USA > California > Solano County > History of Solano County...and histories of its cities, towns...etc. > Part 7
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On the 19th of January, 1848, Marshall observed some glittering particles in the race, which he was curious enough to examine. He called five car- penters on the mill to see them ; but though they talked over the possibility of its being gold, the vision did not inflame them. Peter L. Weimar claims that he was with Marshall when the first piece of the " yellow stuff " was picked up. It was a pebble, weighing six pennyweights and eleven grains. Marshall gave it to Mrs. Weimar, and asked her to boil it in saleratus water and see what came of it. As she was making soap at the time, she pitched it into the soap kettle. About twenty-four hours afterwards it was fished out and found all the brighter for its boiling.
Marshall, two or three weeks later, took the specimens below, and gave them to Sutter, to have them tested. Before Sutter had quite satisfied himself as to their nature, he went up to the mill, and, with Marshall, made a treaty with the Indians, buying of them their titles to the region round about, for a certain amount of goods. There was an effort made to keep the secret inside the little circle that knew it, but it soon leaked out. They had many misgivings and much discussion whether they were not making themselves ridiculous ; yet by common consent all began to hunt, though with no great spirit, for the " yellow stuff " that might prove such a prize.
In February, one of the party went to Yerba Buena, taking some of the dust with him. Fortunately he stumbled upon Isaac Humphrey, an old Georgian gold-miner, who, at the first look at the specimens, said they were gold, and that the diggings must be rich. Humphrey tried to induce some of his friends to go up with him to the mill, but they thought it a crazy ex- pedition, and left him to go alone. He reached there on the 7th of March. A few were hunting for gold, but rather lazily, and the work on the mill went on as usual. Next day he began " prospecting," and soon satisfied himself that he had struck a rich placer. He made a rocker, and then com- menced work in earnest.
A few days later, a Frenchman, Baptiste, formerly a miner in Mexico, left the lumber he was sawing for Sutter at Weber's, ten miles east of Coloma, and came to the mill. He agreed with Humphrey that the region
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THE HISTORY OF SOLANO COUNTY.
was rich, and, like him, took to the pan and the rocker. These two men were the competent practical teachers of the crowd that flocked in to see how they did it. The lesson was easy, the process simple. An hour's observation fitted the least experienced for working to advantage.
Slowly and surely, however, did these discoveries creep into the minds of those at home and abroad ; the whole civilized world was set agog with the startling news from the, shores of the Pacific. Young and old were seized with the California fever ; high and low, rich and poor, were infected by it ; the prospect was altogether too gorgeous to contemplate. Why they could actually pick up a fortune for the seeking it ! Positive affluence was within the grasp of the weakest; the very coast was shining with the bright metal which could be obtained by picking it out with a knife.
Says Tuthill : Before such considerations as these, the conservatism of the most stable bent. Men of small means, whose tastes inclined them to keep out of all hazardous schemes and uncertain enterprises, thought they saw duty beckoning them around the Horn, or across the plains. In many a family circle, where nothing but the strictest econonomy could make the two ends of the year meet, there were long and anxious consultations, which resulted in selling off a piece of the homestead or the woodland, or the choicest of the stock, to fit out one sturdy representative to make a for- tune for the family. Hundreds of farms were mortgaged to buy tickets for the land of gold. Some insured their lives and pledged their policies for an outfit. The wild boy was packed off hopefully. The black sheep of the flock was dismissed with a blessing, and the forlorn hope that, with a change of skies, there might be a change of manners. The stay of the happy household said " Good-bye, but only for a year or two," to his charge. Unhappy husbands availed themselves cheerfully of this cheap and reput- able method of divorce, trusting Time to mend or mar matters in their absence. Here was a chance to begin life anew. Whoever had begun it badly, or made slow headway on the right course, might start again in a region where Fortune had not learned to coquette with and dupe her wooers.
