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 7
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"Mr. Savage and company arrived at his camp in the night of Thursday in safety. In the meantime, as news had reached us of
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murders committed on the Fresno, we had determined to proceed to the Fresno, where the men had been murdered. Accordingly on the day following, Friday, the 20th, I left the Mariposa camp with thirty-five men, for the camp on the Fresno, to see the situation of things there, and to bury the dead. I also dispatched couriers to Agua Fria, Mariposa, and several other mining sections, hoping to concentrate a sufficient force on the Fresno to pursue the Indians into the mountains. Several small companies of men left their re- spective places of residence to join us, but being unacquainted with the country they were unable to meet us. We reached the camp on the Fresno a short time after daylight. It presented a horrid scene of savage cruelty. The Indians had destroyed everything they could not use or carry with them. The store was stripped of blankets, clothing, flour, and everything of value; the safe was broken open and rifled of its contents; the cattle, horses and mules had been run into the mountains; the murdered men had been stripped of their clothing, and lay before us filled with arrows; one of them had yet twenty perfect arrows sticking in him. A grave was prepared and the unfortunate persons interred. Our force being small, we thought it not prudent to pursue the Indians farther into the mountains, and determined to return. The Indians in that part of the country are quite numerous, and have been uniting other tribes with them for some time. On reaching our camp on the Mariposa, we learned that most of the Indians in the valley had left their villages and taken their women and children to the mountains. This is generally looked upon as a sure indication of their hostile intentions. It is feared that many of the miners in the more remote regions have already been cut off, and Agua Fria and Mariposa are hourly threatened.
"Under this state of things, I come here at the earnest solicita- tions of the people of that region, to ask such aid from the State government as will enable them to protect their persons and property. I submit these facts for your consideration, and have the honor to remain,
"Yours very respectfully, "Adam Johnston.
"To His Excellency, Peter H. Burnett."
Colonel Johnston's report had the desired effect; as a result, it was, that Burnett's successor, Governor McDougal, isued the procla- mation already mentioned, which led to the mustering in of the Mariposa Rangers.
The men on the Fresno had been killed on December 17, 1850, and buried on December 20. On January 6, 1851, Major Burney, sheriff of Mariposa County, assembled a strong posse to go in pur- suit of the Indians whom Colonel Johnston had thought too strong
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for his small party. He caught up with them on January 11. Major Burney had been elected captain of a company formed the previous May, with J. W. Riley as first lieutenant and E. Skeane as second lieutenant, and numbering seventy-four men. In a letter to Gov- ernor McDougal on January 13, 1851, Burney describes his pursuit of the Indians on the 11th. They had but few provisions, and not enough pack horses. But they marched, and the day after starting "struck a large trail of horses," writes Burney, "that had been stolen by the Indians. I sent forward James D. Savage with a small spy force, and I followed the trail with my company."
They came upon an Indian sentinel, and being discovered, rushed to the village and arrived almost as soon as the sentinel. Burney ordered the Indians to surrender; some seemed disposed to do so, but others fired on the whites. Burney's men fired and charged into the village. "We killed from forty to fifty," he says, and burned the village. Six of Burney's company were wounded, two mortally, Lieutenant Skeane and a Mr. Little. This fight seems to have been in the vicinity of Fresno Flats in the present Madera County.
The campaign was completed with a battle at "Battle Mountain," which Burney describes as "a watershed of the San Joaquin," where the whites stormed a stockade of the Indians and dispersed them.
The campaign was carried on through the early months of 1851. Major Savage, with leaders like Boling, Kuykendall, Chandler, and with Dr. Bunnell as a member of the expedition, proceeded against Chief Tenaya and chased him into Yosemite in March. His band, seemingly made up of outlaws from several tribes from both sides of the Sierras, was dispersed; and after a hard campaign, the greater part of them were brought out to a reservation which had been set aside in the lower foothills near the Fresno. A campaign was waged against the Chowchillas in the region where Burney had fought his battles, and they were finally pretty well rounded up and brought in.
Dr. Bunnell does not seem to mention what is now Merced County beyond the statement that the Indians had removed their women and children from the Valley, and the further statement that he and someone else, when the pursuit was being organized, went to Snelling's Ranch for horses, which seemingly they had at pasture there. This was in 1851. As we shall see later, the Snelling family did not arrive on the Merced River until the fall of that year. Dr. Bunnell is evidently applying a name which he knew in 1880, when he wrote, to the place they visited in 1851.
The number of Indians involved in these fights is not a thing that can be determined very exactly ; but where the number involved in any one fight is given, it does not exceed a few hundred.
