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 5

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

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He mined in Grass Valley, Nevada County, and in Mariposa County following up mining with merchandising at Coarse Gold Gulch in Fresno County. He conducted a large credit business with the miners but had to close out at a heavy loss with the early giving-out of the mines. Walker's Store was a political and civic center in those days. Ranching at Fine Gold followed, and in the foothills, in 1863, he stocked a range with four dollar a head cattle and in 1867 located also on the north side of the San Joaquin. This was an establishment that was a show place in its day, it was added to until he had 1,300 acres on the river, first raising mules, then interested for twelve years in sheep and later in cattle. Prosperity favored him in this and other enterprises and he served two terms in the state legislature after 1861, was twice sheriff after 1866, and an assemblyman in 1870.

It was said of him in 1905, that he was then one of five left of the early settlers of Fresno County, manifestly as incorrect a statement as the popu- larly misconceived one that he was the first sheriff of the county. Still, Walker was a prominent and honored citizen in his day. There is in existence a re- markable photographic work of art by Frank Beck picturing him tuning up an old fiddle. The picture was one of twelve that won for Beck the first prize at the photographers' national convention exhibition at Chautauqua. Walker died at the age of eighty-six leaving a $40,000 estate, a widow, Agnes J. Cran- mer, and seven children, four of them daughters.

Joseph Medley and T. J. Dunlap

Death removed from the list, in the summer of 1917, Joseph Medley and T. J. Dunlap. Medley, born in October, 1826, was a picturesque character, a

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

resident of the Auberry Valley section for upwards of sixty-six years, identi- fied with activities in the Tollhouse lumber district, a miner of course in the first days, and a squawman as was his brother, Marion, whose death preceded his. Joseph went through life without achieving other mark of distinction than as the picturesque survivor of a past day, eking out an existence as a cattle and hog rancher, and removed only a degree above the Indian whose life long associate he had been. His remains lie buried in the little cemetery at Auberry Grove and, at the simple funeral (July 9, 1917) Rev. Hardie Con- nor of the near-by Indian Mission officiated. Surviving Medley were son and daughter, three nephews and a niece. Leaving no impress of his long life on the history of the county, yet talking interestingly of the very earliest personal recollections of it and its men, the most lurid events in his negative career are recalled in visits to the later founded Fresno City in its infant days to yield to the pitfalls in his path in the den that was dignified with the name of the Star Theater to squander with the prodigality of a Monte Cristo the returns of successive seasons from sale of hogs and cattle, returning to foot- hill haunts and squaw, bankrupt after wasting his substance on the bediz- zened and short skirted damsels who welcomed him as long as his money lasted. Medley ended his days in the almshouse, decrepit and almost blind. The local print noticed his death in a twenty-five-line obituary, without re- vealing the picturesque identity of the character that had passed away.

Of another stamp was T. J. Dunlap of Madera, arrival of 1852-53, whom fortune favored at the very outset in making him strike it rich with a cousin in mining at the mouth of Kaiser Creek where it empties into the San Joaquin, later selling the claim for a big price after having profitably worked it for years. His later day home was on the ranch near Fine Gold; in the 70's he was in the lumber business with saw mill on the site of what is now Bass Lake in Madera County, one of the impounded water reservoirs for electric power generation and at the upper end of which is located The Pines resort.

Dunlap represented in the Fresno County board of supervisors the dis- trict north of the San Joaquin, made a campaign for sheriff, but was defeated, and was a deputy under County Assessor W. J. Hutchinson. He was a citizen of note and his death was at the age of eighty-nine. As with many others Fortune, fickle drab that she is, gave him cold shoulder in his last days; or perhaps times and conditions had changed and the pioneer of other days fell by the wayside in the swifter march of the day.

Passing allusion is made here only to earliest of pioneers in Mrs. Ann Mckenzie-Hart who died in 1910, at the age of eighty-five and Dr. Lewis Leach who passed away at seventy-four, in March, 1897. Record of them is found elsewhere. They were of the very first white permanent settlers. Others might be recalled but they would have to be summoned out of ob- scurity. It is with sadness that it must be noted that in their closing days fate has been unkind, even harsh, with some of these pioneers of pioneers, for burdened with the ills and infirmities of age and poverty not a few have had to seek the sheltering roof of public institutions.

