USA > California > Contra Costa County > History of Contra Costa County, California, including its geography, geology, topography, climatography and description; together with a record of the Mexican grants also, incidents of pioneer life; and biographical sketches of early and prominent settlers and representative men > Part 14
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" Marshall, two or three weeks later, took the specimens below and gave them to Sutter to have them tested. Before Sutter had quite satisfied him- self 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.
" 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 satisfied 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,
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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 observa- tion 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 for- tune 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 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 over- land 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 whaling 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 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.
Early History and Settlement of Contra Costa County. 125
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 afterwards.
" 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 ex- cess with passengers, some of whom were fortunate enough, after the toil- some 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 dain- tiest dandy, if he were honest, could not resist the temptation to work were 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 dol- lar's worth of gold out of rock, or river-bed, or dry ground ; but they con- fessed 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 valué rumor multiplied according to the number of her tongues ; the talk, day and night, unceasingly and ex- clusively, '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 ne- cessary 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 behoved him who expected to gain much, to be among the earliest on the ground. When experiment was so fresh in the field, one
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theory was about as good as another. An hypothesis that lured men per- petually 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 moun- tains. 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 continue 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 con- victions 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.
1
a. Hemme
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" 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 de- part 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 ; see- ing 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, and utterly lost on the threshold of any other ; genial companions, morbidly craving after newspapers; good fellows, but short- lived."
Such was the mælstrom which dragged all into its vortex now thirty and more years ago! Now, 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 Contra Costa, for with the discovery of gold the whole world turned to- wards the mines to seek their fortunes, and as health gave way from ex- posure there, or fatigue caused the wish for a less wearying life to arise, they hied themselves unto the valleys whose fertility was now fully es- tablished, there to make homes and till farms, finer than which no coun- try 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 settle- ment, but as they were found by the parties with whom we have conversed.
1847 .- Elam Brown, Nathaniel Jones, Robinson N. Jones, Napoleon B. Smith.
1848 .- Thomas A. Brown, Warren Brown, S. J. Tennent.
1849 .- Joseph H. Smith, W. W. Smith, M. R. Barber, Alexander Boss, David Boss, William C. Prince, William Slusher, Capt. R. E. Borden, John Beemer, Henry F. Toy.
1850 .- From the list of voters in Martinez at the first election, besides a few of those mentioned above, we find the names of F. M. Warmcastle, Juan D. Silvas, Albert G. Robb, Thomas Allen, W. H. Popple, J. F. Wil- liams, Martine Berryessa, Absolom Peak, Leonard Eddy, John A. Piercall, Daniel Hunsaker, Thomas S. Dana, J. C. Booram, Angel Soto, Josiah Gor- ham, Jobn Carnes, William Hendricks, James F. Quin, José Galindo, Charles J. McIlvaine, Ira B. Stebbins, P. S. Brownell, Elijah Darling, R. S. Thomas, William T. Hendricks, H. A. Overbeck, A. T. C. Debast, Napoleon
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Degalon, Nicholas Hunsaker, James C. Hunsaker, Jos. Swanson, A. V. H. Ellis, William H. Smith, Vicente Martinez, José de J. Martinez, Theodore Kohler, Lyman A. Hastings, Joseph Rothenhausler, Howard Havens, Wm. K. Leavitt, B. R. Holliday, H. M. Holliday, William Allen, Francisco Berryessa. From other sources we hear of Leo Norris, William H. Norris, William Lynch, Howard Nichols, David Glass, John F. S. Smith, Erastus Ford, Oliver F. James, Josiah Sturges, B. Hoffman, Capt. Harding, Dr. George Lawrence, Samuel Russel, H. H. Hartley, the Bodfish family, J. C. McMaster, Capt. George W. Kimball, S. P. Kimball, Mr. Marshal and son, Mr. Dennison, Dea- con John Pulsifer, Dr. Joseph Pulsifer, O. A. Olmstead, Dr. H. M. Smith.
