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 18

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 18

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Mrs. Mary Idria Toms, wife of W. E. Toms of Alameda, now of Fresno.

Scott Ashman Shannon, who manages the Fresno estate.

Sidney J. Shannon from 1889-1901 in the accounting department of the Pacific Improvement Company, for some years thereafter land agent at Los Banos for Miller & Lux, now deputy United States marshal; and

Leland Stanford Shannon, rancher of Fowler. The older brothers are prominent Elks. Save Leland, who saw the light of day at Millerton, the others were born at the fort.

Their mother taught the first private school in the county, receiving seventy-five dollars a month for a term of three months, this school at the fort barracks having an average attendance of fifteen.

Jesse Morrow

A picturesque character was Jesse Morrow, an Ohioan, who was lured by the '49 story of gold, crossed the plains to pass the winter

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at Salt Lake City, but being driven off by the Mormons pushed on with a smaller party which entered California by the Southern pass and disbanded. Morrow and six others, with food and blankets, trudged on westward through Cajon pass, trading rifle for beef, which was "jerked" for food, and crossing the Kern, met at Posey Creek, two survivors of a party of sixteen massacred by Indians. All returned to the Kern, there met an emi- grant train, of which Dr. Lewis Leach was a member, and pushed on north- ward. At Woodville (Tulare County) they came upon the scene of the massacre and buried fourteen corpses. Camping under guard and killing wild cattle as a food supply, they moved on to the Kings and the San Joa- quin, and a part of the party was engaged for Cassady & Lane to mine for them at Cassady's Bar.

Morrow mined at Fine Gold Gulch and on the San Joaquin until 1856, when he removed to Los Angeles, He engaged in stock raising, and driving 1,100 head of cattle to the San Joaquin continued here in the stock business until 1874. One year later, he took up sheep raising on the plains, continuing this pursuit until 1882, having at times flocks varying in number from 4,000 to 20,000. Mr. Morrow was at one time one of the richest men in the county, interested in mining, lending money but losing $160,000 through poor secu- rities, and owning land in the two county seats. In 1874, he was instrumental in erecting the Southern Pacific hotel, which came into his possession two years later. It was the caravansary par excellence of Fresno and bore his name for a time. It was on the site of the present Fresno postoffice building, was the Southern Hotel and the Henry House (Simon W. Henry of Miller- ton), and later known as the Mariposa Hotel. It was moved to the corner of Mariposa and M on the Jeff D. Statham property, in rear of the courthouse, bitt after partial destruction by fire a few years ago removed to a third site and present location at the corner of Diana and Silvia streets.

The Morrows were absentees from the Kings River ranch for fifteen years as residents of San Jose, and in his day he was probably the county's most extensive sheep raiser.

Morrow was one of fate's victims for at death in 1897 he was practically a ruined man. Yet there is the authenticated tale that in one live stock transaction alone about $80,000 was piled up in payment on a table in one of the rooms of the old Morrow house. The kitchen portion of this structure was part of a building wheeled to Fresno from Millerton. Two earliest deeds under date of June 9, 1855, were by Morrow to McCray, one for $200 for the Millerton lot on which the Oak Hotel was erected, and the other for $2,500 for the ferry formerly known as Morrow & Carroll's. It was the irony of fate perhaps that in June, 1874, McCray was sold out by the sheriff on execution, and that Morrow was the judgment creditor buyer, taking back some of the very property sold to McCray, when he came to Millerton a rich man. Morrow was associated with George C. Ferris and J. A. Van Tas- sell in a flour mill at Centerville, and retaining all interest on dissolution bought the grist mill of J. W. Sweem, three miles northeast of there, and for a time had the milling monopoly of the county.

E. C. Winchell

The E. C. Winchell family did not come to Millerton until 1859, but its position and standing in the community was a commanding one. For two years by a special dispensation from the government care-taker, it was permitted to occupy as a domicile the hospital building at the fort, and then moved to a settler's primitive cabin in Winchell's Gulch until a resi- dence could be erected. The family lived in the gulch for fifteen years. It continued as residents of Fresno until 1896, when it moved to Oakland, Cal.