John Dwyer and Robert Brantsford

Not overlooked should be one who, until his death in June, 1912, was a character in Fresno city. John Dwyer came to the territory with the soldiers to give protection to the miners against the hostile Indians. He came as a drummer boy and the tale is, that on the march through Death Valley he was carried, in an exhausted state, for two days and nights on the shoulders of Robert Brantsford, a stalwart and burly Virginian and soldier of the expedi- tion. Dwyer labored on the hand-operated saw mill that turned out the logs and planks for Fort Miller, the soldiers first bivouacking at Fort Washington, further down on the river, where today the school district bearing the name is located.

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Dwyer was also of the squawmen contingent. After leaving the garrison he became a freight carrier between Stockton and the Southern Mines; in this connection the story is recalled that as an expert horseman he was once a principal at Stockton, in a wager with thousands in gold dust at stake, as to who had the best. horse to move a load of given weight over a marked course. The demonstration by his opponent foreshadowed his loss of the wager, but a quick thought saved the day. Dwyer jumped on his horse a- straddle and with the added weight the animal was enabled to secure better foothold to start moving the load and the wager was won. Dwyer was known in Fresno as "The sand wagon man" from his vocation of carting and selling sand for mortar, plaster and other construction work.

Dwyer had passed his eighty-fourth year when death summoned him. It is to be noted as remarkable, the years that the men and women of the pioneer times attained after the hardships and privations endured. Dwyer as a team- ster hauled the material in the construction of the Millerton courthouse, was a California volunteer in the Civil War, took unto wife the widow, Mary Friedman of Millerton, was a pioneer of Fresno city, and a member of the first volunteer fire company. His lot in life was an humble one but he shirked no duty.

Of Brantsford who also joined the squawmen, it is recorded that he died in September, 1890, and in his will, made liberal provision for a daughter Martha, the offspring of a Mono Indian mother, who was known as Mary Hancock because of having assumed other marital relations. Brantsford left for the daughter a trust estate, with Jasper D. Musick as executor of his will.

James J. Rogers

Included in the list of survivors at one time, but eliminated in the course of revisions was also James J. Rogers, whose death was at the age of eighty- two. He was born in Illinois March 17, 1822, the son of Robert Rogers and Helen Patterson, and a direct descendent of Gen. Robert Rogers of French and Indian wars. Rogers served under Gen. Winfield Scott in the War with Mexico and was one of the twelve that carried the American flag into the capital, Mexico City, on the 14th of September, 1847, when the victorious army marched into the city and occupied the national palace. He married Cynthia Ann Stephens, born in Illinois December, 1830, daughter of William Stephens and Delia Short, the latter a descendant of Capt. Short of Revolu- tionary fame, and the parents of J. B. Stephens, who was a captain in the Mexican and Civil wars. James Rogers married at Little Rock, Ark., Sep- tember 26, 1848, left for California April 1, 1850, via the southern route through New Mexico and Arizona, arrived at Los Angeles August 1, 1850. settled at Stockton in the spring of 1851, engaged in mining until 1857 and then removed to Fresno county where a large family was reared. The Rogers were the pioneer owners of the Rogers Hot Springs, known now as the Fresno Hot Springs. James J. Rogers died at Los Angeles March 6, 1904. Mrs. Cynthia A. Rogers, the widow, lived at last accounts (November 20, 1918), at Stockton, Cal., and though eighty-eight years of age is a wonderfully pre- served woman, who despite her years is able to read and write without diffi- culty, goes wither and when the mood possesses her and has found time to knit for the American soldiers in France.

BACK TO MINING ERA

In the rostered membership of the Fresno County Pioneers' Association are the following named living residents whose days go back to the mining era of the decade of the 50's, namely ;

1856-Mrs. Mary A. Parker-Strivens, Charles E. Strivens, James T.

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Parker, Henry Wells, Mrs. Sallie Cole-Sample (Obit., Dec. 17, 1917), and J. F. Boling.

1857-J. W. Holliday, G. W. Statham and Frank M. Lewis.

1858-John C. Hoxie (Obit., Nov. 21, 1918), Elizabeth J. Hoxie-Barth, Sewell F. Hoxie, Mrs. Tillie Gilmore-Brown and Charles Crawford.

1859-Lil A. and Led. F. Winchell (Obit., 1918), Mrs. Peter Parry and Mrs. Carrie E. Hoxie-McKenzie.