The adventurers generally formed companies, expecting to go overland or by sea to the mines, and to dissolve partnership only after a first trial of luck together in the " diggings." In the Eastern and Middle States they would buy up an old whaling-ship, just ready to be condemned to the wreckers, put in a cargo of such stuff as they must need themselves, and provisions, tools, or goods, that must be sure to bring returns enough to make the venture pro- fitable. Of course, the whole fleet rushing together through the Golden Gate, made most of these ventures profitless, even when the guess was happy as to the kind of supplies needed by the Californians. It can hardly be believed what sieves of ships started, and how many of them actually made the voyage. Little river-steamers, that had scarcely tasted salt water
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THE HISTORY OF SOLANO COUNTY.
before, were fitted out to thread the Straits of Magellan, and these were welcomed to the bays and rivers of California, whose waters some of them ploughed and vexed busily for years afterwards.
Then steamers, as well as all manner of sailing vessels, began to be adver- tised to run to the Isthmus; and they generally went crowded to excess with passengers, some of whom were fortunate enough, after the toilsome ascent of the Chagres river, and the descent either on mules or on foot to Panama, not to be detained more than a month waiting for the craft that had rounded the Horn, and by which they were ticketed to proceed to San Francisco. But hundreds broke down under the horrors of the voyage in the steerage, contracted on the Isthmus the low typhoid fevers incident to tropical marshy regions, and died.
The overland emigrants, unless they came too late in the season to the Sierras, seldom suffered as much, as they had no great variation of climate on their route. They had this advantage, too, that the mines lay at the end of their long road; while the sea-faring, when they landed, had still a weary journey before them. Few tarried longer at San Francisco than was necessary to learn how utterly useless were the curious patent mining con- trivances they had brought, and to replace them with the pick, shovel pan, and cradle. If anyone found himself destitute of funds to go farther, there was work enough to raise them by. Labor was honorable; and the daintiest dandy, if he were honest, could not resist the temptation to work where wages were so high, pay so prompt, and employers so flush.
There were not lacking in San Francisco, grumblers who had tried the mines and satisfied themselves that it cost a dollar's worth of sweat and time, and living exclusively on bacon, beans, and "slap-jacks," to pick a dollar's worth of gold out of rock, or river bed, or dry ground ; but they confessed that the good luck which they never enjoyed abode with others. Then the display of dust, slugs, and bars of gold in the public gambling places ; the sight of men arriving every day freighted with belts full, which they parted with so freely as men only can when they have got it easily ; the testimony of the miniature rocks ; the solid nuggets brought down from above every few days, whose size and value rumor multiplied according to the number of her tongues. The talk, day and night, unceasingly and exclusively of "gold, easy to get and hard to hold," inflamed all new comers with the desire to hurry on and share the chances. They chafed at the necessary detentions. They nervously feared that all would be gone before they should arrive.
The prevalent impression was that the placers would give out in a year or two. Then it behoved him who expected to gain much to be among the earliest on the ground. When experiment was so fresh in the field, one theory was about as good as another. An hypothesis that lured men per- petually farther up the gorges of the foot-hills, and to explore the cañons
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THE HISTORY OF SOLANO COUNTY.
of the mountains, was this: that the gold which had been found in the beds of rivers, or in gulches, through which streams once ran, must have been washed down from the places of original deposits farther up the mountains. The higher up the gold-hunter went, then, the nearer he approached the source of supply.
To reach the mines from San Francisco, the course lay up San Pablo and Suisun bays, and the Sacramento-not then, as now, a yellow, muddy stream, but a river pellucid and deep-to the landing for Sutter's Fort ; and they who made the voyage in sailing vessels, thought Mount Diablo significantly named so long it kept them company and swung its shadow over their path. From Sutter's the most common route was across the broad, fertile valley to the foot-hills, and up the American or some one of its tributaries ; or, ascending the Sacramento to the Feather and the Yuba, the company staked off a claim, pitched its tent or constructed a cabin, and set up its rocker, or began to oust the river from a portion of its bed. Good luck might hold the impatient adventurers for a whole season on one bar ; bad luck scattered them always farther up.
*
Hoards sought the mining camps, which did not stop to study roads. Traders came in to supply the camps, and, not very fast, but still to some extent, mechanics and farmers to supply both traders and miners. So, as if by magic, within a year or two after the rush began, the map of the country was written thick with the names of settlements.
Some of these were the nuclei of towns that now flourish and promise to continue as long as the State is peopled. Others, in districts where the placers were soon exhaused, were deserted almost as hastily as they were begun, and now no traces remain of them except the short chimney-stack, the broken surface of the ground, heaps of cobble-stones, rotting, half- buried sluice boxes, empty whisky bottles, scattered playing cards, and rusty cans.