Judge Winchell, who died July 24, 1913, at Berkeley, Cal., was a recognized leader of the local bar, and influential in educational circles. Mrs. 7

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Winchell conducted a select school for young ladies. He was of a literary turn and was in frequent demand for addresses on public occasions and cele- brations. He was county judge from 1864-67, district attorney from 1860-63, and the first county school superintendent appointed in February, 1860, with the organized Scottsburg, Millerton and Kingston districts. Mr. Winchell was a large property holder in the heart of Fresno City on Mari- posa, near J, and on J, between Mariposa and Fresno, but it passed out of his hands at loss. On this property he had erected in 1889 improvements involving a total investment of $42,000. Three children survive him namely :

L. A. Winchell, a well-known citizen of Fresno, an authority on local his- tory and secretary of the Fresno County Pioneer Association.

L. F. Winchell of Oakland, Cal., long connected here with the national guard in the days of the Third Brigade under Gen. M. W. Muller with Fresno headquarters and the Sixth Infantry battalion (later a regiment of six companies) under Cols. Eugene Lehe and J. J. Nunan, both of Stock- ton, and S. S. Wright of Fresno, as the organized military.

Miss Anna Cora Winchell, newspaper woman, music and art critic for one of the San Francisco dailies.

CHAPTER XXIII

A CONSIDERATION OF THE SOCIAL SIDE OF PIONEER DAYS IN FRESNO. ROUGH THE MANNERS, THE LABOR AND THE AMUSEMENTS. WOMAN'S LOT A SPECIALLY TRYING ONE. BIG FAMILIES THE GENERAL RULE OF THE DAY. NO MARRIAGEABLE WOMAN NEEDED TO BE WITHOUT HUSBAND. WEAKER SEX IN NUMER- ICAL MINORITY. FIRST WHITE CHILDREN BORN IN COUNTY. PRACTICAL JOKES CHARACTERISTIC OF THE DEVIL-ME-CARE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. ARTLESSNESS OF THE POLITICAL CANDI- DATE. NO MINCING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH.

The mollycoddle was unknown in the pioneer days. Had he existed, life would have been made an unbearable burden for him. They were rough times those days, especially in a mountain mining, or railroad border village. The men had rough ways and hard labor, were rough and plain spoken in language, rough in their games and amusements, and lacking the restraint of social environments and of the refining influence of the presence of good women, even their horse-play was the quintessence of boorish roughness. Life amidst such rough surroundings was to be borne only with the philosophic reflection that when among the Romans do as the Romans do.

In the early days, every miner was a walking arsenal. Naturally, a popular amusement would be rifle and pistol practice, and tempted by the surroundings hunting and fishing. A game of cards called "rounce" was a prime favorite. Of course all the card and mechanical devices for gambling were at hand to tempt the unwary and reckless. And scrub mule and horse races had their attractions. Refining and intellectual entertainments were unknown in Millerton's earlier days. The coming of a political stump speaker, as in later times, was a veritable godsend, though as caviare to the multitude, because what need of Democratic pabulum in a hide bound Democratic stronghold-carrying coals to Newcastle as it were

Woman's social lot was a specially trying one. No literary club, the time was not ripe for suffrage, no sewing circle, no relief society meeting, no weekly evening prayer meeting. Not until county seat removal had been practically resolved upon, was there church service once in a month, and not until shortly before the removal was there a Sunday school established.

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Eighteen years of village life with never even a missionary chapel cabin. At great intervals, mass was held on stated church festival days, with a clergyman sent for the occasion from Visalia for the benefit of those of the Catholic faith at Millerton. Masses were held on improvised altars at the fort residence, Mrs. Mckenzie-Hart being a member of that faith. Supervisor J. B. Johnson recalls as a boy living at Visalia accompanying the priest several times to act as acolyte.

The annual Methodist circuit camp meeting was always a great event and an opportunity for the exchange of social amenities. The main camp ground was on Big Dry Creek, near the Musick residence, though protracted meetings were also held near Centerville and at other points. Mrs. E. Jane Hyde kept the public table where board could be had at reasonable rates, a corral was maintained for the feed of horses by the day or week, and due reminder was given that "those expecting to remain overnight will please bring their bedding."

No Millerton hubby could habitually absent himself from home at night on the lodge meeting plea, for it was not until almost the last that Odd Fellow and Good Templar lodges were formed, and they met at seven o'clock in the evening, and there was no "missing the last car home." True, there was the even then threadbare excuse to fall back on of "seeing a man on business," but if hubby overstepped the time allowance it was ten to one he could be speedily rounded up at Lawrenson's, or Friedman's or at Mc- Cray's, the latter the popular resort with sundry drawing attractions other than monte, faro, roulette, chuck-a-luck and the other devices.

