USA > California > Glenn County > History of Colusa and Glenn counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 22
USA > California > Colusa County > History of Colusa and Glenn counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 22
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"This account may excite some surprise, but I will explain : nine tenths of our population are here today, and tomorrow are somewhere else. Our population is like birds of passage, except
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that their migrations are not exactly periodical. All the circum- stances which combine to make it difficult to obtain responsible and permanent county officers combine to make these officers necessary. At present ten individuals pay more than three fourths of the taxes paid in the county, and comprise nearly all of its per- manent residents. These men as a general thing reside on their ranchos, to attend to their private affairs, and are the only resi- dents of the county who are able to give the requisite bonds. At the polls the non-residents, when they unite, have the elections as they please; and the result is that transient, irresponsible per- sons are elected and bonds of a like character are filed. Last year the sovereign people elected as County Judge (who is the acceptor or rejector of all official bonds) a dissipated lawyer, who of course accepted such bonds as came to hand; and the administration of public affairs, financially, went on swimmingly for a few months- all the offices were promptly filled, bonds filed, and gin, wine and brandy bottles and glasses occupied the places of stationery. The records of the courts became unintelligible to sober people. Not a court of any kind, except Justice of the Peace Courts, was held within the county (except the Court of Sessions, and that was uniformly conducted by the Senior Jus- tice, while the presiding judge was otherwise employed).
"The property holders, as we are called here, refused to pay their taxes on the ground of the insufficiency of official honds. . . Judge resigned, and the election resulted in the choice of one of the property owners, your brother. And a further result was that legal bonds are required, which transient persons cannot procure."
According to Green's History of Colusa County, J. C. Huls, one of Ide's fellow officers during his term as judge, is authority for the following anecdote, which illustrates the versatility of Ide in discharging the duties of several offices simultaneously.
When Ide was justice of the peace in Red Bluff, previous to his election to the superior judgeship of Colusa County, a man appeared before him charged with horse-stealing. After a short preliminary hearing, Ide bound the man over to appear before the Superior Court; but before the date set for the trial Ide had been elected superior judge of Colusa County. When the prisoner was arraigned, Ide informed the accused of his right to counsel, and as there was no attorney nearer than eighty miles, volunteered to act in that capacity himself. This combination of presiding judge and counsel pleased the prisoner immensely, and he agreed to the proposition, especially as there was no district attorney to prosecute him. But Ide, it seems, in order that the sovereign people of the County of Colusa might be represented, felt called
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upon to act in that capacity also. So the trial proceeded on that basis. As the attorney for the people Ide submitted his case, taking exceptions to the evidence in behalf of the defendant, and ' then, resuming his judgeship, decided the rulings. At the close of the trial the jury were out an hour, when they returned a verdict of guilty. Ide, as judge, then addressed the prisoner at the bar in part as follows: "After a fair and impartial trial by a jury of your peers, you have been found guilty of horse-stealing, for which the penalty is death. I sentence yon to be hanged by the neck until dead, dead, dead; and may God have mercy on your soul." The prisoner was taken to Hamilton, Butte County, for safe-keeping, there to await the day of exeention. On the ap- pointed date, Ide sent the sheriff after the condemned man; but that worthy officer found only an empty cell. The Governor of the state had pardoned the man without even notifying the Colnsa County officers.
Transportation in the Early Days
With the great influx of gold-seekers to the mines, transpor- tation of supplies for them became more Incrative in many in- stances than mining, itself. The following extract from the auto- biography of Rufns Burrows, one of the pioneer settlers in the county, may be of interest, as it gives his experience in this line of business as a boy while living in the vicinity of Sacramento City. "While in this place, I made a trip with seven others for Tanner and Fowler, all having ox teams with the exception of Tanner, who was with ns; and he had horses. Loaded with freight, it took seventeen days to make a fifty-mile trip. Tanner and Fowler got a dollar and a half per pound for hauling this freight. On this trip we were mired down a good part of the time, for the roads were awfully muddy. . . .
