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 19

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 19

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Theodore T. Strombeck, a member of the Mariposa Battalion, known as "Swede Bill"-in those days a nickname was fastened on every one and surnames had not come into fashion-came nearest losing life as the result of a practical joke. He had placed a dab of limburger cheese in the hatband of a Millerton dandy, who resented the familiarity with a loaded shotgun. He met Strombeck and fired, but the latter being alert dodged behind a protecting rock and saved his life.

Strombeck was another squawman. He died at the age of eighty-two in November, 1910. He was one of the Mariposa Battalion in the Indian War of 1851. He was a Stockholmite born, and in him the history of the territory for nearly sixty years was epitomized. He gained his nickname at a convivial gathering at T. J. Allen's Coarse Gold Gulch store of which he was keeper and at which all the Bills had been toasted and a second bottle was brought out for another round beginning with a pledge to the long life of "Swede Bill." The name ever after stuck to him, though William was not his. In January 16, 1918, John Strombeck, aged thirty-four of Auberry, and a descendent, took out license to marry Topsy Buffalo, aged thirty-eight, also of Auberry and the half breed couple matrimonized.

PRO BONO PUBLICO APPEALS

Published card appeals of political candidates were frank and artless. Here is an example :

For County Surveyor

The undersigned respectfully announces himself a candidate for County Surveyor of Fresno County at the ensuing election to be holden in Septem- ber next, 1871. Having been a permanent citizen of this county since organi- zation is believed to be a reasonable apology for not traveling over the county, renewing old acquaintance and establishing new, and having no inclination and but little tact for electioneering, I will not be found among the canvassers discussing the issues of the day.

Millerton, May 2nd, 1871.

M. B. LEWIS.

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Unique was the following asking reelection as county judge, after a first election to the bench :

For County Judge

Millerton, Fresno Co., April 12th, 1871.

FELLOW CITIZENS :- I take this method of announcing through the FRESNO EXPOSITOR, our county newspaper, that my name will be placed before you at the ensuing Judicial Election for reelection to the office which I have the honor now humbly to fill. My official acts as County Judge for the past three years are known to the voters of this county (whether good or bad). I do not claim that I have not committed any errors, but I do claim that whatever those errors may have been, they were of judgment and not of the heart. I feel a desire to fill the office for another term, as I feel that I can do so more satisfactorily to myself, having gained some knowledge of the statute laws and practice of courts of this State. Feeling thankful, fellow citizens, for past favors, if reelected will continue, to the best of my ability, to discharge the functions of the office conscien- tiously under oath of office. GILLUM BALEY.

In those days people minced not the King's English in newspaper pub- lished declarations over their signatures as witnesseth the following:

Caution

Under the above caption a notice has been published in the Fresno Expositor by J. C. Wood warning all persons not to trust his wife, Annie Wood, on his account, as he will not be responsible for any debt contracted by her. He need not fear or bother himself about me, he cannot pay his own debts, let alone mine ; he was run out of Stockton for not paying his debts and then beat me ottt of $600 and left me and my little children to starve. He has come here for me to support him, or he says he will kill me. It is a shame that our little quiet village of Fresno should be disturbed by such a worthless blackguard as he is. Even the clothes he has on his back the vile wretch robbed me of the money to purchase. The citizens should tar and feather such a miscreant and ride him on a rail.

Fresno, February 8, 1877.

MRS. ANNIE WOOD.

But with all crudities and shortcomings, and after all is said and done, be it recorded to the credit of Millerton, at least, that it masterfully dodged the pitfalls of church choir, amateur choral or dramatic societies and silver cornet band.

CHAPTER XXIV

A CHAPTER, THE SADDEST IN THE COUNTY'S HISTORY. PATHETIC END OF THREE MEN PROMINENT IN THE EARLY TIMES OF FRESNO. GASTER AS A DEFAULTER DIES UNMOURNED IN A FOR- EIGN CLIME AFTER THIRTY-TWO YEARS OF DISAPPEARANCE. CONVERSE, WHOM FATE LINKED WITH HIM AS HIS EVIL GENIUS, FILLS THE NEGLECTED GRAVE OF A SUICIDE. CLOSES A CHECKERED CAREER FIGHTING OFF STARVATION AT THE END. MCCRAY, ONCE RICH, INFLUENTIAL AND A PRODIGAL DIES A CANCER AFFLICTED PAUPER. HE LIES IN A LOST SEPULCHER, THE THIRD SINCE HEARTBROKEN DEATH.

