USA > California > Napa County > History of Napa and Lake Counties, California : comprising their geography, geology, topography, climatography, springs and timber, together with a full and particular record of the Mexican Grants, also separate histories of all the townships and biographical sketches > Part 47
USA > California > Lake County > History of Napa and Lake Counties, California : comprising their geography, geology, topography, climatography, springs and timber, together with a full and particular record of the Mexican Grants, also separate histories of all the townships and biographical sketches > Part 47
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nature cannot be successfully opposed. Over a third of a century had already passed since the ruin left in the wake of intemperance had aroused the alarm of the philanthrophist, the statesman, and the divine. Appeals had been made in the name of our common humanity, to every class of peo- ple for their co-operation, in efforts to stay the progress of the fell destroyer. Men, women and children, were induced to pledge themselves to abstain totally from all inebriating liquors as a beverage, which resulted only in spasmodic and temporary reform, if indeed it did not weaken the sense of moral obligation, by habituating people to the violation of solemn pledges. Legislation was invoked and superadded to moral suasion, liquor laws enacted and evaded or openly defied. A generation had lived and died amid the most zealous and energetic exertion on the part of the humani- tarian, political economists and reformers generally, the best of men and women meantime, ever ready to barter their hearts' blood for the protection of their sons from the drunkard's grave, and their daughters from drunken husbands. When, after thirty or forty years had been devoted unremit- tingly to this cause, a cause that appealed alike to the common interests of society and the deepest and tenderest sympathies of our nature, its advocates were made to stand aghast by the discovery that the statistics of poverty and crime caused by intemperate liquor drinking was not only not dimin- ished but absolutely increased, and it was found by reference to the custom house and returns of domestic distilleries, that consumption of distilled liquors had also increased pari passu with the population. From the above facts he was driven to the conclusion, that it is impossible to so change the nature of the Caucasian, as to induce him to consent to live without the luxury of stimulating beverages of some kind, and consequently that wisdom and prudence call for such a regulation of his appetite as it is possible to effect, and this possibility we find in the remedy for the prevention of drunkenness, hinted at by the sage of Monticello, Mr. Jefferson, "make wine cheap." Experience demonstrates that the free use of wine from youth to old age in France, Germany, Switzerland and other countries, inhabited by our own race, where wine making is a leading industry, engenders but a tithe of the beastly drunkenness which characterize the habits of people where wine stimulation is more costly than distilled spirits, and we have among us an abundance of superior constitutions, physical and mental, from those countries, who are living witnesses to the correctness of Mr. Jefferson's statement. And if further testimony is needful to prove that wine is useful to the world and not dangerous to morals, we have only to invoke more particularly that of Holy Writ. Noah's first enterprise after leaving the Ark, if we are to accept the account as historic, was the planting of a vine- yard. Moses reserved the choicest of the wines for his priests. David, the " man after God's own heart," said " wine makes the heart glad." Solomon
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was not in favor of red or mixed wine, and cautioned all against using any kind to excess. He knew that good things could be abused, but the climax of approval of wine drinking we find at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. With all these facts and reflections he naturally concluded that wine making was compatable with a clear conscience, and the next thing was to seek a locality and soil most likely to produce a superior article. This he believed he found in the upper part of Napa Valley, and over twenty years of experience has confirmed his opinion. At that time he could find 'no one who would admit that vines could be made to grow without irrigation. Soils too light for the production of wheat and on which water could not be artificially conducted were thought valueless. A large proportion of the upper valley land was of this charac- ter, with some rather fertile spots here and there. He was made the butt of gibes and jokes for paying six or seven dollars per acre for three or four hundred acres of this kind of land, one-half covered densely with chemisal brush and on none of which could cereals or esculents be successfully culti- vated, and fruit culture was considered impossible for want of water. In self-defence he facetiously claimed that his aim was to raise rabbits for market. He procured Mission cuttings from San José, there being no foreign ones in the country, and put them down three feet deep with a crow- bar, in the expectation that moisture at that depth would remain till roots could sprout at the lower end. Years afterward he found that these lower ends of the cuttings had neither sent out roots nor even swelled in growth, but roots were