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 21
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The West Side, when Mr. Stockton arrived, was a country of a few large stock ranches for cattle and sheep, as the big grants would indicate. Back in the hills on the east slope of the Diablo Range, there was a population, he estimates, of 400 or 500 people of Spanish or Mexican blood. They appear to have lived on ranchitos and to
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have kept a few head of stock, including of course the ever necessary saddle horses, raising, we may imagine, their frijoles and chilis, getting their wood and their venison from the country, and finding employ- ment in season at the rodeos and sheep-shearings on the large ranchos. There were some very large families of them: the Alvarados, up near the head of Los Banos Creek, had nineteen children. and there were the Soto, Pio, Gonzales, and Merino families, to name only a few.
An idea of the American population of the section may be gained from the fact that when the trial of Granice for the killing of Madden was going on at the county seat in 1875, "there were ninety of us here," as Mr. Stockton relates, "on the venire, and that was just about all the men on the West Side who were elegible to jury duty. The total was probably about six times that." i
The road across the Pacheco Pass was a toll-road in 1872, and continued so for two or three years later. Bell. of Bell's Station, owned it. He turned in his road for about a third interest in a new toll-road over the pass.
Old Los Banos was several miles from the present town. It was about a mile and half from the present Volta, west of the railroad; and when the railroad came, some of the buildings were moved down to Volta. About half a mile from old Los Banos was the rival me- tropolis known as Dogtown.
The original Dos Palos (referring to the two poles, sticks, or trees from which the place took its name) was further south than the Merced line, in Fresno County, down towards Firebaugh's Ferry. Dos Palos Colony, in fact, was first established in Fresno County. It was just about the beginning of the nineties when Henry Miller established Dos Palos Colony there. When the land proved poor, Miller packed the colonists up, bag and baggage, and moved them to the present Dos Palos Colony.
There was Hill's Ferry on the San Joaquin at the mouth of the Merced: there was Firebaugh's Ferry; there was Chester (one may see the residence and ferry of G. W. Dickenson there in the 1881 history ) ; and Dover had lived out its brief life, begun in July. 1868, and was gone by 1872. The Cottonwood vicinity had already been given that name, and included the present site of Gustine.
The years 1870 and 1871 were both dry years. A settler had taken up 160 acres at the junction of the San Joaquin River and Fresno Slough. A man from San Francisco bought him out. The site had immense strategic value as the necessary head of a canal. and the San Francisco man had conceived the idea of digging one. At this time Isaac Friedlander, a Jew. of San Francisco, and William S. Chapman, had bought up all the government land they could in the San Joaquin Valley. Chapman's name makes its first appearance in
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Book "A" of Patents in the records of Merced County, in 1868. Friedlander was the first man who shipped San Joaquin Valley wheat to Liverpool from San Francisco. They pronounced it as good wheat as was grown in any country. Friedlander sent to England for the best engineer to be had, and a man named Brereton was sent out. Brereton made a trip up the San Joaquin Valley, and went back and made a wonderful report. He recommended building the old canal -the lower one- and also a larger canal, from Tulare Lake, which was never built. On the strength of his report a company of ten men was formed in San Francisco, capitalized at a million shares at a dollar a share. Henry Miller was one of the ten. They gave the man at the canal head 100,000 shares of non-assessable stock for his land and water rights. They built the lower canal in 1871 as far as Los Banos.
In the record dry year of 1877 Miller was absent in Germany. On his return he found that his partners, under pressure of the short- age, had shut off the water from his land. He equipped himself with an axe, took a Greaser with him, and went up and chopped down the gates. Three warrants were issued for his arrest; but by the time they could be placed in the hands of Sheriff Meany and be served, Miller had bought a controlling interest in the canal.
In 1878 he built the canal on down to Newman, or rather to where Newman was afterwards to be. Concerning this extension Mr. Stock- ton says that he saw the country settle up and unsettle twice. During Cleveland's administration, in 1896, a lot of railroad land which had been held for a line over towards Hollister which was never built, was forfeited to the Government and thrown open to settlement. Water, or rather the shortage of it, was the great problem of the settlers. The settlers held a mass-meeting, and Stockton and another settler were appointed a committee to interview Henry Miller. He promised to build them a canal, but made the condition that there should be no land speculation. The canal was completed, and a celebration was held on May Day, which was Miller's birthday. One of these May Day celebrations had been held earlier, probably in 1877, when Miller seems to have thought it proper to throw open a warehouse for a dance after an officious hireling had refused it to the settlers. The May Day celebration became an established custom, and is still a big day at Los Banos.