No chapter in early' Millerton history, and that means of the county, is sadder and more pathetic than that dealing with the lives and tragic end of three once prominent men-Stephen A. Gaster, Charles P. Converse and

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HISTORY OF .FRESNO COUNTY

Ira McCray. The order of mention is not a measure of their relative im- portance or prominence, but a sequence for the greater convenience of the narrative. Gaster rests in an unknown grave in a far off land, Converse, in a suicide's, in the San Francisco potter field, and McCray in an unmarked and lost one somewhere in Fresno, after two exhumations. Of the trio, Gas- ter paid the heaviest penalty for the one great mistake of his life in trusting pretended friends too implicitly.

STEPHEN A. GASTER

Fate ordained to connect Gaster and Converse in extraordinary manner. Converse, who was a singular and incomprehensible character, may be re- garded as having been Gaster's evil genius. Gaster's disappearance and re- ported later end in a far tropical clime furnished the basis of a mystery that never has been satisfactorily cleared. The man, who, it is believed, might have thrown all light on the subject, took the secret with him into the grave. Gaster never was heard from in self defense, but bowed submissively to his fate. No one has removed the stigma that rested over this unfortunate man without a country, with the name and memory of being Fresno's first official defaulter and a fugitive from justice, whereas while technically a defaulter he was more the victim of fate and of cruel circumstances.

Converse came to California in 1849, mining for gold on the Mother Lode in Mariposa County, later marrying and coming to Fresno, adding the cattle business to his mining operations and running a ferry at Millerton. He acquired wealth rapidly and spent it but not in dissipation. Neglecting a young wife, she took a divorce and in October, 1873, married Dr. Lewis Leach, whom she survives. After the separation, Converse became more "restless and reckless." His courthouse building contract was completed in admittedly "honest, skilful and creditable manner." It was during the pro- gress of the work that Gaster departed one day for San Francisco, ostensibly to be away one week. When he did not reappear, Converse gave out that he had a large sum of money deposited with him and needed it urgently to pay off his laborers. There was no deputy treasurer, the safe was locked, and the key was with Gaster. Converse hurried to the city ostensibly in search of Gaster, returning with the information that he had disappeared, leaving no trace. A warrant was issued for Gaster's arrest for the embezzle- ment of public money.

While all these circumstances looked bad for Gaster, still there was no proof that the money might not be in the safe. The doubt was judicially resolved by County Judge Winchell before whom the criminal proceedings were pending. He ordered the safe cut open in the county clerk's yard in the presence of nearly the entire assembled male population of the village. Fifteen twenty-dollar gold pieces were in the safe, which upon unquestion- able proof and according to the attached tags to the buckskin bag were the property of Andrew M. Darwin of the Upper Kings, to whom they were delivered, he having deposited $3,000 with Gaster several weeks before. The safe had otherwise been cleaned out of money. According to the report to the supervisors, of which there is minute record, some of the twenty-dollar pieces had found their way out of the bag, and in the removal of the safe from the courthouse had scattered into various compartments.

It has always been a debatable question whether Gaster took any of the public money for own use and benefit. He was an old resident, of ex- cellent repute and lived with wife and children in simple manner. The last seen of him was at noon on a hot summer's day in August, 1866, walking from the front gate of his cottage yard, and upon approaching the stage- coach rumbling down the street on its way to Hornitas, thrusting arms into the sleeves of a thin alpaca coat. He was lightly attired, burdened with no baggage or incumbrance, entered the coach and never was again seen.

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

At this time coin was the circulating medium, unless mayhap gold dust. There was no bank, express or post office money order offices in the county, nor any form of printed money, except greenbacks for a brief period during the military occupancy of the fort, and these had disappeared quickly. It was physically impossible for Gaster to have conveyed with him any con- siderable portion of the $6,600 missing funds in coin or dust without attract- ing notice, nor could he have drawn on the alpaca coat, so burdened. Gaster had no evil habits, did not drink, gamble, play the races or speculate. Nor was there proof that Converse knew what became of that money.

