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 23
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In the squad of recruits that year were A. B. Case-initial letters that on the store-sign always reminded the writer of his first days in the primary school ; John Bradford Tupper : Ezekiel Denman,-"Zeke Denman" as the Two Rock farmers in neighborly spirit abbreviated him; Hiram Talbert Fairbanks, store- keeper, banker; John Merritt, rancher, stockman; Andrew Henry-dapper Andrew Henry, whose courtly individuality might have marked him for a Southerner. He made out Wells Fargo Express waybills while dressed in white
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shirt sleeves turned up to protect the immaculate cuffs : Byronic collar, black tie, black cloth trousers, black low-crown broad-brimmed hat. He was patent- leather shod, seldom wore a coat on office duty, a prince of neatness, politeness and gentleness-one of the old-time express agents of the day of the six-horse stage coach ; the six-chambered Colt's: the wealth of a mine under the driver's seat; the sawed-off gun; messenger peering into the roadside bushes and ex- pecting to hear his own death-shot or the loud "throw out that box." A peculiar type of a day that is dead.
ALWAYS "FRITSCH AND ZARTMAN."
And came John Fritsch and William Zartman. Incomplete would be any kind of a story laid down in or even remotely associated with Petaluma if Fritsch and Zartman were left out. Moreover, that wagon-building firm has history peculiarly its own. John Fritsch was born in France in 1829, the same year of William Zartman's birth in Pennsylvania. When Fritsch had reached the third annual post of his life-course, the family immigrated to Zartman's native state, but the "drift-together" of the young men took place in Calaveras county, Cal. Meeting again in Petaluma they engaged in wagon-making, later taking as a third partner James Reid. In 1857 Reid, enroute to New York for ad- ditional machinery for their shop, was lost at sea, and the firm was dissolved. It "came back" next year under the name of Fritsch, Zartman & Co., N. O. Stafford being the "Co." In 1861 these men with C. Tustin and J. Church, operated a quartz mill at Gold Hill, Nevada. Three years after this the wagon- making firm was doing business at the same old stand as Fritsch & Stafford. Mr. Zartman, out of the firm, concluded to take a vacation and a rest. He got them. On the trip east his steamship, the "Golden Rule," foundered in the Caribbean Sea, and after an interesting period of semi-starvation and other hardships on a small island. the seven hundred passengers were rescued. Zart- man concluded that Petalumna was safer for him and he hurried back to the City of the Esteros. It is said on the authority of Matt Doyle, and others, that the next day after the traveler's return the familiar staccato-beats of a hammer were heard coming from the old shop clanging out the "Anvil Chorus." and investiga- tion found the indefatigable Zartman hammering into being a wagon for a Bodega bay rancher who had waited on the beach for "Bill" to come back from the sea.
HOW HARRY MECHAM GOT HERE.
In '53 appeared William Hill, born in New York, thence to Wisconsin. there learned the cooper's trade, thence to Hangtown, Cal., there learned to dig nuggets, thence to a ranch on San Antonio creek, finally to Petaluma, where he worked in a commission business, real-estate buying and selling, and banking. Also Harrison Mecham, another New Yorker. Mecham wandered out to Mis- sonri,-Missouri appears to have been the gathering place for the final jump westward into the yellow haze of the Eldorado. There Mecham heard the "fairy tales" from California-marvelous yarns the winds brought over the continent. Indians and grizzly fights, wild acres for the choosing, brandless horses and cattle for the roping, free gold for the digging, and the "open ses- ame" to these hoards of treasure could be spoken by anybody. These "surface indications" ran the youngster away from home, and he hired out for the trip across the plains. His duty was to keep an ox-team moving towards California.
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dodge Indians, rattle-snakes, and deep water-holes in the river-fords, and for these services he was to get his daily board and clothes, and be shown the way to the Golden State. As the party had to war with almost every kind of hardship from the Missouri river to the Rio Sacramento, many of the payments of daily-board went over to the following week and the collec- tion of the unpaid daily-clothes bill was long ago barred by the statute of lim- itations. However, he staid within whip-lash distance of his oxen and they showed him the way to the Promise Land, and when he unyoked for the last time he was on the Yuba. Some "Good Samaritan" grub-staked the young mineralogist from Missouri and his outfit was capitalized as follows: Wooden rocker, $300; crowbar two feet long, $96; common milk pan, $32; pick, $64; shovel, $116; wooden bucket, $25; frying pan, $40; pair blankets, $96; boots, $50. Out of some paying "pockets" among the placers he soon washed enough nuggets to square this indebtedness and had $2,000 invested in local real estate. Shortly he could have sold out for $20,000 cash, but on the "advice of friends" didn't, and next day went "dead broke." He scraped up enough dust to pay stage fare out of the "busted diggings," and struck out for the "valleys." "Harry" Mecham finally came to rest on his big ranch at Stony Point. Cap- tain "Wash" Neil, brawny Scot and dean of the ancient mariners of the creeks; gallant skipper of the "long, low, rakish" schooners that sailed the tulé-bordered lagoons between the produce-piled wharves of Petaluma and the markets of Yerba Buena. Isaac G. Wickersham, frugal, thrifty, business-minded and from Pennsylvania. He brought the first mowing machine to Petaluma and made hay where the Wickersham building now stands. Freman Parker- eccentric to the letter, that is, the letter of his words and "rote" only in "fonetic stile."
