History of Alameda County, California : including its geology, topography, soil, and productions, Part 16

Author: Munro-Fraser, J. P
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Oakland, Calif. : M.W. Wood
Number of Pages: 1206

USA > California > Alameda County > History of Alameda County, California : including its geology, topography, soil, and productions > Part 16

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Who does not think of '48 with feelings almost akin to inspiration ?

The year 1848 is one wherein was reached the nearest attainment of the discovery of the philosopher's stone which it has been the lot of Christendom to witness. On Jan- uary 19th, gold was discovered at Coloma, on the American River, and the most unbe- lieving and cold-blooded were, by the middle of spring, irretrievably bound in its fascina- ting meshes. The wonder is the discovery was not made earlier. Immigrants, settlers, hunters, practical miners, scientific exploring parties had camped on, settled in, hunted through, dug in and ransacked the region, yet never found it; the discovery was entirely accidental. Franklin Tuthill, in his "History of California," tells the story in these words: " Captain Sutter had contracted with James W. Marshall in Septem- ber, 1847, for the construction of a saw-mill in Coloma. In the course of the winter a dam and race were made, but when the water was let in the tail-race was too narrow. To widen and deepen it, Marshall let in a strong current of water directly to the race, which bore a large body of mud and gravel to the foot.

"On the 19th of January, 1848, Marshall observed some glittering particles in the race, which he was curious enough to examine. He called five carpenters on the mill to see them; but though they talked over the possibility of its being gold, the vision did not inflame them. Peter L. Weimar claims that he was with Marshall when the first piece of 'yellow stuff' was picked up. It was a pebble weighing six penny- weights and eleven grains. Marshall gave it to Mrs. Weimar, and asked her to boil it in saleratus water and see what came of it. As she was making soap at the time, she pitched it into the soap kettle. About twenty-four hours afterward it was fished out and found all the brighter for its boiling.

" Marshall, two or three weeks later, took the specimens below and gave them to Sutter to have them tested. Before Sutter had quite satisfied himself as to their nature, he went up to the mill, and, with Marshall, made a treaty with the Indians, buying of them their titles to the region round about, for a certain amount of goods. There was an effort made to keep the secret inside the little circle that knew it, but it soon leaked out. They had many misgivings and much discussion whether they were not making themselves ridiculous; yet by common consent all began to hunt, though with no great spirit, for the 'yellow stuff' that might prove such a prize.

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"In February, one of the party went to Yerba Buena, taking some of the dust with him. Fortunately he stumbled upon Isaac Humphrey, an old Georgian gold miner, who, at the first look at the specimens, said they were gold, and the diggings must be rich. Humphrey tried to induce some of his friends to go up with him to the mill, but they thought it a crazy expedition, and left him to go alone. He reached there on the 7th of March. A few were hunting for gold, but rather lazily, and the work on the mill went on as usual. Next day he began ' prospecting,' and soon satis- fied himself that he had struck a rich placer. He made a rocker, and then commenced work in earnest.

" A few days later, a Frenchman, Baptiste, formerly a miner in Mexico, left the lumber he was sawing for Sutter at Weber's, ten miles east of Coloma, and came to the mill. He agreed with Humphrey that the region was rich, and, like him, took to the pan and rocker. These two men were the competent, practical teachers of the crowd that flocked in to see how they did it. The lesson was easy, the process simple. An hour's observation fitted the least experienced for working to advantage."

Slowly and surely, however, did these discoveries creep into the minds of those at home and abroad; the whole civilized world was set agog with the startling news from the shores of the Pacific. Young and old were seized with the California fever; high and low, rich and poor, were infected by it; the prospect was altogether too gorgeous to contemplate. Why, they could actually pick up a fortune for the seeking it! Positive affluence was within the grasp of the weakest; the very coast was shining with the bright metal, which could be obtained by picking it out with a knife.