Mothers with their large progenies had their days fully occupied, so that after the domestic toils they were in no mood after supper hour for sociabilities. Family social calls were the main expedient for killing an idle period and exchanging the latest village gossip morsel. There was no threatened danger of race suicide then. Big families were the rule-the more the merrier apparently-and with no school and no compulsory education law there was not the frequent scrubbing, washing, combing and brushing of the young hopefuls to pass the critical muster of the schoolma'm. It was an ideal existence for the young ones compared with the present day school attending preliminaries.

BIG FAMILIES WERE THE RULE

To hark back to big families. There was the Baley household of ten with eight budding girls, the Sample colony of twelve with six buxom las- sies and the "Uncle" S. H. Cole aggregation of ten by a first and third mar- riage, the Helm progeny of seven, the Gower of nine, the nine living of the eleven of John A. Patterson, a founder both of Fresno and Tulare counties and an organizing supervisor of them, the living three of the S. A. Holmes family of ten, the surviving six of the nine by the first marriage of the late Dr. W. J. Prather to which were added two by a second marriage, John Sutherland with six, John H. Shore with seven, A. H. Statham with eight, and Russell H. Fleming and John Krohn each with nine, and Henry N. Ewing, the father of Treasurer A. D. Ewing and of D. S. Ewing, the lawyer, with eight, of which six lived to come to California. He hit upon an idea in giving the children names, the initials of which from A to H established their natal sequence. This is no fiction for here is the proof in names:

1-Achilles D. Ewing of Fresno ;

2-Belle Z. Ewing (deceased) ;

3-Cora L. Clasby (deceased) ;

4-David E. S. Ewing of Fresno ;

5-Emmett Mc. Ewing (deceased) ;

6-Forrest B. Ewing of La Habra, Cal .;

7-George M. Ewing (deceased) ; and

8-Harry M. C. Ewing (deceased).

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But instances of such large families are easily multiplied. The numeri- cally large family circle was the rule: the small or childless, the exception. Ponder a moment on the battalion of kin that the marriages in one family of the offsprings and relatives can in time muster up. A case in point is that of Mr. and Mrs. Josephus Hutchings, who in April, 1911, at Belmont in this city celebrated their golden wedding anniversary with a reunion of kindred. The Hutchings have three children and his living relatives then were four married sisters. A tally was made out of curiosity at the celebra- tion, and the exhibit of local kindred was the following:

Hutchings, 32; Stevens, 10; Nolans, 23; Burnetts, 23; Pecks, 28. Total 116.

The Hutchings are ox team emigrants from Iowa, who arrived in California in October, 1861, lived eight years at Stockton and then moved to near what is now Fresno, he and his brother, William, being credited as the first to sow a crop of grain on the plains at what is now the Fairview vineyard, eleven miles east of Fresno. Robert Edmunds, a neighbor, erected the first domicile so far out on the plains, standing today at Fairview; William, the second, and Josephus, the third. The latter and P. E. Daniels were first to enter the Coalinga field and develop it for oil, sinking, about 1899, a well on the Wabash holding, proving it a million-dollar property. William surveyed and built under contract the big Gould irrigation ditch and system.

Another notable illustration was furnished on April 13, 1917, at Clovis in the annual home-coming of the descendants of Mrs. Jane Sweany-Cole, "Grandma Cole" as she is known, to make joy over her eighty-seventh birth- day anniversary on the fifteenth. As the result of the marriage with William T. Cole in 1854, ten daughters were born, nine living, the one deceased Mrs. Alice Hoskins (wife of the late William Hoskins) having lived to be aged forty years. Mrs. Cole counts eighty-two living descendants, all save ten resident in the county. Death has invaded the family to remove the father in June, 1907, one child, six grandchildren and four great grandchildren. The surviving family members are :

Children, nine; grand children, forty-one; great grand children, twenty- one. Total, seventy-one.

The daughters are: Mesdames Sally, wife of D. C. Sample; Angeline, wife of J. T. Birkhead ; Mary, wife of J. A. Stroud; Jane, wife of F. S. Estell; Ida, wife of John Bell; Kate, wife of W. F. Shafer; Grace, wife of R. L. Hoag : Emily, wife of W. J. Heiskell ; and Harriet, wife of A. H. Blasingame.

"Grandma" Cole crossed the plains with parents from Missouri at the age of twenty in 1850, family consisting of nine children. The journey occupied five months, California was entered at Emigrant Gap via Truckee and halt was made in Solano County. Cole came overland in 1849, also from Missouri. The Coles came to Fresno in 1860 and have lived here since, forty years at Academy where he died, whereafter she moved to her present Clovis home.