The enlistments of '54 were led in by Major James Armstrong-whose martial spirit knew no music like the drum-throb in the "assembly call." He had sailed with Farragut around the world, fought under Taylor in Mexico, and with equally fierce enthusiasm "licked into shape" the fresh, young rookies of the Petaluma Hueston Guard. While Major Armstrong was Petaluma's first military citizen, Captain Neil was "the ruler of her first navee." Brothers in contemporary arms, brothers in citizenship, they were also brothers-in-law, having wedded the daughters of the late John L. Mock-another of the noble pioneers now "in narrow cell forever laid." Then was G. R. Codding, A. Morse and John Raymond Fritsch. The last named immigrant's living record does not go any further back than that year, nor beyond the city limits. Though a pioneer, Fritsch, Jr., can claim nativity with the bear, and point to his first cub-day in the blooming Maytime of 1854.
Samuel Cassiday was among the tourists who dropped their feet in Peta- luma during '55. Then followed Henry Weston and Thomas L. Thompson. This was the year of the printers and of the introduction of that pioneer pub- lisher, politician and statesman to Sonoma. Thompson was born in West Vir- ginia May 31, 1838, and came to this state via Panama in '55. After working a few months at the type-case in San Francisco he landed in Petaluma. August 18th of that year he started the Petaluma Weekly Journal, which he conducted till March, 1856, then selling out to H. L. Weston. In 1859 J. J. Pennepacker began the publication of the Petaluma Argus, and two years after sold it to
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James H. McNabb. In 1864 the Journal and Argus were consolidated under the management of Weston, McNabb and Noah W. Scudder. In a short time the "Journal" end of the title was eliminated and as the Weekly Argus the publication continued. Samuel Cassiday relieved Weston, and Mr. Scudder retiring from the editorial sanctum, McNabb and Cassiday were long its man- agers. The Argus is now a daily and weekly owned and conducted by J. E. & S. M. Olmsted. In the latter part of 1876 the Petaluma Courier was started by William F. Shattuck. It was afterwards sold to D. W. Ravenscroft and finally to J. C. Arthur, by whom it is now published as a daily and weekly. With the journalists came the jurists-George Pearce, Jackson Temple, William Churchman, J. B. Southard, et al. Manville Doyle appeared with a band of horses and cattle, pasturing them on the lands of the Old Adobe.
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CHAPTER XXXVI.
TRAGEDY OF THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE BELL.
Matt Doyle is historical because of his connection with that famous his- torical relic, the Vigilance Committee bell. He was christened Manville in the dawn of a long-ago Illinois day, and on the records in the Doyle family Bible (for eighty-one years) it has been Manville. But in the rough-and-tumble times of the "roaring forties" the name was too long for speedy utterance, and it wore down to Matt. So in the world the flesh and the dev- stock market it is Matt. On the epitaph of the bell should appear two other names-George Pearce and J. B. Southard, who years ago left to attend a court where case- continuances are unknown, and where the time-penalty is eternity. The noted sound-maker was brought from San Francisco to Petaluma and hung in the steeple of the Baptist church for missionary purposes. Like a sister-bell in Philadelphia it was cracked during life, but these coincident facts spring from canses unlike. It was in the early '6os that the Petaluma followers of John the Baptist awoke to the double fact that from their empty belfry no voice went crying in the wilderness; and from the steeple of the Methodist church in another part of the town clanged insistent calls to repentance. This was a sad reflection on their seeming indifference, and a local "association" was held to settle the bell question. In that meeting there was an intensity of purpose and unanimity that made the atmosphere of the hall vibrant, and the word "bell" was spoken so frequently that the room rang as though a Poe recital had broken loose there. Matt Doyle was chairman self-appointed, and led in the argument, pro and con. He said in the preliminary that he had been raised a Campbellite, but "there was damned little difference between a Baptist and one of old Alexander Campbell's folks-the same water would do for both pro- viding there was plenty of it." Then he further cheerfully swore that a bell was as necessary in a Baptist settlement as is a Jordan, and Parson Jehn Barnes was so filled with the pointed expression of the sentiment that he neglected to rebuke the speaker because of his unchurchly language. Next Lord's day the Rev. Jehu followed up with a powerful sermon on the prevailing spiritual deaf- ness of the Petalumans, also on the crying need of a bell to arouse them to a sense of their deplorable moral condition.