plentiful near enough to the surface of the ground to feel the sun's heat sufficiently. About sixty per cent. of the twelve acres planted in this way in February, 1859, grew well, and by the next season he had learned to plant with a spade, and so supplied the missing places, planted many acres in addition, besides cuttings from a nursery of foreign vines, which by that time he was able to procure in San José and from Europe, by the help of Colonel Haraszthy, paying in San José $40 per thousand for cuttings ten inches long, and he continued to plant from year to year till he had a full hundred acres of vineyard. But the above-named, and what remains to be told about the want of a market, etc., by no means cover all the difficulties he and his neighbors were compelled to encounter in getting the vine-grow- ing business in running order in the St. Helena district. To the ravages of the army of hare, squirrels and cotton-tail rabbits in the destruction of young vines was superadded the opposition of temperance fanatics. A preacher who was wise above what is written, and who was more temperate than the Savior, attempted to correct an error of "Him who spake as man never spake," by praying that "God would blight the vineyard business now being commenced in this valley." At this point our friend the Doctor vocif- erated-" spoke out in meeting," as the newspapers have it-in a voice
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audible to everyone in the large congregation, exclaiming, " That prayer won't go six feet high." This irreverent anecdote has gone the rounds of the Press about once a year ever since, correctly adding that vineyard pros- pects continued to brighten after the sacriligious invocation for their blight. Before this time, however, his neighbors, of whom he had but few, began to admit that brush and naked upland was worth something, and it has in- creased in demand, and what has proven on trial to be perfectly worthless for cereals and esculent roots will now sell for $100 or more per acre, and yield, when well cultivated in grapes, from two to four or five times as much annual net profit as the best bottom land devoted to general farming, and bring a large amount of cash to the State for the sale of wines, instead of sending to Europe to pay the foreign laborer there. He claims the credit of pioneering, at a large expense to himself, the utilizing of worthless land as a politico-economical measure. But the next and unforeseen contingency was forced upon him. His cellars, which he had very unwisely dug into the ground, instead of adopting the present mode, became full, and, unable to sell a gallon in our Bay City, he hauled to Napa on wagons some twelve thousand gallons and sent it around the Horn to New York for eight or nine cents per gallon freight. Crossing the Isthmus himself, he met his wine in our great commercial metropolis, but could not find one dealer in that great city who would buy a barrel of it. Fortunately, he had taken money enough with him, or he could not have paid the freight by the sale of the wine, every hundred of his coin at that time (1867-8) bringing one hundred and forty of currency. His white wine, owing to soil, age of vines, or its handling by H. A. Pellet, fermented in pipes, was mainly very good. His claret not clear. Some of the foreign dealers would condescend to examine it. Other California wine also was there. But while the wholesale dealers refused to buy, they did not fail to take alarm. Large sums of money were raised by foreign houses, and special agents sent to Washington to get import duties on foreign wines reduced. After fruitless delay he determined to seek a market in the west, where Nicholas Longworth, of Cincinnati, and the Hermon Missouri Company had already familiarized the people with native wine. Finding at that time that he could not stand the cost of sending his stock by rail- road, it was shipped via New Orleans and the Mississippi to Saint Louis, where he found plenty of native wine made of the Catawba and other American grapes by the aid of alcohol and New Orleans sugar, a large pro- portion of which was "gallized." The low saccharine quality or strength of grapes in every locality in the Atlantic States in which wine was made, compelled the employment of sugar. Glucose was then unknown. He was told by one of the proprietors of the Croton Point Vineyard, on the Hudson, that he paid $2000 for the sugar that year for six thousand gallons of Isa-
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bella juice, and the gentleman was astonished to learn that that was more than the whole cost to the California producer of an equal amount of pure, unadulterated wine, and he said the days of Eastern native wine growing were numbered. He worried along as best he could in Saint Louis for two years at destructive expense to himself physically and pecuniarily, realizing when too late, that if he had understood the business like the practical vintners who succeeded him in that city, that his enterprise would have been a success. But finally, worn out by the sweltering heat and benumbing cold, he traded his cellar of wine and brandy, which had been largely increased in quantity by importations from home, for a Saint Louis County farm, which he ultimately lost after refusing $16,000 cash for it, by causes and complications irrelevant to the object of this Napa County History. Making his effort to create a market for the product of California vineyards, let him down financially over $20,000 below where he would have been if he had remained at home and sold during the Franco-Prussian War for such prices as he could then have realized in San Francisco. But mistakes and errors are unavoidable in all attempts to develop new industries, yet in the present case he has the gratification of knowing that those who were encouraged to embark in the vineyard business, by his example have avoided many of his errors and are now not only reaping a rich reward, but have enriched the county by causing the poorest lands to make larger returns than were realized from the deep alluvial soils before the inauguration of the vineyard business in our valley, and he has the more selfish satisfaction of realizing that what was regarded as his folly and want of business fore- sight in 1860, and for years afterwards, and in spite of his ignorance of the business and many mistakes, the wine-making enterprise has placed him financially beyond the contingency of want in his old age. This he is enjoy- ing on his "rabbit patch," within the corporate limits of St. Helena, in the company of a lady who was the widow of A. J. Grayson, the ornithologist who lost his life while painting the ornithology of Central America and otherwise developing its natural history in the interest of science. He made many contributions to the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, D. C. The former Mrs. Crane, after participating in the cares and arrangements necessary for the conversion of a " barren wilderness " into a literally "fruit- ful field," was not permitted in earth-life to enjoy the full developments which characterize the surroundings of her worthy successor, but the Doc- tor's happy faith assures him that she still regards with lively interest the welfare of her grand-children, the McPike family, and hopes they will never be forgetful of the moralizing and industrial lessons she impressed on their infant minds while she was subjected to the discomforts incidental to laying the foundation on a virgin soil of comforts and luxuries for time and culture fully to develop, and his realization of this development now presenting an
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aspect so different from primitive appearances and conditions twenty years ago afford him a pleasure that is not diminished by the fact of having been outstripped by some of his neighbors in the march of improvement. Then he saw near by a little hamlet of redwood shanties, called St. Helena, occupied by one hundred and fifty or two hundred people, and a landscape devoid of all ligneous or vegetable growth, except what kindly Nature planted, which have now given place to vines, fruit, ornamental trees and shrubbery, teeming with wealth and beauty. Then the territory that now embraces four regularly organized school districts was embraced in one, which led but a poor dying life for want of pupils. Now, the largest district of the four alone numbers three hundred and forty-four census scholars, a proportionate amount of school-house room, with convenient and even luxurious appointments, and he hears the "church-going bell," and counts six edifices within the town limits dedicated to Sunday-schools, re- ligion and sectarian morality. Then, though but two hundred rods from the post-office, he was sometimes unable to reach it in consequence of floods and mire. Now, a substantial bridge and solid road gives him access to that establishment on the arrival of two San Francisco mails a day, the year round, and he well remembers being shut from the outer world two weeks at a time by the impassable condition of the road to Napa City. Then, when traveling was good, the St. Helena and Sulphur Springs people could take a stage at or before sunrise, connect with steamer at Napa City, and about sunset reach San Francisco. Now, they can leave after breakfast, do business in that city, and be home at supper time. And the reader in the next generation will be desirous of learning how these public conveniences were so speedily obtained, and what the character of our civil service has been to bring about the existing financial condition of the county, which bids fair to entail a public debt on him and it. If our archives and their records fail to explain, to forewarn and consequently to forearm our suc- cessors against the crooked ways by which the producers-the creators of the wealth of this county have suffered by designing men, by public ser- vants and capitalists who betrayed and swindled them in spite of the honest efforts of many worthy officials to prevent it, it will become a matter of serious regret that the limits of the present history-a book to which all may have access-prevented a full exposé ; but the subject of our narrative believes that a mere reference here to the history of our railroad, and the fact that the county was swindled out of its ownership by special legisla- tion ; that exorbitant salaries of officials have been caused and maintained by special legislation ; that capitalists have virtually escaped taxation ; that county expenses generally, have far exceeded reasonable limits, and the rod in terrorem has been held over Grand Juries to prevent investigation of the administration of county affairs, he hopes will suffice to put the future
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voter and taxpayer on the alert, to guard against a repitition of such abuses and against all attempts to repeal that provision of our New Constitution which prohibits special legislation.
