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 4

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 4

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).

A place on the seashore about eighteen miles north of Bodega, called by the Indians "Mad-shui-nui," was selected. Of course, the newcomers had their "trihal" name, but the one they gave the settlement-"Kostromitinof"-was too burdensome for the general usage of time. The Spaniards called it "Fuerte de los Rusos," Fort of the Russians, and this finally, and for no known reason, evolved to Fort Ross. Knowing the possibilities of a hostile visit from the Spaniards or their allies. the Indians, the Russians built strong and well. With a rude sawmill they got out lumber from the nearby redwood forests and erected a high stockade on the bluff overlooking the ocean. This enclosure, a rectangle containing about two acres, was at once a village and a fort, and the ingenious construction of its walls and bastions showed the frontier skill of this sturdy, selfsustaining people. The stockade was of thick planks the lower ends mortised into heavy timbers placed under ground, and the upper 'ends of these boards

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

or slabs, twelve feet above, were again mortised, every mortise being keyed with a wooden peg. Two angles of the wall were further protected with octago- nal bastions twenty-four feet in diameter and two stories high, and built of hewed redwood logs strongly fastened together, and covered with a conical roof. At one of the angles was the Greek Catholic chapel, thirty-one feet long and twenty-five feet wide. As two of its walls were a part of the enclosure walls, they were strongly constructed and were portholed for cannon, as was the entire stockade. It must have been inspiring to the Spanish envoys when attend- ing divine service with the Russian officers to see those guns before the altar devoted to the worship of the Prince of Peace, their muzzles pointed towards Yerba Buena and ready for business; even when the owners of the battery were professing brotherly affection for their visitors, and which profession the visitors knew was only entertainment provided by their diplomatic hosts. Two small domes surmounted this church, one circular and the other pentagonal. A chime of bells called the farmers from the fields and the hunters from the sea at matin and vesper time. The chapel, also the large and roomy barracks building constructed within the fort, long withstood the ravages of the years and the neglect of the subsequent occupants of the place. The barracks which had likely only been used by the officers of the fur company is still the resi- dence of the owner, but the church before the 1906 earthquake completed its ruin, was in turn a grain storehouse and a hay barn. The location from a military point of view was an admirable selection as the ten and afterwards twenty guns of the fort commanded not only the land approaches to the town, but protected the shipping in the little harbor, which was itself a cosy cove, lying under a high northern shore, a defense against the fierce storms sweep- ing down the coast. September 10,-or August 30, according to the Russian calendar which was then eleven days behind the almanacs of other nations --- 1812, they formally celebrated the founding of their settlement with gun salutes, mass and feasting.

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

CHAPTER V.

EL FUERTE DE LOS RUSOS.

The comandante at San Francisco promptly notified Governor Arrillaga at Monterey of this invasion of Spanish territory. The document flaming with indignation was transmitted to the Viceroy at Mexico, who with additional fiery comments passed the package on to Madrid. After an interminable stage- wait the answer and order would start westward, and with long stops at Mexico and Monterey would reach San Francisco, but the paper breathed busi- ness. "Drive the Rusos into the sea!" would be the royal mandate, but as this would have been too big a contract for the Spanish in California, the pen in this case, if not greater, was safer than the sword, so the two parties at issue put in the time letter-writing. While the matter was a serious one to the official scribes, there is a flavor of humor around that correspondence which the years do not stale. After the Russian Commander at Fort Ross received the fierce Madrid ultimatum he would send it through the Chamberlain at Sitka to the Czar. There are many, many versts of sea and Siberian plain between Ross and St. Petersburg, and Russia would be farther behind the calendar before the emperor's answer would reach his "faithful Kuskoff," who, whatever the apparent contents of the paper, could readily read between the lines,-"Hold the Fort." While these polished diplomats were sparring for time and unreel- ing leagues of red tape that stretched from Madrid to St. Petersburg via inter- mediate points, the Russian colonists were busy, and under their industry the new place thrived and grew by leaps and bounds. Much of the level land around the fort was put under cultivation and in fact, during the warmest part of the letter-war that threatened to plunge the coast into conflict, these pioneer farmers of Sonoma were placidly sending to San Francisco in vessels of their own building, grain and vegetables of their own growing, lumber of their own sawing and leather of their own tanning. Fruit trees and berry vines procured from elsewhere bore, and were in that early day the commence- ment of the great acreage of orchard and vineyard that adds so materially to the harvest wealth of the county. The homemade burrs of their grist mills, run by windmills, are among the historic relics at Bodega and Ross.