The great cleavage of Civil strife reached westward across the continent, and "north" or "south" held jubilee when the bulletin of battle jarred along the wires. Petaluma being above Mason and Dixon's fateful parallel, the good churchmen of that city in faith as of old, saw Jehovah, a deity militant, lead- ing the federal squadrons when the bird of victory fluttered over the northern bayonets; when the dispatches pictured the gray warriors unsuccessfully saber- ing the troopers in blue, it was a case where the God of Battles in His inscru- table wisdom permitted the hosts of the unrighteous to prevail. But the south- rons of Petaluma didn't observe strikingly this theory of providential com-
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mission or omission. Such celebrations were safer up in the alleged "rebel" town of Santa Rosa, where they sang "Dixie" with a thunderous "anvil chorus" every time General "Jeb" Stuart raided Union territory. In the sacred pre- cincts of the Petaluma Baptist church the dove of peace cooed for "a scrap." Doyle and his kinsmen, the Barnes, were northern democrats, and were con- traband. When the bell-question was ringing through the sanctuary, the other side of the divisional aisle did not respond in hearty choral "amens," but Matt, though he was the proprietor of two big livery stables and a string of running horses, did not lose faith. He went out among the ungodly and passed the hat. The collection amounted to $500. He was chosen to make the purchase, and in San Francisco found the old Vigilance bell, lying dumb in cold storage since Fort Gunnybags was dismantled. He quickly concluded the bell that had rang Casey, Cora and other hard men of a hard period into another world, would be capable of ringing the most flinty-hearted Petaluma abolitionist at least into a lively sense of sin and his soul's peril. Under the potent spell of this inspira- tional reasoning he sought Conroy, O'Connor & Co., and bought the bell. They dug it out of the junk-pile of a generation, and Matt paid the price-$550. He added the four golden eagle-birds needed on the bill of sale, and another eagle- bird for freight and drayage, and brought the fine old instrument home. He was exceedingly regretful as the steamer came plowing up the tulé-bordered estero, that he could not ring the bell and make a joyful noise, and fittingly announce its coming and his triumphant return. But it was packed in a crock- ery-crate and its far-sound melody muffled with straw.
ITS GOLDEN VOICE FILLS THE VALLEYS.
The splendid bell in its new office filled the bill, and its golden voice filled all Petaluma and Two Rock valleys with persuasive calls to repentance. After its long silence it spoke as never tongue spake-at least in Petaluma. When the soft Sabbath winds blew up the great central llano the back-sliding Santa Rosans were awakened to a consciousness of spiritual shortcomings, and out on the Bodega beaches when the breeze went westward, its treble-harmonies blended with the deep organ-bass of the bellowing sea. It had been a "loud alarum bell" with its hollow dies irae falling on a startled city when tragedy struck the brazen key, now its steeple trembled in the sweet invitational vinite domine, or rocked in the harmonic reverberations of a grand gloria in excelsis. But the Petaluma mission of the bell was not to be only peace and good will to men. It clanged an exultant monody when Death harvested the federal regiments on Shiloh's shell-plowed field: and when the southern chivalry was halted in the gory trenches of Gettysburg a jubilee rolled impartially from that sounding rim in "molten golden notes." Soon the bell was a storm-center around which the sympathizers of secession and abolition revolved like two factions of bellig- erent bees. The ringing wrought confusion. Announcement of regular Sun- day service was attributed to a gunboat skirmish on some Mississippi bayou, or to a guerrilla raid across Kentucky's dark and bloody ground. Call for the Wednesday night prayer-meeting started a fierce non-sectarian contention that raged from McNear's wharf to the Revere house, that was anything but divine in character. Such militant worldliness was not to the moral uplift of the church, nor to the healthful placidity of the non-religious. The spiritual and political became jumbled together in this clash of creeds, and the godly were cor-
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rupted by evil communication, and overhead the great bell calm in the dark, cob- webby crypt of the steeple boomed its metallic messages to a discordant world. It may be said that this confusion of office-confusion of bell-tongue-was caused largely by a change in the office of the bell. It became lowered in dignity to a "town bell;" placed on a civic and social par with the public pump and the street-sweeper. Its additional duties were to tell Sonoma county-also a por- tion of Marin-just when the Petaluma common council met to provide a new hydrant; when some citizen's house in that burg was beginning to burn down; or when the small boy to dodge the curfew-cop must seek the shelter of the maternal wing. This over-time arrangement doubtless was convenient, but it was the moral ruin of the bell.