We have not found where the Americans as settlers or miners came in contact with any large numbers of Indians. It is said,
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though, that previous to 1833 they were very numerous. The author of a history of Merced County published in 1881 by Elliott & Moore quotes Kit Carson as saying that in 1829 the valleys of California were full of Indians, but that when he again visited the State in 1839 they had mostly disappeared. He also quotes a Colonel Warner (Walker?) as saying "I have never read of such a general destruc- tion of a people by any angel, good or bad, or by plague or pestilence, as that which swept the valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin in the summer of 1833."
Warner (?) is quoted as saying that he traveled through the valleys in 1832 and that the Indians were much more numerous than he had ever seen on a similar area elsewhere. He describes another trip the following year, when they found whole villages wiped out or deserted by their few remaining survivors, when the dead came so far to outnumber the living that the latter could not either burn or bury the corpses. Cholera, it is said, was the terrible scourge which thus reduced the Indian population to a small remnant of its former numbers.
County Auditor S. E. Acker, who lived most of his life on the West Side of the county, informs us that there are in the vicinity of Los Banos a number of rather shallow circular excavations several yards across, which are attributed to the Indians. Whether they were perhaps where their temescals, or sweat-houses, were erected, or served some other purpose, they seem to indicate an Indian popu- lation there. Whether the population was permanent, or moved between the valley and the mountains as cold weather in the latter or floods made desirable, we can only conjecture. It is to be noticed that in the passage from Fremont's journal referring to his passage through the county in 1844, he does not mention seeing any Indians in what is now Merced County.
We have digressed from Mariposa County. The space available will not permit us to go into the history of mining in that county. Mining, with the exception of recent dredging along the Merced between Snelling and Merced Falls, hardly touches Merced County, except in the secondary sense that it was overflow from the population of miners and those who served them in the Mariposa hills who peopled early Merced.
The two counties are closely connected by several interests. Yo- semite and the roads and the railroad which lead to it furnish one of the chief. Another is in the fact that within Mariposa County lies the watershed-some thousand square miles-from which the water is collected into the Merced River, and which will shortly be impounded at the Exchequer Dam to irrigate Merced County lands. In the power developed from the streams in Mariposa County is found a third. Cattle and sheep men who range their stock in the Valley in
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Merced in the winter time drive it to the mountains, many of them in Mariposa County, in the summer. In the Mariposa mountains many inhabitants of Merced find summer recreation. The logs for the Yosemite Lumber Company's mill at Merced Falls come from the Mariposa County mountains. And in addition to these bonds of union, many of the people who have helped to make Merced came originally from Mariposa. Such names as Kocher, Olcese, Barcroft, Givens, Garibaldi, and a lot of others will readily occur to anyone who knows the two counties.
It is with reluctance that we turn from Merced's mother county with no more than such brief and inadequate mention, for it is a story by itself worthy of a volume.
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SOCIETY OF THE FUTURE. JANUARY 1, 1895
CHAPTER VI
THE FOUNDERS OF THE COUNTY
We know that Merced County was created by the Act of April 19, 1855, organized by an election held May 14 and the votes of which were canvassed May 19, and that the first board of supervisors held their first meeting at the Turner & Osborn Ranch on June 4. But anyone who is at all curious about the matter will want to know how it came about that there were here along the Merced River and the creek bottoms of the eastern part of the county in this spring of 1855 enough people to organize a new county. That is probably the most difficult question in all the county's history, at this distance in time, to attempt to answer with anything like completeness.
It is a matter of history that Stanislaus County was formed in 1854, and it is also a matter of history that an attempt was made- and failed-to include the settlements along the Merced in that county. These settlements apparently that early had a consciousness of being a separate entity. The census of 1850 gave Mariposa County 4379, and that was for the county which extended from the Coast Range to the State's eastern boundary, and from approximately the present northern line of Mariposa and Merced to the vicinity of San Bernardino. The 1860 census gave a greatly reduced Mariposa County 6243. Tulare, Merced, and Fresno had been carved off be- fore 1860; and this figure is the highest which any federal census gives to Mariposa. It is probable that her greatest population, some time in between these two censuses, must have exceeded the 1860 figure, and exceeded it a good deal. Old-timers will tell you that there were 5000 people in Agua Fria and its twin town of Carson City when these mushroom towns were in their brief prime.
