USA > California > San Bernardino County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume III > Part 12
USA > California > Riverside County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume III > Part 12
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The war over, he returned to St. Louis and resumed his calling. and in 1849 joined an overland party bound for California. He spent some time mining in Eldorado County, and returned East by way of Panama and New Orleans to St. Louis. In the spring of 1851 he again set out for California, overland, and in Eldorado County did some mining and also was engineer of the first steam sawmill erected in the Sierra Nevadas. In March, 1853, he moved to Mariposa County, and in the fall of the same year entered the service of General Beal, superintendent of Indian affairs in California. His duties took him to the San Joaquin River Reservation and the Tejon Reservation in Los Angeles County.
Leaving this work, which was uncongenial, Mr. Slaughter in 1854 began working at his trade in Los Angeles, but soon became inter- ested in wool growing on the Puente Ranch in the San Gabriel Valley with Rowland, one of the pioneer owners of that great tract. The chief business of Mr. Slaughter for many years was sheep ranching and wool growing. His interests gradually extended to San Ber- nardino County, and he was one of the first to introduce French and Spanish Merino sheep to this region. He opened a blacksmith shop at San Gabriel in 1854, the first institution of its kind there, and operated it for many years. In all his enterprises he was remarkably successful. In 1868 Mr. Slaughter bought the Buena Vista tract of the Raymondo Yorba ranch at Rincon in San Bernardino County, and soon afterward transferred his herds to this locality. He con- tinued sheep growing until selling out his stock in 1882, and about three years later sold most of his ranch lands, still retaining his homestead and 1,000 acres four miles south of Chino, which he devel- oped as one of the best farms and ranches in the county. He was very thorough in his methods of agriculture and horticulture, and he kept some very fine blooded horses, some of them being noted for their performance on the track, including Joe Hamilton, Exile, Bob Mason, Peri, Pinole and others. He also had a forty acre vineyard and in
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1887 built a winery with a capacity of 20,000 gallons, his wines commanding a high premium in the market.
Through these enterprises he did his part in developing the sub- stantial prosperity of his section. He was always generous, public spirited and progressive. He was of Southern birth and ancestry but was a stanch Union man, and though always living in a normally republican district he had frequent political honors. He was a dele- gate to county and state conventions of the democratic party, and in 1870 was elected a member of the Assembly from San Bernardino County, serving during the session of 1871-72. Governor Stoneman in 1885 appointed him supervisor of District No. 2 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of E. H. Gates, and in 1886 he was elected on his party ticket as his successor. He was appointed postmaster of Rincon in 1873 but refused the office. He was a school trustee, worked for the establishment of good schools, was a member of the Masonic fraternity at San Bernardino, of the California Pioneer Society and of the Mexican War Veterans.
This distinguished and useful pioneer of San Bernardino County passed away May 29, 1897, at his ranch home, when seventy-one years of age. His first wife was Catherine Thomas, who lived but a short time, and was the mother of a son, Edward McGuire Slaughter, who was born at Fulton, Callaway County, Missouri, May 12, 1850. In December, 1860, Fenton M. Slaughter married Miss Dolores Alva- rado, daughter of Francisco and Juan Maria (Abila) de Alvarado, of San Gabriel. She was of pure Castilian ancestry, representing two of the oldest Spanish families in that section of Southern California. Mr. and Mrs. Slaughter became the parents of ten children. The oldest, Senovia, born September 27, 1862, is the wife of Louis Mere- dith, and she lives on a portion of the old estate. Florisa, born on the Palo Alto ranch May 21, 1863, owns a share of the old ranch and was married to Edgar Meredith in 1904. Their home is six miles south of Chino, near the Pioneer Schoolhouse. The third child, Julia, born August 10, 1866, lives at the old homestead and is the widow of Benjamin Fuqua. Robert F., born in 1868, married Louise Saun- ders, and their son, Robert Slaughter, volunteered at the age of nineteen and served through the war, was at Chateau-Thierry, went over the top twice and was severely gassed and is now partly recov- ered but still attending a soldiers' training school at Los Angeles. Joseph J., born February 14, 1871. married Lela Gass and has a family of four daughters and one son. Dolores B., born April 19, 1873, married John Strong and is the mother of a son and daughter. Fenton L., born July 1, 1875, married Beatrice Henry and has two daughters. Lorinda, born in 1877, is the wife of Louis Wells and the mother of one son. Ethel Eunice, born in 1879, died at the age of eighteen months. Floren P., born May 29, 1883, married Lydia Ashcroft and has a daughter.
