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 22

Author: Gregory, Thomas Jefferson
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1190

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 22

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

After Lou had stepped out of obscurity, virtually, and into the blaze of horse civilization, the query in sportdom was "Who is she?" The flow of her male blood can be traced through Sidney Dillon, an aristocrat, though there is a blank on his mother's shield. She was Venus, a "nobody." notwithstanding her goddess-title, yet her clan may have been speedy on some Central Asian course when the centuries A. D. were numbered in one figure. The colt was bred by Henry and Ira Pierce at the Santa Rosa Stock Farm. Pierce named him Sidney and then attached Dillon to the name merely to distinguish him from Sidney the elder, never dreaming that the title would become a hall-mark of nobility. On the maternal side of Lou's house-stable-the line cannot be run back through volumes of horse-bluebook. Her family may or may not have sported a crest, till she won it on the mile-oval. Yet her fore-sire might have carried the lordly Zengis Kahn over the Tartarian plains, or the fierce Attila of the Huns, who boasted that the grass never grew where his horse-

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hoofs trod. But links in the lineal chain are lost under the tracks of time. Her mother is Lou Milton, whose dam was an unknown owned by Green Thompson at Pine Flat, in this county. This mare-Thompson called her Fly-died at colt-birth, and flew into the Beyond. But-plebeian or patrician- she left hier grand-filly a quartet of feet that have trotted all trotting records out of the turf of her day. All honor to the pedigreeless Fly-there may have been something in her name after all. Who knows. May she fly with Pegasus among the planets. Lou Milton was raised on cow's milk, first from the bottle. then out of the bucket, fresh and foamy from her foster-mother. And where is that humble, nameless Pine Flat bossy who mothered the mother of Lou Dillon ?

When Lou Milton was a promising 3-year-old, Thompson one day drove her down to Healdsburg and Charles Brumfield, a well-known citizen of that place who had a running-record-smasher, insisted on a race. After a number of refusals Thompson did an unusual thing-took his trotter out of the sulky. and put a saddle and a rider over her slim back. When the jockey had finally convinced her that she must "break" and run, she struck that gait and showed Brumfield something in the way of speed, showed his horse the way around that track, and incidentally showed the public that she could both run and trot. The mare has no lofty records to her credit, but her life flowered out in her queenly foal. After the "one-fifty-eight-one-half" episode, Al McFayden, the veteran turf-man, tried to find her a place in some Burke's Peerage of horses, but she is only Lou Dillon, the peeress of all.

A NURSERY OF PRIZE TROTTERS.

It was the ambition of Henry Pierce to make the Stock Farm the nursery of the prize trotters of the time, and to that end he made its mile track with no superior on the Pacific coast. He did not live to see his colts graduate and win in their chosen profession, but liis life-dream was realized after his life-work was over. The farm passed to the ownership of Frank S. Turner, and it was this experienced trainer who bridle-broke the great mare when she was trying out her baby-trots at her mother's side. He introduced her to the sulky and drew the lines over her silky-shoulders when she started to school. Millard Saunders, now superintendent of the noted Holt breeding establishment at Indianapolis, the firm that now owns Sidney Dillon, was Lou's maestro, and he was more to his noble pupil. He passed down into the springs of her being and awoke a latent thing within her called life, he flexed her growing muscles and taught them their lightning play over the surface of her supple limbs. He calmed her when she was impatient, he ruled her when she was wayward, and with the infinite tenderness of love he lifted her out of the crudities of youth and attuned her to action perfect and marvelous. He became a part of her- an elemental blending of man and horse-the new creation vibrant in union. In that grand harmony of mind and matter she trod the chords, arising to a symphony of wondrous theme and tone and the rhythm of her hoof-beats was heard around the world.

At The Rosedale Stock Farm, a fine breeding and training station on the northern extension of Mendocino avenue, Santa Rosa, the ponies for many years have been taking their preliminary try-outs for the coming Marathons. The establishment makes a specialty of the famous McKinnv brand, and in their classes are 2:10 trotters, and pacers under the 2:20 clip.

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CROSSING THE BLOODS AND BREEDS.