Some of these were children at the time. They are excluded from the pioneer list of territorial residents before county organization date. The asso- ciation residence date qualification for membership is the removal year of the county seat of Millerton in 1874.

CHAPTER III

HISTORY OF STATE IS UNIQUE AND REDOLENT OF ROMANCE. ITS NAME AN ETYMOLOGICAL ENIGMA. RICHES OF CALIFORNIA GREATER THAN THOSE OF THE FABLED INDIES. LONG NEGLECTED BY ITS SPANISH POSSESSORS. PRACTICALLY UNPEOPLED WAS THE TERRITORY BEFORE THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD. SPAIN OVER- LOOKED ITS OPPORTUNITY. "INFERNO OF 49" STARTLES THE WORLD. THE DAY OF ANOTHER CONTROLLING RACE DAWNS WITH THE SETTING OF THE SUN ON THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MISSIONS.

California is a land redolent of romance in its early history of discovery and exploration. Its very name created in 1510 for a romance of medieval chivalry, "the most fictitious of fiction," is an etymological enigma to this day. Its source origin in a forgotten Spanish romance was not discovered until the winter of 1862, and then by Rev. Edward E. Hale in the course of Spanish archival researches at a time when he expected to become the reader and amanuensis for William H. Prescott, the historian. Melodious as the name is, the California poet Edwin H. Markham, observes that it is "as well also the oldest of any state save only Florida," given by Ponce de Leon in 1512, while in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth.

For long California was "a mere field of cosmographic conjecture," whether island, peninsula or part of mainland. Its location was placed some- where between Mexico and India, with its boundaries vagueness itself. The fabled and the material California have in turn attracted a world's undivided interest. Her history is unique. Considered in entirety or in its successive phases, the record is one unequalled in variety, originality and interest by that of any other province of the New World. Whether regarded from the purely romantic or the positive, materialistic viewpoint, no state of the union has commanded more continuous notice and attention. Writers and historians ever return for a fascinating theme to California, land of gold, of perpetual sunshine, of natural blessings such as no other land has been endowed with in such prodigality.

The romancer of 1510 described his California as an imaginary island "located on the right hand of the Indies, very near the terrestrial paradise." He peopled it with black Amazons, who trained griffins for warfare and caparisoned them with gold. The only mineral on the island was gold, though it was fabulously rich also in precious stones and pearls. It was, as Poet Markham described it, "a rosy romance." Still the Spanish romancer's most extravagant dreams did not conjure up such a rich land as the real, material- istic California has proven to be. The California that the explorers placed on the map and named proved in truth to be the land of gold and of untold riches. Not of precious stones and pearls, but of gold and products of the virgin soil.

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

The gold was not unearthed until nearly three and a half centuries after the romance, and then by the Anglo-Americans, in whose veins throbbed and pulsated to action the admixed red blood of preceding generations of the adventurous and resistless Saxon.

The problem of Columbus' day was to reach "far Cathay" by sea, sailing westward-to open a new route to India. Ever the cry was India. This fever- ish quest for wealth was the impelling motive also of Hernando Cortez after his conquest of Mexico and the subjugation of Montezuma (1520-21). In the various explorations under him, of the California and North Pacific coasts (1532-37), whatever the specific moving cause of particular expeditions, whether in the alarm-spreading presence in the North Pacific of English buc- caneer or freebooter to seize the annual Spanish treasure galleon from the Philippines, whether the threatened aggressions of foreign powers for terri- torial acquisition or commercial spoliation, or whether the location of a Cali- fornia relief port for the teredo-eaten hull or scurvy-stricken crew of the annnal "great Manila ship."

It was all very nice for the history recording apologists for "these con- scienceless gold-seeking adventurers" to advance the specious plea for them, of spreading the faith and win souls through religion, their real motive in the quest for the Indies was always gold, precious stones, the luxurious and costly fabrics-to find the shorter route to wealth, glory and the commerce with the Eastern El Dorado, fat and overflowing with the things precious for the increasing wealth and luxurious demands of the age.

