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 44

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 44

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To divert in the sequence of the story, George Sontag at Folsom con- spired with one Frank Williams, also a life termer, to plan an escape, Wil- liams undertaking to have smuggled in the weapons that Sontag might cause to be provided. This smuggler according to a confession that has been made was William Fredericks, who had then been released after service of a term for robbing a Mariposa stage, but later was hanged for the murder of the cashier of the San Francisco Savings Union Bank at Polk and Market Streets in an attempted daylight burglary. He it was that furnished the weapons and ammunition in the attempted jail break, leaving them in the prison quarry wrapped in blanket and on the day of the break was in a deserted stamp mill hard by with clothing to be exchanged for the convict garb. Williams was to write to Fredericks to call on Mrs. Evans, and Son- tag to her also, informing her of the call and the letter was for the delivery by introduction to "Betsey" (a pistol) and to "Mr. Ballard" (a sawed off gun).

The letters were mailed by a clergyman who was taken in by the peni- tential professions of the fellows. Mrs. Evans declined to give the assistance. June 27 the attempt was made. Guard Lieutenant Frank Brairre was seized to be used as a shield, a desperate conflict ensued, the gatling gun was let loose, the conspirators were armed with rifles and knives, a gulch was jumped over, refuge was taken behind a rock to escape the gatling fire, sur- render was signaled with show of hat at the end of a rifle barrel and waving it. The escape was completely and tragically frustrated. Sontag was badly wounded but eventually recovered though crippled for life. The bodies of the dead were used by the prisoners as a barricade in the attempted escape. A young prisoner named Thomas Schell from San Francisco came within range of the fire and was killed by a chance bullet. He was not of the escap- ing party. One Anthony Dalton, who lost his life, was a Harvard graduate serving a twenty-year sentence for the burglary of a San Francisco gun store. While being conveyed to Folsom, he jumped out of the car window while train was moving at full speed. Frank Williams was a life termer as a stage robber, having held up twelve stages in five months and one of these twice on the same day.

November 28, 1893, the trial was begun of Evans for the murder of of Wilson, the Texas man, and December 14 after deliberations for seventeen hours the verdict was guilty, the jury fixing punishment at life imprisonment. Before impanelment of the jury Sontag had confessed his crimes to War- den Aull for the reasons as he stated that Mrs. Evans had ill-treated his mother when she came to Visalia to nurse John and also had not given her any proceeds from the Collis robbery; also because crippled for life in the attempted escape he hoped by assisting the authorities to secure their aid for a pardon. Sontag testified at the trial against Evans.

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Awaiting sentence, Evans was permitted while in the Fresno jail to be visited by wife and to have meals sent in to him, the restaurant waiter being one Edward Morrell, who was deluded into believing Evans to be a hero and who was himself a bidder for notoriety. On the evening of Decem- ber 26, 1893, Mrs. Evans was making her prison call, Morrell came with the meal and Evans was permitted as customary to leave cell to eat the meal in the corridor, Ben Scott being the jailer. This ended, Morrell asked to be let out with the tray of dishes. As Scott opened the jail gate, he had a knife pressed to his heart with orders to hold up hands. Evans whipped out a revolver which the waiter had smuggled in. Mrs. Evans tried to seize the pistol, Evans pushed her aside, Scott opened the door and Evans and Morrell walked out, Evans declaring to Scott that the wife had nothing to do with the affair and to take good care of her.

Scott was made a forced companion of the escapes and ex-Mayor S. H. Cole involuntarily joined the party when Evans placed a pistol against his chest. At the Adventists' Church at Mariposa and N, one block from the jail, City Marshal John D. Morgan and William Wyatt, a citizen, were met. Morrell thrust a revolver into their faces and Morgan was so taken by sur- prise that he held up hands but when Morrell began searching his person Morgan wrapped his arms around him and he and Wyatt soon overpowered him. Morrell called to Evans for assistance, being a little behind him with his two involuntary prisoners. He hurried up and fired twice at Morgan who relinquished his hold and sank to the ground while Wyatt ran off for assist- ance as did the others. Morrell armed himself with the marshal's revolver and lie and Evans ran to a team hitched near by, but the animals were fright- ened by the shooting and as soon as untied made off and the outlaws had to escape on foot. After some blocks they seized a newsboy's horse and cart and off they were.

