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 9
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The Merced Express of April 3, 1880, published what the owners, W. P. Stoneroad & Co., say they believe to be "a complete list of the old settlers of Merced County who now [1880] reside in this county, and who came to California previous to" the admission of the State into the Union on September 9, 1850. We have no way of knowing how many of these pioneers were in this county when it was formed, except as we gather the information elsewhere. The list follows :
Aiken, William R., Mississippi Blackburn, J. C., Ohio Bennett, P. B., Ireland Bost, J. W., Mississippi Carroll, Patrick, Ireland
Chapman, Joseph, Maryland Chamberlain, A., New York
Clough, A. W., New Hampshire Cargile, Thomas B., Kentucky Chandler, R. T., Georgia
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Cox, Isom J., Tennessee Cocanour, J. B., Pennsylvania Chapman, Harry, New York Dean, T. C., Kentucky
Dickenson, Samuel, Missouri Dickenson, G. W., Missouri Dowst, W. B., Massachusetts Evans, Charles E., Louisiana Fee, Peter, Norway Griffith, Joshua, Pennsylvania Gardenhire, F., Pennsylvania Goldman, M., Prussia
Givens, E. T., Kentucky Herne, Levi, Missouri
Hulse, A. W., New York
Howell, W. L., Pennsylvania Hicks, James E., Missouri Hayes, George, Maine Huffman, C. H., Louisiana Halstead, G. W., New York Ivett, John, England
Ingalsbe, Albert, New York
Stevinson, Col. A., Kentucky Smith, Edward H., New York Scott, Samuel, Kentucky Steele, Robert J., North Carolina
Jones, J. Y., Virginia
Johnson, Thomas, Ireland Kibby, James, New York Kelsey, Erastus, New York
Thurman, M. H., Tennessee Thurman, Eli, Tennessee Turner, Nicholas, Tennessee Tyson, Ed. H., North Carolina
Turner, W. C., North Carolina
Wilson, L. P., New York
Wheat, Job, New York
Marsh, J. B., Massachusetts McErlane, Hugh, Ireland
McCreary, W. A., Alabama McFarlane, N., Tennessee
McFarlane, John L., Tennessee Nelson, William, New Hampshire Openheim, Ben., Germany Ostrander, H. J. New York O'Donnell, John, Ireland Peck, James B., New York Peak, L., Illinois Powell, George W., Texas
Russell, George, Connecticut
Rogers, G. W., New York
Robertson, J. W., Mississippi Ruddle, John, Missouri
Reynolds, Rube, Georgia Rolfe, Nelson, Virginia Stoneroad, N. B., Alabama
Spears, S. K., New York
Stevinson, James J., Missouri
Turner, George, New York
Keys, John, Virginia Kahl, Adam, Pennsylvania Larkin, Frank, New York
Leggett, T. A., New York Montgomery, J. M., Kentucky
Ward, George W., Missouri Yates, Adam, New York
Henry Nelson remembers many of these and has knowledge of quite a number of them being here when the county was formed. William R. Aiken, afterwards county assessor, he thinks was here that early. A. W. Clough was here that early. So were Isom J. Cox and J. B. Cocanour, and T. C. Dean. W. B. Dowst, father of Deputy Sheriff D. D. Dowst, now a resident of Merced, was here that early. Henry Nelson remembers that when he first came to Merced Falls in March, 1854, Mr. Dowst was the driver of the stage on which he came from Stockton. He remembers Peter Fee, but Fee was not in this county but at Mount Ophir in 1855. This is the Peter Fee, a native of Norway, who did live in this county, a
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short distance above Snelling, a little later, and whose diary we have for the years 1858 to 1862 inclusive. About W. L. Howell, Nelson remembers well that he lived on Dry Creek, and that he went to school with Mark Howell, W. L.'s son, in the fifties. James E. Hicks he thinks was here as early as 1855.