The Indians of the neighboring rancherias were utilized for labor in the fields, while the Alaskans of the colony were used in the hunting and fishing. A little coaxing, a tiny drink of brandy and an insignificant wage made the Digger a passable workman. Moreover, the Russians took wives from out the Indian camps, an officer legally performing the marriage services, when no chaplain was attached to the post, in the little Greek chapel, should the high-contracting parties desire the blessing of "book and bell." These social and matrimonial alliances were of course confined to the rank and file of the company, as some of the officers brought out their wives from Russia to cheer a faraway exile. The Russian who is said to be a Tartar below the surface, and who is a fractional savage generally, is apparently more skillful in han-

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

lling neighbor barbarians than the more civilized Spaniards who gladly pur- chased from the Moscovite "squatter" the products which the Indian laborer was persuaded to raise for him. To quote from a well-known writer regarding the earlier days of Fort Ross-"But few of Sonoma county's most intelligent citizens, we apprehend, are fully advised in reference to the magnitude and importance of this Russian colony that planted the standard of civilization here. The oldest men among us were mere boys when the whole coast of this county from the Estero Americano to the Valhalla river was teeming with life and enterprise. Aleuts in their frail 'bidaskes' or skin canoes were exploring every bay, cove or estuary in quest of sea-otter, seal or aquatic fowl. Coming from the frigid north where everything is utilized that would appease hunger or protect the body from the chilling winds of those bleak hyperborean latitudes, they gathered and preserved much that by the less provident people of Cali- fornia would have been deemed of no value." During the last fifteen years of the colony 17,000 pounds of butter and 216,000 pounds of salt beef were sent to Alaska, the first product bringing thirty cents a pound. Lumber and pitch as well as dairy products were sent to Sitka and the Sandwich Islands. They were well supplied with horses, mules, cattle, swine and poultry, and with a fruitful continent on one side and an equally fruitful ocean on the other they were as lords of the manor.

EARLY SHIPYARD OF SONOMA.

But the strongest commercial feature in the make-up of this sturdy people was their domestic shipbuilding industry, and the pretty little basin of a harbor under the bluffs of Fort Ross was the rendezvous of a small fleet born there. In 1818 the Roumiantzof, a 160-ton schooner, the pioneer craft of the yard, was completed at a cost of 20,212 rubles, in our coinage about $16,000 besides the labor of construction. In 1820 the Buldakof, a 200-ton brig was launched. She was a well-built vessel, copper-bottomed and cost upwards of 80,000 rubles -$60,000. Two years afterwards the Volga of 160 tons was completed at a cost of 36,189 rubles and the following year the Kiakhta, 200 tons, was finished, costing 35,248 rubles-about $27,000. As this vessel was the same tonnage as the Buldakof whose cost was $60,000, there must have been considerable differ- ence in the value of the two crafts, or the price of the raw material fell con- siderably between the launching of the vessels. Besides these, several boats and launches were constructed for the Spanish at San Francisco. The first of these vessels were built of oak, but the Russians becoming better acquainted with the pine and redwood around them as lumber material, used that timber in their yard. While the output did not have the fineness and finish of today's noble work, nor the vessels the long-life of the work of the modern yard, it is something to know that this was the pioneer fleet of the Pacific coast and it was built of Sonoma trees in a Sonoma shipyard. The industrious builders thereof were dubbed "squatters" on another people's prior claim. but the prior claimants were of a race whose flower of knighthood was fading. Had the Span- ish here heen of those chivalrous warriors whose lances have been leveled on many a red field of valor, no other nationality, not even American, would have found it so easy to dispossess them. While the Russian with his calendar is about thirteen days behind the sun and the entire solar system, he seems to be "in season" and up with the times in many practical matters; and while they at

2.1

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

Fort Ross and vicinity, mere novices in agriculture, were developing the land and harvesting the sea, the prior claimants were wasting their time and claim. Meantime, the permanent possessor of the land and sea was working his ox-team "across the plains."