Seen thereafter several times, they were at liberty until February 8, 1894, when a posse came upon them, shots were exchanged and they escaped. February 19 they were so emboldened that they visited Evans' home at Visalia, the information was conveyed to the sheriff's office and a cordon was placed around the house at 3 A. M. Sheriff Kay of Tulare sent a boy to the house with a note that further resistance would be useless. It was daylight and Evans could see that they were trapped, the occupants not knowing of the siege before then. Evans sent a note by his little son. It read :

"Sheriff Kay-Come to my house without arms and you will not be harmed; I want to talk to you.

"CHRIS EVANS."

Several notes were exchanged and it was agreed that Kay and William Hall enter Evans' yard unarmed. They did so. Evans and Morrell shook hands with them and surrendered unconditionally. Morrell was charged with robbery in taking the marshal's pistol and life imprisonment was his sentence. Likewise was that pronounced on Evans February 20, 1894.

In their train robberies the modus operandi was to conceal themselves near the engine, wear masks and after holding up the engine crew, cause the engine to be detached and run off for a distance. While one dynamited the express car, the other would hold off interference by raking the side of the train with buckshot. Evans had been a soldier in the Union Army in the Civil War, and before taking up train robbing had been a Visalia resident for twenty years.

Sontag was pardoned March 21, 1908, and took employment as "floor manager" in Tim McGrath's Barbary Coast resort on Pacific Street in San Francisco. He left this position soon, was financed in a book dealing with his past and warning others against the folly of wrong doing. He and Morrell blossomed out afterward as social reformers. Sontag and Evans made the most of efforts in the commercialization of their criminal records.

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While Evans and Sontag were in concealment in the Fresno foothills aided and abetted by an unprincipled citizenship that placed every stumbling block in the way of the officers of the law, the reporter of an ultra sensational newspaper of San Francisco readily arranged through this delectable citizenry and its Fresno agents for a meeting with Evans and the publication of an interview with him as a distinguished personage. It was hailed and made much of as "a feat in journalism."

As illustrative of the efforts to commercialize the murderous deeds of the robber band, may be cited the publication one day in the Herald of Sanger, Fresno County, twenty-five years ago in 1893, and a decade after the bandit reign of terror of the following :

"The cabin at Stone Corral (in Tulare County) which sheltered U. S. Marshal Gard and his posse while awaiting the approach of Evans and Son- tag passed through Sanger on the cars last Saturday. It has been taken to pieces and placed on the cars at Monson destined for the Grove street theater in San Francisco, the manager having paid $100 for the structure. The cabin will be erected inside the theater and exhibited in a melodrama, 'The Train Wreckers.'"

And people at Sanger actually broke off pieces of the timber to keep as souvenirs.

CHAPTER LII

LOCATION IN APRIL, 1872, BY THE RAILROAD OF THE TOWNSITE OF THE FUTURE FRESNO CITY. TRADITION HAS IT THAT A. J. MAASSEN WAS THE FIRST ACTUAL SETTLER. CITY CLERK WIL- LIAM H. RYAN WAS AT DEATH IN 1918 THE OLDEST CONTINUOUS RESIDENT. RUSSELL H. FLEMING NOW HOLDS THAT DISTINC- TION. JERRY RYAN WAS A NOTABLE PERSONAGE OF THE INFANT VILLAGE. EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF SOME FIRST COMERS NAR- RATED ON LATER DAY VISITS. THE POPULAR MYTH THAT FRESNO MARKS THE GEOGRAPHICAL CENTER OF THE STATE. BURIED SECTION SURVEY STAKE IS AT K AND MARIPOSA CORNER. CHOSEN TOWNSITE A MOST WOE-BEGONE LITTLE SETTLEMENT ON THE ARID AND LIMITLESS PLAINS. CONTRAST OF THE YEARS EMPHASIZED IN THE OWNERSHIP OF AUTOMOBILES.

