History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 15

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362

USA > California > Fresno County > History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I > Part 15

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But whether considered as a roaring mining camp, or a county seat, twice visited by river floods and slowly dying from dry rot after the passing away of the mining period, Millerton never was more than a straggling mountain village, and from the very force of circumstances and conditions surrounding it could never have been more than that. There was an idealistic ruralness as witness the following published news brevity anent the court- house :

ABOUT A BIRD-In the courthouse at this place, a little bird has builded its nest in the chandelier in the courtroom, and frequently when the court is in session, or when a religious meeting is being held there, the little fellow will flit backwards and for- wards from its nest to the open air, passing out of the window, or sit in the nest and chirp and twitter right prettily. We think our judicial officers should be well pleased with their little feathered compeer.

As late as the 70's, the supervisors allowed a claim for four dollars for a pole with which to demolish the nests that the swallows built under the courthouse eaves. The San Joaquin was a stream of pure icy water, and clear as a crystal where not muddied by mining. Salmon ascended to the spawning grounds by the myriads, and, when the run was on, the fish were hunted with spear, pitchfork, shovel, even with shotgun and revolver. Sal- mon appeared in such shoals that as late as July, 1870, it was recorded that restful sleep was disturbed because "myriads of them can be heard nightly

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splashing over the sand bars in the river opposite town as they make their way up." Hogs roamed at large unhindered as the self constituted village scavengers.

Fresno was a paradise for the Nimrod. They tell of great herds of an- telope scouring over the desert plains where Fresno City is located. Today an antelope is as rare as the ichthyornis. Along in December, 1870, mention was made on the authority of a Crane Valley man that an Indian named Tom, shot, killed and dressed twenty-one deer in three days within a circle of one mile from a given spot. Even this was regarded as extraordinary enough to warrant publication at a time when the plains, mountains, foot- hills and rivers teemed with game and fish.

With such delightfully primitive conditions, the flutter may be faintly appreciated, when at the close of March, 1871, announcement was made of a change in April in the stage schedule, for all of which Contractor Bennett was publicly thanked for his "enterprising and accommodating spirit." North- bound stages were to connect with Fisher's stages at Snelling (county seat of Merced and a village that went through the same lingering dying experi- ence as Millerton), instead of Hornitas in Mariposa. The Snelling stages arrived at Millerton at the ungodly hour of five a. m., and passengers were piloted to hotels by the pale glimmer of whale oil lanterns. They departed at eight in the evening, arriving at Snelling at eleven on the following morning. The Visalia stage left immediately on arrival of the northern stage, and returning also made close connections. By this new arrangement Miller- tonians could go through to San Francisco in twenty-four hours, a gain of nearly one-half in time, and no unnecessary laying over en route. And this was hailed as rapid transit !

All of which recalls the "unbearable outrage" of July, 1870, when Miller- ton, Big Dry Creek and Kings River. were relegated from a four to a single weekly mail by reason of the abandonment of the mail ronte. Otto Froelich was then Millerton's postmaster. The Expositor, which had never a good word for the national Republican administration said "There is nothing too corrupt or contemptible for the Radical officers to do." In August. Sillman's opposition stage to Stockton began running, leaving Millerton every Thurs- day morning with through fare of eight dollars. About the middle of Decem- ber, Contractor P. Bennett bought off Sillman & Co., who had the mail con- tract and he served again the tri-weekly mail.

Talking about stages, here is another piece of evidence to accentuate the isolation of the village. In July of this year broke out the Franco-German war. The Expositor gave on July 20, 1870. the news of the outbreak based on a dispatch from Visalia brought by Russell Fleming the Saturday before to the effect that France had determined upon a declaration against Prussia. And as for war news thereafter, it was so scarce that a club was formed at Millerton to buy war dispatches at Visalia to be brought by Fleming as "the genial Jehu" of Bennett's stages. Fleming is a familiar Fresno character, re- puted to have been the first appointed postmaster of Fresno City, of which he is one of the earliest settlers. He was the first livery man in the town and his stables and corral at H and Mariposa were long a landmark.