While at any time after 1825 the Fort Ross garrison was sufficiently strong and equipped to have marched from Sonoma to San Diego without much inter- ference on the part of the Mexican government they began to show a disposi- tion to leave California. The seal-poaching along the coast was thinning out the herds and driving the Russian hunters of Ross more inland-to the farms, and farming as a means of wealth is generally beyond the crude methods of this race. Governor Wrangell of Alaska, the head of the fur company, intelli- gently realizing that the Russians must control more territory than that immedi- ately around Fort Ross. approached the Spanish for the purchase of all the country north of San Francisco and west of the Sacramento river. This was a pretty strong proposition, but it would seem that the California officials had suddenly undergone a change of heart, as they submitted the offer to the authorities at Mexico. It is believed that the presence of the North Americans, who were coming over the Nevada mountains in strong immigrant bands and planting themselves with all the airs of welcome-visitors along the coast, had much to do with Governor Alvarado's momentary toleration of the Moscovians. The Californian, whether subject of kingly Spain or of republican Mexico, feared and disliked the "gringo." who had no fear, neither great love nor respect for the "greaser." the American's general title for the Californian. The word "gringo" has a peculiar origin. The song "Green Grow The Rushes O," was popular at that time and the Mexicans hearing the American frequently singing it, caught the words "green grow." and applied them to the Yankee vocalists, hence "gringo." The "greaser" title was first given by the Americans to the Indians. The old-time wooden axles of the immigrant wagons needed greasing frequently-an attention and task not nice nor agreeable-and the Digger's willingness to assume this and other humble labors around the camp of the good-natured white man earned for him this name as well as occasional rations of beef. The application of this title indiscriminately was neither grace- ful nor just, as many of the Californians were people of natural refinement and endowed with the nobility of their knightly Castilian ancestors. In the haciendas of these true grandees there was princely hospitality for the stranger no matter what his race or station, and today their blood flows in the veins of some of the best men and women of this state. And at the head of that company of honorables stands Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, Premier Native Son of the Golden West. Nor were the Americans always disposed to deal fairly with the original settlers whose improvidence frequently placed them at disadvantage in business relations with the people from over the Sierras. It was easy to defraud a people so childlike.

Although the Governor permitted the Russian purchase proposition to pass on to Mexico, under the influence of Vallejo who was Comandante at Sonoma and almost autocrat of all the territory north of San Francisco, Alvarado grew lukewarm on the matter of the sale.

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

CHAPTER VI.

SUTTER ABSORBS THE RUSSIAN REALTY.

General Vallejo had three American brothers-in-law, and so within the close circle of his own family had ample opportunity to become acquainted with the intelligence, energy and push of the Yankees. It is known that hie strongly objected to a permanent occupancy here by any other nation. However, the proposition was not encouraged by the Mexican government and the Russians offered to sell their holdings. The Mexicans not recognizing the Moscovite title to real estate in California, hesitated, and the transaction hung fire. Kostromitinoff, the commander at Fort Ross, proposed that General Vallejo buy the property, price $30,000, payable half in money or bills of the Hudson Bay Company and half in produce delivered at San Francisco. The General expressed a willingness to accept, but while the matter was pending the Rus- sians proposed to sell to General Sutter, who wanted only the movable prop- erty. Vallejo's offer was $9,000 for the livestock alone. An inventory of the property made at the time shows how well the Russians were equipped. Besides well constructed buildings of many kinds there were mills for grinding, run by wind-motors, and a mill run by animal power; shops, threshing floors, bak- eries, bath-houses and twenty-four residences, "nearly every one having an orchard." At the commander's rancho, and included in the list of that prop- erty, was "a boat for crossing the Slavianka river." At Tschernich, or "Don Jorge's rancho," situated between Ross and Bodega, there were 2,000 bearing vines and a large farm under cultivation. This rancho was omitted from the inventory. The Bodega holdings were included, making in all an estate that was indeed going dirt-cheap. But the Mexican government said "no," most emphatically, and the sale was off. Vallejo and Governor Alvarado thought they had Kostromitinof cornered and were only afraid he would make a bon- fire of the combustible property before he bundled his colony on shipboard for departure northward. But the Russian was more practical for he had worked Sutter around to an agreement. Sutter wanted only the movable property which he could transfer to New Helvetia if Mexico showed a strong dispo- sition to cloud or obliterate any of his title, but the adventurous Swiss soldier of fortune, who possessed more enterprise than fortune, perhaps would not have turned down any price if the deal could be made on a credit basis. The Russians finally agreed to sell everything except the land, the Mexican gov- ernment denying their ownership, and the contract was signed December 13, 1841, by Sutter and Kostromitinof in the office of the subprefect at San Fran- cisco, thus giving the transaction an official sanction. Sutter was to pay $30.000 in four yearly installments, the first and second of $5,000 each, and the others $10,000; the first three in produce delivered at San Francisco free of port charges, and the fourth installment in cash. New Helvetia, and the property at Bodega and on the Khlebnikof and Tschernich ranchos were pledged as guarantee for payment. From these terms it would seem that while Sutter