Says Tuthill: "Before such considerations as these, the conservatism of the most stable bent. Men of small means, whose tastes inclined them to keep out of all hazardous schemes and uncertain enterprises, thought they saw duty beckoning them around the Horn, or across the plains. In many a family circle, where nothing but the strictest economy could make the two ends of the year meet, there were long and anxious consultations, which resulted in selling off a piece of the homestead or the woodland, or the choicest of the stock, to fit out one sturdy representative to make a fortune for the family. Hundreds of farms were mortgaged to buy tickets for the land of gold. Some insured their lives and pledged their policies for an outfit. The wild boy was packed off hopefully. The black sheep of the flock was dismissed with a blessing, and the forlorn hope that, with a change of skies, there might be a change of manners. The stay of the happy household said, 'Good-bye, but only for a year or two,' to his charge. Unhappy husbands availed themselves cheerfully of this cheap and reputable method of divorce, trusting to time to mend or mar matters in their absence. Here was a chance to begin life anew. Whoever had begun it badly, or made slow headway on the right course, might start again in a region where fortune had not learned to coquette with and dupe her wooers.

" The adventurers generally formed companies, expecting to go overland or by sea to the mines, and to dissolve partnership only after a first trial of luck, together in the 'diggings.' In the Eastern and Middle States they would buy up an old whal- ing ship, just ready to be condemned to the wreckers, put in a cargo of such stuff as they must need themselves, and provisions, tools, or goods that must be sure to bring returns enough to make the venture profitable. Of course, the whole fleet rushing

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EARLY HISTORY AND SETTLEMENT.

together through the Golden Gate, made most of these ventures profitless, even when the guess was happy as to the kind of supplies needed by the Californians. It can hardly be believed what sieves of ships started, and how many of them actually made the voyage. Little river-steamers, that had scarcely tasted salt-water before, were fitted out to thread the Straits of Magellan, and these were welcomed to the bays and rivers of California, whose waters some of them plowed and vexed busily for years after- wards.

" Then steamers, as well as all manner of sailing vessels, began to be advertised to run to the Isthmus; and they generally went crowded to excess with passengers, some of whom were fortunate enough, after the toilsome ascent of the Chagres River, and the descent either on mules or on foot to Panama, not to be detained more than a month waiting for craft that had rounded the Horn, and by which they were ticketed to proceed to San Francisco. But hundreds broke down under the horrors of the voyage in the steerage; contracted on the Isthmus the low typhoid fevers incident to tropical marshy regions, and died.

" The overland emigrants, unless they came too late in the season to the Sierras, seldom suffered as much, as they had no great variation of climate on their route. They had this advantage too, that the mines lay at the end of their long road; while the sea-faring, when they landed, had still' a weary journey before them. Few tarried longer at San Francisco than was necessary to learn how utterly useless were the patent mining contrivances they had brought, and to replace them with pick and shovel, pan and cradle. If any one found himself destitute of funds to go farther, there was work enough to raise them by. Labor was honorable; and the daintiest dandy, if he were honest, could not resist the temptation to work where wages were high, pay so prompt, and employers so flush.

" There were not lacking in San Francisco, grumblers who had tried the mines and satisfied themselves that it cost a dollar's worth of sweat and time, and living exclusively on bacon, beans, and 'slap-jacks,' to pick a dollar's worth of gold out of rock, or river-bed, or dry ground; but they confessed that the good luck which they never enjoyed, abode with others. Then the display of dust, slugs, and bars of gold in the public gambling places; the sight of men arriving every day freighted with belts full, which they parted with so freely, as men only can when they have got it easily; the testimony of the miniature rocks; the solid nuggets brought down from above every few days, whose size and value rumor multiplied according to the number of her tongues; the talk, day and night, unceasingly and exclusively, 'gold, easy to get and hard to hold,' inflamed all new-comers with the desire to hurry on and share the chances. They chafed at the necessary detentions; they nervously feared that all would be gone before they should arrive.

"The prevalent impression was that the placers would give out in a year or two. Then it behooved him who expected to gain much, to be among the earliest on the ground. When experiment was so fresh in the field, one theory was about as good as another. An hypothesis that lured men perpetually further up the gorges of the foot-hills, and to explore the cañons of the mountains, was this: that the gold which had been found in the beds of rivers, or in gulches through which streams once ran, must have been washed down from the places of original deposit further up the mount-

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HISTORY OF ALAMEDA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.

ains. The higher up the gold-hunter went, the nearer he approached the source of supply.