William Temple Cole named for his American progenitor, who was a Kentucky companion of Daniel Boone, was the eldest of nine brothers and five sisters, but the only family representative in California. He possessed remarkable physical strength and endurance, never met his superior in wrestling and in St. Louis attracted attention by lifting 500 pounds. Of splendid physique, he was noted as a pedestrian and runner, beating the stage often and walking fifty miles in a day from Auburn to Sacramento, carrying $5,000 in gold dust. He was a volunteer in the Mexican War. At twenty-one he was an Indian trader in Kansas for two years, crossed the plains with mule team upon the report of gold, leaving the party at Goose Creek and pack-horsed to San Francisco, arriving August 10, 1849. Return- ing with the company's mail, he met the party on the Bear River, near the present site of Nevada City, closed up its affairs and then mined on the

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Yuba until sickness compelled a change in location. He embarked in stock raising, two miles from Sacramento, also furnishing river steamers with wood for fuel. He prospered but lost all in floods.

Ten years later he moved to Fresno, settling on the. Kings River and two floods left him poorer by $15,000 and a good farm. Moving to Academy for the superior school there, he engaged in stock raising on a section of land and in 1897 retired from active pursuits. The wife whom he married in Solano County, was the daughter of James Sweany, a pioneer of 1850, who lived in Nevada City, farmed in Solano and died in Visalia. In public affairs, it was said of W. T. Cole that he took no part "aside from casting a straight Democratic ticket at all elections."

The pioneer men lived up truly to the biblical injunction that it is not good for man to be alone, and the women included themselves in the category. Second marriages were common and third not unusual. No mar- riageable lass in Millerton, or early Fresno, had to seek a beau. She had her absolute pick. The supply of girls did not meet the demand. No widow had need to repine for a provider. Every marriageable woman had only to say aye and she was snapped up in a twinkling. R. W. Riggs, the local his- torian and Pine Ridge philosophier, came to Fresno in February, 1881, and he is authority for the statement that he had reason for learning that even at that late day there were only fourteen marriageable girls in Fresno city but 200 willing ones to take them off their parents' hands. In the early days there was a disproportionate ratio between the sex representa- tives, and it continued until after Millerton had ceased to exist and Fresno was no longer a railroad border town.

That white woman was no drug on the market was given published cor- roboration in the Expositor on August 7, 1872, in a humorous news item to the effect that ten or fifteen marriageable young ladies, "either of comelv or plain appearance." are wanted immediately, Millerton being then without "a single one" and "at least twenty-five old bachelors in search of ribs." The inducement was held out that "there will be no necessity of long court- ships as they all mean biz."

The marriage relation naturally suggests the question, Who was the first white child born in Fresno County? At the Millerton second reunion of the Pioneers' Society in June, 1915, Stonewall J. Ashman went through the public mock ceremony of being crowned such. The honor was not dis- puted by the then living holder of the distinction, though commented upon at the time by her and W. J. Hutchinson, the president of the society, who had attended her wedding. The distinction then belonged to Margaret A. Boutwell, daughter of Hugh A. and Elizabeth Carroll, who married B. S. Boutwell, while a deputy of Sheriff Ashman. The first born white girl in the territory was her older sister Mary, born in 1854 and died in 1865. Mrs. Boutwell died April 6, 1916. The newspaper "send off" on her wedding read :

"In Millerton, April 26th, 1872, by Hon. Gillum Baley, Bedford S. Boutwell to Miss Maggie A. Carroll, all of Fresno County. Bully for you, Steve. We congratulate you. We hope that you and your blushing bride may have a long, pleasant and prosperous journey through life and finally die happy, and while we do not wish that your issue should be so great as that of vour namesake, the treasurer of the United States, we do hope that your offspring mav be sufficiently numerous to gratify your every desire and that they be honored at home and abroad."

A specimen of the bucolic style of journalism, was it not?

The first white male child born in the county is said to have been Scott Burford, who is living near Clovis. This is on the authority of John C. Hoxie.

Charles C. Baley names Allen Stroud, late of Coalinga, and son of the pioneer Ira Stroud, as the first white male child born in the county. Of half

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breed children, there is a plenty in the county, offsprings of white fathers and of Indian and even Chinese mothers.