George Hayes was not in the county at the time of its organiza- tion. He was a resident on the Merced River, however, earlier. He took up a ranch on the Merced River in 1852, near Snelling. He had first come to California in August 1849. He was a native of Maine, where he was born in 1820. Soon after he took up the ranch near Snelling, his wife came out from the East, and they began keeping hotel in Mariposa. Their hotel was the Mariposa Hotel, and Henry Nelson remembers that he stayed there once as a boy, and that Mr. Hayes treated him very kindly. After living in Mariposa County until 1877, during part of which time he had charge of the county hospital there, Mr. Hayes came to Merced County and took charge of the Merced County Hospital, which was located at that time up Bear Creek from Merced.
C. H. Huffman, Mr. Nelson recalls, was not in the county when it was formed. He was in Stockton, had "the finest mules in the country," and used to haul from Stockton to Mariposa and through the southern mines.
G. W. Halstead came to a farm about a mile below Snelling in 1854. John Ivett, and Albert Ingalsbe, and also Dan Ingalsbe were here when the county was formed. The Ingalsbes came in 1854. James Kibby was here, near Merced Falls, in 1855. "We bought his place," Mr. Nelson says. "It joined us down the river. George was born there." George, son of James Kibby, who is G. W. Kibby, present county treasurer, was born, he himself says, about a mile above Snelling in 1858.
John Keys was here as early as 1855. He drove team in the early days, which was how Nelson became acquainted with him. Later he lived at Keys Grove on the San Joaquin. Frank Larkin was an early resident on Dry Creek, probably as early as 1855. McFarlane was on Dry Creek also as early as 1855. Mr. Nelson recalls this, and Mrs. John Ruddle informs us that John McFarlane was a member of the party with which her husband came out from Missouri in 1849. Mrs. Ruddle's mother was a McFarlane and Mrs. E. G. Rector was another.
Nicholas Turner was here as early as 1854 or 1855, Henry Nelson recalls. Mrs. Ruddle tells us that in 1854, when John Ruddle went back to Missouri and drove out two hundred and fifty cattle, he was accompanied to California by his brother-in-law, Pleasant Henderson, and "Pleas's" brother, Jim Henderson, and that Jim Henderson's wife was Nicholas Turner's daughter. L. P. Wilson was here as early
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as 1855. He lived on the Castle Bluff Ranch before Spears and Odel. Job Wheat was here pretty early; and George W. Ward was on Dry Creek, Nelson thinks, as early as 1855.
John Ruddle, until his death recently (February 1, 1925) the oldest of the county's living pioneers, was born October 17, 1830, and came out across the plains with an ox team from Missouri to Cali- fornia in 1849. In the party, as has been mentioned, was John Mc- Farlane. Basil Delashment was another, and still another was a man named Boatwright. 'Mr. Ruddle mined in Mariposa County in 1849. In 1852, when his parents came out from Missouri, he came down to the country below Snelling, and he and his brother Allen settled on the place known commonly in later times as the Stockird Ranch, now owned by Carlon and Silman.
Allen Ruddle was killed in 1853, supposedly by the notorious Joaquin Murietta and Three-Fingered Jack. Mrs. Ruddle tells how he remarked that he was tired of sitting on boxes, and took three yoke of cattle and a wagon and a quantity of gold, money or gold dust, and started one morning for Stockton to buy some furniture. His team came home with the wagon about dusk the same day, and the following day they found his body, with bullet holes in it, along the old road that leads up over the bluff to the north from the river bottom, about four or five miles below Snelling. The spot was - between the old Buckley stone house and a ford on Dry Creek, just about north of Hopeton. So far as we are informed, this killing of Allen Ruddle was the only murder by Joaquin Murietta in Merced County; and the evidence connecting him with that, Mrs. Ruddle states, was wholly circumstantial.