Great would be the glory and great also the profit of the individual or the nation that would shorten the overland route to India, minimize its perils and difficulties, and pour into the receptive lap of Europe the priceless and coveted commodities of Asia in quantity unstinted. The very name of India suggested boundless wealth and riotous luxury. The Indian sea-route never was voyaged, via the fabled and long sought "Strait of Anian," because the early navigators had to learn that a New World continental barrier blocked the way. In the course of time and in a slow but gradual unfolding of a fore- ordained destinv. California astonished the world with her stores of gold and her succeeding greater material wealth in the soil and products thereof, and her name was acclaimed the synonym for a wealth incomparably greater and more substantial than all the fabled and dreamed of treasures of the Indies.

It was long the subject for wonder and amazement with early travelers and the sea commanders that California so rich and fertile, a great territory capable of sustaining such a large population, and a region so remarkably favored by nature in all things conducive to man's comfort, happiness and prosperity, should, for more than three-quarters of a century during the Span- ish-Mexican regime from 1767 to 1846, be left neglected, remain practically undeveloped, its vast gold-besprinkled interior unknown and unexplored, and the stretch of country along an ocean highway so ill protected as to make it the easy prey of any nation that would have cared to seize it. The little known concerning the land and its isolation were the main safeguards against such forcible seizure.

During the later development periods, California's geographical isolation and position was relatively a less important controlling factor than in the times of discovery exploration. Stretching along the unknown Pacific, the right to control the commerce on which the Spaniards asserted, and next door neighbor to their Mexican province, it was natural that they should dis- cover California and hold possession. No reason then to imagine that the English speaking settlers from the extreme eastern continental shore would come and control the most remote and isolated western border. Previous to the adventitions discovery of gold, in January, 1849, California was practically unpeopled, save for the few scattered Spanish settlements near the sea-coast by those who had come by the comparatively easier and shorter journey from

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Mexico, helped out by occasional Americans and others landed or deserting from trading vessels, or wandering across the country as hunter, trapper or adventurer.

It required a transcendental event to bring about, as it did, California's phenomenally rapid settlement, to brave and overcome the physical obstacles and geographic barriers on the months' long and dangerous overland journey. But for the lure of gold, California might have long continued a sparsely populated country to be settled and developed slowly by a farming class as Oregon and Washington were in large part. The real, positive and unlooked for development of the state began with the discovery of gold. Only natural that Spain should be first to send settlers, but her error was in not practically following up her decided advantages in the presented opportunity. Existing conditions in a country of plenty and the easy life in a genial climate, without necessity for arduous toil "tended no doubt toward stagnation rather than progress." Had these pioneers and their descendants been of as progressive a race as those that were to dispossess them, the very barriers separating the west from the east would have been Mexico's most helpful agency in retaining her California province.

As established in the Californias, the missions were as much political as religious institutions, and they were accorded the protection of the king's soldiers, wretchedly equipped; ill-paid and frequently unpaid for long as they were. Kings of Spain and viceroys of Mexico made their entrances and exits on the world's stage, but California slumbered along and underwent little material change from the discovery days under Cortez, save for the fringe of civilization planted along the sea-coast and spread out thinly from the twenty-one missions from San Diego to Sonoma. In 1831 these missions had already lost much of their splendor and greatness. The downhill grade began in 1824, followed by secularization in 1845, sale of a number of missions for a song, and the neglected Indian converts scattered to run wild and wretched over the country.

Almost up to the time that the great immigration upon the gold discovery startled the world. ushering in an era so extraordinary in history that H. H. Bancroft, the California historian, has epitomized it in the trite phrase, "The Inferno of 49," the interior valley country, which has been the wealth basis of the state through every development stage, continued terra incognita prac- tically. The little known concerning it was indefinite and much of this con- jectural. The very purpose for which the information was gathered-if it was with a definite object in view-existed no more because secularization under the Mexican republic had sealed the doom of the missions and bereft the padres of power and property. The sun then set on the golden age of the missions, the day of another race dawned and with it was ushered in the real and too long held back advancement of a sadly neglected land.

CHAPTER IV

CALIFORNIA'S COLONIZATION DELAYED FOR CENTURIES. SETTLE- MENTS ALL LOCATED ON THE COAST. UPPER CALIFORNIA IMPERFECTLY KNOWN. NO INDUCEMENT TO EXPLORE THE INTERIOR. EXPEDITIONS UNDERTAKEN TO LOCATE NEW MIS- SION SITES. ENSIGN MORAGA THE MOST ENTERPRISING EXPLORER OF HIS TIME. PADRE GARCES STARTING OUT FROM YUMA, TRAVERSES THE VALLEY AS FAR SOUTH AS THE PRESENT LOCATION OF BAKERSFIELD, A REMARKABLE JOURNEY.