"My stepfather bought an ox team from an emigrant and gave it to me. The best day's work I ever did in my life was with this team. I hanled one load of flour to Mormon Island, on the river just above Folsom, then a mining town. When I reached Mormon Island the man paid me in gold dust. It was a little red toy barrel level full. I had three yoke of oxen on this trip. When I started home I kept thinking about Indians, as two white men had recently been killed by them. I was only a boy, and as dark- ness came on I was afraid to camp on the road, so kept on going until I got home, arriving there at midnight. . . .
"I afterwards took the gold dust I received for this trip with me to New York, and had it coined. They gave me one hundred forty fonr dollars for it."
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Early Grain-growers
The transportation of supplies over rough, muddy roads, or in many places over no roads at all, necessitated many head of stock; and the price of hay and barley soon soared to such allur- ing figures that some of the early settlers in the county began to experiment in the raising of grain. In 1851 Isaac Sparks, R. B. Ord, George L. Pratt, Watkins, Bounds, Nelson & McClanahan, R. J. Walsh, Monroe & Williamson, Martin Reager, A. S. C. Cleek, William Swift, and Granville P. Swift had each sown considerable acreage to barley; and several of the above-mentioned men had also tried smaller patches of wheat, thus starting an industry which in the course of a few years supplanted all others and became the main source of wealth in the county.
Valuation and Population in 1852
In 1852 the assessed valuation of the county was $547,837. It may be interesting to note, in the light of present-day valuations, the inverse ratio at that time of real estate to personal property. The three largest grants, the Larkin's Children's, Jimeno, and Ide's rancho, comprising 82,670 acres of finest river land, were assessed at $1.25 per acre; hay, at $15 per ton ; wild cattle, at $12 per head; wheat at $2 per bushel; and sheep, at $8 per head. The number of poll taxes paid in 1852 was four hundred seventy -. six; but the next year there was a very marked decline in the population, and only one hundred forty-three receipts were listed.
First Legal Execution, and First County Jail
The first legal execution in Colusa County occurred in the spring of 1852. Nathaniel Bowman was convicted of murder in the first degree for killing Levi Seigler by heating him over the head with a bottle. There was no jail then, and during the trial Bowman was placed under guard at Monroeville. " After his con- viction he nearly made good his escape. In some manner he eluded the vigilance of his guard and, still shackled, hobbled to the home of Jesse Sheppard, where he begged piteously to have his irons filed off. Sheppard, however, took him back and turned him over to the authorities at Monroeville, where he was executed soon afterwards.
This episode clearly showed the necessity of having some safe place of detention for prisoners. With his characteristic resource- fulness in emergencies, William B. Ide met this situation also. He obtained some bar iron and bolts from San Francisco and fashioned a cage. This he placed in the shade of a great oak in front of the hotel in Monroeville, which did duty at that time
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as the county courthouse also. This simple expedient solved the problem until the seat of government was transferred to Colusa in 1854, whereupon Ide's cage was removed also, to continue duty as a cell in the county jail in Colusa.
While performing his official duties at Monroeville, William B. Ide contracted the smallpox, which terminated fatally on De- cember 20, 1852. By his death the county was deprived of her most public-spirited citizen, whose influence in behalf of law and order could ill be spared in such a turbulent period.
Removal of the County Seat to Colusa
The adherents of the town of Colusa as the location of the county seat drew first blood in the contest in 1851, when Charles Semple had the County Proclamation amended by the legislature by the insertion of the words "and the seat of justice shall be the town of Colusa." Nothing daunted, however, the Monroevilleites proceeded with the work of staking out lots and planning the future of their town. Monroe presented to the county judge a petition signed by ninety-five people asking that an election be held to determine the location of the county seat. The election was held, and Superior Judge Hughes signed an official document declaring Monroe's ranch the county seat, as it had received a majority of the votes cast. The Colusa faction then brought the matter up again at the next general election in 1853, when the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of Colusa. Monroeville was by that time so far outnumbered in population by Colusa that it ceased to struggle to maintain its hold. Its inhabitants settled in other localities, and the site of the town was afterwards merged into the farm purchased by Jubal Weston, Jr., in 1868.
The government of the county was now fully organized with proper officers, and the records previously kept at Monroeville were transferred to Colusa, where, during the summer of 1854, a three-thousand-dollar frame building was erected for a court- house.