We have already told how John Ruddle returned to Missouri in 1854 and drove out a herd of two hundred and fifty cattle, and that Pleasant and Jim Henderson were members of his party on the return. The cattle were American stock, Mrs. Ruddle tells us, and she remembers how, after her arrival in 1859 (she married Mr. Ruddle in 1860), they drove up some of the cows and made butter and cheese. Her mother made the cheese, the first home-made cheese in the county, and found a ready market for it. They had ten or twelve cows to milk. It is interesting to note that in all the ninety-four pages which remain of the assessment roll of 1857, although there are thousands of cattle mentioned, only once is a "cow" mentioned. One wonders whether this indicates that cows-milk cows-were scarce, or perhaps merely that the assessor had occasion only this once to use the singular of "cattle."
Mrs. Ruddle did not come out until 1859; but her brother, William Jefferson Hardwick, called "J," came out in 1854 at the age of eighteen, in the employment of a man named McPhatridge, who drove
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
out a herd of cattle from Missouri. McPhatridge had been in Cali- fornia before. Mrs. Ruddle thinks he settled at Santa Rosa.
The Hardwick party took just two weeks short of six months to make the trip from Missouri across the plains, and they were two days and a half in crossing the Platte, where they had to go over on a raft and swim their cattle. The Indians were massacring emi- grants before and behind them, but their party was not attacked. One day they came to where there were several ox-yokes and some smoothing irons on the ground, a wisp of long light-colored hair on a sage bush, and five newly made graves. A head-board on one of the graves bore the name of one of these five murdered by the Indians-Amanda Melvina Johnson. By a strange coincidence, Mrs. Ruddle's aunt and her sister, both members of her party, both bore the name of Amanda Malvina-Mrs. E. G. Rector, and Amanda Malvina Hardwick. They wrote their names, with the date, and left them beside the dead girl's grave for other emigrants to see. The party in crossing the desert traveled a day and a night and came to an alkali water-hole, where their cattle were so thirsty that they crowded in and drank and could not be whipped away. Quite a number of them died from drinking the poisoned water. There were a lot of other cattle from other parties which had perished in the same way.
Antone Lagomarsino, a Forty-niner, who mined in Tuolumne and near Agua Fria, settled on the Merced River adjoining the Scott place, the present Cook & Dale place, in 1852, and followed the business of market-gardening. His family moved to Merced in 1878, but he himself remained on the river until his death.
John W. Morgan and Lee Hamlin built in 1852 the first flour mill on the Merced River, at the place where the mill known as the Ruddle Mill stood until only a few years ago. This was known as the Lee Hamlin Mill. Mr. Morgan and his wife, after some years, sold out on the river and moved to Santa Cruz, and Mrs. Morgan is living there now at the age of ninety. She was Jane Pitzer before her marriage, and her brother was D. K. Pitzer, the father of Mrs. William Adams of Merced.
Mrs. Sensabaugh, the widow of J. B. Sensabaugh (who was sheriff in 1865) and mother of A. T. Sensabaugh of Merced, was in her girlhood Modest Walling; she was a niece of John Ruddle, and came out to the Merced River with her mother and a party of other relatives of Mr. Ruddle at the age of twelve years, in 1854. Mrs. Sensabaugh now lives in San Francisco, and was eighty-three years of age in February of the present year (1925).
George P. Kelsey, second son of Erastus Kelsey, now living in Berkeley, presents a case to argue about, as to whether he is entitled to be called a pioneer of the county from the time of its organiza-
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tion. The act creating the county was approved April 19, 1855, the election on the organization was held on May 14, the vote on that election was canvassed on May 19, George Kelsey was born on May 25, and the first meeting of the board of supervisors and the first court were held on June 4, all in 1855. Charles Kelsey, eldest son of Erastus Kelsey, was born before the organization of the county; he is no longer living.
In the Le Grand section live two pioneers of the days before the county was organized, Mrs. Penelope Rogers and William Cyrus Wilson. They came out in the same party in 1852, from Missouri. G. W. Rogers was Mrs. Rogers' husband. Alfred Harrell was her brother-in-law, and William Johnson was another brother-in-law, and William Johnson was W. C. Wilson's uncle. They all came in the same party. William Johnson lived on what was afterwards the Adam Kahl place. He owned part of the land where the Plainsburg cemetery now is, and built an adobe house near the site of the town. Johnson left the county, Jefferson Price thinks, in 1876, and went to Texas. He was a cattle-raiser here in this county, and his nephew, W. C. Wilson ("Billy" Wilson), worked for him.