Gaster was an amiable and generous fellow, ever ready to aid or assist a friend. Inexperienced in public life, or in caring for large sums of money, he was such an impressionable man that "trusted friends" might have in- duced him to loan out $1,000 or $2,000 of the idle public money in the safe for brief periods to be returned on call, and "overborne by such specious arguments he may have loaned to trusted but faithless friends nearly all of the public money in his hands," and "when they treacherously failed to repay it his only escape from arrest and imprisonment would be in flight."

Not a dollar of Darwin's money was touched. No receiver of Gaster's favors has ever been mentioned by name. Intimation has been that Converse received large sums that were not returned, but there was never proof of it. Both are entitled to the benefit of every charitable doubt. Following Gas- ter's disappearance, some believed he was in concealment, others that he was dead, asserting he had been murdered. The wife obtained, two and one- half years later, divorce on the ground of desertion, married Converse and after a few years was divorced from him, also because of desertion. Thirty- two years after vanishing from sight in Millerton, Gaster passed away in Central America, possessed of a little property.

Gaster was a man who weighed 140 to 150 pounds and was as dark as an Indian-in fact the general belief was that he was of Indian blood. His induction into office was under George Rivercombe, the first county treas- urer from 1856 to 1863. Rivercombe was a "squawman," living as a patri- arch among the Indians. He had so long and so thoroughly merged himself into their free and unconventional mode of life that it has been said of him that he was more Indian than white man. Gaster succeeded him from 1864 to 1866, closing his career with the disclosure of the defalcation. Gaster was a butcher at one time with J. B. Royal and later with Ira Stroud, also in the saloon business with one Folsom, the estate continuing it until sale to Theodore J. Payne, who was shot and killed near the Tollhouse in the sum- mer of 1873. Folsom was a full blooded Cherokee, described "as an educated ward of the nation and a magnificent specimen of physical manhood."

Twenty years ago, when the Gaster case had been well nigh forgotten save only by the older residents, light was thrown upon it by the publication of an account that the theory had been generally accepted that he had been murdered probably for the money that he was supposed to have taken with him on disappearance. The last seen of Gaster was when he left Millerton on the stage for Stockton whence he was to go by river steamer to San Francisco, the traveled route before the railroad's coming. Converse accom- panied him on the stage to the bay. Converse returned after a few days. Gaster was never again seen. Converse said they parted at Stockton but that Gaster had said that he would return home also in a few days.

Suspicion fastened on Converse for Gaster's disappearance, based on the ground that he was the last man known to have been in his company and that suspicion was never fully removed. However, after nearly three decades had passed, and while engaged in mining in Nevada and Utah-and quite successfully as the doubtful report had it-Converse made attempt to clear himself of the murder charge at least by locating Gaster as a hale and hearty old man at Leon, Nicaragua, whither he had gone in 1866 after disap- pearance. The information was imparted in a letter by Converse to a friend,

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and announced the successful result of his efforts to locate Gaster through and with the assistance of the Washington Department of State.

Appeal had been made to Secretary Olney who directed United States Minister Lewis Baker at Managua to investigate with the result of the fol- lowing letter from James Thomas, general agent for Central America of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and stationed at Leon. The letter read :

"Replying to your favor of the 9th inst., I have to state that Mr. Stephen Gaster resides in this place (Leon) and is running a sawmill.

"Mr. Gaster is an old man of seventy years but as energetic as most men at forty-five, and leads a very laborious life as he has always done since com- ing from California thirty years ago. He is generally esteemed for his hon- esty, industry and other good qualities, and though he has not been very successful in his business pursuits, has a few thousand dollars out at interest.

"Gaster was born at Baton Rouge, La., and went to California in 1850. He is of a respectable Creole family. He lived in California until 1866 when he came here. I have often advised him to go back to California and end his life with his children."

In that letter Converse stated that he had located Gaster eight years before through the efforts of Secretary Blaine, but the documentary proofs had been lost. It was said that an estate left by his father awaited the son. According to Converse's letter he (Converse) had made good the amount of Gaster's defalcation. This statement was pure fiction because no restitu- tion was ever made. The Converse letter established nothing more than that Gaster was alive.