1851 .- John Davis, Daniel Seeley, John P. Chrisman, Samuel Moore, William E. Whitney, Samuel Hodges, John Johnston, John R. Boyd, Abner Pearson, the Gillett Brothers, Mr. Sweetzer, Francisco Otoya, Alexander Moore, Henry Moore, J. D. Allen, Mr. Evans, John C. O'Brien, Mr. Swain.
1852 .- Joel Harlan, Antonio P. Silva, Robert R. Fuller, J. W. Gann, Mark Elliott, Randolph Wight, R. O. Baldwin, August Hemme, William Mecse, Wilson Coats, William M. Wells, Benjamin Shreve, Orris Fales, D. P. Smith, Benjamin Hodges, Felix Coats, Farmer Sanford and parents, William Hook, Philip Betz, Manuel Machado, Josiah Shafer, James Bell, William Comstock, Zelotus Reed, Carroll W. Ish, John Smith, William Chick, Henry Russell, William Mendenhall, Wade Hayes, Francis Matteson, Dr. Watts, Sylvester Degan, Isaac Russell, George W. Hammett, James H. Gorham, Edward Taynton, Mr. Kirker, Asa Bowen, Frank Lightson, Frank Such, the Strode family.
1853 .- Milo J. Hough, James T. Walker, John L. Labaree, Cornelius Garely, George W. Yoakum, Dr. Samuel Adams, Solomon P. Davis, Charles V. Smith, Richard Mills, David F. McClellan, Isaac Smith, Charles N. Wight, Charles J. Pramberg, Jeremiah Morgan, John Baker, William W. Cox, Will- iam Z. Stone, Samuel S. Bacon, Richard R. Hall, George S. Potwin, Hiram P. Hardy, John W. Jones, Smith Ashley, Frederick Babbe, Robert G. Dean, Alonzo Plumley, James Stewart, Henry M. Hollenbeck, Edwin W. Hiller, B. F. Merle, John B. Smith, David P. Mahan, Lawrence Geary, Socrates Huff, L. C. Wittenmyer, B. Alcorn, Jones, Lane and Beemer, David Hodge, Isaac Hunsaker, Wesley Bradley, Ira True, Dr. Turner, Richard Ferguson, Andrew Inman, Daniel Inman, Isaac N. B. Mitchell, John Mitchell, James M. Thomson, John McDonald, H. Lock, James Henderson, Frank Somers, Ezra Clark, George Clark, Charles Clark, G. W. Brown, Mr. Wescott, Dr. E. F. Hough, Mr. Penniman, Mr. Seymour, Myron and John Gibson, Robert McPherson, the Smith family, Mr. Marble, Ben. Hockabout, Hank, Henry and John Davis, Mr. Vandermark, Mr. Barnheisel, Ed. Legrand, Ambrose and James Toomey, Majors Allen and Loring, Quartermaster's Department, U. S. A., on what was called the Government Ranch, Mr. Bishop, Mr. Van Ryder, Mr. Hilshin, J. H. Johnson, Charles L. Bird, G. L. Walrath.
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Early History and Settlement of Contra Costa County. 129
1854 .- Gardner M. Bryant, Manuel G. Aguiar, Jesse H. Williams, Ber- nardo Fernandez, Joshua Bollinger, M. Cohen, James M. Stone, Martin Woolbert, Calisto Navas, Theodore Downing, John H. Haseltine, Solomon Newberger, H. C. F. Dohrman, Francisco Galindo, Col. W. W. Gift, William Southard, Ellis Flynn, Jackson Gann, Wilson Gann, John Courter, Jack Allen, Edward Curry, George and David Meacham, John Merrill, William Brown (a preacher), Samuel Hilstrom, Newton, Asa, Simeon and Philo Woodruff, John Serf, M. Wertheimer, Mr. Knowles, John and Robert Ken- nedy, Capt. James Gill, Timothy Ingles, Mr. Isham, Major and William Dowling, Ira Graver, Walter Mills, Captain Black.
