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 75
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After returning to San Antonio, I joined a party bound to Mexico to take part in the struggle for independence of the people of the northern part of that country, comprising the States of Cohuila, Nueva Leon, Tamaulipas
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and Chihuahua, then marshaling their forces against the Central Govern- ment. With about two hundred and thirty Texans, under the command of Colonel Jourdan, we were associated with from five hundred to one thousand Mexicans and Indians, resembling very much Falstaff's motley crowd of ragamuffins-better skilled in stealing than fighting. Interspersed with the Mexicans were a few old soldiers, but the mass was composed of vaqueros, Léperos and Mescalero Apaches-all first-rate soldiers on "retreat," either before or after the enemy; the two hundred and thirty Texans being allowed to do the fighting. General Canales was chief in command of the Federal forces-as our fellows were termed-and General Arista chief of the Central forces. The object of the Federals-as the Revolutionists termed themselves-was to restore to the several States the original sovereignty guaranteed by the Mexican Constitution of 1824, which had been changed to a Central Directory by General Santa Anna, and continued by Bustamenta, then President of Mexico, regardless of the Constitutional rights of the States. The Revolutionists, however, soon changed their plans, and declared for an independent Republic, comprising the four States mentioned, with the name of "Republica del Rio Grande," electing one "Vedauri" as President.
Like all revolutions of that unstable people, the leaders, after continu- ing a lively campaign for several months, Judas-like sold out to the Cen- tral Power for their thirty or more pieces of silver, and the poor Texans were compelled to fight their way back to the Rio Grande and into Texas, wiser if not richer men. There had been two attempts on the part of our patriot friends to deliver us over to the tender mercies of the Centrals, one at the city of Monterey on the 1st of January, 1840, and another at the town of Morales. Soon thereafter, at Monterey, I was informed that the price for which we were to be delivered was an ounce or doubloon per head. I never knew the price at Morales. As we were not parties to the contract, we fought our way out of the country, fully satisfied with our experience of Mexican patriotism. Of the many little fights of the campaign, the desperate valor of the Texans was always successful. The capture of a battery of four pieces loaded to the muzzle with can- ister, near the town of Mier on the Rio Grande, was one of the most gallant charges in modern history. Two hundred and twenty-five men charged a battery of four pieces, supported by six hundred of the flower of the Central troops. As they advanced in the open plain they were met with a shower of canister, at about two hundred yards distance, but falling to their faces at the first smoke of the priming, the discharge was measurably harmless. Rising to their feet, they dashed forward with the old Texan yell, shot down the artillery men from the already re- loaded guns, turned them upon the six hundred then in mass and in close range, when up went the white flag. We had more prisoners than we
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could guard, so had to send for our Mexicans to come from the far rear to take care of the prisoners. An amusing incident occurred in the beginning of this action :
There were in our mongrel crowd of patriots about two hundred Mes- calero Apaches, and, to make them available, Colonel Switzer, one of our men, was detailed to lead them against the enemy. Switzer gallantly advanced his command, but receiving a harmless volley at long range, every Indian deserted him, and, as they swept by us, every breach-clout fluttering in the breeze, at a two-forty trot, the Colonel followed on his white horse, crying, " Avancen ! Avancen!" being all the Spanish he knew. They continued to advance, but in the wrong direction to suit the Colonel, and as they dashed into the thickets and gulches, the dis- gusted Colonel gave up the chase of his flying soldiers, and dismounting, rejoined his old comrades in the front, and, in the subsequent charges, proved that there was one gallant man left of his regiment. Though the famous Apache appears to make a success of fighting Uncle Sam's Regu- lars in Arizona, his reputation with us was that of a first-class coward.
