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 18
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December 30, 1865 : "Personal .- Hon. R. H. Ward, our mem- ber of Assembly, and John C. Breen, Esq., one of the copying clerks of that body, improving the opportunity afforded by the adjourn- ment of the Legislature, returned home this week to spend Christ-
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mas. The former accompanied by Mrs. W., a late addition to the Ward family. .. . " "
"The Hunt .- Last Saturday the young men of this immediate vicinity had rare sport hunting. Two or three days before, two captains were chosen, who in turn chose several privates. . . . The penalty was the dinner for the winners. . . . The following persons participated, and the number of points made by each is shown :
"R. R. Leak, Captain, 16; H. A. Skelton, 37; Coley Fitzhugh, 28; Geo. W. Halstead, Jr., 50; James Halstead, 22-total, 153. E. G. Rector, Captain, 21; Wm. James, 13; S. L. Anderson, 42 1/2 ; E. J. Simon, 17; C. M. Blair, 35-total, 128 1/2.
"Everything was on the square with the single exception of a few tame ducks rung in by a certain county official."
Editor Robertson was a guest at the banquet.
In the issue of January 6, 1866, we read: "Col. B. F. Moore, for many years a member of the Sonora bar, died at Stockton on Monday night last. .. . " In the next issue appears the professional card of "W. C. Montgomery, Attorney at Law, Office at Snelling." Moore & Montgomery had been maintaining an office at Snelling, as well as one at Sonora, before Moore's death.
Other professional cards appearing about this time are those of B. D. Horr, Attorney and Counselor at Law, Knight's Ferry, Stan- islaus Co., and Dr. H. H. White, Surgeon Dentist, who announced that he would be at the Galt House on December 15, 1865, for a few days.
In the issue of January 20, 1866, we read: "Wednesday the Stockton stage failed to reach this place on account of high water in Dry Creek. . .. In the following issue, after relating that "Last Sunday and Sunday evening the rain came down in torrents," the editor states that they feared another flood like the one of 1862.
The weather evidently remained pretty damp, for in the paper of February 3, 1866, he writes : "Ye City Fathers, Attention .- The other day a loaded wagon from Stockton bogged down right here within the corporation limits, nearly opposite this office. . . "
February 3: "We learn that the ferry boat owned by Mr. John Ivett, which was built by him and placed below Murray's Mill on this river, has been sold to John Roberts, to be used at his ferry on the Tuolumne-his boat being the one spoken of last week as being washed down stream. Mr. Roberts intends to bring his new ferry boat down the Merced into the San Joaquin and from thence have it towed by the small steamer running on the last named river, up to his ferry on the Tuolumne. He is unable just at present to get it done on account of low water, but as soon as we have another rise in the river he says he will pass Snelling with colors flying. Look out · for the engine when the bell rings."
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In the issue of February 10, and in that of the 17th, we find two characteristic items which may serve to close this chapter of impres- sions of the first year after the Civil War in Merced County.
On the 10th: "Stolen Cattle .- Three men supposed to be citi- zens of Maximalian's 'Empire' crossed the Merced River at Murray's Bridge last Monday with forty head of cattle, all of which are sup- posed to have been stolen. . . . They were pursued by N. B. Stone- road, Paddy Vaughn, and Thomas T. Howard, who found but one animal known to belong in this county. The villians very willingly paid for it and were allowed to proceed. They said they were going to Sonora, Tuolumne County."
On the 17th: "Appointment of Judges of the Plains .- Last week the Board of Supervisors appointed Arch. Rice and Paddy Vaughn Judges of the Plains for the coming year as provided by statute. . . . " The editor then gives a synopsis of the statute men- tioned, by which it appears that the duties of the "Judges of the Plains" included, besides deciding questions of ownership at rodeos, also the exercising of just such oversight over cattle passing through as Stoneroad, Vaughn, and Howard exercised in the case of the Mexicans mentioned on the 10th.
HARVESTING SCENE SHOWING THIRTY-EIGHT ANIMALS ON COMBINED HARVESTER
CHAPTER XI THE SETTLEMENT OF THE PLAINS
The Merced County which we have seen, chiefly through the eyes of the county seat, in the year immediately following the Civil War, may be called a static Merced. Three or four years after the close of the war, when the ravages of that conflict had been somewhat mended, there began what must probably be regarded as the most important single movement in the whole history of the county-the settlement of the plains, and the beginning of the great grain-farm- ing days.