" To reach the mines from San Francisco, the course lay up San Pablo and Suisun Bays, and the Sacramento-not then, as now, a yellow, muddy stream, but a river pellucid and deep-to the landing for Sutter's Fort; and they who made the voyage in sailing vessels thought Mount Diablo significantly named, so long it kept their company and swung its shadows over their path. From Sutter's the most common route was across the broad, fertile valley to the foot-hills, and up the American or some one of its tributaries; or, ascending the Sacramento to the Feather and the Yuba, the company staked off a claim, pitched its tent or constructed a cabin, and set up its rocker, or began to oust the river from a portion of its bed. Good luck might hold the impatient adventurers for a whole season on one bar; bad luck scattered them always farther up. * * * *

" Roads sought the mining camps, which did not stop to study roads. Traders came in to supply the camps, and not very fast, but still to some extent; mechanics and farmers to supply both traders and miners. So, as if by magic, within a year or two after the rush began, the map of the country was written thick with the names of settlements.

" Some of these were the nuclei of towns that now flourish and promise to con- tinue as long as the State is peopled. Others, in districts where the placers were soon exhausted, were deserted almost as hastily as they were begun, and now no traces remain of them except the short chimney-stack, the broken surface of the ground, heaps of cobble-stones, rotten, half-buried sluice-boxes, empty whisky bottles, scattered playing cards and rusty cans.

"The 'Fall of '49 and Spring of '50,' is the era of California history which the pioneer always speaks of with warmth. It was the free and easy age when everybody was flush, and fortunes, if not in the palm, were only just beyond the grasp of all. Men lived chiefly in tents, or in cabins scarcely more durable, and behaved themselves like a generation of bachelors. The family was beyond the mountains; the restraints of society had not yet arrived. Men threw off the masks they had lived behind, and appeared out in their true character. A few did not discharge the consciences and convictions they had brought with them. More rollicked in a perfect freedom from those bonds which good men cheerfully assume in settled society for the good of the greater number. Some afterwards resumed their temperate and steady habits, but hosts were wrecked before the period of their license expired.

" Very rarely did men on their arrival in the country begin to work at their old trade or profession. To the mines first. If fortune favored, they soon quit for more congenial employments. If she frowned, they might depart disgusted, if they were able; but oftener, from sheer inability to leave the business, they kept on, drifting from bar to bar, living fast, reckless, improvident, half-civilized lives; comparatively rich to-day, poor to-morrow; tormented with rheumatisms and agues, remembering dimly the joys of the old homestead; nearly weaned from the friends at home, who, because they were never heard from, soon became like dead men in their memory; seeing little of women, and nothing of churches; self-reliant, yet satisfied that there was nowhere any 'show' for them; full of enterprise in the direct line of their business

Week

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and utterly lost on the threshold of any other; genial companions, morbidly craving after newspapers; good fellows, but short-lived."

Such was the maelstrom which dragged all into its vortex now thirty and more years ago! Almost the entire generation of pioneer miners who remained in that business have passed away, and the survivors feel like men who are lost, and old before their time, among the new-comers, who may be just as old, but lack their long, strange chapter of adventures.

We will now attempt to give the names of those gentlemen who settled in Ala- meda, for, with the discovery of gold, the whole world turned towards the mines to seek their fortunes, and as health gave way from exposure there, or fatigue caused the wish for a less wearying life to arise, they hied themselves unto the valleys whose fertility was now fully established, there to make homes and till farms, finer than which no 'country in the world can claim. Of course many names are omitted, not from any fault on our part, but rather from the fact that treacherous memory remembers them not; the dates are not so much those of their actual settlement, but as they were found by the parties with whom we have conversed.

1847 .- Perry Morrison, William Morrison, Earl Marshall.

1848 .- Simeon Stivers.

1849 .- Peter T. Wilson, John F. Frese, George May, E. L. Beard, William P. Abbey, Thomas Goodale (or Goodall), Thomas W. Mulford, A. R. Biggs, Moses Weeks, E. M. Smith, W. C. Smith, Steve Smith, Robert Smith, - Solomon, Socrates Huff, C. Winton, and two Frenchmen on the Encinal named De Pachier and Le Maitre.