The gathering of news for a weekly issue for Millerton, with a popula- tion of 200 to 300 at the most, was no easy task, when so much was sup- pressed, and so much space wasted in fulminations against the "radicals." The "unbearable outrage" in the reduced mail delivery made the task the more difficult, with "not a single exchange under ten days old," and "no communication with any portion of the county either." But all things come to those who wait. Things hummed again in the first week in September, according to the Millerton pace. An editorial squib read :

"MILLERTON has been quite lively thus far this week. The county court has been and is still in session and a very large number of jurors and

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witnesses are in attendance. Whiskey has flowed pretty freely and some con- siderable skirmishing has taken place."

There may have been no connection whatever between the two, but in the next column was this pithy, two-line penitential announcement :

"EXCUSE the lack of editorial matter in this issue as we have been sick."

CHAPTER XIX

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY SETTLERS. POLITICAL OPINIONS DURING AND AFTER THE WAR OFTEN LED TO BITTER PERSONAL ANIMOSITIES. FIRING ON FORT SUMTER STIRRED UP STRONG UNION SENTIMENT IN CALIFORNIA. FRESNO SETTLERS HOSPIT- ABLE AND WHOLESOULED AS A CLASS. GAMBLING AND DRINKING A STATE WIDE HABIT. CHRONIC INTEMPERANCE NOT A GENERAL VICE. LEVELING TENDENCIES OF THE PIONEER DAYS IN DEMOC- RACY OF LABOR. A TRIBUTE TO WOMANHOOD.

"The earlier settlers of the county cared little for politics. They were a plain, hard-headed, sensible people, who worked the placers, tilled the soil, raised cattle, herded sheep, made money, reared large families, feared God, respected the laws and were happy. The interest they took in politics was largely of a personal character, to secure the maintenance of order, the enforcement of the laws and the making of needful internal improvements. It may be that this indifference to politics was due largely to the fact that the county has always had a safe Democratic majority. The early settlers very generally came from the southern states, and at the breaking out of the war their sympathies were with the Confederacy and they voted that way."

These observations, in so far as they relate to the earlier settlers, and written in April, 1891. may be accepted as fairly accurate, though the state- ment that they "cared little for politics" must be taken with a grain of salt, because with the war influx the political interest was bitter, even vindictive. There was also personal animosity displayed during the period of the war and after. So much so that a time was when a Republican was a lusus naturæ as much as ever a five-legged lamb, or a double-headed rooster was, and also when it was not always politic or safe to announce one's affiliations, if .they were not friendly to the southern cause. That cause had in this county and in Tulare and Kern many unreconstructed adherents, whose opinions had not been changed with the result of the war, but had become the more fixed, and probably not without cause, by reason of the indignities heaped upon the vanquished by the carpet-bagging administrations foisted upon the Southern people. The passions and prejudices of men ran high in those days, and the resultant conditions are not to be wondered at.

Leland Stanford, elected governor in September, 1861, was the first Republican chosen to that office in California. For more than a decade after admission into the union, the state was controlled by the pro-slavery wing of the Democratic party. The news of the firing upon Fort Sumter came to San Francisco on April 24, twelve days after the fact, and was sent across the continent by pony express. It stirred up a strong Union sentiment in the state, and the lines were sharply drawn as between northern and south- ern men. In parts of the state, Confederate sympathizers were largely in the majority, notably in Los Angeles and in various localities in the San Joaquin Valley.

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Still there never was a more hospitable, a more wholesouled and a more mutually helpful people than those early settlers of Fresno. This is conceded. A stranger, destitute, or sick, or unfortunate, found himself among sympathiz- ing and helping people, who ministered to his wants, not with the hope of reward, but ont the goodness of heart prompted by the spirit of the broth- erhood of man. In Millerton was an aged black woman, known the county over as "Negro Jane," who had come as a slave with Henry Burroughs. She was a character, earning a livelihood as a washerwoman, nurse, or whatever came her way. She was the Good Samaritan of the village, and was there a miner in a camp sick, destitute or neglected she was the first to be at his side. "Negro Jane" has long passed away, but there are still some among the living to recall the voluntary acts of charity of this black- skinned sister of mercy.

Hugh A. Carroll was another of the original Fort Miller garrison and with him came as a camp follower the wife, Elizabeth, mother of the first white girl child born in the county territory. She was of decided mas- culine character and temperament.as the result of army life associations. She could swear and anathematize on occasions, like a trooper or a pirate. but she had a heart for the sick and afflicted and her memory is recalled for many voluntary visits of mercy to sick and neglected miners. There is the story that with the location of the garrison she and Mrs. Ann Mckenzie were the first of their sex in this region, and such a curiosity for the squaws that meandering from the fort in company on an occasion and approaching one of the rancherias they were seized and the squaws rubbed and pinched their faces to satisfy themselves that their skins were white and not painted, believing in their ignorance at sight to them of these first whites, that none of their sex could be of color other than their own. The two women were alarmed at the demonstration. Mrs. Mckenzie escaped early in the demon- stration but Mrs. Carroll was stripped naked before the dusky sisters satis- fied themselves that not only was she white in face but in body also.