We have had a look at the county through the columns of the Merced Herald, in 1865. Of the history of the county during the war itself there is little to be gleaned directly from records. What little there is, is subject to grave suspicion so far as its unbiased reliability is concerned, for those were times of very warm feeling in Merced, "the South Carolina of California." We have seen samples of the political editorials in the year after the war, and we may be certain that they were not less warm-they and the general feeling they reflected-while the war was still in progress. Of the county's earliest paper, the Banner, there are no files in existence. A story of the Banner's stormy history, from the time of its first issue on July 5, 1862, until its fatal injury at the hands of Union soldiers some time in February, 1864, and its complete demise several weeks later in the same year, has been written in the 1881 history of Elliott & Moore by Mrs. Rowena Granice Steele, wife and fellow editor of the proprietor, Robert J. Steele. Her account makes the Banner and its proprietors appear pretty much as martyrs, but her account is obviously a good deal biased. When we hear from the children of early settlers, as we can, or when we read it in Wigginton & Robert- son's Herald, in the case of L. P. Hall, alias Pierce, of the short- lived Democrat, that citizens of this county went to Alcatraz during the war; when we hear of Harvey J. Ostrander, sturdy representa- tive of a mighty slim majority, sticking up the colors of the Union on a pole in front of his house and preparing to stand guard over them with arms if necessary; when such a man as J. C. James, a pioneer from the north in the early sixties, remarks mildly, in refer- ence to the raid on the Banner office, that he "guesses they were disloyal," we get a few glimpses of the rather dimly outlined obverse of the picture.
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Happily now, after two generations, the bitter feeling of those stormy days is but a softened memory, and we may dwell more pleasantly on the kindlier phases of the resemblance to the old South which fairly entitled the Merced River settlements to the title men- tioned-"the South Carolina of California." There was a good deal of the kindness and hospitality of the South, which still survives; there was a rather surprising lot, for so new a country, of the feeling of aristocracy, limited doubtless or modified by the small number of negroes-there were a few-for whom there was no closer substitute than the Chinese and the Indians. We can hardly escape a suspicion that the very strong tendency to settle along the river and creek bottoms was made stronger by the fact that so many of the settlers came from river and creek bottoms back home. There are cotton and cotton gins, there are Judges and Colonels, there is stress laid upon gentlemen and the fine theory that they can do no wrong, there are fine horses, there are camp-meetings, there are mansions, there are shootings. If Huck Finn had floated down the Merced on the ferry boat that went to the Tuolumne, the country, we imagine, would have looked familiar to him.
The most of the settlement of course was along the Merced itself, though the settlements on the creeks further south-Bear Creek, and especially Mariposa Creek, and the smaller ones-must not be mini- mized. The Turner (or Turner & Osborn) Ranch, where the first supervisors and the first court met, was west of the present highway and the Central Pacific tracks, and J. B. Cocanour had a place on Bear Creek clear down at what we now call Robla. But the Merced settlements were continuous pretty well down to the San Joaquin, with the most settlers from Forlorn Hope up to Merced Falls.
J. W. Stockird, who is a grandson of Col. Archibald W. Stevin- son, and who remembers back to the assassination of Lincoln, moved with his father and mother from the Stevinson Ranch to Hopeton in 1867, where his father, John Thomas Stockird, bought the old Barfield place. Mr. Stockird remembers that at that time or earlier there were settlers along the river below Hopeton as follows: Be- ginning where Livingston now is, and going down the river on the south side, came first W. P. McConnell; then Phillip Henry Bink, just below Livingston; then David Chedester, William C. Turner, W. G. Collier (then county surveyor), Col. A. Stevinson, J. J. Stevinson, and Mahlon Stone. On the north side there were only about five, going down from the vicinity of Livingston : T. P. Carey, then a place where Isom J. Cox afterwards lived, Adams, John Hawkins, who had the ferry, and Judge George G. Belt. Going up from Livingston on the south, Neill Brothers' place came down to McConnell's. Their house was in the bottom near where R. Shaffer
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afterwards built the house on the bluff. Next up the river on the south side was Augustus ("Gus") Jones, then Dr. Joshua Griffith, then the Cocanour place, now known as the Borland Ranch, next Reuben T. Chandler, and then J. M. Montgomery. Going up on the north side there were W. P. McSwain, J. B. McSwain, and one other, and then William J. (Doc.) Barfield, Dan Ingalsbe, Albert Ingalsbe (in the bottom under the bluff), and Samuel H. P. Ross, adjoining Albert Ingalsbe. Ross married the widow of "Jim" Ruddle, John Ruddle's brother. Above Ross came John Thomas Stockird, on the place first owned by the Ruddles, then by Barfield, then by a man named Corcoran, before Stockird, and now known as the Silman place ; and above Stockird came Erastus and Tom Eagleson.