After the disappearance, the wife accepted the theory that so many others entertained that he had been murdered, though probably not sharing in the popular suspicion of Converse, for she secured divorce and married him. In February, 1900, Emma R. Clark as a daughter, aged thirty-six, peti- tioned the superior court to administer upon the estate of her father, which was represented to consist of sixty acres valued at $7,500 in Madera County, the site of the Ne Plus Ultra Copper Mine. The distribution was to the petitioner, to a son Henry M. Gaster, forty, of Madera, a daughter, Arza D. Strong, thirty-eight, of Oakland, and another daughter, Orena V. Lowery, thirty-seven, of Visalia. Their mother could not participate in the distribu- tion because she had been divorced and could lay no claim.

In later years in Fresno, when she kept a rooming house in the Gari- baldi-Olcese building at Mariposa and K, report had it that she was cogni- zant of Gaster's existence in Nicaragua and report also had it that she was in correspondence with him.

CHARLES P. CONVERSE

Converse, who erected the courthouse, was also the first man to occupy one of its dungeon cells as a prisoner for the homicide of William H. Crowe on election day in September, 1876. The grand jury liberated him on the theory that he had acted in self defense. The homicide historically illus- trates the passions that political campaigns aroused in those days. With the exception of William Aldrich, the pick and shovel miner, as the sole Republican for years before and after the war, every other man in the county was either an Andrew Jackson or a Jeff Davis Democrat, excepting a few old-line Whigs, who though their party expired with Daniel Webster, still held to their beliefs and scouted the new Republican doctrines. Thus any political quarrel in the county could only arise in the house of Democracy itself. It arose during the shrievalty campaign of J. S. Ashman and James N. Walker, honest, capable and uncompromising Democrats, and both incum- bents of the office for two terms each.

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Converse announcing himself for rotation in office, espoused the cause of Walker with all energy and activity in a "hot and exciting canvass" not so much between the principals as between "rash and reckless adherents." Election day passed off quietly with the exception of the presence of armed men in public. The vote was light, and all qualified electors had voted by three o'clock in the afternoon when by common consent the count was started in the courtroom. Converse was in front of Payne's saloon, when a cobble hurled from within by a half drunken fellow passed close to his head. He fired at his assailant, missed aim and ball lodged high in the wall. Crowe, a confederate of the cobble thrower, sneaked up behind Converse and struck him on the back of the head with slungshot, only the thickness of a felt hat protected the skull from fracture.

Stunned by the blow, Converse fell to his knees but arising fired and shot Crowe through the body. Crowe fell on hands and knees ten feet away, and tried to arise, and mutual friends rushed in to aid. In the general melee, John Dwyer, teamster with the original fort garrison and for years later in Fresno the driver of the "sand wagon," took to his heels to avoid the bullets and in the flight his hat was blown off by a leaden messenger. Con- verse struggled against a throng whom he fought as supposed assailants, but was landed finally on the courthouse steps and by multitude of hands his Samson like strength was overcome. After this tragedy, be became "more uneasy, irresolute and unsettled."

He withdrew into the mountains, south of the Kings River. There he laid claim upon location to "a large amphitheater of forest and chaparral en- circled by mountain ridges." It bears to this day the name of "Converse Basin," though he never secured title. It has been ruthlessly denuded of its timber, including Big Trees, in the Millwood lumber mill operations. Upon return to the plains, he professed reformation, was admitted as a member of an orthodox church and publicly baptized in a font excavated for the cere- mony. For a time he discharged faithfully the newly assumed responsi- bilities, regained the confidence of former friends and secured that of new ones. He was in the real estate business, but the old unrest seized him and he drifted to San Francisco, where for ten years or more "his checkered life was spent in desultory endeavors to keep starvation at bay." He an- nounced himself as a mining expert and engineer. Converse was a striking figure, six feet tall, weighed 200 pounds or more, and in later years was largely developed abdominally. He was a man of great physical strength, and an expert swimmer, a demonstrated accomplishment that is cited to refute the assertion by some that his drowning in San Francisco Bay was accidental. The fact is that he met death in a second attempt at suicide, and when the waters of the bay gave up the corpse it was weighted with rocks, a circumstance that alone effectually disposes of the accidental death claim. He was a sociable companion, but a change came over him after Gaster's disappearance. A shadow seemed to hover over him, say those who had known him in the days of abandon, when he was not always overneat or precise in attire, and yet was remembered for kindly and animated face, topped by a shock of stand-up-straight-in-the-air hair.