The outside canal was not built until much later-about 1894- and the railroad had been built by that time.
Charles W. Smith came to California from Illinois in 1866, at the age of twenty, and to Merced County in 1874. He has lived on his present home ranch at Badger Flat, about three miles north of Los Banos, since 1878. Mrs. Smith was a daughter of M. F. Robinson. She was born at Napa. Her father came to the West Side in 1869.
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The house where Mr. and Mrs. Smith now live enjoys the very rare distinction of having had the golden weddings of a mother and daughter both celebrated in it. On September 30, 1924, Mr. and Mrs. Smith celebrated the fiftieth anniversay of their wedding, and thirty- three years earlier, in 1891, Mrs. Smith's father and mother cele- brated theirs.
Mr. Smith worked for Henry Miller for three or four years after his arrival in 1874. It was in 1875, at the San Luis camp, that he entered Miller's employ. Miller had a fence from Hill's Ferry to Firebaugh. The Santa Rita Ranch was Miller's pride.
Mr. Smith relates that when he settled on his present place in 1878, there were but three settlers on the way to Newman-Knight, Hardman, and one other. There were four Knight families, some back from the road. A man named Jordan was the original patentee of Mr. Smith's place. Others who were there when Smith came to this place or shortly after were Jeffers, "Billy" Stockton, Bernard Ne- gra (who came in 1880), Joe Cirimele (who is still living), and Uriah Wood. When Mr. Smith settled on this place he could go straight from his own fence corner to Hill's Ferry, twenty miles, without a fence to stop him or turn him aside.
Uriah Wood entered seven sections just south of Smith. Wood secured this land by beating Henry Miller in an exciting race to the land office at Stockton; he gave the ferryman five dollars, it is said, to hold the ferry boat on the east side of the San Joaquin at San Joaquin City until Wood could be sure of start enough to reach Stock- ton first. The seven sections, says Mr. Smith, cost Wood about forty- five cents an acre. Wood did some farming on this land .
There were two Portuguese settlers on the West Side when Smith came, Caton and Silva. They were both sheep men.
In 1878 old Los Banos and Hill's Ferry were the only West Side towns. At Hill's Ferry there were two stores, Newman's and Kahn's. A man named Charles Harris had a lumber yard at Hill's Ferry. There was a school there, called the Orestimba School. There was also a Cottonwood School when Mr. and Mrs. Smith settled on their ranch. At Los Banos, Mose Korn had a store, and Harry Thornton a hotel and saloon. There was also a blacksmith shop. In all, there were about a dozen people. Thornton, Mr. Smith says, was there as early as 1874, perhaps earlier. Dogtown was about the same size as Los Banos. Adolph Whitman owned the store there. The two towns were about half a mile apart. Dogtown didn't start up much until they put the canal in, about 1876.
The canal was finished down to Los Banos Creek in 1874. In 1878 it was finished to Newman. The outside canal was built just a
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short time before the railroad. As bearing upon the water supply, Mr. Smith states that 1924 was the first year since he has been on this place when he did not have water enough.
Mr. Smith estimates that when he arrived there were probably not over two hundred people on the West Side, exclusive of Miller's men, though probably more, with them.
The place where the Dos Palos colonists were first located was old Shingletown, between Ora Loma and the San Joaquin River, in Fresno County, from which, as has already been said, they were moved further north into this county when it was found that the land at the original location was not good.
A Merced County man was once a candidate for President of the United States, but unquestionably the man whose career has left the greatest mark on the history of the county was Henry Miller. The Presidential candidate was P. D. Wigginton, who ran on the American ticket in 1884, when Cleveland was elected on the Democratic ticket, and when Blaine ran on the Republican, and John P. St. John of Kansas on the Prohibition and Benjamin F. Butler on the Greenback ticket. We may dismiss Wigginton's candidacy with this brief state- ment, but Miller has left a mark that calls for further notice.