"And it all availed nothing."

Little effect on the substantial new conditions after the American con- quest had all the impotent efforts to block manifest destiny during the three-

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

quarters of a century of the Spaniard and the Mexican, with the heroic work of the padres in their missionary and civilizing labors. The quoted phrase epitomizes in fitting epitaph the passing of the Spanish rule in California (1769-1828) with its ten vice-regal governors, of the Mexican rule (1822-46) with its thirteen governors, and incidentally the end of the efforts of the padres, at times arising almost to the sublimity of martyrdom, to convert the Indian and introduce an effete civilization.

The two periods cast over the early history of California a glamor of romance and the picturesque but added little or nothing to the real and materialistic. No effort in Upper California at colonization was made for a little more than two and one-half centuries after Juan R. Cabrillo's voyage in 1542-3 exploring the coast line, half a century before the discovery of Massa- chusetts bay, nor for more than 160 years after Sebastian Viscaino's, in November and December, 1602, when he set foot in the harbors of San Diego and Monterey.

To prevent Russian encroachment southward from Fort Ross and Bodega bay and to convert the Indians, successive land and sea expeditions sent out from Mexico eventually established a chain of twenty-one military and relig- ious establishments located at intervals of a day's journey by horse along or near the coast.

The first of these was founded by Padre Junipero Serra in July, 1769, and the last in August, 1823, as one of two north of the Bay of San Francisco, blunderingly located by Gaspar de Portola in a search for Monterey Bay, but ignorant to the last that he had given the world one of its three greatest har- bors. San Francisco Bay was long after its discovery mapped as Sir Francis Drake's Bay and was so shown in Colton's Atlas, published as late as 1855 for use in the public schools. In the very early history of California, Serra, the simple friar, was the greatest pioneer, the first civilizer of the western coast, the very heart and soul of the spiritual conquest, and he it was who "lifted California from the unread pages of geological history and placed it on the modern map."

Upper California's physical geography was imperfectly known until after American explorers and scientists investigated. Little attention was paid this subject further than to learn something generally of the country on the ocean border from San Diego to Fort Ross. This was a forty to fifty miles-wide strip comprising the white settlements concerning which anything was known with accurate particularity. So also as regards the boundaries. Not until the Americans seized Oregon was it that they, and not the English under claim of the Francis Drake (1579) and George Vancouver (1791-94) discov- eries, were dealt with in settling the northern boundary dispute. The eastern line question was not determined until the entire country came into the pos- session of the United States after the war with Mexico. Even then the segre- gation was by the Americans themselves with California's admission into the union in September, 1850. Down to the American conquest, the Californians occupied only a negligible portion of the interior, yet while knowing nothing of the country east of the Sierras, save by report, they asserted claim to the land as far eastward as Salt Lake.

The coast mission sites were located with reference to sea harbors as San Diego, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and San Francisco, while the others on the Camino del Rey (King's Highway), connecting them all, were selected with special regard to water for irrigation. California's climate was similar in general to that of Mexico and the solicitude of the padres was ever to chose well watered sites in fertile valleys for their establishments. Their judgment of sites was admirable. Settlements along the camino mani- fested no tendency to spread from the coast. The interior was so inaccessible and appeared so dry and inhospitable. The fathers discouraged mining-in short there was no inducement to explore the interior, while the isolation tended to self support and the development of a quiet pastoral life.

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Barter there was none, except in hides and tallow with the periodical New England traders, and hence cattle raising became the industry. Geo- graphic considerations determined the location of the settlements and the occupation of their founders. The seaports and valleys would probably other- wise have received most of the new comers, until they came to appreciate the necessity for irrigation, when they would gradually have spread to the interior. The search for gold in turn headed them from the agricultural districts into the gulches and canyons of the Sierras, and so with the great stampede, mining camps and towns sprang like mushrooms in the Sierra foothill belt. Locations were controlled by convenience to some rich bar or stream, often in narrow gulch or on steep mountain slope, rarely with regard to farming prospects or future lines of travel, activity or centers of population, accounting for the desertion of so many of them with the later changed conditions.

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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 5

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