Several miles west of Santa Rosa is Wrights, a station and a farm. The station is a halting place on the electric railway, and the farm-a tract of sev- eral hundred acres of oaken-plain-is the home of Sampson B. Wright. While Mr. Burbank is budding and blending to perfection new fruits and flowers, Mr. Wright is crossing bloods and breeds in new animal creations. From hogs to horses he has been changing and improving until the stock from the S. B. Wright farm is widely known. At the head of his horse-class trots Sonoma Girl, 2:0512-not slow for only a girl, considering that she at that pace is just eleven seconds faster than her famous grandsire, Anteeo, in his prime. Girl has a full-sister, Sonoma May, who started out in the game on a trial-heat of 2:1414. Another full-sister, Sonoma Queen, is a good third in the family record. Charley Belden, a brother of the trio of Sonomas, is a star member of turf-society with 2:081/2 on his visiting card. This splendid colt shares name with Charles C. Benden, a well known harness maker and horseman of Santa Rosa. The popularity of Charley Belden the man is only a quarter second behind the popularity of Charley Belden the horse. When Sonoma Girl was lifting herself over that record mile-at Lexington, Ky .- Lotta Crabtree, another native girl of the Golden West, was witnessing the exploit from the grandstand. When the actress left the track Girl went with her, and Lotta's check for $26,000 went to the trotter's California owner, Anteeo's first dash to fame was as the $10,000 racer of a local stock company organized at Santa Rosa in the early 'zos by Mart Rollins. That string of men-thoroughbreds all, and fit to play the "Gentlemen's Game," was composed of Isaac DeTurk, James and John Laughlin, Judge Jackson Temple, George Guerne, Al. McFadyen, Captain Guy E. Grosse, James Warner and others; many of these now sleep under the turf their horses trod with honor to their native place and distinction to themselves.

ANTEEO AND HIS SPEEDY RAND.

When Anteeo shook the home-dust from his nimble heels he showed up in Kentucky, and after a bunch of victories on the blue-grass tracks, was sold for $50,000. He left behind a band of California colts worthy of the sire whose blood gave them "go" on many an oval field. One of the string, Alfred G., bred and raised by George Guerne,-whence the G of the colt's name,-finally followed his illustrious daddy east to some Kentucky Home stable, leaving $20,000 in this state as a golden solace for the Guernes. Eva G., another of the family string, owned by Ney Donovan, a prominent merchant of Santa Rosa, early trotted out in view. Her dam was one of the famous Nutwoods, and with such a blend of blood in her chestnut body, the young filly was soon hitting the high places in the Sonoma tracks at 2:30. In rounding up the Anteeo band Maud Fowler must not be cut out. Her Sonoma Girl-May- Queen, Hattie Fowler and Olive Dillon are fillies of her blood and bone. An- other Dillon-Katie-is Anteeo from her mother. Grace Brothers' Ole-whose name reminds one of "Olsen" and other countless "sens" of Scandinavia, was foaled by a Nutwood dam, Maud Fowler's half-sister, and this equipped him to sweep the California tracks in his day and generation. Ole exchanged the racing ring for a life of leisure and his later life-history would be an edition de-luxe. He is the one-horse-power motor of a Los Angeles capitalist's car-

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riage, and takes his oaten-fare in a stable that would make a Sultan's charger in palace-stall grow green with envy.

These are a troop of trotters that raced with Father Time, clipping second after second from the stretch, often leaving the old sport with his scythe and hour-glass at the quarter-pole sadly distanced and out. Mart Rollins is the man who has coached bevies of equine buds and drove his speedy debutantes out to make the track people sit up and take notice. Mart can tell of the day long ago when Seneca Daniels, pioneer of the California turf, from a middle-western State landed in Petaluma with General McClelland, Black Hawk and Morgan in his string. The ancient flyers were good for the time, when 2:58 or there- abouts, was not bad for speed, and they left descendants and successors that have steadily changed the olden records until Lou Dillon has kicked bodily almost a minute from their mile.

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CHAPTER XXXV.

PETALUMA AND HER NAME ORIGIN.

The history of Petaluma and her surrounding lands begins in the year 1836, when Comandante Vallejo occupied his great valley rancho with the adobe dwelling on the west slope of Sonoma mountain. The aged house and its four acres of grounds were, in 1911, given to the Petaluma Parlor of the Native Sons of the Golden West, to be restored and preserved as a relic of days too soon forgotten. The house, now tenantless, was once bustling with life. The wings and rear of the great two-story building were storehouses and factories. In the latter a coarse, serviceable blanket was made for the hundreds of In- dians employed or retained on the rancho. "Home-made" carpets were woven, and leather tanned for saddles and harness, boots and shoes. General Vallejo says in a letter dated May 16, 1889: "My harvest productions were so large that my storehouses were literally over-filled every year. In 1843 my wheat and barley crop amounted to 72,000 Spanish bushels. My plowmen were only two hundred men. Corn about 5,000 Spanish bushels, besides a super-abun- dance of all grains, of daily use, such as beans, peas, lentils and vegetables of all kinds.