Miller was born in Brackenheim, Wurtemburg, on July 21, 1827, it is said. That appears to dispose of the story that they celebrate Miller's birthday when they hold their May Day festival annually on the West Side-at least that they celebrate it on the anniversay of his birth. Miller arrived in New York when he was fourteen, and among the early jobs he had was one turning a sausage machine, which may possibly be said to have been the first step towards his becoming the future cattle baron of California. At any rate we find that by the time he was eighteen he had a butcher business of his own in New York, in which he employed a hundred men and ran a boat out to schooners in the harbor to supply them with meat. He had made $30,000 by the time he was eighteen, and he then closed out his busi- ness and returned to Germany. But he left the Fatherland shortly to avoid military service, and two years later turns up at Panama, where he is in some business, just what does not appear, with a partner. Panama fever and bad management on the part of the partner led to his settling up this business; and young Miller found himself with a ticket to California, $5 in money, and a cane which his weakened condition made necessary. He landed in San Francisco in 1850 with his $5 and his walking-stick, and went down the street asking at each place of business he came to for employment. One of the exceedingly temporary jobs which he seems always to have remembered with distaste was one at washing dishes ; but he soon got work at a butcher's -it is said he came to a place where there were men needed to skin a
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lot of lambs, and that he made $14 that day. He soon had a shop of his own, and then several shops.
And now begins his contact with the San Joaquin Valley. He went down into this country to buy cattle, and drove them to San Francisco for slaughter. He, became well acquainted with cattle- raisers. In 1857 he went through the whole cattle country south to Tehachapi and secured options on all the fat beef. Charles Lux was one of several large wholesale butchers in San Francisco at that time. When Lux's buyers learned of Miller's options, Miller was able to make such terms with Lux that he was taken in as a full partner; and thus began the partnership out of which the present corporation grew. That corporation has figured large in the history of Merced County. We think of it now as confined almost entirely to the West Side, with the exception of some lands on the east bank of the San Joaquin; but the driving energy of Henry Miller in his prime extended his activities at least to include the East Side, and if he did not own land, he at least bought and sold and shipped here. Oldtimers tell us how, at various livery stables, he had his particular team reserved for his use when he should require it. In the period of close to twenty years between the building of the Central Pacific on the East Side and the railroad on the West Side he made much use of the former.
On the West Side many elements of a growing legend group them- selves about his name. They tell you how his keen eye never over- looked so much as an empty barley sack out of place. Any loose end of unfinished business was like a challenge to him. You will hear of his sending a man a mile to pick up some trifle. C. W. Smith relates that when he was in Miller's employment before 1878, Miller once sent him pretty much the length of the Santa Rita at night with two dollars for some man to whom it was due. S. C. Cornett tells how Mr. Miller came into the company's store at Firebaugh, trailed by several workless men; ordered the storekeeper to give one a shirt, another a pair of pants, another shoes, and so on; and then, when the job was done, asked "How much it it?" and paid for it out of his own pocket. There was very little trouble about carelessly or malici- ously set fires, gates left open, or any similar ranch troubles on his places. What was picturesquely known as "the dirty plate route" was long an established institution on all the ranches of the company, and men who "packed their blankets" from one ranch house to another always sure of something to eat, at the second table. There were were some whose small orbits hardly extended beyond the company's ranches in this and the adjoining counties.
We have already noticed how Miller & Lux in 1866 secured a decree quieting title to the Santa Rita. In the early records of deeds we learn that William Dunphey and Thomas Hildreth on May 22,
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1863, for $10,000, deeded to Henry Miller and Charles Lux two square leagues, being the southeast portion of the Rancho Sanjon de Santa Rita, which the deed recites were reserved by Fancisco Sobranes in a sale to Manuel Castro. We also find a deed of November 8, 1861, by Manuel and Juan Bautista Castro of the County of San Francisco to Valentine Alviso of the County of Alameda, quit-claiming all the Castros' interest in the Santa Rita. It will be recalled that this Alviso was the one defendant in Miller & Lux's action to quiet title who did not default, and that he stipulated that the decree might be entered, so that we may reasonably assume they bought him out.