There were six ferries on the Merced: John Hawkins', below the Stevinson place ; McSwain's, about where what is called the Ward Ranch is, a little above the present McSwain Bridge; Cox's Ferry, opposite Hopeton; and Young's, Murray's and Phillips's, these last three bunched within two miles or less from Merced Falls down. We read in the papers a little later of an attempt to establish a ferry more nearly opposite Snelling, and also a "Free Bridge," but it does not appear whether they were established.
In 1865 Harvey J. Ostrander sunk what is said to have been the first well on the plains out away from the streams. Its location is given in the Elliott & Moore history of 1881 as about half-way between Bear Creek and Mariposa Creek andlabout three miles east of where Merced was afterwards built. This well was used to water sheep; but it demonstrated that the plains were habitable, and in the same year Mr. Ostrander settled on the plains not far from where Planada now is. Others, stockmen and grain-farmers, appear gradu- ally to have followed suit, though apparently not on any very large scale for about three years.
In August, 1868, after the Herald established by Wigginton & Robertson had run its course, Robert J. Steele, of the Banner, again appears in the Merced County journalistic field. He was just nicely in time to catch the movement with which this chapter; deals, as it struck its stride. In Vol. I, No. 1, of Steele's Herald, August 22, 1868, we read:
"Immigrants Arriving .- During the week we have noticed several immigrant wagons containing families just arrived overland from the States, pass through town on their way to Bear Creek and Mariposa Creek, where they will settle and enter into the business of farming. We are informed that settlements are being rapidly formed in the southerly portion of this county, and it is hard to tell which portion of our vast plains which have hitherto been given up to the pasturage of wild cattle and horses that roamed over them at will, shall become
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the most densely populated. The tide of immigration has set in this way, and will doubtless continue until every nook and corner that can be made habitable is filled."
The same issue chronicles the birth of a new town and the growth of on old.
"New Town .- Dover, situated on the San Joaquin River, five miles above the mouth of the Merced, is a new town that has but re- cently been laid off and commenced to be settled. We are informed that building is going on and that already a store has been established by the Messrs. Simpson, which supplies the people with dry goods, groceries, hardware, and other necessaries. The place supplies the best landing for steamers on the east bank of the San Joaquin of any other (sic) point in the county and is the natural outlet for the im- mense trade that will in one or two years be built up in this county. That portion of the county is being rapidly settled up by industrious farmers who will, the coming fall, sow the lands with wheat, thereby adding to the general wealth, commerce, and prosperity of the State. The place is of easy access from all parts of the county south of the Merced River, and in future years must necessarily grow to be an important shipping point, and the country to the eastward of it will be in one or two years more at farthest, what Paradise Valley is at the present time-the granary of the State."
It is a rash man who will put a prophecy in print to be read sixty years later, but in this case six years would have served as well as sixty to refute the editor's enthusiasm about the permanence of the new town. We read in another reference to Dover, some time within a few months after this one, that the town was started about the middle of July, 1868; and W. J. Stockton says it was no longer in existence when he came to the West Side in 1872. A careful reading of the newspaper references to river navigation along through these years would disclose that the men of that time had not learned as much about the ups and downs-particularly the downs-of the San Joaquin and its tributaries as we know now. A lot of that knowledge was to be acquired in the costly school of experience during the next year or two. We shall see at the end of July of the year following this a hope expressed by the editor that the water will remain high enough for navigation for a few weeks more to enable the farmers to get their crops to market; and we shall see, as we should expect, that it was a vain hope. A lot of them were left; with large quantities of grain on hand, warehouses had to be built-at Hill's Ferry and Dover among other places-and there were hard times on account of inability to get crops to market and convert them into money.