Accepted tradition is that A. J. Maassen was the first town settler in Fresno, locating a little to the southeast of the railroad depot. He had a shanty there, a water well with trough attached and the home made sign :

HORSE RESTAURANT Bring Your Horse In One Horse By Fresh Water One Bet One Day Hay Water 3 Bet

The teamster pumped up the water, slaked thirst of himself and horses and the "bit" was twelve and one-half cents. The same year M. A. Schulz and Henry Roemer erected a saloon and refreshment stand, with scant sleep- ing accommodations on the future H (or Front Street) fronting the railroad. Otto Froelich, who was the first to desert Millerton, put up a board shanty near the corner of what is now Mariposa and H and opened a merchandise store with Julius Biehl as manager in charge. Frank Dusy was the first to ship wool from the station. Depot there was none and he loaded on the cars from the wagons. Railroad construction hands lived in tents. Original freight depot was and continued for years along the reservation between Inyo and

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Kern. First hotel was the Larquier's Bros. on H Street between Mariposa and Tulare after the depot was built and facing it across the square. It was known as the Larquier's and later as the French Hotel. Preceding it perhaps, but certainly contemporaneous, was the little Railroad Hotel at the upper end of the railroad ticket office sentry box. Russell H. Fleming started the first livery stable on the ground where the Kutner-Goldstein stores were afterward located. George McCollough came along with an insurance cabin and invested in town lots. Later he was the first justice of the peace and still later with Lyman Andrews established the first water works, doing away largely with the private wells and windmills, and so long located on the south side of Fresno Street at the corner of the alley between I and J. J. W. Williams located early in 1872 the first blacksmith shop on the site of the later Grand Central Hotel at Mariposa and J Streets.

Few there were to realize March 6, 1918, when William H. Ryan, city clerk of Fresno, at the age of fifty-one years and nine months lacking only a few days, died so unexpectedly and so calmly after having romped with the children before retiring to bed for the night, that in him passed away he who was for continuous residence the oldest city inhabitant. His continuous resi- dence was one of forty-six years.

Literally he had grown up with the town. His acquaintanceship was a wide one. Friends and acquaintances he counted by the legion. He was in youth "a mother's boy." Companions of his age there were few in his day in the wretched little village. Its population could readily be enumerated on a slip of paper. All were acquainted with each other. There was as much use for a directory as a fifth wheel to a coach. His parents were thrifty, plain people beginning life over in a rough new country after better days in Texas before the war. He was thrown much into the companionship of a good, hard working mother and so fell naturally into domestic ways and habits. It was said of him that he was a good cook and that as a cake and pie maker few excelled him. He was a graduate of St. Mary's College of the days when that institution of learning was located on the peninsula of San Francisco, far out on the old Mission Road and almost at the San Mateo County line.

His first election as city clerk was in 1905. He was the second under city charter organization. The first was Supervisor J. B. Johnson, who was also the first Postal Telegraph Company operator in Fresno City. At the time of death, William H. Ryan had completed the first year of his fourth successive term as city clerk. His elections had been practically without opposition so popular was he.

Townsite of Fresno was located in April 1872. It was platted the month after, and the special election for the removal of the county seat was not held until February 1874. The Ryans came to Fresno in December 1872 from the native state of the son, Texas, when he was six years of age. They have never severed their relations with Fresno, they have died here and are buried here. Three sons and two daughters and grandchildren are the living descendents of a family of nine children in the direct line. It is not to say that there were not men and women in the county long before the Ryans came, but they never became residents of Fresno City. Others who had preceded them in the coming did become such residents but it was after them, and others still were here at and before the time of their arrival but moved away afterwards or have long passed away.

With the death of William H. Ryan, the oldest living continuous city resident and also for age is Russell H. Fleming, who in the palmy days of Millerton was the driver of the mail stage between Stockton and Visalia, with Millerton as the most important stopping place en route. He was in the county years before the coming of the Ryans. He became one of the first permanent residents of the village county seat. Familiar with the country of the seat site even before it was platted, his stage route from Millerton to the Kings River ford or bridge-crossing took him far out of the course from the

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later located railroad settlement. Direct as was the route between the points not an habitation stood, not a drop of water was to be had on the line.