The "fall of '49 and spring of '50" is the era of California history, which the pioneer always speaks of with warmth. It was the free-and-easy age when everybody was flush, and fortune, if not in the palm, was only just beyond the grasp of all. Men lived chiefly in tents, or in cabins scarcely more durable, and behaved themselves like a generation of bachelors. The family was beyond the mountains; the restraints of society had not yet arrived. Men threw off the masks they had lived behind and appeared out in their true character. A few did not discharge the consciences and con- victions they had brought with them. More rollicked in a perfect freedom from those bonds which good men cheerfully assume in settled society for the good of the greater number. Some afterwards resumed their temperate and steady habits, but hosts were wrecked before the period of their license expired.
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THE HISTORY OF SOLANO COUNTY.
Very rarely did men, on their arrival in the country, begin to work at their old trade or profession. To the mines first. If fortune favored they soon quit for more congenial employments. If she frowned, they might depart disgusted, if they were able; but oftener, from sheer inability to leave the business, they kept on, drifting from bar to bar, living fast, reck- less, improvident, half-civilized lives; comparatively rich to-day, poor to-morrow ; tormented with rheumatisms and agues; remembering dimly the joys of the old homestead; nearly weaned from the friends at home, who, because they were never heard from, soon became like dead men in their memory; seeing little of women and nothing of churches ; self-reliant, yet satisfied that there was nowliere any "show " for them; full of enter- prise in the direct line of their business, and utterly lost in the threshhold of any other ; genial companions, morbidly craving after newspapers ; good fellows, but short-lived.
Such was the maelstrom which dragged all into its vortex thirty years ago ! Now, almost the entire generation of pioneer miners, who remained in that business, has passed away, and the survivers feel like men who are lost and old before their time, among the new comers, who many be just as old, but lack their long, strange chapter of adventures.
No history of a county in California would be complete without a record of the rush to this coast at the time of what is so aptly named the " gold fever;" hence use has been made of the graphic pen-picture quoted above.
Where there were so many homeless, houseless wanderers, the marvel is not so much that thousands should have succumbed to sickness, as that there was no epidemic to sweep off the entire reckless population.
In the winter of 1849-'50 large numbers of miners repaired to Benicia, and there pitching their tents, plunged into the most head-long dissipation. Saloons and gambling hells were in full blast, large sums of money being spent on and in these canvass palaces, ornamented and embellished with the wildest display of meretricious splendor. In the spring of the year, when the weather opened, the majority returned to their will-o'-the-wisp pursuit after wealth in the mines, while those who remained, heart-sick at hope deferred, cast aside their rockers and picks, and betook themselves to the ploughshare, so to try their luck at fortune-making by the production of golden grain, as against the acquiring it from golden sand. In these years commenced the arrival, in numbers, of settlers in Solano county, a goodly share of her oldest and most worthy residents having each had, at one time or another, a long or a short spell at the mines, and truly do they love to narrate their experiences in these eventful years, which is usually done with a simplicity at once " child-like and bland."
· But to return to the settlement of Solano county : In 1848, John Stilts, who had two years previously visited the district, returned and settled in Green Valley, where he was shortly after followed by W. P. Durbin and
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THE HISTORY OF SOLANO COUNTY.
Charles Ramsey. In the following spring came Landy Alford from Benicia to the Suisun Valley, and located on the farm now owned by Lewis Pierce. Alford was of that class of whom the most stolid citizens are made. He was a man brought up on the frontier, and, as usual with such characters, lacked those more refined qualities which education and contact with society brings. A man who was passionately fond of hunting, and when not engaged in the pursuit of deer, bear, or other wild animals, or recounting his exploits to interested listeners, was silent, reserved, and almost moody. After his coming to this township, and when civilization became more advanced and game became sparse, he pushed on to the valley of the San Joaquin, where he died a few years ago. He, with many of the early set- tlers, have been gathered to their fathers on the brighter shores of the Great Beyond. A few are left awaiting the summons to join those who have gone before, but who shared with them the hardships and privations incident to pioneer life in this part of the Pacific slope, erst the home of Solano and his tribe of Suisuns.