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

was "safe" when he acquired the livestock, machinery, battery in the stockade and a schooner in the bay, did not make a "gilt-edge deal" when he took over a second-hand fort and farming appurtenances. But M. Le Capitaine Sutter, as he was known in French military circles, did not propose to "trade" him- self wholly into the hands of the reluctant and changeable-minded Mexican officials. At the delivery of the property listed in the sale Sutter exhibited a certificate ante-dating the contract one day. It was from Manager Rotchef of Fort Ross and certified that all the lands held by the Russians in California for upwards of thirty years was included in the sale to Sutter for $30,000. As Kostromitinof, who executed the contract, was the general manager and head of the Alaska Fur Company, Rotchef either entered into a compact with Sutter to over-reach Governor Alvarado and the California officials, or assumed that he had authority to transfer the land. Whatever his reason, the clouded title created by the signature of a subordinate officer left leagues of coast land be- tweeti Bodega Bay and Valhalla River to drag through dispute and court liti- gation in after years. As peacefully as was their coming the Russians hastened away leaving fort, village, farms and shipping in the little harbor for the new possessor. Probably the order to depart brought keen regret to those who for a quarter of a century had made their home in that place, but there was no disobedience to the virtually imperial edict. After the ship Constantine had returned them to the north the only original colonists left at Fort Ross were those of the graveyard, the Greek crosses marking the mounds extending east and west-on the parallel of latitude, as Russia buries her dead. Among these several hundred people virtually going into exile from sunny California to wintry Alaska was the Princess Helena, wife of Count Rotchef. Fort Ross is a ruin, even the Slavonic names with their unmixable consonants have passed from use, but the memory of this noblewoman of the great White Empire will live as long as Mount St. Helena lifts its blue dome to the skies.

THE GUN OF AUSTERLITZ.

Immediately after the evacuation of Ross, early in 1842, Sutter loaded his new schooner with movables including the guns, which he might find useful at New Helvetia should the Californians conclude to make him an armed visit. His well fortified adobe fort had always been a place of refuge to the Amer- icans and his kindness to the foot-sore immigrants trailing down the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains made his loyalty to the Mexican gov- ernment a matter of some doubt. It is likely the Captain's diplomacy and the rifles of his North American hunters which could shoot true and far had much to do with the toleration of New Helvetia. One of the guns removed from Ross is a history-maker in itself. It was a brass four-pounder cast in St. Peters- burg and first saw active service when Napoleon so signally whipped the Aus- tro-Russian forces under the sinking sun at Austerlitz. Though the Russians lost sixty pieces of cannon to the terrible Corsican, this gun was among the few saved. Sutter mounted the piece on the walls of his fort; but when he marched south with his company to help Fremont whip Castro, that fighting Californian took it away from him at the battle of Conenga. It was afterwards recaptured by the American forces and returned to Sutter, who presented it to the Society of California Pioneers. The famous gun of two hemispheres received its last baptism of fire when it and its kindred relics went down in

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

the flames that swept San Francisco, April 18, 1906. With Sutter as aids at Couenga were General John Bidwell, afterwards of Chico, and Major Ernest Rufus, who, in turn, were in charge at Fort Ross. The schooner which Sut- ter re-christened "Sacramento" doubtless finding her Slavonic name unpro- nounceable even for his cosmopolitan tongue, became a historical character before she went to the graveyard of ships. She passed through a wreck or two on the coast and the river whose name she bore, and sent the title on to a street and wharf in San Francisco ere she went out of commission for all time.

