USA > California > Sonoma County > History of Sonoma 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 time > Part 2
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Truitt, Roland K. 347
Turner. John W 1069
Y
U
Young. Ernest L. 902
Young, Peter 473
Urban, Kurt, M. D.
853
V
Z
Valentini, Louis 1094
Zamaroni, Peter 1055
Vallejo, Gen. Mariano G.
413
Zanolini, Guissepi 1089
Varner, Philip E.
703
Zartman, William 763
Varner, Samuel
768
Zartman, William H. 756
Vogensen, H. P 617
Zweifel, Walter J 650
T
Taylor, Benjamin F. 692
Taylor, John S. 867
Temple, Jackson 684
Williams, George S.
516
Wilson, John
782
Winkler, Clayton
358
Winkler, George H.
833
Winton, Homer W
904
Wolfe, Abraham L. 780
Wood, James W 973
Woods, Robert
903
Woodward, Edward F 845
Wyatt, Charles E.
932
Walls, David 828
Ward, Thomas B 910
Watson, Capt. Greenville 527
Weeks, Lewis
277
Welch, Charles
906
Sullivan, John D. 1019
Sweet, James S. P 774
Waldrop, Mrs. Helen L 695
Stevens, Charles D. 976
Stewart, Dell
1111
Stornetta, Louis
1093
Stradling, William C. 551
York, Charles W
934
HISTORICAL
CHAPTER I.
SONOMA-VALLEY OF THE MOON.
Sonoma, "Valley of the Moon," was the fitting name which the Indian gave the most eastern vale of this many-valleyed county. It was in a day beyond the dawn of written history when the red Chocuyen looked over that graceful line of level land sweeping from the farther horn of its crescent in the Napa hills, around by the circling rampart of northern peak to its west- ern point where a spur of the great Coast Range dips under the tides of the San Pablo. To his nature-trained mind was that perfect lunar shape-its arc to the north, and to the south its chord-a wide frontage on the big inland water. And he called it Sonoma. And the rancherias of the aboriginal set- tlers multiplied in the Valley of the Moon, for within those oaken groves and along the willow-bordered streams they found in their early period that which has made this portion of the Pacific the most gifted land under the sun. The two great luminaries of the skies were the chief deities of the Indian's primi- tive worship,-the sun that brought, and yet brings, days of plenty and peace to that favored region; and the moon that mellowed the night there and gave her name to the valley,-and the eves are as nights in Eden when the moon silvers Sonoma's vine-clad plain. The fitness and the triple-vowel melody of the title, with the sweet tonal harmony of its three syllables sounding like a Spanish word, so appealed to Padre Jose Altimira, sent to establish a mission there, that he immediately applied it to the local Indian tribe, and afterwards to the pueblo which soon grew around the adobe church which he built. This new mission Altimira called San Francisco de Solano, in honor of St. Francis Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order of priesthood, and of St. Solano, the celebrated "Apostle of the Indies." It was the most northern and the last of the chain of missions that linked the coast settlements of the Californias to- gether. Like its kindred institutions Mission Solano droops under the bur- dens and the neglect of time. Even its sacred title once voiced in veneration by the neophytes kneeling before its altars, is now seldom spoken by men. But the Indian's name lives not only in the town and valley where the pioneer padre wrought for the moral uplift of the primitive Sonoman, but it has passed across the western mountain range. It has spread over a noble territory bordering the wide waterways of the state and fronting twenty leagues on the Pacific, the present and future battle-wave where the world's commerce will struggle for supremacy, and throwing back from the sea into the interior of this grand domain a breadth of thirty miles. "The valley was found best adapted by rea- son of its climate, location, abundance of wood and stone for building pur- poses," wrote Father Altimira in his journal, "and above all for its excellent springs and streams." The far-seeing padre had looked over many proposed places for his mission and his choice of Sonoma proved him unusually wise in his generation.