BUCOLIC AMUSEMENTS AND JOKES

The roughness of the bucolic amusements and practical jokes was in accord with the "loose devil-me-care style" of the times. Early historians ever noted with elaborate glee the story that has become a stock one since 1853, how Quartermaster Jordan of the fort-"shrewd, cunning and crafty," but for Jordan "first, last and all the time"-was checkmated by one John Newton. Jordan contracted with him to deliver all the hay he could furnish at fifty dollars a ton. Newton cured in the spring ten tons that he gathered in an immense stack. It was measured and accepted at fifty tons and paid for. The first load that Jordan hauled away laid bare the imposition. The hay was only a thin covering of a great rock boulder. Newton conveniently decamped, Jordan was beaten at his own game and the populace said it served him right.

Another shop-worn tale is the one of 1856, anent T. J. Allen's restaurant with bar and justice of the peace annexes and the trial before a jury of three of Dr. Leach's case on a claim of $350 with full verdict, notwithstand- ing that the court's jurisdiction was limited to $300. On the last day of grace for an appeal, Lawyer James T. Cruikshank came from Millerton to perfect that appeal on the unimpeachable ground of lack of jurisdiction. Warned of his coming and errand, the genial and frisky spirits that hovered around Allen's bench and bar to make themselves serviceable occasionally as jurors plied him with drink so assiduously that he was unable to prepare the papers, and at midnight was tenderly put to bed, the legal time for appeal having then expired. Cruikshank took in the situation next day (Sunday) and tramped home an euchered man.

There was always something astir when Shannon was at leisure. He had a little horse known as "Jeff Davis" that held the blue ribbon in the county and brought him in many a dollar at races until he was matched one day at Kingston and met his Waterloo. But long before that in the summer of 1856, according to another tale that has been worn to a frazzle, Shannon and James Roan discovered a new sport-a footrace between buxom squaws. Shannon backed and trained the red, Roan the blue. The red won and Shannon was the richer by $150. Editor L. A. Holmes of the Mariposa Gazette commented on the novel race to record that if Roan had kept his squaw in as good training as Shannon the race would have had another ending.

The name of "Gabe" Moore, an Arkansas slave, black as the ace of spades, and brought to this state by Richard and William Glenn, early set- tlers on the Kings River, has been handed down, because he "contributed more toward the fun and amusement of those people than any other man in the settlement," for which reason some of his transgressions were winked at. Gabriel was once in serious trouble, having coveted a squaw of Kings River Agent Campbell, who had introduced the Brigham Young custom of a plurality of wives with the red-skinned damsels. Tempted to his melon patch, Gabe committed an act comparable to the incident that befell the Sa- bine women, and Campbell vowed to kill him but consented to submit the matter judicially before W. W. Hill. The cabin courtroom was crowded at this cause celebre, Gabe who always appealed to his former masters when in trouble, was in fear and trembling at the outcome, nothing very intel- ligible was extracted from the native daughters. but the case being sub- mitted acquittal followed, after consideration of the case far into the night and the free introduction of liquid stimulants to ward off slumber. Years after in condoning his act, Gabe chuckled and grinned, "Ah massa, 'omen was scarce dem days."

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Gabe died in May, 1880, leaving for one in his station in life a nice little estate in trust for his black widow, Mary.

McCray had a Newfoundland dog named "Dawson," whose wonderful. sagacity is the subject of many a tale. There was no fish for the hotel guests one Friday and McCray confided the fact to "Dawson." The dog jumped into the river from the ferry scow, swam about and anon returned with a fresh salmon in his mouth. They had fish for dinner that day. On another occasion and being overcome by too many of the cups that cheer even singly, McCray turned to "Dawson," intimating that it was bedtime. "Dawson" scampered off, returned with the candle stick for lighting and piloted his master to bed. "Dawson" was made a gift to Len Farrar, a Fresno saloon keeper and there long exhibited his intelligence for the amuse- ment of many a patron in the role of valet in the bringing of hats on de- parture and in like tricks.

Recklessness in gambling was characteristic, with Converse a notable example of it. There was nothing that he would not risk the hazard of chance on. He would wager any stake on who could expectorate closest to a given mark. He and McCray laid a bet whose road was the longest from their respective ferries. Converse lost, and after the wager was paid it leaked out that the night before the surveyor's measuring chain had been shortened by several links. On another occasion, it is related, Converse was in a card game for high stakes-gold dust in buckskin sacks-at McCray's with cutthroat "greasers," and Converse was cleaned out. Undismayed, he excused himself, asked that the game be not halted, and on return reentered it, won back all he had lost, and more too. The buckskin with which he regained everything contained only sand that he had scooped up on the river bank during his temporary absence.

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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 18

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