Returning to Texas without glory or money, I made my way to Houston with one companion. In Victoria, on the Guadaloupe, a friend gave us a three-dollar Texas red-back, worth twenty-five cents on the dollar ; with that we had to cross three ferries and make a distance of over two hundred and fifty miles through a wet, flat country. Being too proud to beg or steal, and having given my trusty rifle to a friend on the Mexican frontier, reserving my side arms only, and my companion having a Mexican scopet, or short musket, to scare off Indians only, and unfit for use, as it had no flint, we could kill no game; we consequently traveled like General Hardee's soldiers-by doubling distance at half rations. The route was full of amusing incidents, but in crossing the last ferry (a ferry was our bête noir), at the town of Richmond, on the banks of the Brazos, we feared trouble. The banks were too miry to allow our mules to reach the water for swimming, and a mule is a bad swimmer. We were told that " our kind " would be required to pay in advance, and, as we had no money, the situation was desperate. We were within forty miles of home, and the river must be crossed. I boldly called the ferry-man from the opposite bank. He was one of those trustworthy ancient privileged negroes of the olden time, known far and wide as "Old Cain," and fearing his scrutiny of our shabby plight, I allowed him no time to consider, assuming a patronizing manner in hurrying him off with his boat, plied him with a constant stream of questions, allowing scarcely time to answer till we were on the other side, when, on leaving the boat I said to him : " Uncle, I'll return soon and pay you this ferriage." He replied in a dejected tone, " Dat's wat dey all tells me," and dropping his head and looking at me from the
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corner of his eye, accompanying his words with the motion of his head. " I does spize dese poh white folks." Being amused instead of insulted, I passed out. A few days thereafter I had occasion to cross his ferry again.
My old employer, John W. Pitkin, of Houston, welcomed me back, and after the barber and tailor had finished with me, sent me to Rich- mond and vicinity to purchase several crops of cotton from the adjacent planters, my judgment of that staple being first-class. Mounted on the magnificent thoroughbred of my employer, with all the barber and tailor could do for me, I appeared at the ferry of the redoubtable Cain. In the most polite and obsequious manner, the apron of the flat was arranged to admit my entrance ; after crossing I drew out my pocket-book, displaying a large roll of bills, and desired to know what was due him-" one dollar, sah," with his hand to his hat. " But I owe you for two ferriages more." " Isn't .you mistaken, marssa ? I never seed you afore." " I'll remind you : I was riding a handsome brown mule, my companion a white one, and when I proposed to pay the ferriage on my return, your reply was that you "despised poor white folks." " I declar to God it warn't dis nigger ; I nebber talked dat way to a gentleman, in my life. 'Twas some odder nigger, shoh. I can't take dat money, marssa ; let dat miserable nigger get it hisself. You owes me de one dollar, and no mo. I never seed you afore !" Almost bursting with a desire to laugh, I pretended to believe him, and paid the one dollar only. So much for appearances. My friend, Pitkin, the following year, closed his business in Texas, and not finding employment to my taste in Houston, and having acquired strong relish for the sports and excitements of country, and frontier life in par- ticular, I began a roving existence in search of fortune and pleasure over the lovely praries of Texas-the " Beautiful," as its name signifies in the Indian tongue. In the latter part of 1842, after having disposed of a good deal of the " wild oats" of young manhood, the' fortune still non est, . and the pleasures very much mixed with pain, I found myself among strangers, "dead flat broke," and just recovering from a severe attack of malarial fever. Too proud to loaf on the generosity of the country people, and unwilling to write home for help, and thus confess my poverty, I concluded to attempt the art of agriculture as the only field of progress open to my enterprise and capital, and as "he who by the plow would . thrive, himself must either hold or drive," I began operations in my new sphere as captain, or navigator, of a pair of Texas steers attached to a plow. I had learned to steer a boat and also to manage a pair of carriage horses, but the most difficult task I ever undertook was to make a success of this last institution. The oxen appeared to recognize a " greeny " at the helm, and were in a constant state of mutiny ; the plow would plunge to the beam, then porpoise like, rise to the surface and skye to the right, then to the left, and had it not been for the natural combativeness and pluck
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of the captain, the first lesson in agriculture would have ended in a failure. But as perseverentia vincit omnia, I finally graduated as an agriculturalist, and especially as a manager of the Texas steer, through whose aid (five or six yoke of them attached to a prairie " schooner ") I ascended from the bed-rock of poverty and misery to the position of a respectable merchant.
In December, 1848, I married my first wife, then Miss Adeline Bram- lette Durham, the fourth daughter of Colonel Thomas Durham, the seventh son of John Durham, of Chappel Hill, North Carolina, and Elenora Thompson, the only daughter of William Thompson and Mary Jane McMullen, of same place. Colonel Durham was a representative man in the early settlement of Durhamville, Tennessee, Lexington, Mis- sissippi, and subsequently Central and Western Texas. The varied and exciting history of my Texas life would make a fair romance; but as history and not romance is the object of this writing, I will state that in the Spring of 1850, with my young wife, I left Texas for California, arriving in San Francisco on the steamer Tennessee, on the 20th of June. There were many incidents of the trip from New York via Panama, illus- trating the grand rush for the gold fields of California, and the trials and tribulations of that first lot of twenty modest and respectable ladies, some with their husbands and the rest under escort of friends coming to join their husbands who had preceded them.