How many people there were in Merced County when it was formed it is not possible to tell with exactness. So far as we have found, there was then no minimum population requirement, as there is now, for the formation of a new county. Perhaps as good a line as we can get on the population of the county at the time of its formation is to be had from the 1857 assessment roll. There were 277 names on that roll. On the 1925 roll there are 11,998. The county's population according to the federal census of 1920 was 24,576; it may perhaps be 30,000 now. If it is, that is two and a half population for each name on the assessment roll; and if we take that as a basis, we should get for the 277 names on the 1857 assessment roll a population of a little less than 700. The 1860 federal census gave Merced County
.
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1141. If the county had gained, say, 450 in the three years from 1857 to 1860, it seems likely that it may have gained 200 or 300 in the two years from 1855 to 1857; and if it had, then the population at the time of its organization would have been between 400 and 500. That is perhaps as close a conjecture as can be made now.
Whatever the exact number may have been, when did it come into the territory which came to be Merced County, and who were these few hundred founders of the county. There is, in the frag- ments we can now find of the answer to that question, more ro- mance than in anything else in the county's history; and we can find only fragments. Since the death of John Ruddle on February 1, 1925, there are alive, so far as we can find, just a dozen people who may fairly be called pioneers of the time of organization. John Rud- dle was the dean of these founders; he was ninety-four years old on October 17, 1924. The twelve now living are: Mrs. Louisa Stevin- son, of the Merced River ; Mrs. Jane Morgan, of Santa Cruz ; Henry Nelson, of Merced; Samuel L. Givens, of Bear Creek; William C. Wilson, of Le Grand; Mrs. Penelope Rogers, of Le Grand; George Powell, of Merced; Mrs. Modest Sensabaugh, of San Francisco; Mrs. Mary Buckley, of Snelling; George Barfield, of Merced; George P. Kelsey, of Berkeley; and Samuel R. Murray, of Fresno Flats.
Of these, George Powell did not actually live in the county at the time of its organization, but drove stage and was in and out of it. Mrs. Rogers just missed being in the county at the time of its organi- zation. She was on the Merced River near Merced Falls before the organization, moved into the Mariposa hills, and moved back to the vicinity of the first county seat, the Turner & Osborn ranch, the latter part of the summer of 1855. Samuel R. Murray, son of Charles Murray who had the bridge, ferry, and mill at Merced Falls, was born at that place just a little prior to the organization of the county. He lived there until he was thirty-two, and has since lived near Fresno Flats, in what is now Madera County. His son is Superior Judge Stanley Murray, Madera County. Charles Murray and his wife were of course here before 1855.
Along in 1852, 1853, and 1854, quite a large proportion of the townships of the county were surveyed; in a good many of them the section lines were surveyed within a year or so after the township lines. On these plats appear a considerable number of houses, fields, ditches, fences, and other works of man, including a number of roads. It should be understood, in reading the plats, that the object of the surveyor was primarily to show the township and section lines, and that such culture as is shown was marked where the lines ran across or near it, for the purpose of showing more clearly where the lines ran.
Taking the successive rows of townships from north to south and following them across the county from west to east, we find Township
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4 South, Range 12 East ( all of course Mount Diablo Meridian and Base Line ) surveyed, township lines in 1853 and section lines in 1854; Kirkpatrick's house in the southwest quarter of Section 2; a field in parts of 2, 3, 10, and 11; Silas Hall & Co.'s house in the southwest quarter of 13; another field near that; the Mariposa stage road pass- ing these two houses; and a trail running across from northwest to southeast. In 4/13, surveyed same time, there are Morley's house in the southwest quarter of 5, Dry Creek in the southeast corner of the township, A. Forbes' house in the southeast quarter of 34. In 4/14 are a road from Knight's Ferry to Snelling, a road from Snelling to Dry Creek, and three fields, no owners' names. Part of the township boundaries were surveyed in 1854, the balance of the survey in the sixties. The Merced River appears in the eastern part of 4/15 ; no culture.