CHAPTER V
ORIGIN OF PLACE NAMES. THE COMING OF THE STOCKMEN Origin of Place Names
Of all the men who were in the county, and were active in its organization and early government prior to 1853, none have left any descendants still living in the county except A. S. C. Cleek, Martin Reager, and Robert Hambright in the northern part
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of the county, and Elijah McDaniel and Mayberry Davis from the Afton district, on the east side of the river. Either the other set- tlers left the county, or their children have scattered to other parts of the state. The names of many places, valleys and streams, however., still attest their primacy.
Stony and Grindstone Creeks both derived their names from the first manufacturing industry in the county. According to General John Bidwell, Moon, Merritt, and Peter Lassen made grindstones on the banks of these creeks in 1845. The men freighted their product to the river by pack-horses, loaded the grindstones into a canoe, and peddled them at the different ranchos along the banks of the river, disposing of all their output before they reached Yerba Buena (San Francisco).
As the very earliest settlements were made along the river, most of the places which bear the names of the early pioneers are in that locality. Ord, or Ord Bend, was named from R. B. Ord, who first settled in that vicinity. Before the organization of the state government he was a Mexican alcalde, which corresponds to our justice of the peace. Ord left the county later, and finally located in Santa Barbara.
Walsh school district was so called because the site was for- merly part of the Walsh Grant, owned by R. J. Walsh. In the early fifties, Walsh was a merchant in Shasta. He shipped his supplies from San Francisco to Colusa by boat, from which point they were freighted by pack train or ox team to Shasta along the old Red Bluff Road, which followed the river. For convenience in his teaming, he established a ranch on the route, where his stock might be relayed and so rested between trips. Shortly after 1851, he gave up the mercantile business and turned his attention to the ranch and the raising of stock. Surrounding land and claims were bought up, until his holdings comprised twenty thou- sand acres. He devoted his energies to improving the cattle of that period, importing some thoroughbred shorthorn Durhams from Kentucky for that purpose. Walsh died on April 30, 1866. He had no children, and after his wife's death the property re- verted to his sister, Mrs. Chambers, and her children.
St. John takes its name from A. C. St. John, one of the early settlers in the county. He purchased a tract of land on Stony Creek, near its mouth. After the collapse of Monroe- ville's hopes of eminence by the removal of the county seat to Colusa, one corner of this tract was set apart for a town site, the post office was moved there from Monroeville, and the place was named St. John. The first marriage ceremony performed in Colusa County was that which united A. C. St. John and Miss Julia Griggsby at Princeton, in 1853. Two sons and two daugh-
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ters were the fruit of this union. After several years the family removed to San Jose, and the children are now living in San Francisco.
Swift's Point, on the Sacramento River near Hamilton City, bears the name of Granville P. Swift, already mentioned in a previous chapter. At this place the river was fordable at low water; and this crossing was much used in the early days in travel between Red Bluff and points on the east side of the lower river.
The McIntosh school district, which has recently been estab- lished, was named in honor of L. H. McIntosh, a pioneer of 1852 and at one time owner of three thousand acres of land extending from the river to a point five miles west, including the site of the present school district.
Leaving the river district, and turning to the foothills, the second belt of settlement in the county, the following places which commemorate the names of pioneers are found. Hambright Creek, which joins Stony Creek on the Greenwood place near Orland, derives its name from Robert Hambright, a Mexican War veteran. At the close of the war he came to California and engaged in stock-raising, purchasing land along the creek which still bears his name. His daughter Ida married Albert Papst, and some of their children are still living in Orland. Briscoe Creek, which rises in the Coast Range mountains and flows into Stony Creek about half a mile south of the town of Elk Creek, commemorates the name of another pioneer. Watt Briscoe and Robert Anderson settled in Green Valley and engaged in stock-raising in the later fifties. Briscoe had no descendants. Clark's Valley, nestled among the hills sonth and east of the town of Fruto, was so named because it was first settled by James Clark. His family are all dead, with the exception of one granddanghter, who is married and is living in the southern part of the state. Rising in the foothills southwest of Orland, and flowing into Willow Creek at a point two miles east of the town of Willows, is Walker Creek; named after Jeff Walker, who in the early fifties ran thousands of sheep on the low foothills and plains northwest of Germantown. Walker had one daughter, Molly, whose present whereabouts are unknown.