1850 .- N. Greene Patterson, Jacob Patterson, Edson Adams, E. R. Carpentier, A. J. Moon, A. Marier, Robert S. Farrelly, William Tyson, Robert F. Patton, Will- iam Patton, Edward Patton, Calvin Valpey, Moses Chase, Ephraim Dyer, Gideon Aughinbaugh, H. C. Smith, W. W. Chipman, John L. Beard, H. G. Ellsworth, Ed. Niehaus, - Coombs, Joseph Nicholls, Origin Mowry and two brothers, John Neil, Zachariah Cheney, Charles Hanyon, L. P. Gates, John L. Wilson, John Threlfall, John Sweetser, Captain Bond, - - Chamberlin, James Hawley, Jeremiah Fallon, Captain Roberts, Michael Murray.

1851 .- John W. Kottinger, Robert Blacow, Antonio Fonte, William Hayes, William C. Blackwood, Hiram Davis, Augustus Johnson, James B. Larue, - Parker, M. Segrist, - Dean, John J. Riser, - - Fuller and son, George W. Pat- terson, Dr. B. F. Hibbard, George W. Bond, - Parfait, Capt. S. Larkin, Joshua Wauhab, William M. Liston, Lewis C. Smith, Christian P. Hansen, Henry Smith, A. M. Church, Capt. John Chisholm, Doctor Buckland, Captain Richardson, Captain Nowell, John Wilson, Edward Carroll, - Wright, Thomas Mclaughlin, Charles Ray, - Strickland, "The Scotch Boys," John Johnson.

1852 .- James Beazell, Charles Hadsell, Calvin J. Stevens, F. K. Shattuck, N. J. Overacker, John Hall, Joseph Freeman, Isaac Freeman, Duncan Cameron, George Gaskins, Peter Olsen, D. A. Plummer, John W. Jamison, Louis Ettablow, Alexander Allen, Rev. W. Taylor, Harvey Taylor, Liberty Perham, Rev. A. H. Myers, Richard Threlfall, Henry Curtner, Daniel M. Sanborn, John T. Stevenson, E. S. Allen, - Finch, Joseph Ralph, Joseph Worrell, Joel Russell, - Scribner, George Simpson,

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HISTORY OF ALAMEDA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.

Joseph Scott, Victor W. Nuttman, Samuel Murdoch, Thomas W. Millard, Isaac M. Long, William Barry, - Tompkins, George M. Walters, H. K. W. Clarke, Nathan- iel L. Babb, Edward Ross, Howard Overacker, Emery Munyan, Garrett S. Norris, Peter J. Campbell, William H. Cockefair, Edward Chauncey, WV. Param.

1853 .- James Hutchison, Cornelius Mohr, Thomas B. Smith, Michael Overacker, William W. Mckenzie, John D. Brower, Joseph Dieves, Franklin Pancoast, William Newcomb, Henry Rogers, Capt. F. C. Coggeshall, Russell M. Rogers, Henry Smyth, Mason, George S. Myers, H. A. Wickware, N. W. Palmer, Tim. Hauschildt, H. S. Barlow, David S. Smalley, Captain Miller, Frank Frietes, Hermann Eggers, John C. Whipple, Joseph F. Black, John McRae, J. S. Munoz, Jarel T. Walker, Luther E. Osgood, John Blacow, Farley B. Granger, John Proctor, James Emerson,, John Buchanan, Abraham Harris, McWilliams, William Ogden, - Trueworthy, Edward F. Burdick, Ebenezer Healey, John Whitman, J. West Martin, James W. Dougherty, Doctor Kampf, E. Clawiter, Christian Butsow, Lewis Brady, - King, . Isaac Frank, - Peterson, Chris. Anderson, William Oatman, C. P. Hansen, Joseph De Mount, J. F. Elliott, John Huff, William Mahoney, E. D. Mann, Emmerson T. Crane, Leonard Stone, Rev. H. Durant.