1855 .- Thomas Flournoy, William B. Rogers, William B. May, George W. Hauxhurst, Munson Gregory, Barnes Holloway, Austin Dorman, James Curry, Edwin Morgan, Simon Blum, W. A. J. Gift, Franklin Hostetter, David Carrick, Philip Sage, John Johnston, James McNeil, Joshua Marsh, John H. Weber, T. C. Finney, James Clark, Henry and Peleg Briggs, David Goodale, Henry Benson, John Wilcox, Mr Peck, John Galvin.
1856 .- Peter Lynch, Martin Homburg, Nicholas Kirkwood, M. W. Hall, D. N. Sherburne, Charles E. and Nathaniel S. Howard, Albert Sherburne, Thomas Z. Witten, Justin M. Goodale, Homer S. Shuey, Alpheus Rich- ardson, William Morgan, Michael Lawless, Mathew Mulcahy, James Mc- Harry, Azro Rumrill, Dr. Carothers, Charles Rhine, the Stranahan Brothers.
1857 .- Andrew Abrott, John Nicholl, William R. Forman, Walter Ren- wick, James Gay, Daniel S. Carpenter, William H. Dukes, Joseph Wiley, John Larkey, Thomas Johnson, Thomas Litchfield, Commodore B. Notting- ham, George P. Loucks, James Foster, Daniel R. McPherson, R. B. Hatha- way, George Betz, Augustine Barrao, Michael Kearny, Phillip Hermann, William H. Martin, Weatherby & Poole, John Proviso.
1858 .- John C. Peterson, Charles Close, Frederick L. Hamburg, Albert W. Stone, Syranus Standish, Thomas W. Sturges, George Cople, Ferdinand Hoffman, John Sproll, M. B. Ivory, James F. Harding, Frank Webb, David S. Woodruff, Joseph Boyd, Michael Kirsch, William Ellis, John G. Chase, Christian Hoffman, Andrew Portman.
1859 .- Daniel Clancy, William Newman, G. H. Scammon, John A. Shuey, Thomas B. Jenkins, George M. Frazer, Seeley J. Bennett, Peter Thomson, S. W. Johnson (who passed through the county in 1846), Henry M. Hale, J. A. Littlefield, Henry Blume, William Krieger, Rev. David Mc- Clure, Ransome Woods, Solomon Perkins, John Gibson, Christian Leeming.
1860 .- James M. Stow, Henry Polley, David G. Bartnett, William Rice, William Gilchrist, John S. Moore, Ludwig Anderson, Frederick Wolf, Thos. P. Tormey.
The first town to be laid out within what are now the confines of Contra Costa county was that of Martinez, the second was New York of the Pa- cific. . Histories of both these places will be found within these pages,
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History of Contra Costa County.
therefore it will not be necessary to enter into the details of their founda- tion here; suffice it to say that they were both surveyed in the year 1849. Let us rather proceed at once to the year 1858, when the Contra Costa Gazette was established, and from its pages cull what matters of interest there may be which do not especially belong to the history of any of the townships into which the county is now divided.
On September 18, 1858, the first number of that periodical was issued with the promise that it should be published every Saturday morning in the village of Martinez, the proprietors being W. B. Soule & Co. In the por- tions devoted to advertisements we find that E. H. Bryan, L. H. Hastings, A. Hersey, J. W. Sanborn, S. Blum & Brother, and E. Lasar were all estab- lished in business on Main street; the Alhambra Hotel and Restaurant flourished at Park place, and was then, as it is now, conducted by Josiah Sturges. A livery stable was run by James C. Hunsaker and John M. Rountree, while Charles A. Ruggles, M. D., signified his desire to see patients at the office of Captain Sylvanus Swain. The Morgan House was at that time in possession of George F. Worth, while Dr. John Tennent had his drug store between Main street Bridge and the Alhambra Hotel. It will thus be inferred that Martinez in the first ten years of its existence had become a place of some pretensions, while, from the report of the Superintendent of Schools, published in the month of December, we learn there were twelve hundred and ninety-one children in the county, but only three hundred and fifty-eight of them attended the public schools.