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HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY
The name "California" has come through broken accounts from an origin, vague, distant, impalpable. The treasure-mad adventurers from Spain always seeking undiscovered golden troves, believed, in the fierceness of their desire, there were other places on the new continent rivaling the stored wealth of the Peruvian Inca, from whom Pizarro looted so richly and murderously, or of Montezuma, the pitiful victim of the insatiable Cortes. Fictionists of the time wrote lurid stories of the cities in the mystic west peopled by semi-supernatural beings who jealously watched their vast treasuries. One of these writers was Ordonez de Montalvo, and his book, "Sergas de Esplandian," published in 1510, told of the magic "Island of California," where beautiful amazons ruled and grim griffins guarded not only the feminine wealth, but the mineral treas- ure as well. The young and valiant grandee and knight of belt and spur, Esplandian, meets the wild queen, "Califa," in her capital city, where after many fierce fights between his followers and her dragon-like people, he suc- ceeded if not in conquering the place, at least in having her fall in love with him. Califa was devoted to her Spanish cavalier, something of the devotion of a tigress, and it took all the watchfulness and valor of her lover to keep his life secure when she had an unusual "tender spell." Her savage soldiers had an unpleasing habit of flying around on their bat-wings and picking up the soldiers of Sergas, which they would lift to a great height and then drop. Of course the soldier thus treated was of no use afterwards. Because of their birdlike manners Montalvo in his book dipped into the Greek and called them "ornis," and "Califa" is from "Kalli" (beautiful) in the same language. "The f was inserted for the sake of euphony," says Professor George Davidson, the translator, hence "California," beautiful bird. This golden Ali Baba tale was popular with the Spanish knights of fortune, and doubtless Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, when he saw the islands off the southern coast of this state, named them after the mystic amazon queen, as they were first known as "Las Cali- fornias." Could this Portuguese in the naval service of Spain have gone farther into the province he found and named so fittingly he might have won the golden lure that drew him to the threshold of a greater discovery. But he died sud- denly in that vicinity and was buried on one of his Santa Barbara islands, in a grave nameless and unknown. But this portion of the Golden West assumes no indefinite or foreign derivation for her title. She has supplied it from within herself; and her almost nine hundred thousand acres of soil-lowland and upland-have never felt a drought, and where the fauna of all earth's zones blossom in richest beauty and fruit in generous harvest, is-Imperial Sonoma.
The surveyor who chained off Sonoma County from the rest of the con- tinent smoothly moved along lines of least resistance-along natural boundary lines. The reader may imagine him setting his first stake in the southeastern corner, on the San Pablo bay shore. Starting northward he is soon on the crest of a range of high hills and on this elevated course he travels through innumerable turnings and twisting. passing Napa county on his right, and over the slope of Mount St. Helena, where he reaches the corner meeting place of Sonoma, Lake and Napa counties. Turning west he tramps along the parallel of latitude, tending to the south of this line, and finally striking the upper waters of the Valhalla -- now known as the Gualala-river, and this dashing mountain stream is his guide till he reaches the sea. The Pacific is the western boundary
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HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY
from that northwest corner as far south as the mouth of the Estero Americano on Bodega Bay. He travels easterly up this creek to Valley Ford, thence he chains a southeast, cross-country line to the upper part of the Estero de San Antonio. This stream down to its end in San Pablo Bay he marks on his survey the division line between Sonoma and Marin. It would seem that this county found for herself a place within the natural barriers of hill and bay, stream: and sea, during those distant days when mighty terrestrial forces were heaving hemispheres into form. And this amphitheatre of virile vale and mesa awaited through the unwritten savage years for the coming of the day when these acres would yield their wealth to the home-building Saxon.
LAS CALIFORNIAS EARLY STORY.