The mother of these children died June 30, 1916. Florisa Slaughter, now Mrs. Edgar Meredith, was a pupil in the old Pioneer Schoolhouse standing near her residence. There were 100 scholars and only one teacher. She has many memories of this crude schoolhouse and the educational system there is vogue. Many of the children played cards under the desks, and it was there that she learned the game of casino. The teacher was a man, kept his large ink bottle filled with whiskey, and had some older scholars teach while he lay down on a bench and slept. All the pupils drank from one bucket of water, using a
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single tin cup and there was no case that Mrs. Meredith recalls of an infection due to the use of the common drinking cup.
Edgar De Witt Meredith was born in Geneseo County, New York, July 9, 1859, and was educated in the public schools of Chino Valley. He came to San Bernardino County at the age of sixteen years. He has followed mining, also the carpenter's trade, and is now retired and living in the old Slaughter homestead.
JESSE F. MAYHEW, who is now enjoying an honorable retirement in a comfortable home at 354 Central Avenue, Chino, is one of the few sur- vivors whose intimate recollections of San Bernardino runs back fifty years. He has lived a life of intense activity, and almost altogether out in the open, enduring the discomforts and dangers of the desert and the range.
He was born January 1, 1848, at White Sulphur Springs, Mississippi, son of Jesse and Eunice (Clay) Mayhew, the former a native of North Carolina and the latter of Mississippi. . They had a family of five sons and two daughters. Jesse Mayhew, Sr., was a California forty-niner, crossing the plains by way of the Santa Fe route and driving a Government team through to Yuba, California. He followed mining with varied suc- cess for several years. In 1853 his wife, his son Jesse F. and one of the daughters set out to join him, coming by way of New Orleans and the Isthmus of Panama, Jesse F. Mayhew being packed across the Isthmus on the back of a native. From there a steamer took them north, and at Yuba City they joined Jesse Mayhew, Sr. On the arrival of his family the father turned to ranching and teaming, and in 1860 came south to Los Angeles and in 1861 moved to San Bernardino. He mined one season in the Holcomb Valley, and then went to El Monte and did farming in that locality and also operated a freighting team until 1865. He was one of the freighters between Los Angeles and Prescott, Arizona. It was about that time that Jesse F. Mayhew began participating in the active life of the frontier. Though a boy, he drove a team of six or eight mules for his father, passing over the old toll road through Cajon Pass, a road then owned by John Brown, Sr. It was customary to combine eight or ten such teams in a single party, since only in numbers were they safe from Indian attack. The teams would be on the trail all day and at night guards were slung out to protect the camp. The freighters had to haul hay enough to feed the stock as far east as Soda Lake, thence depending on the natural grass, and grain was also part of the equipment for feed. Freight rates were twenty-five cents per pound from Los Angeles to Pres- cott, and the trip usually consumed sixty days. When the Indians became especially hostile United States soldiers were appointed to escort such trains. One detachment of soldier guards was stationed at Rock Springs, and Mr. Mayhew recalls the fact that all the privates deserted, leaving only the lieutenant, who quit in disgust and resigned his commission.
In 1866 Jesse Mayhew, Sr., bought a half league of ground for fifteen hundred dollars from the Chino heirs. This land was near the present town of Chino and in the old Rincon section. Jesse Mayhew built a grist mill, the first one in this entire valley. It was a water power mill and was con- structed in 1875. He also did stock raising and dealt in horses and mules. driving them to market in Idaho and Utah. The first drive consisted of 500 head. Jesse Mayhew, Sr., died at Downey, California, and his wife died at Oceanside but was buried at Downey.
Jesse F. Mayhew in such pioneer circumstances had no opportunity for school. He began doing some of the very hardest and most arduous work when only a youth. In 1868 he married Emily Hickey, who was born
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September 12, 1848, in Texas, daughter of Isaac Hickey, a Baptist minister. She was a small child when her parents crossed the plains by ox team to California. Mr. and Mrs. Mayhew had seven children: Felix, who was born on the Rincon ranch, is in the mining business at Yuma, Arizona, and is married. Mrs. Eva McDonald, the second child, was born at Santa Ana and died in Arizona. Elmer, born at Rincon, is a teamster at Tucson, Arizona, and is married and has four children. Clay, born in Pinal County, Arizona, now lives in Safford County, that state, and is married. Goldie, born in Pinal County, is the wife of Arrow Smith, of Garden Grove, California. Gracie, born on Rincon ranch, died at the age of seven. Dixie is the wife of William E. Phillips, of Rincon ranch.