From Hildreth & Hildreth, Miller & Lux acquired one of the largest cattle businesses in the San Joaquin Valley and the "H H" brand, which is still theirs. The land now owned by Miller & Lux in Merced County includes a great deal besides the Santa Rita and the Orestimba ; these two great ranches, with their 46,000 and 10,000 acres respectively in the county, constitute hardly a third of the com- pany's Merced land.
W. J. Stockton, from his acquaintance with Henry Miller dating from 1872, has conceived a great admiration for him, and is well qualified to speak about Miller and about pioneer times on the West Side. The following is a talk which Mr. Stockton delivered before the Lions' Club at Merced late in 1924, and it gives such a vivid picture that we print it in full :
EARLY DAYS IN MERCED COUNTY AND MY PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF HENRY MILLER
"Ingersoll once said, 'The reason that Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt, was to keep that interesting event fresh in the minds of the people.' As for looking backward, if I had been turned into a pillar of salt on every occasion, I would be able to start some salt works by this time.
"A few years ago we held a meeting of the Pioneers of this county. Everyone that had been here forty years, who had come here of his own volition, was eligible. I was one of the youngest men in that crowd. They called on me for a speech. I talked for a while, pleasing them the best I could. Next day I was talking to Tommy Hall, and he said, 'Bill, you're a great talker, aren't you?' I said, 'Well, I don't know; they had some lawyers and preachers there who were really good speakers.' 'Well,' he said, 'they didn't have anything on you- you just talked a blue streak, didn't you Bill?' Then he said, 'Say, really Bill, didn't you have a shot or two?' I hope none of you will think that I have patronized a bottlegger to-day.
"My friends, I must say I feel flattered for your invitation to address you today. When anyone reaches my time of life, it is
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natural for them to look back, and if the 'big I' comes to the front you need not be surprised. Of course many of the things I was per- sonally interested in are not so interesting to the public. My father lived in half the counties in the State. First in Sonoma, and Marin, then in Nevada, Colusa, San Benito and Santa Cruz, where I was married.
"I settled in Los Banos fifty-two years ago, where I served the 'dear people' in one capacity or another for twenty years, and I am still a school trustee.
"When I first came to Los Banos, I hauled timber across the old Toll Road from Gilroy to build me a house. It took me about a week to haul one load-and such a road! Sometimes we used to tie a log on to the back of the wagon with a rope to act as a brake, the road was so steep. The stage ran through to Visalia three times a week. Sometimes there were storms in the mountains, and high water would delay them, so we would not get our mail for several days. Harry Thornton used to say, jovially, that we had 'tri'-weekly stages. They went over one week and 'tried' to get back the next.
"Those pioneers ! What men and women they were! And their elections ! Oh, my ! I remember them ! There were during one election, three fights over one negro, and then he only got $5 for his vote. The county was made up mostly of men from the South-nothing, of course, but Democrats. I remember a Mr. Davis was running for the Senate from Stanislaus County. He was a Democrat, and had no opponent ; it was no use to try to oppose him. Some of the men around town put up a negro bootblack that had a stand at the old El Capitan Hotel. Then they went around to some of the old-time Democrats, and told them that Davis would surely be elected, but they would like for them to vote for Hiram Smith, who was running on the Republican ticket-said he was a personal friend of theirs, and they wanted him to get enough votes to make a fair showing. By this method, the bootblack got about seventy votes. Then the men who were responsible for his campaign would go around to the old-timers and say, 'You're a hell of a Democrat to vote for a Republican, and a damn nigger at that!' Mad? I should say so!
"Mr. A. J. Meany was the first Democrat I ever voted for. There were two Democrats running; so I voted for him. He was a man of pleasing personality, a good fellow, generous and warm-hearted, and at that time was one of the most popular men I had ever known.
"The next election I remember particularly, was a so-called 'High License' election. It split both the old parties wide open, and what an election it was! I remember Mr. Breckenridge was district attorney at that time, a man of the most pleasing personality-would be no- ticed anywhere and everywhere in any company. He coined the term
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'Anti-Saloon,' which has gone everywhere. The man who preached his funeral sermon said of his oratory, that he could reach the higher notes with a skill that is seldom equalled and never excelled. Brecken- ridge and one of our old farmers out here in pioneer days, by the name of Brouse, were talking over the political situation. Mr. Breck- enridge had travelled the 'primrose path' some. Mr. Brouse said he didn't see any sense in anybody going into saloons. He said he had never drunk whiskey, nor smoked, had never sworn, gambled, nor chased after the ladies. Breckenridge said, 'Shake, old man, I've done them all !' I myself, as supervisor, had a very warm time over it at home. I didn't have much trouble in Merced, nor with the saloon men themselves anywhere. Los Banos at that time was considered kind of a tough place, but I was young and husky, and the saloon men themselves didn't bother me, but some of their hangers-on wanted to fight with me every day. I couldn't pass a corner but what some of them would say something to me-call me names, etc.