1854 .- H. H. C. Barlow, Col. Jack Hays, Richard T. Pope, Simon Zimmerman, Andrew J. McLeod, H. Hampel, John Mathew, Joseph B. Marlin, Joseph H. Taylor, Frederick Schweer, Jacob Schilling, John Taylor, Henry Dusterberry, William Wales, Z. D. Cheney, Silvester P. Harvey, William H. Mack, Michael Ryan, August Heyer, August May, Elijah Foster, William Morgan, - Bain, Ezra Decoto, D. S. Lancey; and from the accompanying list furnished to us we find there were the following " squatters ' in this year, all the signatures being genuine: W. R. Richardson, F. Pancoast, Fred. S. Smith, James Ford, A. Moon, Chas. W. Evans, Anthony Perry, John Howlett, Hiram A. Wickware, E. Saillot, H. K. W. Clarke, J. S. Tubbs, G. W. Gaskins, Lemoine Fréres, W. L. Johnson, Aaron A. Ferguson, Felix Byrne, Murdock Nicholson, Michael Trombly, Lecomte Jean Jules, James F. Barnwell, H. L. Leffingwell, Samuel Chase, John Hagan, Rufus C. Vose, William Lunt, Laren Coburn, Jonathan Mulkey, C. H. Regné, Jona- than L. Marshall, Duncan Cameron, Henry C. Clark, Thomas Wheeler, William Shelly, Alphonse Gonnet, George Carpenter, A. Marier, Edson Adams, A. W. Barrell, A. Staples, Sargent Kelly, H. A. Brown, Moore & Chester, J. Miller O'Meara, Arthur Mathews, L. Hughes, Thos. Beale, Anto. Vidal, Louis Lamréi, A. François Xavier, Homer Horton, Alfred H. Osborn, John D. Brower, George Mahan, - Rudsdale, John McCorkey, F. P. Keefer, John Trendt, William Harwood, J. W. Cronkheite, C. Alexander Petersen, William Tullock, James Jamison, G. W. Parsons, John Chisholm, Seth K. Bailey, Frederick Van Horn, Jonathan Wells, William Ortman, George Heinsld, E. H. Keakley, John Huff, John J. Hardy, John B. Lock, William Perkins, George C. Wickware, B. F. Simms, Henry Bohlman, R. Christensen, O. F. Fay, George Fay, Darwin D. Mann, Patrick McDonald, Augustus Johnson, N. H. Wray, William F. Miller, Franklin Wray, William Watts, Peter Johnson, John Sturgis, R S. Farrelly, R. T. King, Jacob Eversen, Riley H. Gragg, Samuel E. Spusling, E. A. Hawley, F. Maillot, B. Phillips, E. Clawiter, Christian Anderson, A. H. Smith, A. Ringle, Jr., James Beletsen, Calvin James, C .. Shoe, Jerry Beeday, J. A. Hobart, L. LaGrange, George H. Everett, I. Sanford, George Mason, C. Shaw, W. L. Johnson, Samuel Moore, J. E. Otter, Daniel Tichnor, Charles Goodrich, John Bowman.

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1855 .- William M. Card, Hiram Bailey, Edward Hoskins, Abraham C. Brown, Peter Mathews, James Linfoot, Josiah H. Brickell, Joseph Graham, Richard Barron, Philip Thorn, William H. Healey, Frank Heare, James Taylor, -- Hirschfeldter, Robert Gilmore, I. B. Haines.

1856 .- Conrad Liese, Thomas Rafferty, John Lynch, Edmund Jones, William Knox, Otis Hall, Frederick Wrede, John Wille, Ferdinand Schultz, A. B. Montross, James A. Brewer, James Shinn, Henry F. Nebas, Comfort Healey, M. G. Higgins, - Deveney, John Martin, Dan. McMillan, Charles Stuzel, Frederick D. Arff, Die- drich Pestdorf, Edward Murphy.

1857 .- John N. English, W. T. Lemon, E. H. Dyer, Howard S. Jarvis, Walter Baker, George W. Peacock, James Sinclair, Samuel K. Brown, Lewis Knox, Samuel Merritt, Andrew Peterson.

1858 .- Maas Lueders, Hugh B. McAvoy, Edward Newland, Hiram Tubbs, Thomas W. Morgan, Bernard McAvoy, Joseph S. Emery, W. H. Miller, William Gibbons, Antonio Bardellini, John Green.