"All these products were stored in different departments of this large house, besides giving freely to the Indians who lived in the surrounding coun- try in peace with me. A large number of hides were preserved every year, also tallow, lard and dried meat to sell to the 'Yankees.'

"In one wing of the house up stairs, I lived with my family when in Peta- luina valley. The south front was 250 feet, and formed a large square, the house having an immense courtyard inside where every morning the laborers inet and called the roll before dispersing for their various occupations.

"The house was two stories high and very solid, made of adobe and tim- ber, brought by oxen from the redwoods, and planed for use by the old-fash- ioned saw, by four Kanakas (my servants) brought from the Sandwish Islands by Captain Cooper, my brother-in-law. It had wide corridors inside and out- side, some of which were carpeted by our own make of carpets.

Mr. Fowler, father of Henry Fowler of Napa, was the last carpenter who worked at my old house. I sold it to Mr. White about twenty years ago for $25,000. It was never attacked by Indians. When I was taken prisoner by the Bear Flag party, this house was filled with what I have already mentioned, and they disposed of everything."

GUADALUPE VALLEJO BOGGS,

Hon. William M. Boggs of Napa, who occupied the premises on his ar- rival from across the plains, 1846, says: "My father's family and myself and wife were kindly tendered the use of the building by General Vallejo when we reached Sonoma. It was the first shelter we obtained and it was not completed.

It is a large square construction with the usual court (Spanish style)

THE OLD ADOBE

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with verandas twelve feet wide on the upper story. The front of the building, looking toward Petaluma, also has the wide veranda. The walls on the south and east were not finished and were covered with a tulé thatch to protect them from the rain. It was Vallejo's summer rancho residence and had been oc- cupied by the family before the General tendered it to us to winter in. The lower rooms were used for storing grain, hides and other ranch products. The Vallejo family furniture used during the summer sojourn was still in the rooms above. On our arrival in the night at the ranch, General Vallejo, who had gone ahead of our worn-out teams, had aroused his Indian servants to prepare supper for us. The tables were spread with linen table-cloths, sperm candles were in the chandeliers and we had a regular Spanish cooked meal, wholesome and plenty of it. With Spanish hospitality the General waited on the table, helping all the large family. After supper he handed Mrs. Boggs a large bunch of keys to the various rooms, and assigned one large well furnished apartment to her and me. Here in the "Old Adobe," January 4, 1847, our eldest son was born. A few weeks after this young immigrant's arrival, and while I was at Yerba Buena, an enlisted soldier in the war against Mexico, General Vallejo paid the baby gringo an official visit. He was much interested in the youngster and in- quired his name. My mother replied that the baby was yet unnamed and re- quested the General to supply the necessary title, which he did, naming the boy after himself. Guadalupe Vallejo Boggs, who is now a resident of Oregon, claims to be the first white boy born under the American flag in California. One or two female children were born in Sutter's Fort probably before or about this time of the year."

PETALUMA AND HER NAMES.

It will be remembered that Padre Altimira, seeking a mission-site, camped in June, 1823, where the General constructed his hacienda, thirteen years later. To begin Petaluma history back to chapter I, paragraph I-the Spanish ex- plorer, Captain Quiros, discovered and ascended Petaluma creek in September. 1776, seeking a water route to Bodega bay which had been explored by Lieu- tenant Bodega. in his Catholic Majesty's warship Senora, the year before. Quiros did not learn that Marin county is an island, but he found a deep, clear stream of water with low, tree-covered hills on its west bank and a broad, level liano to the east. He camped on it near the head of tide water, and noting the several arroyos leading down from the hills and the sloughs threading the park of tules in the vicinity, also the bold point to the south, he called the place "Punta de los Esteros"-point of the creeks. The Americans afterwards desig- nated the point-or its locality "The Haystack"-somebody's cattle ate up the origin of the name but the unmusical appellation is yet sticking to the Punta. The Indians of the valley called the vicinity "Chocuali," which doubtless is a tribal name. The Petalumas just call it Petaluma-probably a tribal name. The stream, in whatever tongue-Spanish, Indian, Gringo or Petaluma-be its title, is a noble piece of water, and as long as its tides flood and ebb. Petaluma will be free. Light-draught vessels sail and steam between bay and town and no railroad company can padlock the local transportation question while that busy fleet is carrying to market. The winter-waste from the plow-lands tend to shoal the creek, but an occasional congressional appropriation dredges and straightens the channel .- and never was a public dollar more righteously spent.