In this year, too, there established themselves in Vaca valley, J. H., W. B., and Garard Long, who were soon after followed by Marshall M. Basye ; General J. B. Frisbie, too, at this time arrived in Benicia : while there were others, who it has been impossible to trace, arriving almost daily. Most of these have been gathered to their fathers ; while some have left the county to reside in other parts of the State. In the fall of 1850, John R. Wolfskill was joined by his brother Mathias, on his grant on Putah creek ; the same season Nathan Barbour transferred his residence to Suisun valley ; while in that year, among the arrivals in the county, were J. H. Bauman, W. A. Dunn, and his family (among whom was Alexander, the present County Clerk of Solano), who located in Fairfield in December, but afterwards moved permanently to Vaca valley ; Dr. Frisbie, and Paul K. Hubbs and his family, in Benicia ; S. W. Long, in Vacaville; and Harvey Rice, of Suisun.
In 1850, Benicia had assumed considerable proportions as a city ; while, through the auspices of General Vallejo, another town, within seven miles of it, was commencing to spring into existence. This is now the city of Vallejo, which was to have been called Eureka, and at one time actually bore the name of Eden. It is known to all how this county became the possessor of the legislature - it fluctuating between Vallejo and Benicia, until it was gobbled up by Sacramento - the full history of these doings appear in another portion of the work; and also to this period belongs the credit of seeing the erection of the first two-storied frame building in the county. This was built by Daniel M. Berry, in the summer of 1850, and is now occupied by his son, Elijah Berry; it being located on the farm of
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THE HISTORY OF SOLANO COUNTY.
Joseph Blake. The following years still saw the population on the increase ; in 1851, came E. F. Gillespie, to the upper end of Suisun valley, where he commenced farming and haying; Robert and Thomas Brownlie, with their families, to Vallejo ; James G. Edwards, to Suisun, locating on the farm now owned by John McMullen ; Charles Ramsey, to Green valley ; about this time there settled, also, Captain Wing. In the following year, among those who cast their lot in the county, were W. G. Davisson, George A. Gillespie, the present Deputy County Clerk, a most worthy gentleman, and a complete encyclopedia of information in the various affairs of the country since the date of his location in it; J. B. Lemon, the present County Treasurer, in Green valley ; Christley Manka, in Suisun township; Elijah S. Silvey, in Silveyville, from whom that village and township takes its name; and Dr. O. C. Udell, on Putah creek. At this epoch of the county's history, there was only one blacksmith shop ; it was situated at the foot of Suisun valley, and kept by J. M. Perry ; to this establishment had the farmers from miles around to come to get their ploughs repaired, their harrows mended, and horses shod, consuming, in many instances, two entire days. In 1852, the first store was opened in the Suisun valley, by J. W. Seaver, on the ground now occupied by Sam. Martin, which lessened the distance to procure the necessary commodities for existence. The country had now become well populated ; the wild oats of earlier years showing a commencement of van- ishing before the enterprise of the new-comers ; they for the while contented themselves with but scant covering from the rude winds ; a log cabin, of proscribed dimensions and primitive build, was all that the greater number could afford. True, John R. Wolfskill had already built a fine frame dwell- ing on the banks of Putah creek, the timber for which he had procured from Benicia, a distance of forty miles, which cost him a " bit " a foot, and for transporting which, he providing horses and wagons, he paid a driver sixteen dollars a day. The later arrivals were not thus blessed ; their mode of getting along was different. A few acres would, at the outset, be enclosed by a ditch and mound, with brushwood heaped on top, to protect the rising crops from the depredations of the wild oxen and other animals; timber was not to be procured save under disadvantageous circumstances of fatigue and risk ; while a still greater enemy was ever to be feared in the firing of the uncut portions of the wild oats, which, when ignited, burned with fearful rapidity. Civilization had, however, made its impress upon the land. Hay was made; grain was grown; and though the markets were at a long distance from the producer, even at this early date small crafts found their way to the Suisun embarcadero, and transported the freight, to what was then, the thriving city of San Francisco.
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THE HISTORY OF SOLANO COUNTY.
We quote from the abstract of the census of 1852, of the State of Cali- fornia, the following return, having reference to Solano county :
Population
2,835
Whites, male.
2,324
Whites, female.
402
Citizens, United States, over 21 years of age.