Permanent residential locator at Fresno he did not become until after the coming of the Ryans as the pioneer livery stableman as one of the first established business enterprises in the village. Mr. Fleming is a remarkably well preserved man. His name is associated in after years with many of the first things in city and county.

Jerry Ryan was here with the railroad construction gang. He was the section boss over the division between Fresno and the San Joaquin River, as was Luke E. Shelley later of the other division between the railroad village and the Kings River south of it. Jerry Ryan and his father had seen better days before the war in Texas. He had come to America as a child. Father and son were engaged as railroad construction labor contractors. They employed 200 teams. They constructed the first railroad in Cuba. The civil war proved their undoing, the experience of so many others. The son looked about for a new field. Sacramento was headquarters of railroad activities in California. His former railroad affiliations aided him in his search. He cast his eye upon Oregon as a new and promising field and made a journey to look over the ground. Choice was offered him of employ at Sacramento or Fresno. He chose the latter because of the superior school facilities promised for his large and growing family, moved also by pioneering and adventurous instincts. And so the family came here before there was a town.

He located long before the vote to change the county seat. That special election day was a memorable one. Railroad carried the day for removal of the seat. All hands were rounded up to vote from the Kings on the south to the Chowchilla on the north as the county boundaries and were brought to the village precinct polling place that day. Tradition has it that whiskey was peddled that day free out of bucket in tin cups for votes for Fresno as the county seat, and the victory was with hands down. Charles C. Baley cast his first vote at that special election. His twenty-first birthday anniversary fell on the day after. He arranged under the new registration law to be qual- ified to vote and vote he did.

Jerry Ryan continued with the railroad a little longer than a year and launched out for himself. He opened the Star Hotel and boarding house at the corner of Tulare and H on the site today of the Olender block, later was associated there with Michael Slaven from April to September 1875 and there- after alone in the building of C. G. Sayle known as the Court building adjoin- ing that of Shannon & Hughes before occupied by B. S. Booker; later was associated with James Mooney, who bought him out and renamed the house, the Morning Star. During that association he bought the present Hughes Hotel corner at Tulare and I Streets, and erected a house to occupy it as the Washington Hotel. This was in May 1876. One of the disastrous fires of the early days wiped him out there. Undeterred by this loss, he resolved in August to erect the two story brick hotel building at the corner of Mari- posa and I Streets, one of the early larger structures and a notable one also. Here he conducted the United States Hotel popular as an eating house. Here he continued until he leased the place to Sam Toombs, saddler and har- ness man, for whom afterward was named the large brick structure at J and Merced Streets known as Toombs Hotel and still standing.

Ryan moved in 1883 and next as a Boniface he was on J Street between Mariposa and Tulare, facing the courthouse square. This was the California Hotel. In 1886 he was in the Arlington House at Inyo and J, a three story brick building and a notable one in that section. At one time, he had also erected a family residence in the select section at Inyo and K. Ryan was a man who was ever retiring from the active pursuits of busy life, but so rest- less that he invariably returned to them after brief intervals, accounting for the oft changes and locations. Twice during his Fresno career he took up long residences in Oakland and San Francisco, though he always retained 18

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his property interests here. He could not remain away from Fresno. His last return was to make his home at the Arlington surrounded by most of his grown children and there died and the wife before him. Ryan invested wisely in real estate and died a well to do man, to the last plain and unassuming in style and living. He was one of the best known local characters of the vil- lage and the later town.

As a young man in the Civil War, he served in the Seventh Texas Cavalry and was taken a prisoner. And thereby hangs a tale. While such prisoner at Rock Island, he became the prison hero for beating to his knees in a pugilistic set-to, both combatants stripped to the waist, a fellow, who accord- ing to the varied versions had either affronted him or was a bully who had lorded it over every one until it was no longer to be borne with. Condi- tions in the prison were at the time not the pleasantest because of the retali- atory measures pursued for the cruel treatment of Union prisoners at Ander- sonville. At any rate, it was a ring fight to a finish and Ryan was crowned the victor. Years after at Fresno, J. D. Collins and Major T. P. Nelson were in town one day from Academy and entered the United States Hotel for the noon day meal. Collins had also been a war prisoner at Rock Island, having been taken with a Tennessee cavalry command in Pegram's brigade after a defeat in the Cumberland Mountains. While paying the score, Collins thought he recognized the voice of the man who was receiving his money. A question or two sufficed to establish his identity as the prize fighting hero at Rock Island. A comradeship sprung up between the Confederate veterans that was broken only by the death of the erstwhile Lone Star state trooper. Both had been exchanged and set at liberty before the close of the war. The meeting under the circumstances was a pathetic one.