The passage from New York to Chagres, in the steamer Philadelphia, Captain Pierson, was a pleasant one, the monotony being broken by the putting in at Jamaica, for the purpose of landing Mrs. John McDougal, wife of the Governor of California, she being dangerously sick. The Pearl of the Antilles was then a Negro Heaven-all lately enfranchized and above work. The plantain trees and fish of the bay furnished food, clothes in that warm climate being a superfluity, the free Negro really " surfeited" in the luxury of laziness. Arriving at the bay of Chagres, the sea being rough it was a trying time for ladies to disembark, leaping from the ladder at the ship's side to the small boat, and into the arms of strong men prepared to catch them as the rising wave lifted the boat to the ladder, receiving each one a genuine hug, as she fell into the arms of her catcher, no doubt beneficial to those wives coming to meet husbands and so long deprived of a good manly hug.
Arriving at the town, their modesty was shocked by the necessity of huddling with the crowd in the temporary hotels, or shelters improvised for men only, as lady passengers had been few up to that date. The private rooms for our ladies of these hotels were eight-by-ten spaces, on a common floor, divided by partitions of thin muslin or " butter cloth," the doorway to each being a curtain of the same. This shock to the modesty of pure and refined women was only a precursor to the trials of the river trip of three or four days, in dug-outs, with native negroes as
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oarsınen, in the garb of Father Adam, without so much as a fig leaf cov- ering. Such being the circumstances, each and every one of the male passengers, from the roughest to the most refined, appeared to vie with each other in delicate sympathy, rendering every possible protection to them which could have been given to their own pure mothers and sisters.
My party, consisting of my wife, then nineteen years of age, my friend, James F. Quinn, and a negro man-servant, fared somewhat better. After inspecting the room at the hotel, and leaving my wife under the guar- dianship of the gallant Major Chase, the veteran of Chapultepec fame, I started out to look for better quarters, when, with much joy, I learned that my cousin, Captain David B. Morgan, with his steamer, the Tele- graph, was moored in the river above the town. We lost no time in getting aboard his ship. Abandoned by his crew, he was keeping ship with only a cockswain and two negro boys. After remaining with him two or three days, he kindly loaned me his yawl, or gig, and the cockswain having agreed to manage the boat, procured the services of two native oarsmen, and thus we ascended to Gorgona, the natives being persuaded by the muzzle of a pistol to keep their "calsoniz," or drawers, on in the presence of ladies. Through a letter of introduction to the Alcalde of Gorgona, from my brother, (the late Col. Wm. M. Smith), I readily pro- cured a full equipment of horses, mules and peons, for the passage over the summit to Panama. After passing the summit, in advance of our baggage, we stopped at a canvas hotel for lunch and rest ; there we were told that a state of war existed between the natives and Americans at Panama, and that the natives, having been repulsed at the city walls the day before with the loss of several of their number, were mustering in force for another attack on the city. This, of course, was alarming, but not liking the looks of the landlord and his crew of New York roughs, Quinn and I concluded there was less danger in running the blockade through the native negroes, than trusting to our own countrymen of that stripe. Arriving at the outskirts of Panama, we came upon a dense pack of some three hundred mixed bloods and negroes being harangued by a tall negro apparently under great excitement, but having determined that there was less danger in forcing a passage than retreating, each of us having had some experience in fighting the warriors of Mexico, we dashed forward at a quick gallop, my wife and I in advance, Quinn next, and the colored servant in the close rear! We were then inclosed in a kind of street-way, between huts, and close up to the pack of natives. The danger was imminent, but the guarded wall of the city was in sight. My wife, mounted on a splendid animal and accustomed to the saddle, was directed to go for the gate, regardless of what might occur to the rest of the party, and to sit close to the saddle, as I expected to shoot a lane through them. At our approach the crowd opened a lane of about
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ten feet, but the orator and captain planted himself across the center, facing us, apparently intending to stop us. Cautioning my wife to hold her seat, I spurred a little forward, with pistol cocked, but concealed at my side, and when about to shoot him at the front of her horse, he stepped to one side, exclaiming, " Ah que boneta y tan galan !" (oh, how pretty and so gallant)-and we swept by, unmolested, to enter the gates and receive the hearty congratulations of our people inside at our lucky escape. Ladies, crossing the Isthmus at that time, were either transported in chairs on the backs of sturdy natives, or sat astride of the gentle mule or horse, led by a native on foot. To the contrast of all this, our " lady," with youth and a fair share of beauty, with proper riding-habit, and a gay feather in her hat, in side-saddle, on a splendid animal which she gracefully sat and controlled, was a thing of beauty, which caused the gallantry of the man to overcome his combativeness for the moment. She was the first lady to cross the Isthmus in the proper style of her countrywomen, and to that circumstance only we considered our safe passage due. There was some little skirmishing that night-the Ameri- cans, with the local police, guarding the walls through the night.