After his marriage Mr. Mayhew leased and farmed a tract near Santa Ana, but in 1877 removed to Pinal County, Arizona, where for thirty-five years he engaged in the cattle business and teaming. While there he was elected and served twelve years on the Board of County Supervisors. He has always been a stanch democrat in politics. While in Arizona he twice lost all his accumulated property, but in time he learned his lesson and more than recouped his losses. In 1913, on returning to California, he bought property in Garden Row, but sold that and in 1920 located at his present home in Chino. His life throughout has been among the new settlements and his experiences are all of the frontier. He knows San Bernardino County from the days of early Mormon settlement and from the horse drawn stage to the auto stage and railway. His experience preceded the building and operation of telegraph and telephone lines, rail- ways and improved highways. At an age when most modern boys are thinking of entering high school he was driving an eight horse mule team far into the desert and frequently among hostile Indians. He has the sturdy honesty and self reliance of the old time frontiersman.
JOHN BROWN, SR., was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, December 22, 1817, and when a boy started west to realize the dreams and fancies of youth. He stayed awhile in St. Louis, Missouri, then began rafting on the Mississippi River, and went to New Orleans. While on a voyage to Galveston he was shipwrecked and returned to Fort Leavenworth by the Red River route. He was at the battle of San Jacinto, and saw General Santa Ana when first taken prisoner. He remained two years at Fort Leavenworth, then went to the Rocky Mountains and for fourteen years hunted and trapped from the head waters of the Columbia and Yellowstone rivers, along the mountain streams south as far as the Comanche country in northern Texas, with such mountaineers and trappers as James W. Waters, V. J. Herring, Kit Carson, Alexander Godey, Joseph Bridger, Bill Williams, the Bents, the Subletts and others of equal fame. He engaged some- times as a free trapper, and at other times with the Hudson Bay and other fur companies, hunting the grizzly bear, buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, and trapping the cunning beaver, among the Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Sioux, Cherokees, Apaches, Navajos, Utes, Comanches, and other Indian tribes.
He helped to build Fort Laramie, Fort Bent, Fort Bridger and several others to protect themselves from hostile Indians. This period is hastened over, for the Bear and Indian encounters and hair-breadth escapes with the above named hunters, would fill a volume fully as interesting and thrilling as Washington Irving's "Captain Bonne- ville" or "Kit Carson's Travels." Suffice it say that such brave and intrepid hunters and adventurers as Mr. Brown and his companions served as guides for General John C. Fremont across the Rocky
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mountains, and had he adhered more closely to their advice he would not have ventured in dead of winter to cross this precipitous range when he lost so many of his men and animals in the deep snow, those surviving suffering untold agonies. Still General Fremont has gone down in history as the great Pathfinder with but very little said of those intrepid mountaineers who preceded him and who showed him the paths to take, and which to avoid.
The gold fever reached the mountaineers in 1849. Messrs. Brown, Waters, Lupton, and White "fitted out" their prairie schooners and joined one of the immigrant trains bound for the land of gold. They spent the 4th of July, 1849, in Salt Lake City, and arrived at Sutten's Fort September 15, 1849, and began mining on the Calaveras River. In November, Mr. Brown moved to Monterey, and with Waters and Godey opened the St. John's Hotel and livery stable at San Juan Mission. Here he was elected Justice of the Peace. His health failing him, he was advised by his family physician, Dr. Ord, to seek
JOHN BROWN, SR.
a milder climate in Southern California. In April, 1852, he went with his family to San Francisco, and boarded the schooner "Lydia," Captain Haley, commander, and after a week's voyage down the coast, landed at San Pedro, where he engaged Sheldon Stoddard to move him to San Bernardino, where he arrived and settled in the "Old Fort" May 1, 1852, purchasing from Marshall Hunt his log cabin for $50.00, located on the west side of the fort, next door neighbor to Sheldon Stoddard, Captain Jefferson Hunt and Edward Daley.