THOUGHT OF ARRESTING THE COUNTY-SEAT.
Matters went from bad to worse as the war-clouds went from dark to darker. Petaluma was "union" from the creek to the graveyard-just put on the real estate market-back of town, but Santa Rosa was notoriously "disloyal" and there was strong talk of arresting the county-seat and confining it in Al- catraz. Petaluma's ulterior designs on that same county-seat began when Peta- luma was a civic baby prattling to the mud-hens on her creek. When the Bear Flaggers that early morning, June 14, 1846, pulled down Vallejo's Mexican red, white and green in the Sonoma plaza and then drank up all his mission brandy, they found two brass 18-pounders lying across the adobe wall, their warlike throats choked with last-year swallow-nests. Lieutenant Joseph W. Revere, U. S. N., tried to get the pieces aboard the "Portsmouth" then at Yerba Buena, with the object of having them mounted at Annapolis for the fighting-inspiration of the naval cadets. He employed Jim McChristian, the sole-surviving Bear Flag maker, now living at Sebastopol in this county, to get the guns down to Embarcadero. The ancient trucks under the pieces wouldn't revolve and McChristian's oxen balked on the haul, and Revere lost his souvenirs. Mac was eighteen years old when he and Midshipman John E. Montgomery, the 18-year-old son of Captain John Montgomery of the "Ports- mouth," dragged that battery out of Sonoma,-but that is another story. The gallant middy soon after was killed by hostile Indians near Sutter's Fort under circumstances similar to the killing of the French Prince Imperial by the Zulus in Africa years later,-and that's another story. McChristian's claim for that haul has slept in its War Department pigeon-hole for sixty-three years,-and that is still another story.
One of these brazen death-dealers turned up on Petaluma creek-how, no inan knoweth-the battery of a low, rakish scow-schooner, possibly to be used in the capture of the Santa Rosa court-house. Major James Armstrong who had won his shoulder-straps with Dave Farragut and Zachary Taylor, had the "rookies" of the Hueston Guard all-rationed for the invasion, and Doyle had three Lexington colts with two-minute records, in his stable saddled day and night for a Paul Revere ride to Santa Rosa the moment Petaluma took the warpath. Jehu Barnes had been declared heretical and a parson late from a Boston conservatory of divinity was holding down the pulpit of St. John the Baptist. Tinctured with the literature of Harriet Beecher Stowe, he considered every "secesh" in the church a Legre, and threatened those unorthodoxies with expulsion from close communion, till Bill Barnes, the "Jack Hamlin" of the day.
PUBLIC LIBRARY, PETALUMA
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loaded his old-style Colt's and swore he would maintain his full membership if he had to shoot every "black abolitionist" out of the church. The assassina- tion of Lincoln rushed matters to a climax, and one night the bell disappeared from the steeple. Next day several "abductors" were haled before Justice of the Peace John Edward Cavanagh, and George Pearce with his "alibis" and "habeas corpuses" and "nolle prosequis" and citations from the Code Napo- leon kept the court busy till after candle-light. Then the "kidnapers" not in custody, made another visit to the steeple and cleaned it out, carrying away the bell-frame, wheel and rope. If Pearce had not gone the limit of his "motion" privileges. or could have kept Cavanagh longer from his dinner, the Barnes adherents would have abducted the church. Then Matt Doyle bailed out the accused and the matter went over ad infinitum. The cases were settled out of court and the bell and its appurtenances were found in the Baylis warehouse under a pile of potatoes. The recovered was returned to its place and packages of blood-curdling warnings were freely handed to future kidnapers.
SILENCE BROODS IN ITS "SOUNDING CELLS."