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And these sums, small compared with the results of their expenditure, keep the Rio Petaluma in active and excellent use. Rio Petaluma is good, for the stream is a river, having long outgrown the creek-age, and it only remains for the new maps to officially proclaim it.

When the county was cut into townships this stream became a division line between two of the sections. Petaluma was platted in the township of that name, but when East Petaluma grew into municipal notice that portion of the city was found lost in the wilds of Vallejo township. The antithetical "found lost" can not appear more complex as a descriptive term than is the possible complexity of township and city official government on the same territory. Vallejo extends east to the crest of the high hills, and from San Pablo bay northward to the line of Santa Rosa township. When Petaluma creek heads in its various feeders five or six miles north of the city, the township line takes a cross-country run northwesterly to a common corner near Stony Point. The Cotati rancho is in the upper part and the original Petaluma Rancho occupies the remainder of Vallejo township, a portion of the grant, however. being in Sonoma township. Petaluma township lies to the west extending south to Marin county. over the hills and west to Bodega township, and north to Analy. Within this area is the Rancho Laguna de San Antonio, also nearly all of the Rancho Roblar de Miseria. As has been told, West Petaluma stands on the old Miranda grant,-now only an unpleasing memory of days when clouds hung over home-titles. On vega and hill was a luxuriant vegetation running from oats to oaks. The redwoods and pines were the towering lords of the mountains, but the oaks spread over the lower lands, over the oats that reached shoulder-high to a mustang. Even the name of its great rancho-Roblar de Miseria-refers to the strong, roborant, oaken groves that grew on the tract. Through thesc woods roved bands of wild horses and cattle, nominally they were owned by General Vallejo, and their home-corral was at the old adobe hacienda at the foot of Mount Sonoma, but they owed allegiance to no master and were as free as the coast winds that with them swept plain and mesa. Like their fellow-foresters, the elk and the deer. they were game for whoever needed them and met them on the range. Many a hide with the "V" brand on the flank was dried on cabin-wall not owned by Vallejo. But it was the 1011- written law of the unfenced llano. This law grew from the prodigality of the supply and of the supplier, and both finished in obedience to another law-the state of waste. Vallejo, as many of his fellow-Spanish occupants in this state gave, gave until all was gone, gone. The knightly old don never ceased in his gift-giving. whether it was a fat beef to a thin immigrant just from "across the plains," or a rich ranch to another Americano whom the General loved. And for much of this he received only injury and ingratitude. He died at his home January 18, 1800, having been identified wth political matters of this ter- ritory for sixty years, and California has no spot more honorable than the place wherein he sleeps at Sonoma.

FALL OF FORTY-NINE OR SPRING OF FIFTY.

Petaluma came here in that legendary age-the spring of '50, or possibly the fall of '49. Like the Mavflower period to the man of Massachusetts, or the Randolph era to the Virginian, "49-50" is the golden-time to the F. F. C. Dates before and after bear no, or dim, hall-marks of social distinction. Dr.

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August Heyermann built a log cabin then, and that was Petaluma till Tom Lockwood and several companions, in October, 1850, drove in their stakes. They were hunters, and with their outfit in a whaleboat they had left San Francisco for the game-grounds. The riflemen camped in the Bell grove of oaks. Also came John Linus and Lemarcus Wiatt, and Thomas Bayliss and David Flogdell-the "Tom and Dave" of early Petaluma. These pitched their tents under the trees, and so populous and popular did the sylvan settlement be- come that "los robles" or "the oaks" seemed destined to be the coming city. Then was the houses, real houses of wood, imposing structures of boards rip- sawed or split, or logs fitted into wall and roof. Jim Dawson, who landed at Bodega equipped only with gringo-grit and good looks, and married the widow Caseras and the Rancho Pogolome, had a "home-made" saw mill as early as 1834. Dawson for years was busy sawing lumber, and many of the first frame houses of Sonoma, Santa Rosa and Petaluma came from his Bodega logs. Wiatt and Linus constructed a small shack on the bank where the creek horse- shoes itself around the point just above Washington street, and in it started "a store." Soon after Baylis and Flogdell inaugurated a trading post farther down the stream where was the dock of the old stern-wheel steamer Relief, a craft that zigzagged for many a-year along the estero. G. W. Keller opened an emporium, warehouse, lodging house, eating house, trading house and house for almost anything that rode along that way. James M. Hudspeth and James McReynolds, afterwards the two pioneer "Jims" of Gold Ridge, built a ware- house and were soon doing a profitable business buying and shipping agricul- tural produce to Sacramento and San Francisco. Grain was coming in from the valleys, potatoes from out Bodega-way and hay from wherever the wild oats grew. Their first farm was the city site and the two Jims "raked the meadow rich with hay" where the residence-lawns are now nursed with hose into summer verdure. In the early part of '52 Keller laid out the town, this survey starting from the creek between Oak and Prospect streets and running west to Liberty near Kent, thence south to A street, thence northwesterly to the stream1.