We are indebted to Mrs. G. B. Crane, of St. Helena, for the excellent portrait of the old pioneer George C. Yount, and also for the sketch of his history which she furnished us, and which will be found in the body of this work, written by Mrs. Day, of the Hesperian, in 1859, at Mr. Yount's own home in Napa Valley. Mrs. Crane's fellow feeling for the adventurous is but natural, and has led to the preservation of the history of many early immigrants with whom she was personally acquainted. Her own immigra- tion to this coast partook largely of the romantic. It supplemented on an extraordinary scale her wedding tour, and protracted in a most unusual manner the honeymoon, till even after the advent of a third party. Much the same may be said of Mrs. William M. Boggs, of Napa City, who started upon the western journey when a bride of but a few days. Her father-in- law, ex-Governor Boggs, of Missouri, with his train joined that of A. J. Gray- son, and to their number was also added the painfully historic Donner party, whose separation from them at Fort Bridger led to their terrible fate. None but the most daring spirits at that day (1846) would risk their lives on the arid plains, barren mountains and savage wilderness generally, which separates the great central valley of the continent from the Pacific Ocean. Of these Mrs. Crane's former husband was confessedly one. His advertise- ments in the St. Louis papers of that date soon called together resolute men and women equal to the emergency. Colonel Grayson and his family went to San Francisco, then a mere hamlet known as Yerba Buena, in the midst of the Mexican War, which added California to the stars and stripes, and in which most of the company were destined actively to par- ticipate. To narrate her experience in this and incidents in the lives of prominent men whom the gold excitement brought to and through San Francisco en route to the mines, would be most interesting to the general reader, but rather out of place in this local history, although it is within the purview of our subject to add her statement to the effect that the sum- mer of 1859 she spent on the ground where the flourishing village of Calistoga now is, while Colonel Grayson was painting the ornithology of the Mount St. Helena region, the place being then only known by the less musical names of "Sam. Brannan's sheep ranch " and "Hot Springs "- Aguas Calientes, as the Indians and natives who visited them called the waters.
COOMBS, HON. NATHAN (deceased). The subject of this memoir, whose portrait will be found in the body of this work, was born in Middle- borough, Massachusetts, in 1826, and at an early age went with his mother
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to the Territory of Iowa, and settled near the then embryotic city of Muscatine. His father was dead, and his mother was then married to a Dr. Carpenter. In 1842 the family went to Oregon across the plains, and in 1843 came to California, locating in Yolo County. In 1845 the subject of this memoir came to Napa Valley and purchased a farm from Salvador Vallejo, which was located about one and a half miles north-west of where Napa City now stands, and where he resided till his death. He also owned the land on which a portion of Napa City now stands, and laid out the original town site in 1848. He served in the State Legislature, and always took a very active part in whatever conduced to the welfare and advancement of the city and county in which he resided. He was a very liberal contributor to public improvements, and was well known all over the State as a raiser of blooded stock and a patron of the turf. He reared a family of intelligent children, one daughter having married Hon. John M. Coghlan, and one of his sons is the present District Attorney of Napa County. Much more could be said of the life of this most worthy pioneer, but we regret that the proper data could not be obtained, and we were de- pendent upon the press notices for all the facts stated above. His death occurred December 26, 1877. On the 29th of that month, the following resolutions were placed upon the records of the Board of City Trustees of Napa : Resolved, That the Board of Trustees of the City of Napa deplore the death of Hon. Nathan Coombs, an early pioneer and a distinguished citizen of California, and the founder of this city. Resolved, That, as a mark of respect for his memory, the Board do now adjourn.