On account of the pancity of the county records, little can be found as to the doings and places of abode of the numerous other pioneers of the northern part of Colusa County prior to 1854. In this broad open country there was land enough for every one. A man's claim was respected by every one whether he followed the preemption law or not; and if any one wanted the same piece of land more than the original settler, he bought
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up his claim and took possession with very little formality. Even those who had proved up, and had government land patents to their lands, were very careless about recording their titles with the proper county officials; so that as late as 1868 a large per- centage of the landholders in the county were assessed by what was known as possessory titles.
The Coming of the Stockmen
By 1855 many men who had come to California during the gold excitement of 1849 and 1850 had been disappointed in the mines and turned their attention to agriculture and stock-raising, the mild climate and luxuriant wild grasses of the country sup- plying almost ideal conditions for the latter industry, which had always formed the main dependence of the Spanish Californians. Thousands of small wild cattle grazed on their vast ranches, but these were slaughtered mainly for their hides. In fact, before the discovery of gold, hides often formed the medium of ex- change between the Californians and the outside world, as tobacco did between the early colonists of Virginia. Several forty-niners, who afterward settled in what is now Glenn County, returned to Missouri and Kentucky and drove back across the plains enough fine stock to form the nucleus of their later herds. Once in California with their stock, it was not so much the question of pasturage as the finding of living water that decided their location.
Nearly all the lands along the Sacramento River were claimed either under Spanish grant or by purchase, previous to the year 1858. The following were some of the residents and landowners along the river: Mayberry Davis, who settled near the present location of Afton; Elijah MeDaniel, who located at Painters Land- ing, on the river; Joseph McVay; Bounds and Picknell; H. C. Nelson; Frank Steele, whose family still own land and reside on it at the river opposite Princeton; Levi Jefferson MeDaniel, whose ranch is now known as Carson Colony No. 1, or Baker Colony, subdivided into small farm tracts by Mr. E. R. Baker and associates; J. J. Winkler, a veteran of the Mexican War; John Price, still owning the land and residing at his original location; Isaac Sparks, who located at Jacinto, later the home of Dr. Hugh Glenn; Watkins, who settled near Jacinto in 1851; George C. Pratt and R. B. Ord, who settled at the location on the river known as Ord Bend; U. P. Monroe, who located at Mon- roeville, now the Weston Ranch; Richard Walsh, who lived on the Walsh Grant, in the vicinity of St. John; L. H. McIntosh, who owned the McIntosh Ranch; and Joseph and Michael Billiou, who resided near the present site of Hamilton City. Martin A.
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Reager and S. C. Cleek operated a hotel near St. John, on the Red Bluff road, in 1850. Later they farmed near St. John, and then took up their respective farms on Stony Creek, in the vicinity of the present city of Orland. James Ewing Mitchell located on the river. north of the present site of Hamilton City, and engaged in sheep-raising. Jubal Weston clerked in a hotel or road house at Monroeville, formerly the county seat of Colusa County, in the year 1854.
The search for water, as well as feed for their stock, led the new settlers into the foothills along the creek valleys. Claims were laid out along the courses of streams, and the range controlled by the water was fenced in by brush fences. Most of the foot- hill settlers saved their home range for winter pasturage, turning their stock out in the spring to roam the plains in common with wild game, untended save for the annual rodeo in the fall. The crossing of the imported stock, principally of Durham blood, with the native cattle gradually improved the standard of all the herds in the county. Stock-raising was the only industry of any importance in the county prior to 1870. The early miners derisively spoke of Colusa as one of the "cow counties" of the state, whichi cognomen was justly earned, and was turned into one of praise by her vast herds of improved stock.
Thousands of head of sheep were raised annually, hut fewer individuals were engaged in that branch of the stock industry. Some of the most prominent sheep-raisers were: James Ewing Mitchell, Jeff Walker, U. S. Nye, A. S. McWilliams, James Tal- bot, Patrick O'Brien, W. W. Marshall, Laban Scearce, William Murdock and Milton French. The feeling between the cattle men and sheep men, so bitter in many places in the West, never attained any degree of rancor in this vicinity.