The knowledge of the existence of the baser metals was possessed by the pioneers of California, while the wonderful wealth which has trans- formed the wilderness into a garden and decaying pueblos into commercial cities, was sleeping in our hills and ravines. But with this knowledge there existed a great anxiety lest the mineral upon which the value of all the others depended should not be found in our soil.
Without coal it was perceived by the early founders of the State, the rich and extensive mines of iron, lead and copper which they knew abounded in our mountains, would be next to valueless. Accordingly, while the earliest adventurers after precious metals were following up the search, which began on the discovery of gold at Coloma, the more practical and really far-seeing explorers were looking for ledges on our Coast Range. Though they were rewarded by the most hopeful signs, and in more than one instance, by actual demonstration, that their search had been success- ful, it was reserved for a period when the discovery of coal could be turned practically to advantage, to make known the value and abundance of its supply ; and it will be remembered in after years as among the earliest fruits of the geological survey of the State, that it developed the existence of coal-beds in our mountain-ranges, the importance of which can scarcely be estimated.
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In the Contra Costa Gazette of December 11, 1858, we find that Messrs. Rountree, Walker and Dickson discovered coal on November 24, 1858, about half way between the base of Mount Diablo and Antioch, and distant from the River San Joaquin about five miles. This was situated nearly two miles from the vein discovered by Mr. Israel. It would thus appear that this discovery of Mr. W. C. Israel was made during that year, and the manner of his finding the vein was while cleaning out a spring on his land at Horse Haven, six miles south of Antioch. In connection with his father and brother George, he opened the vein for a short distance, but not having capital to work it, they disposed of their interest to James T. Watkins and - Noyes, who, either from want of knowledge or capital, failed in open- ing the vein so as to make the working of it successful. They abandoned the mine in 1861, since when it has not been opened. On December 22, 1859, about three miles and a half from Horse Haven, Frank Somers and James T. Cruikshank discovered the vein of coal which has since become so well known as the Black Diamond vein. Somers, Cruikshank and their asso- ciates, H. S. Hauxhurst and Samuel Adams, located the lands which were afterwards known as the Manhattan and Eureka Coal Mines. George Hauxhurst, George H. P. and William Henderson, in company with Frank Somers, opened the cropping of the same vein, on what was afterwards known as the Black Diamond and Cumberland mines; but, believing that the expense of making roads was beyond their means, they made no at- tempt to secure title. The Black Diamond Mine was shortly after located by Noah Norton, and the Cumberland then went into the hands of Frank Such and others. Those lands, with others adjoining, have since become noted as the Black Diamond Coal Mines. Frank Such disposed of his in- terest in the Cumberland Mine to C. T. Cutler, Asher Tyler, Josiah Sturges and L. C. Wittenmyer, all of Martinez. It was from their efforts and means that the Cumberland Mine was successfully opened and worked, and roads constructed from it to the town of Clayton and New York Landing. They also assisted Noah Norton to open the Black Diamond Mines. The Pitts- burg Mine, east of the Eureka, and towards Horse Haven, was located by George H. P. Henderson, who entered into a contract with Ezra Clark to open the mine, in the opening of which the vein of coal known as the Clark vein was discovered. The Central Coal Mine, east of the Pittsburg, was located by John E. Wright. The year following, William B. Stewart be- came connected with it. The Union Mine, north of the Manhattan, was located by George Hauxhurst. The Independence Mine, north of the Eu- reka, was purchased from Major Richard Charnock by Greenhood and Newbauer. The Empire Company opened in 1876. They have a magnifi- cent vein of coal. It is six miles south of Antioch, and within three-fourths of a mile of the first opening made on the coal veins by the Israels. Open- ings on the veins from that mine to the Brentwood Coal Company's works,
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