Dr. Leach was of a philanthropic bent of mind, and Dr. Chester Rowell, who came to Fresno from San Francisco early in 1875, was of the same stamp. The world will never know the many acts of quiet charity of these two men. No man or woman, destitute and in need of medical treatment or medicinal remedy, ever appealed to either in vain. The names of Mrs. Carroll, "Negro Jane" and Drs. Leach and Rowell are called up in grateful remembrance by old timers of Millerton and Fresno.

Gambling and the prodigious drinking of alcoholic beverages among the Millertonians were no more characteristic of them than of Californians generally in the mining regions. Chapters on this subject are devoted in every history of Early California, and the causes lengthily and plausibly gone into. It is admitted that the prospect of gain before the advent of laws or rules or customs of binding authority and the lack of restraints attracted many vicious and dissolute after the discovery of gold.

The presence and assertiveness of this class, combined with the absence of the repressive influence of decent women and the lack of refined or rational amusements to ease the daily toil, hardships and coarse living, encouraged dissipation and vice. "Gambling and drunkenness became not uncommon." says Hittell, and he is borne out by others, "and ruined many who under ordinary circumstances might have escaped the contamination."

This writer, speaking from personal observation adds: "In no part of the world perhaps was there so much gambling and so much drinking as in California, Not everybody gambled, not everybody dissipated, but so many did, and the gambling and drinking houses were such public and well patronized places of resort that it almost seemed that everybody was given over to these twin vices. Throughout the entire country, wherever men congregated and even where they sojourned with any regularity, and in any number on their way to other localities, there were sure to be places for drink-

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ing and gambling, and among the supplies carried into the mining camps liquors and cards and their usual concomitants found a very large and expen- sive proportion."

When drinking and gambling were so generally the vogue, was it to be expected that Millerton would be the one notable exception? Does it not smack of satire almost, to read in one of the earliest recorded deeds in Fresno County, under date of August 18, 1856, that Levi Steinhoff sold for $350 to Frank Rowe his "right, title and interest to the house or building known as the Temperance Hall," with the 85x100 lot in the town of Miller- ton? "A Temperance Hall" in the town of Millerton in 1856, when whiskey, brandy and gin were sold not by the drink but by the quart bottle and the gallon !

But in extenuation, let it be recalled that these conditions obtained in the days when "every possible luxury connected with drinking procurable in California could be found in the mines, and there was hardly any drink in the world too rare or too expensive for importation into that paradise of in- dulgence. It is doubtful whether there ever was before so ready a market for the costliest brandies and most exquisite champagnes, and no business afforded such profits as the liquor business," while "hardly a team left Sac- ramento or Stockton, or train threaded the mountain trails, that did not carry more or less spirittous or malt drink, and hardly a man lived or worked in the mines that did not contribute to some extent to the fortunes of those who managed its importation and distribution."

It is stated that as a consequence of the indiscriminate drinking in those early days delirium tremens became a common ailment, and pathetically humorous in overlooking the superinducing cause of it, is the record of the belief that there was supposed to be something in the very climate of Cali- fornia peculiarly favorable to "the jim-jams" as they were called. Still it is also of record that while there was a great deal of drinking, there was very little habitual drunkenness among the earliest pioneers. There was a plausible reason for it. The confirmed toper was physically unfit for the hardships and exposure of the across-the-plains, or the around-Cape-Horn journey to California, and the wrecks of subsequent days had not yet become the habitual topers.

To quote history: "But even including those who were so much addicted to gambling and drinking as to deserve the name of gamblers or drunkards -and as soon as they were such they were no longer counted among the heroes of the early years-it may still be reiterated that the pioneers were the most active, industrious and enterprising body of men in proportion to their numbers that was ever thrown together to form a new community. Four-fifths of them were young men, between eighteen and thirty-five years of age, and they came from all sections of the country and many from for- eign countries. They all came to labor and found at the mines that to keep on an equality with their neighbors they had to labor."