1859 .- Adam Fath, Samuel Milbury, Jeremiah Callaghan, James Moffitt, Watkin W. Wynn, William Owen, James J. Stokes, David H. Beck.

1860 .- Lysander Stone, William Meek, Columbus R. Lewis, H. Remillard, N. D. Dutcher, John W. Clark, Jacob F. Meyers, John Decoto, Adolphus Decoto, Nicholas Bergmann, Edwin A. Richmond, Jonathan E. Healey.

1861 .- William M. Mendenhall, Daniel M. Teeter, W. W. Moore, Capt. Thomas Badger, Frederick Brustgrun, A. P. Rose, Israel Horton, Judge Nye.

1862 .- O. W. Owen, Duncan Sinclair, A. W. Schafer, Ivan J. Tifoche.

1863 .- John Booken, Amos S. Bangs, Hugh Bankhead, F. D. Hinds, J. A. Bilz, Alson S. Clark, Solomon Ehrman, B. T. Clough, Jacob Teeters, William Whittner, Doctor Goucher.

1864 .- Dr. I. N. Mark, William B. Smith, Ives Scoville, Diedrich Buhsen, J. A. Rose, O. Whipple, Michael Rogan, Adam A. Overacker, - Powell, Manuel Fereira.

1865 .- Frederick Rose, Charles Rose, Martin Mendenhall, Peter Pumyea, W. B. Ingersoll, A. G. Lawrie, Capt. A. Milton, E. B. Renshaw, M. W. Dixon, F. C. Jarvis, Hugh Dougherty, Peter McKeany, C. A. Plummer.

In our township histories will be found all that is of interest appertaining to them, therefore we will spare the reader the infliction of repetition. The history of the city of Oakland which was first incorporated as a town, will be found fully given in its proper place. Its existence began before Alameda County was; indeed the same may be said of the other places in the county. In 1853 the Legislature created from out of Contra Costa and Santa Clara Counties, that of Alameda, and soon the official machinery was set in motion, the facts of which will be found in our Legislative history.

It will be curious in a general way to state the appearance of Alameda County in 1851. In that year of grace the triumvirate, Horace W. Carpentier, A. J. Moon, and Edson Adams appear on the scene and commenced their operations where now stands Oakland. Moses Chase and the Patten Brothers made their home where we now have that portion of East Oakland then called Clinton; the San Antonio red- woods were resounding to the noise of hundreds of axes and tens of saw-mills 'and

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pits. Between there and the mission no residence was to be found save those of two or three Mexican rancheros. Where San Leandro now is the Estudillo family held dominant sway. An Indian rancheria occupied the locality of San Lorenzo; Haywards was the home of Guillermo Castro; behind the hills, José Maria Amador was lord and master; a howling wilderness was what has since become Mount Eden; what has now developed into New Haven was then the embarcadero for the mission; there were a very few settlers about Centreville; at Washington Corners, John M. Homer was alone; at the mission, Henry C. Smith had succeeded Chamberlin in his store, while there were a few foreign settlers and many natives; the famous Warm Springs were as yet an undiscovered boon to iany but a few Indians and Californians, and the old chief Morgiana had still around him a few retainers; Suñol Valley was inhabited by a few of that name; Pleasanton, then called Alisal, had the Bernals and John W. Kottinger; and in Livermore Valley the little Englishman, Robert Livermore, was " monarch of all he surveyed." In that year James B. Larue had taken the first step towards found- ing the town of San Antonio, while many were the eager and hungry eyes that longed for so fair an inheritance. In the following year Chipman and Aughinbaugh laid out the town of Alameda; landings were established on all the creeks where a boat could float; in Brooklyn Township we had that of Damon and Clark; at San Lorenzo, Capt. John Chisholm and William Roberts were erecting warehouses; near San Leandro Moses Wicks, T. W. Mulford, Minor and William Smith, made a landing whence they shipped game to San Francisco; and last came that horde of squatters who located on every available piece of land.

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History of Alameda County, California : including its geology, topography, soil, and productions, Part 16

Author: Munro-Fraser, J. P Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Oakland, Calif. : M.W. Wood Number of Pages: 1206

Author: Munro-Fraser, J. P
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Oakland, Calif. : M.W. Wood
Number of Pages: 1206