CHAPEL, B. A. Was born in Chenango County, New York, July 10, 1831. When nineteen years of age he went to Illinois, and in March, 1854, started for California. He came by steamer, and arrived at San Francisco, May 19th, of the above year. The following two years were spent in the mines of Placer County. He then went to Nevada County and engaged in milling for about four years. We next find him once more in Placer County, where he followed different occupations until 1868, when he sold all his in- terest in Placer County and went to San José, where he engaged in hotel- keeping. In 1869 he sold out and moved to San Diego, where he followed carpentering about fifteen months. He then went to Colusa, where he re- mained a short time. In April, 1871, he went to Olympia, Washington Ter- ritory, where he remained until the fall of the same year, when he returned to California, and resided at Healdsburg, Sonoma County, until July, 1872; then moved to Oakland, and after a short time went to Sacramento. Here he remained six years, and then returned to Oakland, and from there he came to Napa County, where he has since resided, being engaged in farming. Since Mr. Chapel's advent into California he was in the employ of the
Truly, your EmFrancis
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Central Pacific Railroad Company, and Contract and Finance Company, until he located in Napa County. He married, April 1, 1863, Mrs. Ellen Vincent, a native of Quincy, Illinois.
COGHLAN, HON. JOHN M. (deceased). The subject of this memoir, whose portrait appears in this work, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, December 8, 1835, and was the son of Cornelius Coghlan, a native of Phila- delphia, and Lavina Fouke Coghlan, a native of Kaskaskia, Illinois. When he was but a boy he came across the plains to California with T. Frank Raney. He went to Nevada County with A. J. Raney, and made his home with him until 1859, when he came to Gordon Valley and engaged in farming till 1861. In that year he came to Napa City, and became foreman for Nathan Coombs, and employed his leisure moments in reading law. He was then appointed to the position of Deputy Recorder by J. H. Howland, but being ambitious he soon gave it up, and entered the law office of J. Brunson, and was admitted to practice in the courts of Solano County in 1864. He shortly afterwards formed a partnership with Hon. W. S. Wells. He was elected to the State Legislature in 1865, and to the Congress of the United States from the Third District in 1872. He was appointed Supreme Judge of Utah in 1875, and United States Attorney for California in 1877. He was tendered the position of Supreme Judge of Utah a second term, but declined the honor. He died March 26, 1879. Truly he was a self-made man, building up from humble foundations to almost the topmost pinnacle. He was the only man who was ever elected on the Republican ticket to Crongress from the Third District. He was married July 14, 1864, to Miss Eva, only daughter of Nathan and Isabella Gordon Coombs, who was born in Napa. Their children are Mary, born December 28, 1865 ; Willie O., born February 22, 1870, and died March 19, 1871; Katie E., born August 11, 1872, Nathan Coombs, born April 5, 1875 ; John C., born December 25, 1878.
CORNWELL, GEORGE N. Was born in Albany County, New York, March 22, 1825. When he was quite young, his parents moved to near Lake George. At the age of eleven he moved with his parents to Lansing- burg, that State, and at that place his mother died. At the age of fourteen. he moved to Fulton, Oswego County. At the age of sixteen he, with his father, went to Helena, Arkansas, where his father died. During this time young Cornwell had partially learned the cabinetmaker's trade, at which he worked two years. At the age of eighteen he went to Cincinnati, where he completed his trade. In the summer.of 1846 he returned to Albany, New York, when he enlisted in Stevenson's regiment and came to California, arriving in March, 1847. He remained in the service until the fall of 1848. He was a member of Company H, under Captain J. B. Frisbie. In: 1848 he
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went to the mines and spent about six weeks. He then returned to Sonoma and shortly afterward came to Napa as the manager of a store for Vallejo and Frisbie. In 1850 he had a field of grain near McBain's tannery, this being the first grain raised in the vicinity of Napa City. In 1852 he pur- chased the vessel " Josephine," and used it as a store-ship in Napa. In 1853 he was elected to the Legislature. At the end of his term he returned to Napa and engaged in farming. In 1860 he was one of the locators of the Redington Quicksilver Mine, and still owns a large interest in it. He has served on the Board of Supervisors for three years-from 1860 to 1863. In 1875 he was elected to the Legislature a second time. In 1876 he was sent from this district to the National Democratic Convention in St. Louis. His present beautiful residence, located in the south-western portion of Napa City was erected in that year. Mr. Cornwell has always been prominently identified with the interests of Napa County from its incipiency to the present time, and in all his relations of life, both social and political, he has been found a worthy and honorable gentleman. He was married, Novem- ber 20, 1854, to Anna J. West, a native of Bangor, Maine. Their children are : Fannie G., Clara F., Morris L. and Carleton M.
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