A noteworthy feature of the times and the conditions was "the extra- ordinary leveling tendency" of the life, a tendency upon the effects of which, it has been asserted, have been based to a great extent the readjustments and developments on new lines that have constituted the peculiarities of California civilization. As printed history has it: "Every man finding every other man compelled to labor found himself the equal of every other man, and as the labor required was physical, instead of mental, the usual superi- ority of head workers over hand workers disappeared. This condition of things lasted several years."

The more common and general effect was to level pride, and everything suggestive of the aristocracy of employment. The California pioneer has had to stand sponsor for much. It is only truth and justice to record that the pioneers that founded the state constituted a race of men, whose superior is not readily found. And in this tribute should not be overlooked the priva-

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tions, toil, hardships and dangers borne and the civilizing influences wielded by the brave and undaunted pioneer women and mothers, honoring in this category also the delicate and refined women of the South, who cast their lot amidst rough and primitive conditions to battle anew with life after the distressing days following the war, when the future was so blank and deso- late in contrast with the comforts and affluence that had gone before in the sunny and beloved Southland. Never had men such self-sacrificing and brave helpmates as in these honored early and later pioneer women of California.

By 1865, there was an appreciable increase in the population of the county as demonstrated by the greater bulkiness of the assessment roll.

CHAPTER XX

CHANGES IN MILLERTON RETROGRESSIVE RATHER THAN PROGRESSIVE. FIRST COUNTY SEAT REMOVAL SUGGESTION IN 1869. THE Ex- POSITOR AS A FALSE PROPHET IN 1870. PREMONITIONS OF THE PERIOD CHANGE ABOUT TO BE USHERED IN. SURROUNDINGS OF THE VILLAGE. RESIDENTIAL EXCLUSIVENESS ABOUT THE FORT. BIG FIRE VISITATION WAS ON THE EVE OF THE FOURTH OF JULY IN THE YEAR 1870. UNAIDED BY FORT, MILLERTON NEVER HOUSED ITS FIXED POPULATION.

After the county seat removal, Millerton was still spotted on maps for some years. As a village it lingered along, dying from dry-rot, slowly but positively. Habitations were literally carried off on wheels. Chinatown held out longest. Future it had absolutely none. Its history was a closed chapter. "Finis" had been written. It could only recall the past with its memories of the gold mining days, the days when it was a halting place on the stage line routing and when it was overburdened with the weight of county seat honors. But for them it would have been off the map long before.

It is recalled that as late as the year 1879 the handful of children left in the school at Millerton had formed the habit at recess of digging for gold under the bluff bank near the school. They washed the "dirt" in the river hard by and were rewarded by fifty to sixty cents during the noon hour. On a certain Wednesday they dug too far under the bank and the latter caved in on them, overwhelming Charlie and Willie, sons of Sam Brown, Jeffie Donahoo and two of Labe Mathews' children. A passing Chinaman removed the soil from Jeffie's face so that he might breathe as he was covered all but the head, while a little girl ran to the schoolhouse to give the alarm. It took seventy minutes to rescue the children but one of them, Johnny Mathews, aged fourteen, was dead. He was buried next day at the fort cemetery and the school took a vacation.

Four years and two months before the vote on the county seat removal but after the flood and before the fire, it is recorded that in June, 1870 there were in Millerton:

Four stores (three Chinese), express and postoffice, two stables, black- smith shop, barber shop, furniture and cabinet maker, printery, physician, hotel, three saloons, butcher shop, druggist, saddlery and harness shop, tailor shop, four lawyers, Millerton Ferry Company. "And quite a number of private residences."

Between 1865 and 1870 the village business changes had been few. These few were retrogressive rather than progressive. Business activities during the period were these: 6

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Hotels-Oak, Ira McCray ; Henry House, S. W. Henry. (Both had livery stables attached.)

Butchers-Stephen Gaster & Co., James Thornton.

Blacksmiths-McCray & Shannon, S. W. Henry.

Saloons-"Challenge," Folsom & Gaster; "Court House Exchange," T.

J. Payne; Farmers' Exchange of S. Levey; and Allen's, T. J. Allen.

Dry Goods and Groceries-George Grierson & Company, Otto Froelich. Notary Public-William Faymonville.

News Depot-W. A. Grade & Brother.

Newspapers-Times (1865), Expositor (April, 1870).

Saddle and Harness-D. B. McCarthy.