Nor does Scnoma begin her life with the sisterhood of counties in a late historical period. Her discovery came in 1774-five years after somebody, said to have been Gaspar de Portola, seeking Monterey, found Yerba Buena. Who- ever found what is now known as San Francisco certainly was not so successful in finding a name for the place, as no later botanist or vegetarian has ever found there the "good herb" that suggested the Spanish title "Yerba Buena." Sonoma continued incognito for two hundred and thirty-two years after Cabrillo at San Diego saw and added this, the last, domain to the empire-kingdom of that monarch who was at once an emperor-Charles V of Germany, and a king-Carlos I of Spain. Charles, then only the German ruler (having suc- ceeded his maternal grandfather, Maximillian), was fighting in the Nether- lands when the death of his paternal grandfather, Ferdinand, lifted him to the Spanish throne. The warlike qualities of the sturdy Dutchman kept him so busy in the Low Countries that he did not see his new kingdom-the greatest on earth-for years, and the maladministrations of his six immediate succes- sors further sent Spain on the downward road that ended when her flag dropped in Cuba and the Philippines. In constant turmoil at home, her far western possessions, Mexico and California, were left to get along with only intermit- tent attention. Between Portola, ( 1769) and De Sola (1822) ten Spanish appointees had more or less governed Alta California, but these easy-going soldiers of fortune had staid prety close to the shore. They found the pueblos of San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara. Monterey and San Francisco more comfortable than the Indian-infested inland. The work of civilizing the wilder- ness and incidentally raising food and other luxuries for the government officials and their soldiers were left to the mission padres and their native converts. These Franciscan priests. when Charles had expelled the Jesuits from Spanish dominions accusing them of plotting against his crown, succeeded to the rights and holdings of the deposed order on the Pacific. They also succeeded to the "Pious Fund", which had been set apart for the support of the Jesuit mission- aries in Lower California. This fund grown to large dimensions and withheld by the Mexican government, was returned to the church a few years ago by a decision of the Hague. The Dominican order, however, demanded a share in the mission field, and Junipero Serra, president of the Franciscans, looking over the sterile, uninviting hills of Baja California where the Jesuits had labored under such discouragements, was willing to cede the whole peninsula to the other order. This Serra did and the following years find him with his co-work- ers building missions from San Diego to Sonoma. seeking the soul-salvation
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HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY
of a sordid savage who had more veneration for a pot of "carne y frijoles," beef and beans, which the good fathers cooked, than for cross and creed held up to his primitive mind.
After the seizing of the pious fund, then grown to $78,000, and upon which Mexico had kept hungry eyes for years, and the secularization of the mission property, the institution went down and the great adobe chapels began to crumble back to their mother dust. The Spanish era was the "sleepy" period of California-the slumber just before the grand awakening when "the Gringo came." Of course the different governors and comandantes frequently aroused themselves for family quarrels in which there was generally more fluent talking and letter writing than real fighting, but a few concessions and cheap compli- ments brought peace-till the next row was due. Even when Mexico threw off the yoke of Spain in 1822 and had her own emperor, Iturbide, crowned as "Agustan I," for a few months, the change hardly rippled the placid surface of this portion of the new Mexican empire. And when luckless Iturbide lay dead before a file of Mexican soldiers, as did Maximillian, another emperor, later on, the Californians quietly hauled down the new imperial standard and as quietly hauled up the old tricolor of the Republic of Mexico. It was "on again, off again" without any powder burned over the changes, in this "mañana" land.
Yet there was onc question that drew these sons of old Spain into some- thing like unity, and while it did not cement the aggregated mass, it helped the Californians to present a considerable front to the common family enemy That question was the man from the "States," the North American,- in contra- distinction to the Mexican of the South. From their minimum of geographi- cal knowledge they knew that the Great Wall of the Sierras stood guard on their eastern border and over those icy crests they desired no immigrant should come. For generations Spain had seen her standards torn and tossed on English bayonets and her armandas go gurgling down in the deep at the mere will of the invincible Albion, and no descendant of Castile and Aragon cared to come in contact with even a branch of that militant race. Moreover, the eagle of America and his brother-bird of Mexico were screaming warlike front shore to shore of the Rio Grande, and Texas was preparing the way for a march to the ancient city of Montezuma. The Spanish in California, with the purblindness which has been a distinct characteristic of that race always, carried their senseless antagonism to their only and more powerful neighbor occasionally to extreme lengths. They even desired to annex themselves to anyone of the European governments whose fleets were hovering watchfully on this coast. They knew that it was the world's belief that California was a logical part of the United States and that the stars and stripes would wave on the Pacific beach whenever those Yankee color-bearers so desired. So to these colonists playing like children at state-building, galloping their mustangs over vast hidden mineral and agricultural wealth yet finding it not, slumber- ing in a long siesta on the threshold of a great waterway that was to bring to their harbors-after their day-the cargoed riches of countless argosies, it was anything but the hated "gringo." It was this knowledge that in 1842 hurried Commodore Jones with the United States frigate United States intc Monterey, where he hoisted his flag. even if he did haul it down next day,
HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY
learning that General Taylor had not yet got his guns to working on the Mexican, Santa Ana; and it was this knowledge four years afterwards that sent Commodore Sloat in the United States steamship Savannah racing uf: the coast with the British frigate Collingwood, Admiral Sir George Seymour commanding, in the speedy Yankee's wake. War was on with Mexico and the good old wooden ship Savannah, fit mother of the modern cruiser of steel, was outsailing her Britanic majesty the Collingwood, and a state was the prize. That was a glorious "ride" over the sea that merits a place in song with the runs of Revere and Sheridan, for when Seymour came in port nexi day Sloat's ensign was over Monterey, and it has never come down.