To look back from the vantage point of 1925 at Editor Steele's comments on the events in the midst of which he moved, affords as interesting and convincing an instance as could well be had of the
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inability of a contemporary properly to see and estimate the broad trends of the history that is being made while he looks on. From Snelling up the river into the mining country was the old established order of things; the San Joaquin and the Sacramento were also established as main avenues of heavy transportation ; and the product of the new kind of farming was bulky-it could not be driven to market on its own four feet; and moreover, it was soon to exceed in quantity anything that could be grasped by even a pretty vivid imagi- nation. Also the cause and the effects of railroads were not so well known as they are now, for railroads were exceedingly new-it was not until the spring after Steele started his Herald that the Central and Union Pacific met at Promontory Point. So if he exults a little as he tells of people moving their buildings from Coulterville down to Snelling, and fails to realize that Snelling in a few years will fall away towards the decay which is claiming the mountain town; if he travels through the busy short-lived towns that shipped their grain by water along the Tuolumne, and fails to realize that the railroad will be the end of these, and that even if they were to stay, Snelling was not due for a share of their prosperity because of the fact that it was above the head of navigation, he is no worse a prophet than many who have prophesied since. At any rate he tells us a vivid story of his times. In the same first issue we read :
"Merced Falls .- This place, at which is situated the new woolen mills, just now about completed, presents quite a lively appearance, and will soon be a manufacturing town of great importance. The woolen mills will be set in operation in the course of about two or three weeks, which will give employment to a large number of persons and soon build up the place to become the largest town in the county. The machinery will be run by water, of which there is abundance for ten times the power required to propel the machinery now about to be set in operation. The flocks on the hills and plains in the immediate vicinity of the factory will supply wool of every grade desired at the lowest price, and we think the success of the enterprise cannot fail to induce other capitalists to embark in the business of manufacturing at other points both above and below the Falls. The aspect of the town has changed within a few months past from a dilapidated min- ing town to that of a brisk and growing business place. Property is looking up, and in a few months the population of that portion of the valley will be double or treble what it has been in past years."
August 29, 1868: "More Immigrants .- During the week we have noticed several wagons pass our door which had the appearance of having crossed the plains this season, filled with families which were on their way to homes in the great valley to the southward. Those arriving are usually people from the South and West, who
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have fled from the reign of terror "which prevails in the late slave States, and come here in hope of finding homes where they can live in peace under the forms of constitutional law. They have been driven away from their country, their homes, kindred, and property by the tyrrany of the military despots appointed by a lawless set of usurpers holding the reigns (sic) of power, and come among us in the hope of carving out for themselves and families, by the sweat of their brows at honest labor, a comfortable competence. Our earnest wish is that their fondest hopes will be realized, and that they will soon be enabled to give aid and encouragement to the unfortunate ones who are forced by sheer poverty to remain in the stricken land from which they have so lately fled. Lend them a helping hand."
Also on August29, 1868: "Crops .- The harvest in the valley is now over, and we hear no complaint among our farmers except of bountiful crops and the distance necessary to convey their crops over- land to find a market. Cheap and rapid means of transportation is the great disideratim (sic) now, for the product is so great that the market afforded by the mining counties contiguous will not suffice. Improved navigation on our streams, and railroad communication with tide water must be an accomplished fact in a short time, for the people will no longer remain behind the balance of the world in these conveniences."
September 5, 1868: "Stockton andı Merced Railroad .- A meet- ing of the directors of this company was held last evening, and the following officers were elected: President, Dr. E. S. Holden; Vice- president, Dr. C. Grattan; Secretary, N. M. Orr; Treasurer, E. R. Stockwell; Attorney, E. S. Pillsbury. We clip the above from the Stockton Gazette. of Tuesday." The Herald then goes on to say it expects the books to be opened for stock subscriptions, and that the proposed railroad will be of great benefit to the farmers.