And Petaluma was growing in the commonwealth-making "Fifties." The nimrods and their neighbors at "Los Robles" folded their tents and stole away- to acquire building lots in the new city of "los esteros," "little hills," "foot hills," or whatever gave the town title. And it was the sturdy band that came up the creek during that decade-the argonauts that threaded the tule-reaches and beached their galleys on a shore of wonderful fertility. Henry E. Lawrence landed in the town from Tennessee via Missouri. Next year he returned to the latter state for cattle with which to stock his Stony Point ranch, and in 1857 made another round-trip "the plains across" for the same purpose, although the ranch this time being in Marin county and among the fog-drenched hills of the coast. James M. Palmer, from Buncombe county, N. C., the famous "Bunkum county" where hoop snakes took their tails in their mouths and rolled along the road-a sensation and a peril to the country-side; where the barrels of the rifles were curved to shoot deer that persisted in running around sugar- loaf hills ; and where the people were such amazing story-tellers that the fame of their yarns got into the magazines, and the name of their county got into the dictionary, adding a new word to the language. Samuel N. Terrill, early justice of the peace, and who contests the honor of being the first postmaster

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with H. P. Hentzlemann, and W. D. Kent. Of the class of '51 was Major James Singley, one of Ireland's contributions to the west, sailor, merchant, legislator, and who as station agent of Peter Donohue's road sold the first rail- way ticket used in Sonoma county; George B. Williams, who hauled the lumber from the redwoods and built the present Washington hotel. There seems to have always been a Washington hotel in Petaluma-though an "American," a "Union," and a "Petaluma" hotel sprung up in after years, a patriotic list of inn-names appealing to the soul or the fiercest country-loving traveler. Robert Douglass built the first Washington, but Robert did more and better work in Petaluma than starting a line of Washington hotels,-he started a Petaluma clan. His marriage with Hannah Hathaway, December 31, 1851, was the first wedding in the city, and his daughter, whose birth was during the following year, was the first white child born in Petaluma.

WHEN THE SETTLERS "DROPPED IN."

The '52 crowd was larger, at least the list extant is longer. All ways and trails were leading to Petaluma. Then a rival sprang up in the tulés. On the creek, a short distance below Petaluma, H. P. Hentzlemann and M. G. Lewis constructed a wharf and several buildings, and upon this infant settlement- not enough of it to stand alone-they piled the ponderous title of "City of Petaluma." Colonel J. B. Hine of San Francisco was interested in the new municipality and by agreement ran his steamer "Red Jacket" between the bay and the creek landing. The "City of Petaluma" never got beyond the wharf- and-warehouse age, nor did it become a menace to the town of Petaluma. One of the early troubles was the establishment of its name. This sounded too much like the name of the original place and everybody insisted in calling it "New Town." One night the skipper of the Red Jacket was induced to start his engines and accept an invitation to visit "Old Town." The hospitality of his hosts and the depth of water under his boat while "up-river" were argu- ments too logical for the perpetuity of the tule-town, and it is of the things that were. Several steamers took successive runs during after years over the new reach of navigable creek, among them the "Kate Hayes," Captain Van Pelt ; "Sioc." Captain E. Latapie: "E. Corning." Captain C. M. Baxter ; "Petaluma," Captain Charles Minturn ; and the yacht-like "Josie McNear," Captain Washington Neil. Not on the roster of the early fleet that carried Petaluma's flag and freight abroad, defending her commercial supremacy on the seven inland-seas, must be omitted the "Relief," beamy, snub-nose, uncomely and stern-wheel, now gone "over Lethe's wharf." When one saw skipper Dave Baylis in her pilot-house coax the full-breasted. wide-hipped ark up to the foot of English street, the observer would expect to see her step ashore-a lightning change, a magic transformation from boat to frau-and go thumping her wooden shoes up-town to visit the Poehlmann Brothers.

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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 22

Author: Gregory, Thomas Jefferson Publication date: 1911 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic record company Number of Pages: 1190

Author: Gregory, Thomas Jefferson
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1190