During the years immediately following the departure of the Russian, little was done by Sutter's major-domos to keep up the property. A number of buildings had been removed to New Helvetia, but what remained, including the picturesque little church, were generally neglected-the formerly sacred edifice occasionally changed to a sanctuary for hay. The livestock left on the ranchos heard the call of the wilds and found freedom in the neighboring pine forests so enticing that for a supply of meat it became easier to rope a bear than a steer. In 1844 William Benitz was sent to take charge of Ross and next year with Major Rufus he leased the place from Sutter. The Muniz Rancho on which the Ross property stands was granted by Governor Pio Pico in 1845, to Manuel Torres, but Benitz easily quieted that title by purchase. It extended from Russian River to Timber Cove and called for four square leagues or about 17,760 acres, and as usual when the Americans bought out the grant-possessing Californians, got it for "a song." Soon after, Major Rufus, who happened to be on the winning side in the "rebellion," received from the grateful government a grant for the Rancho de Herman, more known as the German Grant, of 17,580 acres lying north of Muniz-big pay for a little labor, but people in those early golden days here reaped rewards whether for or against the Mexicans. Ernest Rufus and Henry Hagler, a fellow Ger- man, improved the rancho, the latter being a skillful mechanic having come to this coast with Captain Stephen Smith as carpenter in the bark "George and Henry." Hagler constructed a grist mill on the grant, cutting the burs from the sandstone in the vicinity. He also cut the burs for Smith's mill at Bodega, and these two relics of California's early "stone-age" are left to corrode where they were finally dropped. These cultured and intelligent owners of Rancho de Herman named the beautiful little mountain stream that ran dashing and splashing through their estate down to the sea "Valhalla." They saw in this coast-range river scenic reminders of their own wild Scandinavia, and in that game-crowded, fertile region the peace and plenty of Valhalla, that paradise of the brave in Norse lore, where the feast eaten by the spectre-heroes at night becomes renewed ere the dawn. Alas for the poetic title-the pretty river be- came known as the Gualala (said to be of Peruvian lingo), and alas for the culture of the Valhallans there, -- it is often heard "Wol-hol-lar."

THE MUI.DREW "CLOUD."

Although the Muniz grant lapped over the Ross property there seems to have been no disturbance between the two claimants. Sutter went on ship- ping grain in his schooner to San Francisco, making payments on his pur- chase, cleaning up the indebtedness of $30,000 in 1859-fifteen years after the sale. After buying the Muniz claim Benitz refused to pay rent to Sutter but

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

remained with his family at Fort Ross till 1867. Afterwards he removed to the Argentine Republic, where he died in 1876. In 1859 he sold his claim to William Muldrew, George R. Moore and Daniel W. Welty and here began the famous "Muldrew litigation," the purchasers basing their case on the shadow-title acquired by the Russians from the Bodega Indian chief. While Benitz declined to pay Sutter rental he tried to quiet the Muldrew claim with a cash payment of $6,000, and as the other settlers declined to follow his lead, it is likely this amount is all that Sutter ever received for his coast princi- pality. The District Court finally brushed the Russian title out of existence and the great rancho whose price first was three pairs of breeches, three hoes, two axes and four strings of beads, second was $30,000 and third and last was $6,000, reverted to private life and so ends the Russian history of Sonoma.

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

CHAPTER VII.

THE SPANIARD REACHES SONOMA.

After the discovery of Bodega Bay in 1774 it was thought that that body of water extended southeast to San Pablo, making what is now Marin county an island. The next year two Spanish officers, Quiros and Canizarez, were sent to explore the locality. With their company of soldiers and Indians they sailed up a wide, deep slough to a place where the spur of high hills abruptly terminates, facing the broad valley and creeks below. This they fittingly named "Punta de los Esteros" Point of the Creeks, and how that title became "Peta- luma" the local historians have not determined. It may come from punta de los lomas-point of the hills-or as the more classic aver, from the Latin peda -foot, or possibly pedra-rock. Others who lean to "home-made" names pro- fess a belief in an Indian origin, but as the aborigines in the valley called the place "Choculi," and the definition of that word passed away with the tribe, the Petalumans will doubtless accept without questioning its derivation the easily-pronounced name that has come down to their city-practically the sea- port of the county. This matter of changeling-names, or mutilated-titles, is a sore subject to the writer, native of California, who all his life in this state has heard the smoothly flowing Spanish names frequently sacred and ever ap- propriate, nasaled and jarred into nondescript sounds, because the American, generally, fails to note and appreciate the richly harmonious vocalization of the Castillian. 'Tis a pity that less dead, and more of the alive languages are not taught in the California schools and colleges.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

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 4

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