On the first of June we waded to the boats, some hundred yards from the beach, and were transported to the steamer Tennessee, off Toboga island. An incident at Acapulco on the way up where the ship stopped to coal, was a famous " mule race," in which some of California's prom- inent men figured as first-class jockeys, proving, as of old, that " the race is not always to the swift." Charlie Fairfax, Bob Post and Sam Dwinelle, wandering in the outskirts of the town, fastened on a pair of mules and immediately began racing; Charlie's mule, though much the fastest, would invariably fly the track, and being summoned by the trio to aid with counsel, I agreed with them that the slow mule would undoubtedly prove the fastest. So a race was declared, and the sporting passengers of the steamer repaired to the track to bet on the race between Bob Post and Charlie Fairfax. As expected, Charlie's mule was the favorite, but the insiders, believing in true Christian faith, that "the battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift," in meekness of spirit accommodated the friends of the fast mule by taking all the bets offered. The mules were started, and in spite of Charlie's desperate efforts, the fast mule came near winning, and if the outcome judges had not closed in a little would have come out not only ahead, but the winner of the race, to the chagrin of the insiders. But after a furious squabble another race was ordered, in which the fast mule vindicated his true character by dashing squarely out into the chapparal and leaving the race and stakes to Bob and the slow mule. Of course, Charlie was accused of throwing the race, which was indignantly repelled. We won the stakes, were all denounced as a pack of frauds, and accused of playing on the innocents.
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After remaining in San Francisco a day or two, which looked much like the camping ground of an army, with white tents covering the sur- face where now its finest edifices are erected, we embarked on the sloop Sweetheart for Martinez, the expectant city of the Straits, where we were kindly received by Aug. Van Horn Ellis, the agent and town clerk of the embryo city, he kindly yielding to myself and wife his comfortable quar- ters adjoining his office, taking our meals at the Hotel de Steward, kept by a colored man and retired ship's cook by name of William Jones. Steward furnished his table bountifully with hard-tack, pork, beans and beef ; potatoes, onions and vegetables were not then provided to any extent in Contra Costa county, and consequently were a rare luxury in the early history of Martinez. The population was truly a mixed one, the Nantucketers and Pikers being in the ascendency, and though as totally different in habits, customs and vernacular as is possible for people of one common country to be, yet as harmonious as doves, the Pikers furnishing their aristocracy with the titles of Squires, Judges and Colonels, while the Nantucketers were nearly all Captains-a preference for " flapjacks and bacon " on the part of the former, and " hard-tack and codfish " that of the latter, being the principal distinction. The public institutions were the aforesaid Hotel de Steward; two stores, one kept by J. C. Boorham, and the other by Theodore Kohler; the Alcalde's office, presided over by Thomas A. Brown, with Nathaniel Jones as Alguazil or Sheriff; and the ferry scow, commanded by Judge Hunsaker. Benicia, on the opposite shore, was another embryo city, already possess- ing a good start, with the United States navy yard, barracks and custom- house, and with the machine shops, dry docks and iron foundry, to be erected by the Pacific Mail Company at Fisherman's Cove, on the Mar- tinez side, the ground having been tendered by Colonel William M. Smith and accepted by Captain Stout, the agent of the company. As the selected site was not included in the survey of the town, and Colonel Smith having neglected to procure a quit claim from the heirs to the company for the then comparatively worthless tract of thirty acres of wild, rough land, and during his absence to the Atlantic States some of the heirs, prompted by feelings of jealousy towards Smith, refused to make the title as agreed upon, except at an exorbitant and unreasonable price, Stout, having in the meantime received favorable overtures from the people of the Benicia side, immediately began the erection of the Pacific works on that shore-eventually abandoned by the company, the tule land proving unfit for heavy structures.