1,298
Negroes, male.
26
Negroes, female.
2
Mulattoes, male ..
35
Mulattoes, female
None.
Indians, male.
31
Indians, female .
15
Foreign residents, male.
790
Foreign residents, female.
101
The quantity of land under cultivation in 1852, was five thousand nine hundred and forty-nine acres, which was situated chiefly in the Suscol, Sulphur Spring, Green, Suisun, Ulattis, Vaca, and Putah valleys.
The number of horses, cattle, and live stock generally, is appended :
Horses .
1,957
Mules
187
Milch Cows
2,185
Beef Cattle
1,085
Hogs
2,264
Sheep
2,000
Oxen
1,149
The quantity of produce raised in the county was :
Bushels of Barley
105,630
Bushels of Oats.
13,870
Bushels of Corn.
3,555
Bushels of Wheat
8,395
Bushels of Rye.
100
Bushels of Potatoes.
25,905
Tons of Hay.
2,146
Number of Grape Vines
5,811
Number of Fruit Trees
1,961
Thus is seen what gigantic strides had been made towards the establish- ment of Solano county as a centre of agricultural production, and with what just pride may we now refer to those of our relations and friends who are still alive, who did so much towards bringing the valleys, and now some of the mountains, within the influence of the plough. It is not within the
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THE HISTORY OF SOLANO COUNTY.
province of this work to follow individual by individual in his location in the county ; it has been a sufficiently intricate task to particularize those few whom we have enumerated; how much more difficult, therefore, would it be, were it possible, even to account for the two thousand and more who were already settled in the county in the year 1852. As year followed year, the cry of immigration was " still they come;" as month succeeded month the wants of the communities were supplied. Churches were built, schools established; peace, order and good government were maintained as effectively as could be ; while the judicial system had been put into practi- cal operation.
The first hotel opened in the county was naturally at Benicia, the then metropolis of Solano. It was carried on in an adobe house, by Major Stephen Cooper, and named the " California House." The Major kept it but for a short time, when it passed into the hands of Captain E. H. Von Pfister, at a rental of five hundred dollars a month. The first church was one for the Presbyterian order, constructed by the residents in 1849, the frame having been imported from one of the Eastern States, and occupied by Doctor Sylvester Woodbridge, now of San Francisco. The first school was opened in 1849. The first birth was that of a daughter to the wife of Nathan Barbour : the first marriage occurred on December 16, 1847, being that of Doctor Robert Semple to Miss Fannie Cooper, daughter of the Judge of the Court of First Instance, Major Stephen Cooper, at which there was considerable merriment ; and the first record of a death, is that of John Semple, a young man of twenty-one years of age, and son of the Doctor by a former marriage.
In December, 1851, the plat of the town of Vacaville was filed, the origi- nal grantors of the land being sponsors for the same ; while in every portion of the county immigrants arrived, and locations taken up on all sides. Such, indeed, was the influx of settlers into these valleys, the fertility of which had already been noised abroad, that we find, in the year 1853, the estab- lishment of a post-office at Cordelia, a small village, which now only exists in name. In this year, Doctor S. K. Nurse established himself at a spot, which he named Nurse's Landing, now known as Denverton, where he built a residence, and in 1854, continued his enterprise by building a wharf of considerable size, and a store as well.
Let us now consider what the prospects of the county were in 1855, as we gather from statistics. In that year the amount of land within the county, was 535,000 acres, of which there were under cultivation, 18,500 acres, divided as follows :
Mowed for Hay. 4,000 acres-yield. 6,000 Tons.
Planted in Wheat.
7,500 acres-yield. 150,000 Bushels.
Planted in Barley.
5,200 acres-yield 156,000 Bushels.
Planted in Oats
700 acres-yield 28,000 Bushels.
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THE HISTORY OF SOLANO COUNTY.
Planted in Corn 700 acres-yield. 21,000 Bushels.
Planted in Potatoes .. 200 acres-yield. 30,000 Bushels.
Planted in Onions ...
50 acres-yield.
50 Tons.
Planted in Broom-corn
135 acres-yield.
Planted in other crop.
26 acres-yield.
The estimated stock of animals was :
Horses 3,000.
Cattle 24,000.
Mules 300.
Sheep 18,000.
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