For one of his physical proportions, Converse was of intense mental and business activity. He was a man of means in his day. Among his activ- ities were the lumbermill at Crane Valley, which after the 1862 flood passed into the hands of George Mccullough. The ferry below Millerton, likewise the property on the village side of the river, also went to others. He was known as far back as 1851, when he and T. C. Stallo were general mer- chants at Coarse Gold. So well established was his reputation for restless- ness and financial improvidence, that despite strong partisanship and posi- tion he was never seriously considered politically. In connection with his Kings River sojourn, he tried to exploit a plan to cut the virgin timber in the basin, float the logs down the stream to railroad connection, and from

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

there out as lumber from the saw mill. Converse was a glib and plausible talker and almost interested capital in the enterprise. Logs had been floated to prove the feasibility of the water transportation. A financial panic came on and capital dropped him.

With the building of the railroad, Converse is found on its payroll as a legislative lobbyist and an active partisan of its proposition of a $5,000 a mile subsidy for constructing the road through the valley counties. Senator Thomas Fowler made one of his record fights against the measure and the legislature killed it in the end. The closing years of Converse's checkered career were spent in San Francisco as a curbstone broker and mining expert, pursuing such a precarious course that not infrequently he was on the verge of starvation. To hail a former Fresno acquaintance was like clutching at the straw by the drowning man, for it meant a temporary loan, never to be repaid, to hold off the gaunt wolf of hunger. A perfunctory coroner's inquest with no relatives or acquaintances attending, and with no effort at a positive identification of the barely recognizable remains has left a doubt on which has been impinged a far fetched belief, entertained by some, that he returned to his native state and there ended his days a charge on the bounty of an old negro "mammy" in Georgia. This is manifestly incorrect for well is it remembered that A. H. Statham financed Converse to go to Georgia to claim an inheritance. It was thought he had been rid of for good and always, but the surprise was when he returned to close a subsequent precarious career in San Francisco.

Extraordinary physical energies and activities, excellent intellectual abilities and fine social qualities were combined in a strange make up, with many elements of goodness that would have made him a useful and influen- tial citizen, had he not lacked the regulating balance wheel of rigid principle, or perhaps if his lot had not been cast among the turbulent and restless scenes of early California life. Converse and Gaster are in unmarked graves, yet singularly on the present site of Millerton stand, side by side, only two structures of the days when they lived, monuments to their memory-the courthouse that Converse built and the adobe saloon where Folsom & Gaster held forth, and Payne after them.

Payne was shot in the leg in May, 1873, and bled to death at Tripp & Payne's store on the Tollhouse road to Humphrey & Mock's mill. It was a wanton act, claimed to have been an accidental shot after target pastime by John Williams, a negro, who in December, was sent to the penitentiary for two years for manslaughter. Payne had sold his saloon to retire from business, and was buried at the fort.

IRA McCRAY

Ira McCray came to Millerton a rich man, credentials which made it easy for him to jump into prominence, to be public spirited and as early as 1857 to erect a $15,000 stone and brick hotel structure that was in all Mil- lerton's time surpassed only by the courthouse. He was the prince of good fellows, liberality personified, and if he had no other redeeming quality would have stood high alone for his credit, for it was said of him that "his word was as good as his bond," in marked contrast to Converse.

McCray was a man physically as large as Converse, but better propor- tioned, weighing about 180 pounds. Bearded and mustached, he passed for a handsome man. As early as 1854, he and George Rivercombe, as hotel and liverymen, did "an enormous business." thanks probably in a large measure to the side issues. McCray was for years the popular idol, heart and soul in every public enterprise and movement, and an influence in the county to be reckoned with. He was one of the commissioners named in the act for the creation of the county. He filled the office of coroner from 1861 to 1871, acted in that capacity before that, under appointments, no one presuming

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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 19

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