On April 26, 1853, the Legislature of California passed the Act creating the county of San Bernardino. By Section 5 of said Act, Mr. Brown was appointed with Col. Isaac Williams, David Seeley, and H. G. Sherwood, a Board of Commissioners to designate the election precincts in the county of San Bernardino for the election of officers at the first election and to appoint the inspectors of election at the several precincts designated, to receive the returns of election, and to issue certificates of election to the first officers.
In 1854, Mr. Brown moved with his family to Yucipa, where he went into the stock business and farming, returning to San Bernardino
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in 1857, where he lived, taking an active interest in all public affairs for the welfare and progress of his home.
In 1861, seeing the necessity for an outlet to Southern Utah and Arizona for the productions of San Bernardino County, he, with Judge Henry M. Willis and George L. Tucker procured a charter from the Legislature for a toll road through the Cajon Pass, which he built and kept open for eighteen years, thus contributing materially to the business and growth of San Bernardino.
In 1862 he went to Fort Moharie, near where Needles is now located, and established a ferry across the Colorado River, still further enhancing the business of the city and county. He was a liberal contributor to the telegraph fund when assistance was required to connect the city with the outside world, and favored reasonable encouragement to the railroad so to place San Bernardino on the trans- continental line. At his own expense he enclosed the public square, (now Pioneer Park) with a good stout fence.
In 1873-4 he delivered the United States mail to the miners in Bear and Holcomb valleys, when the snow was three and four feet deep in places, thus showing that he still retained that daring and intrepid disposition he acquired in the Rocky Mountains.
In his later years he devoted much of his time to writing a book entitled, "Medium of the Rockies," in which he narrates many thrilling incidents of his adventurous life, and some chapters on spiritual and advanced thought. Born near Plymouth Rock, on the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, he seems to have partaken of their religious freedom and liberality of thought, and his years among the grandeur and sublimity of the Rocky mountains aided in developing an intense love of nature, the handiwork of the great Creator. Here, as a child of nature, among the fastnesses of the mountain forests, or among the crags and peaks he saw the Great Ruler in the clouds and heard him in the winds. Without any education except that derived from the broad and liberal books of nature, he was able to read in the faces of his fellowmen those ennobling sentiments of love, truth, justice, loyalty and humanity. His spirit seemed to be dedicated "to the cause that lacks assistance, the wrongs that need resistance, the future in the distance, and the good that he could do."
As old age began creeping on and many of his old friends were passing away, and the activities of life had to be transferred to others, Mr. Brown joined George Lord, William Heap, R. T. Roberts, W. F. Holcomb, George Miller, Taney Woodward, Mayor B. B. Harris, David Seeley, Sydney P. Waite, Marcus Katz, Lucas Hoag- land, Henry M. Willis, his old Rocky mountain companion, James W. Waters, his son, John Brown, Jr., and others and organized the San Bernardino Society of California Pioneers, believing that many hours could still be pleasantly passed by those whose friendship had grown stronger and stronger as the years rolled by, and thus live the sentiment of the poet :-
"When but few years of life remain,
'Tis life renewed to talk, to laugh them o'er again."
Mr. Brown raised a large family, six daughters: Mrs. Matilda Waite, Mrs. Laura Wogencraft Thomas, Mrs. Louisa Waters, Mrs. Sylvia Davenport, Mrs. Mary Dueber, and Mrs. Emma Ronse Royalty, and four sons: John, Joseph, James, and Newton Brown.
He outlived all of his Rocky Mountain companions, all of the commissioners appointed to organize San Bernardino County and all
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of the first officers of the county. He remained alone to receive the tender greetings of his many friends who held him not only with high esteem and respect but with veneration and love. He was greatly devoted to the Pioneer Society; its pleasant associations were near and dear to his heart. Although feeble with declining years, he appeared at the meeting of the Society on Saturday, April 15, 1899, and discharged his duties as President, and on the following Thursday, April 20, 1899, at seven o'clock P. M. at the home of his daughter Laura, his spirit departed to that new and higher sphere of existence he so fondly looked to while in earth life. A large concourse of friends attended the funeral of their old friend from the Brown homestead, corner of D and Sixth streets, the present residence of his son John. The funeral services were conducted by Mrs. J. A. Marchant, Super- intendent of the First Spiritual Society of San Bernardino, and also by Rev. A. J. White, of the Presbyterian Church of Colton. The choir was under the direction of Mrs. H. M. Barton and Mrs. Lizzie Heap Keller. The floral offerings were profuse; one emblematic of the Pioneers, a tribute from the Pioneer Society.