The most valuable realty asset of the Ryan estate, the landmark at the corner of Mariposa and J. streets, 125x50, popularly known as "Degen's Cor- ner" for William Degen, who conducted a corner saloon for eighteen years there, was reported July 1, 1919, to have been sold for $125,000, or $1,250 a front foot.

In November 1917 lived at Porterville in Tulare County Mrs. Mary Haskell, pioneer of that district and also of Fresno before the coming of the Ryans and the days of earliest beginnings.

"Henry Glass would sure have a time job on his hands if he had to take care of this year's raisin crop alone," she remarked after noting the figures of the estimated Fresno district raisin yield for that year. "Glass said back in the seventies he could eat the whole crop. Away back then, when I lived in Fresno and when all the country round there was a barren plain there was talk of taking water from the San Joaquin and irrigating the land on the plains for raising grapes and fruit. Glass was a lumberman and lived over Millerton way, and he said he could eat all the raisins they could ever raise on the plains."

Mrs. Haskell and husband who died years before came to Fresno from the east in July 1872. There were then according to her recollection two buildings in Fresno. One was the railroad station, a story and a half box with office, dining room and kitchen below. The upper half had two small bedrooms, partitioned off at one end and the remainder was one large bunk- room. Mr. Haskell worked for the railroad then in course of construction south to Visalia and she managed the dining room in the depot building. The other structure was a little one-room box called an "Irish shanty" in which Otto Froelich conducted a merchandise store. It stood a little to the north- east of the depot site (Mariposa and H). War time prices prevailed yet, potatoes as high as five cents a pound and sugar from twelve and one-half cents to fourteen cents a pound.

Drinking water was brought in railroad tank cars. A man put down a deep well a little southeast of the depot and in the summer made money selling water to teamsters. He sold water for a "bit" (121/2 cents) a bucket,

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buyer hauling bucket up by windlass, so by the time his horses were watered he had spent several "bits" and money not plentiful. This man was the same one that perceived and seized the opportunity for commercializing the Fresno heat. Mrs. Haskell told of Maassen's "underground garden," dug to a depth that made it cool all the time. This resort so pleasurable remembered by surviving early settlers was covered over and filled in in the erection of the Ogle House by the Blasingames in later years, and uncovered in part nearly forty years after where not filled in, in the demolition of the Ogle for the building of the Collins Hotel, the foundations of the first named having sunk for lack of proper support in the unfilled excavation and throwing the old building out of plumb.

To recall another phase of those first days of Fresno was the visit in April 1910 of Mrs. Martha Patten Owen, first woman teacher, and widow of J. J. Owen, founder of the San Jose Mercury. She was still a school girl attending the State Normal School at San Jose when Professor Allen, the principal, called her into his office one day and asked her whether she would like a little experience in teaching before finishing her course. If so, the opportunity presented itself in a request for an assistant at Fresno. The offer was accepted and homesick she was after entering upon the journey at thought of going among strangers, so far from home, inexperienced and in a new and rough community. Her fears vanished, said she, in the warm welcome received.

"It was scarcely more than a little settlement at that time but the lack in size and people was made up in the character of those few who were the founders of the city of today. The weeks and months passed so rapidly and joyously that Fresno has ever since been a charmed picture for me and among the cherished recollections in my memory are the dear delightful days passed in Fresno. It was to the kindly and helpful suggestions of the prin- cipal of the school, R. H. Bramlet, that I owe what success attended my early educational efforts. My home was with Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Ferguson and from this association a warm friendship sprang up," narrated the lady.

The school term ended, Miss Patten returned to the Normal to complete her studies. Upon graduation, she took a position in San Jose, later becoming principal of the school and resigned to marry Mr. Owen. She is the author of "A Portrait Gallery of American Women," telling of noted American women in American history.

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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 44

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