Mrs. Rogers' family remained about a year in Los Angeles, then came to Stockton, and after a short time to Merced Falls. From Merced Falls they went in 1853 to the Elkhorn Ranch in the present Mariposa County; and in 1855 they came down to near the Turner & Osborn ranch, which that summer enjoyed its brief term as the county seat of Merced County. They did not come down until towards the latter part of the summer, and therefore were not actu- ally in the county at the exact time of its organization.
Mrs. Rogers' father was Isaac A. Ward. Ward bought a settler's right from a man named Derrick (we have already seen the name on the township plat). Ward sold to a man whose name, Mrs. Rogers recalls, was something like Atwater, and this man sold to Healy. G. W. Rogers went back to Missouri in 1853 and returned in 1854 with a bunch of cattle. He rode an iron gray horse for years that he caught out of a band.
David Eason Lewis, a pioneer of the Plainsburg section, missed being here when the county was organized by about a year ; he arrived in the county in May, 1856.
Captain Nicholas Turner settled on Mariposa Creek two and a half miles east of Plainsburg, apparently in 1854. He was born in Tennessee in 1802 and married Keziah McClure in 1826. He came to California in 1848, went back in 1851, came out again in 1853, and returned to Missouri in 1856 and drove out a band of cattle. He led several emigrant trains out from the East. His son Joseph L. Turner, born in Missouri in 1838, came out to California in 1853;
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
and presumably it was on this trip of his father that the latter brought his family out with him.
James Cunningham, born in County Londonderry, Ireland, in 1824, followed the sea a number of years. He arrived in San Fran- cisco in February, 1852, as captain of the clipper ship Canada. The crew all deserted and went to the mines. Captain Cunningham, with several months' pay unpaid, and practically "broke," became one of a party of five that went to the Yuba River. He mined there for nearly two years, but meanwhile made two trips on horseback to Mariposa County. On the first trip he located a mining claim on Mariposa Creek; on the second he found that somebody had jumped it. From Captains Smith and Renwick he bought 320 acres of land and a growing crop of barley for $1000. This appears to have been late in 1853 or early in 1854. This land was the nucleus of the present Cunningham Ranch. When Captain Cunningham arrived, his nearest neighbors were seven miles away, both on the north and on the south.
John Boyd Cocanour was one of the earliest pioneers of the county. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1813; he arrived in San Francisco August 12, 1850, by way of Panama. He spent a very short time in the mines and then went into the cattle business in what later became the eastern part of Merced County. He kept 8000 to 10,000 head of cattle during the days before the grain farmers came ; in 1872 he sold out his cattle and went to farming. He was one of the founders and stockholders of the woolen mill at Merced Falls. With J. M. Montgomery, he was amongst those who took part in the Madera lumber flume enterprise. Like Mr. Cunningham, who precedes him here, and Mr. Barfield, who follows him, he was one of the county's supervisors ; he was supervisor for fourteen years.
William J. Barfield, who was a brother-in-law of John Ruddle, a native of Georgia, was a pioneer of the county, and one of the three members of the first board of supervisors. We find "Ruddle & Barfield's House" on the township plat of Township 5 South, Range 13 East, which was surveyed in 1853 and 1854; Mr. Bar- field was established there and engaged in farming well before the county was organized. As has been said, his son, George Barfield, is also a pioneer of the county; he was born at his father's place on the Merced River in January, 1855.
Elbridge Gerry Rector was born in Tennessee in 1816. He went to Texas in 1835, served in the Mexican War, and came to Califor- nia, to Mariposa County, in 1849. In 1853 he went to farming on the Merced River. He and E. T. Givens circulated the petition for the organization of Merced County, and Mr. Rector was the county's first county clerk, and was afterwards sheriff.