Photographer-Frank Dusy.

Lawyers-E. C. Winchell, C. G. Sayle Jr., C. A. Hart and S. B. Allison. Livery-M. J. Donahoo.

Justice of the Peace-William T. Rumble.

Ferries-McCray's, Converse's and Millerton Ferry Company (Walker, Faymonville & Company).

Postmaster-Otto Froelich.

The earliest published suggestion to move the county seat from the mining center was in 1869. The railroad was already heading southward through the valley from the junction at Lathrop. In July, 1870, there was the following first concrete, sporadic wail :

"Everything is dead or on the rapid decline. No buildings of any value, no churches, no society, and no appearance of permanency about anything. Such should not be the case in a growing, prosperous county like Fresno, and such would not be the case were the town located almost anywhere else in the county. As it is, it is unhandy for all sections. It is off the line of travel and has no inducements for people to settle in it, even though there was room to build suitable houses to live in, which there is not."

In April, 1871, the Expositor in self-contradictory editorial review, also assuming role of prophet, boasts, notwithstanding the "continued assertion" of many that Millerton "was a dead cock in the pit," that it "has made some considerable advancement." In proof it cited that two societies had been formed and a third was forming, that it has increased in population and business, that there was not an unoccupied house, and yet that it was a fact apparent to anyone that "Millerton will always exist as a town, even after the county seat is removed." As a prophet, the Expositor was a rank failure, except in the statement that the district school would become a graded one.

True, Millerton was not yet the dead cock, but it was in the pit in dying struggles and last squawks. The fact is a great change was about to come over Fresno, a new period was about to be ushered in with irriga- tion to bring about the transformation. True, there had been increase in population and business, but that was in the county, and Millerton reaped the indirect benefit. True, in November. 1870, there was not a vacant house yet a demand for residences. But half the town had been washed down the river, the number of houses had been reduced, there never were too many, and no new ones were being erected to meet demand or replace the destroyed ones-and all because of the uncertainty over county seat removal, which like Banquo's ghost "would not down." Any kind of a house rented from six dollars to twelve dollars a month, and there was not an empty one even up at the fort, old time barracks and hospital included. Land through- out the county was assessed at $1.25 an acre awaiting the time to be boosted up with irrigation

In August, 1870, it was said that the mountain saw-mills could not turn out lumber fast enough for the demand. The price was cheaper than almost anywhere in the state at twelve dollars per thousand at mills, with the added twenty dollars for hauling it thirty miles to the village.

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But that lumber was not wanted for improvements at Millerton, but through- out the county in the spreading farm settlements, and especially in the more rapidly filling up Kings River bottoms, near water. There was never such a hegira as when they began to move away from Millerton. In 1871 the business changes and dissolutions had already begun, and upon the result of the election, with the significant vote, the village sank to the obscurity of a hamlet, for everything movable was carted off, leaving only the ferry landing places, the house cellars and foundations, the courthouse and its conspicuous neighbor in Payne's adobe Court House Exchange Sa- loon, and Hart's Chinatown brick houses, as reminders that a village once stood on the river bank, and that it had once close relation with the govern- ment fort in the N. E. 14 of Section 3-11-21, four miles above the present Pollasky railroad terminus.

Unaided by the fort, Millerton never did house all its population. A landmark stood for many years half a mile or more below the village in the Jenny Lind bridge, condemned on account of age a decade ago and carried away by winter freshets, the last standing concrete tubular iron encased supports snapping off when the waters also floated off the buildings at the Collins' sulphur springs. The Millertonites made pretension to residential exclusiveness. A favorite spot was Hill's Flat, named for S. H. Hill, who taught school in the village in 1862 and later at Centerville and Kingston, and from 1864 to 1867 and again in 1870-71 was county superintendent, and whose brother, W. W. Hill, was treasurer from 1864 to 1874, dying in office. Hill's Flat was nearer the river than the fort; yet part of the semi- circular table land of the fortsite, and to the left on approaching it from the village. Here were located the Hill residence, also the Clark Hoxie home, known as the Garden house, besides a cluster of other pretentious homes of the day. Pretentious was the house that boasted two stories, an attic, and say a balcony entrance. Hill's Flat was edged by the creek that emerged from Winchell's Gulch, a dry arroyo in summer but turbulent in winter as the drain way of the nearby low hills.

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History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 15

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858- Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company Number of Pages: 1362

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362