In 5/13, surveyed in 1853 and 1854, the Merced River appears in the southern part; there are five large fields; Ruddle & Barfield's house is in the southeast quarter of the southwest quarter of 23, Eagle- son's house in the northern part of the northwest quarter of 22, D. C. Clary's house in the northeast quarter of 32, south of the river; and there are several ditches, fences, and other works of man. This township has two east of it and three west of it. In 5/10 are two roads ; in 5/11 there is a mustang corral in the northwest part of the northwest quarter of 27, near the present Cortez; and in 5/12 there is a road from "Merced to Tuolumne" running northerly and south- erly nearly across the western third, there is one other road, there is the Merced River in the southeast corner, there is Rector's fence about a quarter of a mile north of the south township line crossed by the line between sections 34 and 35, and "Neal's fence" about an eighth of a mile from the south township line crossed by the line between sections 35 and 36. All three of these townships were surveyed in 1853 and 1854. In 5 /14 the Merced River appears in the north half. On the north side of the river are Hempstead's house in the northeast quarter of 12, Rammel's house in the northwest quarter of 12, Schroeder's house in the southwest quarter of 2 (Schroeder was Peter Fee's predecessor), two fields just below the site of Snelling, another about a mile further down, W. W. Jackson's field in the southwest quarter of 18 and the northwest quarter of 19, and there are roads and ditches on both sides of the river. This township was surveyed in the fourth quarter of 1853. Going down from towards Merced Falls, 5 /15 shows Phillips' Ferry near the line between sections 3 and 4, Nelson's house on the forty line near the center of the southeast quarter of 4 on the north side of the river, Young's store on the south side of the river about a mile downstream, Young's house on the north side in the northwest of the northwest of 9, and Young's Ferry between his house and store. Wilson's house
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is on the north side of the river in section 7 about a mile and half west of Young's house. Wilson's field and another field are shown ; and the road to Fort Miller leads from Young's Ferry, and the Stockton and Mariposa road and Stockton and Mariposa turnpike lead from Phil- lips' Ferry. There is a house in the southwest quarter of 25, south of the river. The township was surveyed in 1853.
Going back to the West Side of the county again for the sixth row of townships south, 6/9 shows the San Joaquin and part of the lower Merced, the road to Hill's Ferry down the north side of the Merced, Blair & Co. (house, apparently) on the east bank of the San Joaquin in 34, Belt in the southeast quarter of 35, and Gitky in 36 about a mile up the Merced from Belt. The survey was made in 1853. In 6/10 the Merced River runs along the south side. There is the road along the north side of the river; and on the south side of the river in the Chedister Bridge vicinity are two places, apparently small houses, in the east half of 35, marked "Odon," and a little further up in the southeast quarter of 25, "Francesio Bustemento." The township was surveyed in the fourth quarter of 1853. Going on up through 6/11, we follow the river about through the middle of the township. There is a road along each side, and there is a fence in the west half of 30. No houses or fields shown. Also surveyed in fourth quarter of 1853, as was also 6/12. The latter's northwest corner is crossed by the river. On the north side of the river are "Wm. Greene and French Enclosure" in the northeast of the northeast of 7, and the enclosure of Fruit & McSwain between 4 and 5. South of the river are Neagle's fence between 7 and 18, and the enclosure of Neill & Co. between 1 and 2. Nothing but trails is shown on 6/13, surveyed in 1852 and 1853. Dry Creek, a pond, and some short stretches of road appear on 6/14. surveyed in the fourth quarter of 1853. Along the western side of 6/15 appear the Black Rascal Hills, and further east Black Rascal Creek, and near the eastern side Burns Creek. Also near the eastern side is the Fort Miller road, and in the northwest quarter of 12, "Howard," doubtless the ranch house of Captain Howard and his brother. The survey was made in late 1853 and early 1854. The road from Stockton to Fort Miller appears in 6/16, and Howell in the northeast quarter of 30, Mullan in the northwest of 29, a field and a house in the northwest of the northwest of 19, and a house in the southeast of the southeast of 32. Same date for the survey.