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George W. Halstead, Sr., and George W. Halstead, Jr., were both pioneers of the county. The father came to the Merced River bottom in 1854 and preempted a tract of land which he farmed until 1867. George W., Jr., was thirteen when he came to the Merced River with his father. George W. Halstead, Sr., first came to Cali- fornia in 1849. He worked in the mines a year, returned East in 1850, and two years later brought his family out. They lived in Stockton until 1854.
B. F. Howell was a pioneer of 1853 and one of the organizers of the county.
John Loftus Ivett and William Penrose came to the Merced River and bought a squatter's claim to 160 acres of land for $300. Ivett was a native of England and was born in 1823. He came to the United States when he was eighteen. He was established in Wis- consin in 1851; in that year he set out for California. He came around the Horn, and from San Francisco walked with several other Englishmen to Mariposa County. Ivett and Penrose's place on the Merced River was first known as the Blue Tent, later as the Bluff Ranch.
John W. Sharp was not quite a pioneer of Merced County, but he was located at Hill's Ferry in 1855 ; he worked for a Mr. Wilson there for a number of years. He was a native of Virginia, born in 1835. After working for Wilson he worked for John McPike. In 1874 he bought a ranch of his own on Orestimba Creek, and raised sheep until 1880, and then cattle.
Harvey J. Ostrander, born in Madison County, New York, in 1825, was one of the very early pioneers of the county, and one of those most prominently identified with its history. He came to Cali- fornia in 1849 overland through Mexico; walked with a partner, driving a pack horse, from San Luis Obispo to the Tuolumne; mined there; and turned up on the Merced in the fall of 1850, took another partner, and bought and sold beef cattle for two years. In 1853 he bought a steam flour mill at Stockton and set it up on the Merced River. He was a pioneer in irrigation, and a pioneer in opening up the plains to farming. During the war he raised the Stars and Stripes on a flag-pole in his yard on his place near the Merced River, on July 4, 1862, and kept them flying during the rest of the war.
John P. Murry helped J. M. Montgomery drive out a drove of cattle from Missouri in 1853; he had come to California the previous year, and returned to Missouri with Mr. Montgomery. He remained in Montgomery's employment until 1855, and then went to Tulare County.
John L. McFarlane was a pioneer to California in 1849, to Stanislaus County in 1850, and to the Dry Creek section of Merced County in 1854. He was born in Alabama in 1826. In California
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he married Hannah Peeler, who crossed the plains from Missouri with her parents in 1854 and settled in Merced County.
John Phillips, a native of England, crossed the plains in 1849, tried mining a short time, then established Phillips' Ferry across the Merced at a point which was taken, upon the organization of Merced County, as marking the boundary between it and the parent county of Mariposa. He returned East in 1851 and brought out his family the next year and settled at the ferry.
A. W. Clough, the father of the late County Assessor A. G. Clough, was a pioneer to California in 1849, and after mining several years, followed blacksmithing at Hornitos and also at Phillips' Ferry. He married Tirza Phillips, daughter of John Phillips. Whether Mr. Clough was established at Merced Falls before the county was organ- ized is uncertain.
Charles S. Peck, born in Buffalo, New York, in 1834, came to California in 1852, following two brothers, James and John, who had come out in 1849. Frank Peck, a fourth brother, joined his brothers in 1853, on the Merced River apparently. At any rate Charles S. was there. He built the first stone building in Snelling, and we are told that he then went to Mariposa County and mined for six years and then returned East in 1859. In that year he mar- ried Adaline, daughter of Peter Cook, of Genessee County. His son, James F., was born in Buffalo in January, 1860. That spring the family returned to California and located at Snelling.
Out on Mariposa Creek near the Mariposa line were John and "Paddy" Bennett, here very early. The latter kept the Union post office, where the road from Stockton to Fort Miller crossed Mariposa Creek.