Settlement of the Foothills
The first settlements in the foothills were made during the year 1855. A. D. Logan settled on the property which he after- wards sold to "Zink" Garnett, and which is now owned by the J. S. Garnett Company. Just west of the Garnett Ranch, James and Thomas Talbot took up the land which is still known as the Talbot Ranch. Oscar Stiles and James and S. D. Young settled north of the Garnett Ranch, and were bought out by J. R. Tiffee in 1858. This ranch was afterwards divided between his two danghters, Anna R. Safford and Theodora Tiffee Purkitt; and the two places resulting from this division are now the property of S. Stormer and W. Stormer respectively. Robert Eggleston settled just west of the ranch owned by Tiffee, and sold his ranch a few years later to a man by the name of Small, whose daughter
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Mary married Levi Welch, by whose name the place was called until it came into possession of the Nichols family. Nearly all the Small family are buried in a private cemetery on the place. Abe Musick, Jerry Schooling and Charley Brooks settled on the land purchased by U. S. Nye in 1858 and held in the possession of his family until 1916, when it was sold to H. M. Garnett. Just north of the Nye Ranch, Patrick O'Brien settled, and acquired a holding of twelve thousand acres known as the O'Brien Ranch, which is now in the possession of the Turman-Mitchell Company. In 1855, Milton French settled on the ranch known as the French Ranch, and there engaged in sheep-raising. French gradually acquired more and more land, increased his flocks of sheep, and later farmed a large acreage to grain, attaining prominence as one of the largest ranch owners and most successful stockmen of the county. J. C. and S. P. Wilson settled on the ranch known as the Marshall Ranch in 1855. Later in the same year, W. W. Marshall purchased the interests of the Wilsons and engaged in sheep-raising and farming. He was widely known as a suc- cessful farmer and owner of blooded stock. One of his race horses, Stranger, won three out of five races in the Northern Circuit in 1893. Jeff Walker settled on the ranch known as the Butte Ranch, southwest of Orland, and was one of the largest early sheep-raisers in the county. In 1858, H. B. Julian settled on the ranch known as the Julian Ranch, on Stony Creek, north- west of the present town of Fruto. Here he increased his holdings until his ranch included over nine thousand acres, on which he raised thousands of head of stock and also farmed a large acreage to grain. In 1859, I. W. Brownell purchased an eighty-acre farm on Stony Creek from the owner, Mr. Sparks. From this small beginning Mr. Brownell, by thrift and good management, grad- ually acquired the splendid property known as the Brownell Ranch. Laban Scearce, a forty-niner, filed on government land on Stony Creek, six miles northwest of Orland, in 1856, and engaged in stock-raising. The property, consisting of forty-six hundred acres, is now owned by the Scearce Company. Noah Simpson settled in African Valley on Stony Creek in 1853, near the present site of Simpson Bridge, which spans Stony Creek on the Newville-Orland road. Mr. Simpson was one of the prominent stock-raisers of the county. Robert Hambright, who has been previously mentioned, settled on the creek bearing his name, about seven miles west of Orland, during the year 1853.
In the vicinity of the site of the present town of Newville, James Flood, J. B. and Joseph James, M. Kendrick, James Kilgore, Lysander V. Cushman, Rufus G. Burrows, John Mas- terson, B. N. Scribner, James A. Shelton and George W. Millsaps
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settled previous to 1858 and 1859. These men all acquired land and became permanent settlers of that community. Their hold- ings are today owned by their estates or families. In 1853, Joseph Millsaps settled near the present site of the village of Chrome. Beginning with a three-hundred-twenty-acre ranch, he prospered in the stock-raising industry and finally became the owner of over three thousand acres of land.
Before the year 1858, the following pioneers settled in Stony Creek Valley, between the location of Elk Creek and vicinity and Stonyford : L. L. Felkner, Robert Anderson, Watt Briscoe, Wilcox, Farrish, Bowman, J. S. B. West, Jack and Dave Lett, W. E. Green and sons, W. W. and Alfred. These pioneers engaged in stock-raising. Later, through the division of their estates, these ranches were separated into smaller farms, now as prosperous as the larger ones of the early settlement days on Stony Creek.
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