September 5, 1868: "The San Joaquin Settlement .- We are in- formed that that portion of the valley in this county and Fresno bordering on the San Joaquin River, continues to fill up rapidly with settlers. Large tracts of land have been purchased and people are coming in and erecting houses as fast as building materials can be procured from below. Notwithstanding that portion of the county has been permitted to lay undisturbed by the plow of the agriculturalist until the present time, unnoticed and unthought of as a farming coun- try, yet it is destined to become the most productive portion of the San Joaquin valley. The valley is so extensive, and the soil so rich, that there is no possibility of that section failing to become one of the a few years at most, the largest town or city on the San Joaquin most productive portions of the State. In that locality will be, in River or its tributaries above Stockton. Dover has a future of pros-
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perity and rapid and permanent growth that all may envy, but few will be able to rival in any agricultural country. Trade is springing up, and in a few months what was, one year ago, an open, wild prairie, will be a thriving town and densely settled surroundings. The people now settling in that locality are a thorough-going, industrious, and intelligent class, and are imbued with a spirit of improvement to an extent that all obstacles will be surmounted that lay in the way of building up their place. Persons in search of permanent homes could not do better than pay Dover a visit and examine the country depend- ent upon it for a shipping point. The State affords but few localities preferable to it for settlement, and we are pleased to see the atten- tion of the people arriving in the country directed to it."
In the issue of September 12 the editor calls attention to "our Tuolumne City advertisements." He also has this to say on the subject of fires :
"Fire .- As usual during the dry season, this summer has wit- nessed many conflagrations that have rendered houseless and home- less many who were in good circumstances, and reduced them to a condition of want. . . . " The editor recommends care about fire ; his successors have learned to make their similar recommendations at the beginning of summer.
September 19: Under the head "New Post Master," we are informed that Samuel Shears, Esq., has been made post master at Snelling, and that John S. Williams, his predecessor, remains deputy.
Going back to September 12: "Navigation Closed .- The navi- gation on the Tuolumne River above Tuolumne City has now closed for the season, leaving that place the head of navigation. We were informed while at Paradise this week, that J. D. Peters, of Stockton, was transporting his grain overland to Stockton by teams, paying seven dollars per ton freight. Bad for Peters, but good for the teamsters."
There is a good deal about Paradise and Tuolumne City in the Herald and its successor, the Argus, along in the late sixties and early seventies. Paradise was about three miles below the present highway bridge across the Tuolumne at Modesto, and Tuolumne City about nine miles-both on the Tuolumne. There is quite an exchange of journalistic compliments, in the good old manner, between Steele, of the Herald and Argus, and the editor of the Tuolumne City News. One of the matters which occasioned an exchange of shots was the case of Peter Henderson, referred to in the chapter of county boun- daries. When the courts had finally decided that seven miles down the San Joaquin from the mouth of the Merced meant that distance measured along the meanders and not in a straight line, Steele had placed himself in a position where he was badly exposed to the News
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man's guns, and he saves himself from a complete rout only by attacking the enemy vigorously on an entirely different subject.
The issue of September 26 affords this reminiscence of still ear- lier times, from an exchange, the Amador Ledger :
"Four Grizzlies Killed .- Last Sunday night, four grizzly bears were killed at Bear Valley, on the road between Silver Mountain and the Big Trees."
The issue of October 3, 1868, contains another story of immi- grants, of especial interest because it appears to have been the party which included County Recorder J. C. Ivers' family, and the county recorder himself, at a very tender age, They came, not from the East, but from Napa County. This is the story :
"They Come .- A friend from Bear Creek, who is himself a new settler in that locality, informed us on Tuesday last that fifteen fami- lies had arrived there from Napa County and formed a settlement upon that rich body of land the day previous. We are pleased to welcome them to our county, and hope they will be followed by a sufficient number of hardy industrious farmers to occupy and culti- vate every acre of land in the county. We regard the settlement of those people in this county as an excellent recommendation to our county for the richness of its soil, as they come from a county noted for the production of large quantities of grain, and the inference is that those who have migrated hither from that county are experi- enced farmers and capable of judging of the capabilities of our soil for the production of the California cereals. And too they will probably introduce among us improved methods of farming that have not heretofore been adopted by our people, and thus add still more to the prosperity of this section of the State. In this country muscle is capital, and therefore population is wealth, and we regard the acquisi- tion of population now going on as so much added to the wealth of our county."
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