According to direction from the deceased frequently given by him to his children, the casket and everything else necessary for interment, was like his character, white as the mountain snow. The honorary pall bearers were among his oldest friends then living-Sheldon Stoddard, W. F. Holcomb, R. T. Roberts, Lucas Hoagland, J. A. Kelting, and Lewis Jacobs, and the active pall bearers were J. W. Waters, Jr., George Miller, Randolph Seeley, De La M. Woodward, H. M. Barton and Edward Daley, Jr.
JOHN BROWN, JR., eldest son of John Brown, Sr., the famous Rocky Mountain explorer, hunter, and trapper, was born in a log cabin situated on the bank of Greenhorn Creek, a tributary of the Arkansas River in Huerfano County, territory of New Mexico, now Colorado, on October 3, 1847.
When about a year old he experienced an almost miraculous escape from the Apache Indians, and owes his life to the sublime courage of his devoted mother. This section of the centennial state was at that time a vast wilderness inhabited mainly by various savage tribes. His father and fellow mountaineers, having accumulated a large quantity of buffalo robes and beaver pelts, conceded to send a pack train to Taós, New Mexico, their trading post at that time, from whence, after selling their peltries, they would return with provisions. Mrs. Brown, with her baby boy, accompanied this expedition, and on the way through the mountains they were attacked by a band of Apache Indians, who captured the whole pack train and killed some of the hunters. While fleeing on horseback from these pursuing and desperate warriors, some of the men shouted to Mrs. Brown, "Throw that child away or the Indians will get you," but the faithful mother indignantly exclaimed while endeavoring to escape as fast as the fleet horse could run with her, "Never; when that baby boy is thrown away, I will go with him." Fortunately, the pursued cavalcade soon reached a deep ravine, where the hunters were safe from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, who feared to approach further, and withdrew, having captured the pack train with the buffalo robes and beaver pelts, one of the principal objects they were after. These hunters, with Mrs. Brown and her babv. were glad to reach Taós, the trading post, alive.
To show the dangers the frontiersman underwent in this wild and unexplored region, Mr. Brown, when endeavoring to farm on
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the banks of the stream, often dug a rifle pit in the middle of his corn or wheat field in which he could jump to defend himself with his trusty Kentucky rifle, which he always carried with him, ready for an attack at any time.
Early in 1849 the news of the discovery of gold at Sutter's mill reached the mountaineers, so Mr. Brown, James W. Waters, V. J. Herring, Alexander Godey and others formed a traveling party, for protection on the way, and soon were crossing the plains, reaching Salt Lake City July 4, 1849, and Sutter's Fort, California, September 15, 1849, Mr. Brown bringing his family with him, among them his son John, who was then going on two years of age. In 1852, Mr. Brown moved south to San Bernardino, and became a resident of Fort San Bernardino, next door neighbor to Uncle Sheldon Stoddard, Captain Jefferson Hunt, and Edward Daley. Although John was but five years of age, he remembers the first teachers, Ellen Pratt and William Stout, who taught before the two old adobe school rooms were built on Fourth Street, and among the incidents he remembers the balloon ascension in the Fort.
In 1854, the family removed to the Yucipa valley, about twelve miles southeast from San Bernardino, where John's father farmed and raised stock for three years. Returning to San Bernardino in 1857, they moved into the home on the corner of D and Sixth streets, which has been the Brown Homestead since that time, a period of sixty-five years, and where our subject grew to vigorous manhood. Attended the public and private schools in San Bernardino and finally graduating from St. Vincents College, Los Angeles; and Santa Clara College, Santa Clara County.
He followed the vocation of teaching for a number of years, served one term as county school superintendent, and presided over the Board of Education, was city attorney one term, in all of which honorable positions he acquitted himself to the general satisfaction. He studied law under Judge Horace C. Rolfe, and was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the State and Federal Courts. It can be truly said of him that he espoused the cause of the poor and oppressed, and advised settlement of all cases before going to law, if possible. He is pre-eminently the friend of the aged, and is beloved by the children, who regard him as a true Santa Claus. Even the poor Indian finds in him a faithful champion of their rights. Not only the local Coahuilla and Serrani Indian tribes, but those at Warren's Ranch, in May, 1903, sent for him to come to their rescue when they were deprived of their old home where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries, and removed to the Pala reservation.
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