Thus for the stupid jealously of some of the Pinole heirs, Smith's pet town, in which they were jointly interested, after a few spasmodic struggles declined into a " Rip Van Winkle sleep " until awakened by the
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snort of the " Iron Horse " to a contemplation of what Martinez, with its proximity to the mines, might have been under the attracting influence of the wharves, dry docks, foundries and machine shops of the company, drawing to it, if only for repairs, the whole commercial fleet of the Pacific. Happening with my brother at the office of the company in New York, April 15, 1850, when the change of locality and cause was explained, with intense disgust at his co-owners in Pinole Ranch, he exclaimed, " d-n them, they have blasted the hopes of the town and my work is lost.'' Continuing my personal narrative, my destination being "Pinole," the home of my brother, we soon took horses and left Martinez, and after a romantic and pleasant ride in the midst of a gay cavalcade, consisting of some American friends and the gaily dressed retainers of Don Vicente Martinez on fine horses, all richly caparisoned with gold and silver mounted trappings, and the females of the family ensconced in the peculiar carriage of the country-yclept "Correton " or " Dobie Cart " -- we duly arrived at the residence of my brother in Pinole, where we were kindly welcomed by his wife, the leading lady of that once proud and happy family of native aristocracy (the Martinez and Castros being the most refined and wealthiest families of the upper district of the Contra Costa). How different now is the status of the remnants of those once proud and im- perious families, with their wealth of domain comprising half the area of the county, with cattle and horses in immense numbers covering the thousand hills and valleys. The contact and contest with the Anglo- Saxon race for thirty-two years, leaves them mere beggars at their own threshold, now the property of the stranger.
The product of the gold placers being wonderful, I was anxious to try my fortune with the rest, but my brother having arrived from the East, on the July steamer, prevailed upon me to settle down as a rancher. I thereupon began fixing up for my family, on what was then called the " Ward and Smith League " of the Sobrante, now known as the old Smith ranch of San Pablo creek. Having hired several American farmers and sailors, at the monthly wages of seventy-five dollars, I soon had some shanties erected, a field fenced, and good corrals built for the stock, and after the rains began, started some plows to turning over the virgin soil for the future crops. My eldest son, William Quinn Smith, was born at the Pinole ranch on the 11th of December, 1850. The mother having passed the Winter at my brothers house, returning to the new ranch, after the Spring rains were over, with her young babe. With five hundred head of cattle, one hundred head of horses, a league of land, a young wife and baby boy, under a good shelter, with a cultivated field of barley wheat, corn and vegetables, I was as happy as a lord. My nearest neigh- bor, some three miles distant, on the only wagon road out to Martinez, was Squire Elam Brown-the Patriarch of his settlement, who still lives
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honored and loved by all of his old acquaintances, as a true type of " God's noblest work."
I remained on this ranch for two years, where, as a kind of outpost of the inner settlements, I was continually battling with the grizzly bears and marauding caballeros, not yet reconciled to the Gringo. While riding into Martinez one day alone, I saw two of these caballeros approaching at a gallop. One of them began preparing his riata, evi- dently with the intention of throwing it over me in passing and jerking me from the saddle with deadly force. Perceiving his intention, I reined out about twelve feet, holding my cocked revolver under my Talma cloak, and continued to meet them. Instead of reining out to pitch the riata with one quick motion, or whirling it to reach me, he mut- tered "Caramba !" and dropped the coil in the road. As he did that I remarked, "Bien echo armigo," and returned my revolver to the holster at my side as we passed each other, The lasso or riata was more dan- gerous in skillful hands than firearms, and had I not been skilled in its use through my Texan and Mexican experience, and thus able to detect the intention in his movements of preparation to throw, I would no doubt have been instantly killed by the jerk to the ground. My playful friends were Joaquin Murietta and Three-fingered Jack, his lieutenant, desiring a little playful practice on a " Maldito Gringo." Being twelve or more feet distant, requiring a whirl of his riata to reach me with certainty, his prudence saved his life when he threw down his rope- being as certain with my revolver, from long practice, as he with his rope. Those playful tricks were quite common in the early settlement of Cali- fornia. It must not be understood that the native Californians of this county were of the above description ; to the contrary, they were kind and generous in the extreme to the way-worn pioneer seeking a home.
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