From July 16, 1769, the day Junipero Serra founded his first Upper Cali- fornia Mission at San Diego, the Spanish colonists, if comparatively straggling bands of ill-clothed, poorly paid or no-paid soldiers often with poverty-stricken families, can be called colonists, began to settle along the fringe of coast. This wave of civilization rolled sluggishly towards the north, led always by the indefatigable lame padre of whom Pope Clement said, "I would that I had in my garden more junipers like that one." Under Serra's supervision mission after mission arose in the California vales fair as gardens of the Lord, until his body, bereft of the flame of a life-zeal, lay dead in the Valley of EI Carmelo. In 1817 the Mission San Rafael was established. the beautiful Marin valley chosen for an establishment to relieve the poor, unselfsupporting Mis- sion Dolores in San Francisco. This brings the reader along the chain of missions whose links measure seven hundred miles and whose walls were a half century in the building, until he stands at the door of the twenty-first and the last-San Francisco de Solano, at Sonoma.
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HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY
CHAPTER II.
SONOMA ENTERS HISTORY.
To write the history of Sonoma one must, in part, write the history of California, for in this fifteen hundred and fifty square miles of Pacific slope were for awhile the northern and final ends of the records that began with the landing of the first European on this western rim of the continent. Hence the foregoing narration of events which marched county by county,-to give the different localities their present geographical designation,-into the north. Sonoma may be said to start the second half of California's colonial history, San Francisco and San Pablo bays being practically the division line, with Sutter's "New Helvetia," now Sacramento. the only settlement beyond. But though written into the history of the state, Sonoma has a story as distinct as the five epochs marked on her pages, and even few of her own native sons and daughters know or feel the importance of that tale, or of the part this county played in the drama of Las Californias. Indian, Spaniard, Russian, Mexican, American, with the ubiquitous Englishman hovering near, each in turn, has worked out his role on this stage of the continent. Four have gone leaving imperishable names, blood and racial characteristics in the soil they trod, and in the invincible race that remain. Each strove for the "goodlie" land; each surrounded by different conditions lived his day, accomplished his political life work and passed at the coming of the fifth,-the last-who, like the march of empire, was holding west his way till the ultimate sea beating against the bases of the hills thundered-"No farther." The primitive aborigine faltering in the strange first steps of Christian civilization, saw the soldiers of Castile's knightly king with sword and cross move over these waters and valleys and stamping their monarch's signet into the land that had been the Indian's land since the day the Supreme signed the title deeds. Then the bearded boyars of the Romanoff appeared out of the north and planted the two-headed eagle of their sovereign and the double-beam cross of their faith on the sea-cliffs of the Redman's hunting-ground, and the crosses of Spain and Russia shone at the same time over Sonoma's soil. They too passed,-the Castilian back along the track Columbus had charted across the sea, and the Moscovite into the white wastes of his north. Then he saw the petty-officials of the nearby republic that had been reared on the blood-red ruins of the Aztec, rule and wrangle for awhile and cease to be, swept away by the irre- sistible Saxon. And finally the Indian turned from the successive coming and going to pass before the last and fittest. The curtain goes down on each following act, and vale and mesa of this golden plateau hear the actors no more. On moves destiny, unswerving, inexorable.
The soil of Sonoma has been claimed by a kingdom, an empire, a king- dom and two republics, while between the two last appeared for brief periods a "homemade" empire ( Iturbide's ) and an independent principality equally home- made but more homely. also more vigorous than the weak, imperial thing
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HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY
attempted on the Mexican republicans. The Bear Flag was only a smear of lampblack on a piece of white cloth, it was without national sanction or recog- nition and the strongest argument for its existence was down in the barrels of its thirty-three rifles, but it foreshadowed the approach of a new order. the approach of that which was to vitalize this portion of the hemisphere. So, the hoisting of the grizzly mildly regardant-to apply a fitting heraldic term- over virtually the last Mexican and the last mission, was well timed, or the banner of the bear might have dropped ignobly like Jones' ensign at Monterey. But events just then began coming, crowding and overlapping, and the Repub- lic of California gently annexed itself to the United States.
"PERFIDIOUS ALBION."