Orestimba Creek appears in 7/8, Peth's house in the southeast quarter of 19 on the south side of the creek, a road in 5, and a trail in 36. The east boundary of the township was surveyed in 1853, the rest of it in 1859. The San Joaquin and the mouth of the Merced appear in 7/9. Hill's Ferry is shown between 3 and 4 near their south line, with a fence, a garden, and a windmill. There are roads to Hill's Ferry from the southwest and the southeast. There is a
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pasture in the north part of 25 on the west bank of the San Joaquin. Most of the township lines were surveyed in 1853, the rest of the work in 1859. Along the south side of the Merced in 7/10 are Stone & Hammond about the west line of 6 (apparently Mahlon Stone), "Stephenson" field in the northeast quarter of 6, Lapee in the north- west of the northwest of 4, McManns in the northwest of the north- east of 4, Turner & Beaver in the southwest of the northwest of 3, with a field extending downstream, and a public road along the south side of the river. Turner is doubtless W. C. Turner, pioneer of 1852, and "Stephenson" means Stevinson. It seems to be a favorite mistake even yet to misspell the name of the particular pioneer family. It is correctly spelled with a "v" and an "i," and in view of the tendency to spell it otherwise, it may not be out of place to state that Mrs. Louisa J. Stevinson herself is authority for that. The commonest error is to change the "i" to an "e," but the more glaring error of "Stephenson" occurs in the big relief map recently installed in the ferry building at San Francisco. That applies to the town; both the name of the town and the name of the family is "Stevinson." The San Joaquin River runs nearly west in this township and there is a small house in the northwest quarter of 32 on the right bank. Most of the township lines were surveyed in 1853, part of the south and southwest in 1859 and 1870, and the section, segregation and meander lines in 1870. Nothing shows in 7/11, surveyed late in 1853. Bear Creek appears in the southeast corner of 7/12. Hadden & McFa- den's shows on the south bank in the southwest of 36. Surveyed in the fourth quarter of 1853. The creek, divided into several sloughs, appears in 7/13, and in the northwest quarter of 22 on the north side of the main creek is Richardson's. Surveyed in 1852 and 1853. This "Richardson's" was approximately three miles west of the present court house, and a little further north. On 7/14, surveyed in 1853 and 1854, where a large portion of Merced is now, appear Bear Creek and another creek and two sloughs, and there are three or four forties along the creek marked, which presumably were claimed to hold water-holes. Further up the creek in 7/15, "Cockenall's house" and field are shown in the southwest quarter of 17, on the north bank. Givens' house is in the northwest quarter of 15, on the south bank, T. Givens in the southeast quarter of 10, south bank, Reed in the northwest quarter of 12, Harrison's field in the northeast of 12. Surveyed in 1853 and 1854. The Fort Miller road and Miles Creek are shown in 7/16, a field in 16 and 17, Cunningham in the northeast of 16, Cunningham's field in the southeast of 9 and the southwest of 10, Keener (in Mariposa County) in the northwest of 10, and on Owens Creek, Owens in the southwest quarter of 23. Surveyed in 1853 and 1854.
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Going back to the West Side on the next row south, Las Garcas and Quinto Creeks appear on 8/7, and in the northern part branches of Orestimba Creek. There are two grain fields in the northwest quarter of 1; there is Hubbel's corral on Oat Gulch in the southeast quarter of 10; there are a sheep corral in the southeast of 14, another corral in the northwest of 15, Miles in the southeast of 22, Worthy's in the southeast of 23, Mrs. M. Walker in the northeast of 24, a road to Hill's Ferry down Las Garcas Creek, a cabin and two corrals in the northwest of 36, and a road from Las Garcas to Quinto Creek. The south boundary was surveyed in 1858, part of the north in 1859, the rest of the north in 1874, the remainder of the work in 1880. The next three townships going east were surveyed so largely after the organization of the county that it is hardly likely any of the culture except a road or two date back that far, and there are no works of man on 8/11. Bear and Mariposa Creeks enter the east side of 8/12, but there are no works of man. The "Mariposa River" and Owens Creek appear in 8/13, surveyed in 1852 and 1853. In 8/14 the township lines were surveyed in 1852 and 1853 and the section lines in 1854. Owens Creek runs through the northern part, the north slough of the Mariposa through near or a little north of the middle, the middle slough a mile or two further south, and the main or south slough a little south of that. On the middle slough is a house, Houghton, in the northwest of 13, and a field between 14 and 23. In the southwest of the northwest of 23, a house marked "Turner" marks the place which afterwards for a few months was the county seat. In the southwest of the southwest of 22 is Derrick. A considerable number of oak trees are shown on the middle and south sloughs. Deadman's Creek appears near the south edge of the town- ship. The next township east, 8/15, was surveyed, township lines in 1852 and 1853 and section lines in 1854. Still more oaks are shown along the "Mariposa River." Pieces of road show in the northeast quarter of 1, in the northeast of 3, and in the northwest of 6. Along the north side of the main or south branch of the Mariposa are houses as follows : Lovejoy in the southwest of 18, Cooper in the southwest of 17, Rogers in the northeast of 15, Fitzhugh in the southeast of 11, Vance in the northwest of 13. On the north side of the north branch in the southwest quarter of 9 is Swan's house. The Fort Miller road runs the northeast corner of 8/16. The township lines were surveyed in 1852 and 1853, the section lines in 1854. McDermot's house is shown just south of the Mariposa and west of the Fort Miller road in the northeast quarter of 2. Fremont's Ranch is shown on the south side of the Mariposa in the southwest of the northeast of sec- tion 10. There is a field of perhaps 25 or 30 acres in the southern portions of 16 and 17. Deadman's Creek is shown. The next town- ship east, 8/17, had its south and west boundaries surveyed in 1853,
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