One night not long after this event a single, short, sharp note clanged out from the steeple, and then all was still. Next day somebody rung the bell and instead of the expected round, throbbing tone, a harsh, discordant clangor broke out of the place. The bell had been broken, presumably with a heavy hammer, and a wide crack running upward from the rim of the instrument, which could not be closed, nor in any manner repaired, forever ruined the grand relic. That final note was the death-shriek, the human-like protest of the dying, as the soul of melody tore itself out of the mutilated shell and went sobbing away in the night. The jarring clamor that in after years came from that steeple was condemnatory of the act destroying on one stroke that golden voice which was wont to roll in ever-widening chord-waves over leagues of rancho,-over mesa and vale, to fall afar like a great benediction. Though melody will come to that ruined rim nevermore,-how the funereal plaints of bells and ravens and Annabel Lees blend and whisper into recollection when the mind conjures up that melancholy singer whose life-song was a threnody and whose life-day was the shadow of death,-though silence broods in its "sounding cells," neither time nor vandal hand can mar its splendid record. Grand bell,-ancient herald of law and order, annointed prophet of peace and hope, its harmonies fire- born and fire-toned when its constituent-earths were annealed and its "sound- ing cells" were molded into graceful form,-is there no crypt of honor for it now?
THE CLASS OF FIFTY-SIX.
George Ross who taught the first young Petalumans to dance gracefully and then photographed them in artistic poses, B. B. Munday, and John Augustus McNear, '56, household names in Petaluma, hung up their hats in town. Next year Isaac Bernhard, Conrad Poelilmann, John Cavanaugh and J. B. Hinkle attached themselves to the fortunes of the new settlement. The latter gentleman assumed the proud title of "the most popular man in Petaluma." The incident which authorized this distinction occurred in this wise: While absent in the southern portion of the state he became sick, and finally it was reported that he had died. Before a second report announced the error of the first, the news- papers had published the usual beautifully-worded biography of the deceased-
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an innocent little weakness of editors. When Mr. Hinkle returned home like "one arisen," he humorously proclaimed his astonishment at his own nobility of character and his great popularity, though unfortunately, he said, he never learned of these facts until he died. During '58, '59. '60. W. B. Haskell, W. H. Pepper, H. H. Atwater, B. F. Tuttle, F. D. Starke, Kelly Tigh, John W. McNear, were first seen around town. It must not be understood that these names comprise a list of Petaluma's "solid" men, even during the ten years of '50-'60. There are others. They have passed,-some from recollection, be- cause those who might have recollected them have also passed. Under repainted sign-names are the names of men who were formerly in business here and those disappearing names have since appeared in the marble on the "Hill."
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Photo loaned by L. C. BYCE
PORTION OF FLOCK OF 8000 HENS
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CHAPTER XXXVII.
CITY OF THE LITTLE CHICKS.
Petaluma on her navigable stream and in a territory of inexhaustible soil- fertility early began breaking records. She frequently repeats the exploit. In 1858 the city was incorporated, the lines crossing the creek and taking in East Petaluma, originally a portion of the Tom Hopper tract, purchased from Gen- eral Vallejo. The building of the San Francisco and North Pacific railroad, beginning at Petaluma in 1869 and reaching Cloverdale in 1872, brought the central valleys down to the esteros. The completion of the Petaluma and Santa Rosa electric railway to Sebastopol, to the county-seat and into the splendid fruit-belt around Forestville, is drawing in the rich products of the coast coun- try. The northern extension of this line into Mendocino county along the grand Russian river scenic route, as proposed, and the southern extension, now build- ing to a bay terminal, will further make for this progressive place. Along the banks of the creek they have taken advantage of the easy solution of the transportation question, vacant places have been reclaimed for business and sites are ready for the manufacturer. Petaluma, the Poultry City of the present, may be a name-evolution from Petaluma, the "duck-hill town" of the past, providing the tulé-prowling Indian who is vaguely supposed to have originated this name, ever arose to the fitness of any town-title. This is not likely, but the domestic hen in her centuries of migration seems to have found here a nest to her liking. In detached barnyard places, heretofore, in a nail- keg or discarded yeast-powder box, she has supplied the family with breakfast "hards," "softs," "scrambled" or "overs," or has brooded her incubating season away in a wasted effort to hatch a setting of chickless eggs originally from Far Cathay. Since that time she has formed a partnership with science and has advanced her egg-output and herself, commercially. She is a recognized in- dustry and when she cackles a world's market falls. Her native office of bring- ing out and up a family has been relegated to a machine and the downy flock looks out of its orphanage through glass walls. But this artificial incubation and cultivation of her young is a win-out of minds over matter-of man over the hen. Where a nest held a dozen eggs, a nest now holds a hundred dozen ; when the big crop unshells itself, art mothers it to market, all in promptness and completeness never dreamed of since the birds began to incubate on the new earth. Poultry culture is not old in Sonoma county, but from hay-shore to north parallel line, and from sea-beach to eastern hill-chain the white hen- neries gleam thickly in the sheltered places.
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