Dr. J. W. Fitzhugh was a pioneer of the county before its organ- ization. He settled with his family on Mariposa Creek. We have seen that the early survey of the townships shows his name. The place was what afterwards became the Burchell place. Henry Nelson tells of the Fitzhugh ox team bringing wheat to Nelson's mill when he was a boy. Dr. Fitzhugh was the first county judge, and it was he who held court at the first county seat. Dr. Fitzhugh was a native of Kentucky ; like many other early pioneers to the county, he came here from Missouri. He was on the Merced River near Snelling as early as 1851.
General John W. Bost, who married Dr. Fitzhugh's daughter, was born in North Carolina and came to California from Mississippi. He arrived in Merced County in 1852, while still a very young man. He held the positions of county surveyor, county clerk, assemblyman, and surveyor-general.
In the old cemetery out near the foot of the bluff above Snelling as one goes out the road to Dry Creek, there are preserved the names
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of several members of the Snelling family and a few others. The greater number of the bodies formerly interred there have been re- moved to other places of burial, and the cemetery is unfenced with the exception of the Snelling family plat. Outside of this fence are three marked graves. The names and dates on the headstones are : C. Ann Duckwall, born April, 1838, died August 8, 1859; Ricardo G. Lam- bert, native of London, died November 8, 1871, aged 42 years; and Mary Elizabeth, daughter of D. A. and N. K. Jamison, died Novem- ber 7, 1864, aged 2 years, 5 months, 1 day. Inside the fence are : Dr. J. W. Goodin, died January, 1859, aged about 35 years ; Frances C. R. Bludworth, born June 5, 1862, died April 26, 1873; Frances Bludworth, the beloved wife of Wm. N. Neil, died April 1, 1876, aged 35 years, 7 months, 9 days; William S. Snelling, died December 5, 1858, aged 37 years; Sarah A. White, died Oct. 5, 1852, aged 35 years; Charles F. Bludworth, native of La., died Dec. 7, 1869, aged 39 years; B. Snelling, native of La., died Nov. 29, 1858, aged 66 years; Abiah T. Snelling, died Oct. 10, 1853, aged 10 years and 11 months; Thomas B. Hill, born Nov. 12, 1819, died Dec. 31, 1868. There are footstones bearing the following initials : W. S. S., A. T. S., S. A. W., B. S., F. C. R. B., and C. F. B.
This Dr. J. W. Goodin was presumably one of the six men who figured in the shooting which Peter Fee so briefly chronicles : "Three men kild in Snelling." Charles F. Bludworth was the county's first sheriff; and Frances Bludworth, his wife, who afterwards married William Neil, was born a Snelling. Whether Thomas B. Hill was a pioneer we cannot tell; his headstone bears the dates of his birth and death and Masonic and Odd Fellows emblems.
Charles V. Snelling, who we presume lived later than those of his family who rest here, was the man who deeded to the county the site for its first court house and jail ; the deed stands of record among the first deeds recorded in the county. A member of the sixth genera- tion of the Snelling family in Merced County is now living in Merced, aged about two years.
CHAPTER VII
ORGANIZATION AND BOUNDARIES
An act to create the County of Merced, to define its boundaries and to provide for its organization, was passed by the legislature and approved April 19, 1855, and is as follows :
"The People of the State of California, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows :
"Section 1. There shall be formed out of the southwestern por- tion of Mariposa County a new county to be called Merced.
"Section 2. The boundary of Merced County shall be as follows : Beginning at a place on the San Joaquin River known as Converse's Ferry, thence along the main road leading to a place on the Merced River known as Phillips' Upper Ferry, thence in a straight line to the southeast corner of Stanislaus and southwest of Tuolumne coun- ties, thence along the line dividing Mariposa and Stanislaus counties to the western corner of the same, thence southeastwardly along the western boundary of Mariposa County to the corner of Tulare and said county of Mariposa, thence along the dividing line of Tulare and Mariposa counties to the road leading from Converse's Ferry on the San Joaquin river to Visalia in Tulare county, thence in a straight line to the place of beginning.
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