grimshaw about the farm above Snelling where he lived. We read on March 3, 1858, "the case set for Thorsday the 11th." Judge Creanor had arrived the day before; it was apparently at Sonora, for he went there February 28 and on March 1 engaged H. P. Barber to attend to the case for $300. On the 16th, verdict for 320 acres and $1 damages. The matter drags for a considerable time and he finally is put into possession of the property. He records that he moved down from "the Norwegian Tent."
His daily life well illustrates the industry, the varied activities, and the self-reliance imposed by necessity, of the pioneer. He was teamster, farmer, stock-raiser, carpenter and general mechanic. Witness such entries as these: "Hauled wood, worked on the wagon, worked on the brake, made two mailboxes, brought Polly's calf home, the twin caffs born, made an oxyoke, worked on the erigation ditch, went to the mill (he hauled a good deal of lumber from vari- ous sawmills in Mariposa County), ploughed the garden, planted turnips, peas and beans."
He did a considerable amount of work for Col. J. C. Fremont, who was then living on his grant at Las Mariposas. On the lower part of the last page for May, 1858, he records : "Fee hould during the mount for Col. J. C. Freemont 7233 ft. of lumber from McNeals mill to Fremonts, $144.66; for houling of 12,000 shingles, $24.00; for houling of 1275 ft. lumber to Mersede, $19.02-$187.69. Paid cash to D. Clark for shingles, 12,000, $96-$283.68. Paid the 17th July by Fremont." He records several times that Fremont passed, that he went below, and so on.
On July 26, 1858, he writes : "Fee born 40 years ago, 1818," and adds, evidently referring to the rules from the ancient family journal of the Fees, "Truht, Temperance." This quirk of reversing the order of the "th" in English words occurs often-usually he writes "wiht."
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Frequently we find that he put in a part of a day, a day, some- times more, hunting cattle, which is eloquent of the unfenced condi- tion of the range in those days. He records where he attended this and that and the other man's rodeo, and found one, two, or more head (of his own). The cattle he hunted were sometimes his oxen- he records it so sometimes-and this is sometimes when he is away on a trip with his team.
He makes brief record, necessarily afterwards some time, of important world events. He did this with the opening events of the Civil War, but the war soon apparently outran the scope of his little book. Opposite the regular daily entry on August 6, 1858, he notes "Telegraphic cable landed," and at the end of this month's record he amplifies this to "The telegraphic cable landed at Trinity Bay."
On the 10th of this same August (Tuesday), "Fee went to Campmeting at Cathes Valley," and found it evidently worth while, for the following Sunday, "Fee & Mrs. Fee went to Campmeting." He and his wife go visiting-chiefly on Sundays, for he is too busy on other days-sometimes as far away as Auga Fria; and he frequently records the visits of neighbors to them.
On the new State's eighth birthday he records that "Fee and Granpar workt on the Arastras," and ditto the next three days. They put in about seven more days at this job by the end of the month. "Granpar" was his father evidently; he refers to him sometimes as G. Fee, and we are told that he was born in 1786. Fee notes his birth- day several times through the dairy, and on one occasion notes that he was sick and that they had to send to Hornitos for medicine for him.
The name Grandpa suggests that the Fees had children. We make out at least two sons, apparently; but we cannot always be sure, from the very brief mention. On September 24, 1859, he records that Charley was very sick and that they waited on him all night; and the next day Charley died and was "buried in the east corner of the field. Rev. Bonsel said the funeral servis."
From July 9 to 15 we read of what was apparently a small revolu- tion that Fremont had on his hands. The record is as follows for the week :
"9 Fr. The Pinetree jumped by a mob. werry warm. 10 Sa. Fee & Mrs Fee wisit Fremonts Famelie. 11. S. Great exite- ment in Bearvaly. 12. M. Inlisting volenters for protektion of F. property. 13. Ti. Fee hould wood. 14 W. The dificulty at Pinetre setled & the Miners & Setlers left the mine. 15. The Miners & Setlers trial in Mariposa." There was prompt justice in those days at any rate. On the 19th: "Went to Mariposa. Dst. Court con- vened. Fremont comensed work at the Pine Tree Mine."
5
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He records usually the number of feet of lumber he hauled. We have seen this in the statement of the account with Fremont. The figures there indicate $20 a thousand for the lumber, which was prob- ably the purchase price at the mill plus hauling. It seems pretty high for hauling, and the account states expressly that Fee paid cash for the shingles, and that Fremont afterwards repaid him.
When the Banner, the first newspaper in Merced County, was started, Fee hauled the press from some earlier plant further north. It is sometimes stated that the press came from Waterford; Fee's evidence, while it does not absolutely show this to be incorrect, makes it appear very strongly that it came from Knight's Ferry. The entries about the matter from the 27th of June to the 2nd of July, 1862, are as follows: "27 F. Hoed in the garden. Engaged to houl the press. 28. Sa. Started. Staid at Dr. Both at Toaleme. 29. S. Arived at Nights Ferry, 5 horses. 30. M. Loaded, started across river. Got a buggy from Linstad for a horse. Staid at Ding- ley. Harry Linstad Baker & Salon in Nights Ferry. Juley 1 Ti. Staid and swopt oxen with Dingley. 2 W. Staid Gallops. Arrived and unloaded at Snellings & went home."
Fe records the flood of January, 1862, which washed away the hotel and other buildings at Snelling, and which, Henry Nelson re- calls, washed away the bridges at Merced Falls, so that when he returned from a trip to the mines south of the river he had to take his wagon over on a little ferry boat and lead his mules across one at a time behind a row boat. Fee's entries about the flood begin on January 5, Sunday, and continue for eight days. The entries are as follows : "5, S. Raind and storm. 6, M. Raind old day. 7, Ti. Removed the hay. 8, W. Workt on the bulkhead; rain. 9, Th. The bulkhead broke away with the flod . . . 10, F. The wather rose op to the house 5 o'clock A. M. 11, Sa. The river rose over the road took up the barn sable & workhouse. Mrs Fee at Muglers. 12, S. The river faling; Wilson got out of the tree."
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