"There was a young fellow who had just come to town that I knew, who was a prize-fighter, and in fact he had come in on purpose to get a fight. It was not, however, generally known about town. One day I said to him, 'Bill, what will you take to lick about half a dozen men for me?' He said, 'About $5 each.' I said, 'Bill, will you lick five of them for $20?' He said 'Sure.' 'Well,' I said, 'there goes one now; you try your hand on him, and see what you can do.' He followed the big fellow into Fred Bonillas' saloon. Pretty soon I saw him come out backward with the bully following him-three or four men were holding on to him and advising Bill to get away while he had a chance. He said, 'Turn the big stiff loose; he couldn't lick a baby.' He tore at Bill and made a big swipe at him with his fist. Bill delivered one sharp blow in the solar plexus and the fight was over. They picked the fellow up, poured water on him, and after a while he came to, raised up, and asked, 'Did I lick him ?' They told him, 'Not to hurt anything.'
"Next morning I went into town. They said that the justice of the peace wanted to see me, that Bill Bryan had gotten drunk the night before and had beaten three or four fellows up. I went down to the Justice Court. The judge was a friend of mine, in fact I had helped materially in making him justice of the peace. He asked me, 'What do you want me to do with him?' I told him that I wanted him to be sentenced to leave town for three days, as there was a fel- low up in the Bonanza District who was going to lick all the High License men there were up there, and I wanted Bill to go up there and meet him. I didn't see Bill for about a week, and when I met him, both eyes were black, his lips were cut, and he looked as if he had been run through a threshing machine. I asked him what was the
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matter. He said, 'That last man you sent me up against was a $10 man.'
"I often wonder if people really know what poverty is. A few of the experiences of my pioneer days will introduce it. During the Cleveland administration there was a lot of land thrown open to settlement, and everybody, high or low, rich or poor, went out and took up a quarter section of land, myself included. I took my wife and little girl, some blankets and a little grub, and we went out and camped on the claim. My wife stayed out there on the plains and we camped until Sunday. Then I built a house. All we had to contend with on the plains were coyotes, rattlesnakes, skunks, horn toads, grasshoppers and kangaroo rats, north winds and dry years.
"I planted grain out there on the plains until I got so poor I didn't have a friend in the world. Going to work I would go a mile and a half out of my way to keep from meeting a man to whom I owed a couple of dollars, who needed it as badly as I did. After it seemed that I had lived there beyond all hope, I used to gulp about three times before I could ask a man to trust me for four bits' worth of beans. My wife put an old sock in a knot-hole, and fastened it with a tack. The North wind blew it so that it waved in the air, and looked just like a foot. It used to sing a song of poverty and desolation. When it seemed things had gotten so bad that I couldn't stand any more, and I could feel the hungry wolves of poverty snapping at my heels, a man came along and said, 'How are you getting along, Mr. Stockton?' I said, 'Poor enough.' Then he said to me, 'Mr. Stockton, I am going to dig a canal right out there.' Talk about the voices of angels, the music of an Aeolian harp; think about the first time your sweetheart let you kiss her, kind of by accident-it was absolutely nothing compared to those words!
"Then he told me, 'You can have all the credit you want at my store. I'll help you and you help me.' We had a public meeting, about fifty of us, and of course we resolved that we had to have some water. The whole business of us couldn't have raised $10,000 to save our lives. No bank would have loaned it to us-been foolish if they had. I told them what Miller had done for the people at Hill's Ferry; maybe he could do something for us. He went to work and dug us a canal 40 miles long, 100 feet wide, and filled it full of water, and told us to go to it; and there wasn't a man who owned a piece of land as big as my hat that he didn't make a comparatively rich man. This brings me to the finest man I ever knew in my life.
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