While writing the introductory pages of the history of Sonoma County the scribe must not miss an allusion to a man who has made more ocean history than any other individual in his day. He is of England-traveler in every land and sailor on the "seven seas," and to catch his first appearance on this coast the reader must slip back to 1579, the year Francis Drake trans- ferred his ship-activities to the Pacific, or "Calm Sea," as he called it, remem- bering the three, out of his five vessels, which he had left in the stormy Atlantic. On the southern coasts he had conducted himself in a manner to win no little hatred from the Spaniards, and at that period in his career this pions people in both the new and the old world were cursing him most prayerfully. As in the Spanish Main, he had pretty well swept this ocean of the fat treasure-laden galleons homeward bound from the Philippines to far España, and with $2,000,- 000 or more of loot in the hold of his clumsy little "Golden Hind," Drake was himself trying to make home. Well knowing that the Spaniards were cruising over the southern seas supplicating all the churchly saints in their calendar and the heathen god of winds to waft him safely into their hands, he had elected to sail west by way of Cape Good Hope instead of east through the Straits of Magellan. But unfavorable winds had blown him back on to the California coast, in this vicinity, which he then saw for the first time. Though his ship was loaded down with the pirated property of Spain he calmly annexed the entire country to the British crown, calling it "New Albion" because the white summer-hills reminded hint of the chalk cliffs of Dover. The hard strain of the long cruise and of the stiff fights he had put up had told on his insignificant craft, so in a bay, either Bodega in Sonoma or one in Marin now known as "Drake's Bay." he careened and repaired the "Golden Hind." What a prize she and her skipper would have been to the Spaniards could they have found them helpless on the beach of New Albion in that far June of 1579! But Drake went home, rounding the continent of Africa, the first circumnavigator of the globe, and his queen knighted him in return for the Spanish dollars and domin- ion he presented her. She doubtless put the money to immediate use, but there is no existing record that she ever attempted to "prove up" on her Sonoma real estate claim. Somewhere on that shore is a pile of stones and near it is an English penny bearing the august profile of Elizabeth, elaborate head-dress, high ruff collar and all, and this was the pre-emption notice left by Sir Francis Drake. When this coin is found it will mark the exact place of his twenty- six days' stay, and will also be evidence of his claim to the country. Then it
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HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY
will be in order in this Augustan age of litigation, for George V of England to commence suit-if only a friendly suit-for the purpose of quieting title to New Albion.
ANOTHER ONE.
In 1792-two hundred and thirteen years after Drake's day-so slowly time flew then-Captain George Vancouver, another wandering Englishman, came sailing down the coast. He visited the Spanish at Yerba Buena, enjoyed their hospitality but quietly ignored their name and claim. He also noted that the Spaniards were ill-prepared to defend their possessions against foreign invasion and advised his government to grab the grand domain. Great Britain just at that propitious time, was trying to keep out of the great French Revolution, and was also taking an occasional shot at Holland, and at Spain nearer home. Also she was out of money and the Bank of England .had suspended specie payments. Moreover, she had lately come out of the conflict with her rebellious colonies on the Atlantic seaboard-second best, and had no strong desire to get into a fresh fight so near the warlike Yankees. Other- wise, it is probable that a British fleet soon would have made short work of subduing the few, weak Spanish settlements on this coast, and California might have become a sister province of Canada. After Vancouver's departure the Spaniards awoke to the danger of having foreign officers spying out the land, and they set themselves to work making their position stronger. Ports and other exposed points were to be fortified, and one of these was Bodega. Since 1775, when Lieutenant Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra in the Spanish warship "Sonora" explored the bay and gave a portion of his considerable name to the place, the comandante at San Francisco had apparently forgotten the discovery. Now a military road running along the east shore of Tomales Bay, through Marin county was projected, and four guns were mounted in a small redoubt on Bodega Point. But the military road only reached the dignity of a sheep-trail and the guns gathered rust until somebody hauled them back to San Francisco. Spain had troubles at home and the other European nations were busy with one another, and no more dangerous foreigners appearing, California was left to sleepily work out her destiny. A band of fur-dealing Russians from Alaska settled on Bodega beach and the bluffs at Fort Ross, but as they were more interested in sea-otter and agriculture than in adding more territory to the already over-wieldy empire of the White Czar, they were practically left unmolested to hunt skins, and smuggle garden-truck to the scurvy- racked Spanish soldiers in Yerba Buena.
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