Merced County CA Archives History - Books .....Early Days In The County 1925
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/copyright.htm
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/ca/cafiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com February 1, 2006, 6:04 am

Book Title: History Of Merced County California

CHAPTER IX

EARLY DAYS IN THE COUNTY

   The assessment roll of 1857 tells us a number of interesting things, and some
of them are important in the early history of the county. Perhaps the most
striking thing of all is the light it gives us upon the location of the
population at that time. When we consider that this population was for the most
part located in two main groups, one stretching down the Merced River from
Merced Falls to about the Ingalsbe place, according to the pages that are
extant, and including Neill, Cox, W. C. Turner and the Stevinsons as the index
shows, and the other along the creeks from Bear and Burns Creeks south to the
Chowchilla, and stretching out from the edge of the hills to, say, not more than
half-way to the San Joaquin (except for the Cocanour and Bludworth places in the
vicinity of the present Robla), the conclusion is strongly forced upon us that
the population was, as we should have expected, probably largely an overflow
from the mines in the Mariposa hills.

   On the West Side we find the Rancho Panoche de San Juan y Los Carrisalitos,
some 22,220 acres, assessed; we find Hildreth & Dunphey assessed for a lot of
stock, though for no land, but the inference is probable thatt they were on the
Santa Rita Ranch, later, we know, owned by Hildreth & Hildreth, and still later
acquired from them, along with their "H & H" brand, by Miller & Lux; and we find
Francisco Pacheco named in the index, and Juan Perez Pacheco was one of the
grantees of the San Luis Ranch, one of the Mexican grants, which still exists,
stretching from the western edge of the level San Joaquin Valley lands on to the
pass which now bears Pacheco's name, and across it out of Merced County. In
addition there are a number of Spanish names, a few assessed for land, and it is
probable that a portion at least of these were on the West Side. However, if we
may take the fifty cents an acre of the Pancoche Grande y Los Carrisalitos
Rancho assessment as a standard of valuation for the West Side lands, they may
not have been. It is a pity we have not also the assessment on Pacheco's San
Luis Ranch to check by. There may perhaps have been an unconscious tendency on
the part of the assessor to assess the larger land tracts a little lower. We
notice, for example, that John M. Montgomery's 640 acres on Bear Creek and E. J.
Stearns' 2240 acres near the present Le Grand are assessed at a dollar instead
of the almost universal (for the East Side) dollar and a quarter.   The smaller
holdings were practically all bottom land, and where a tract ran to greater size
there was more chance for the inclusion of some less valuable plains. We can
only guess.

   And we must guess with some caution. For example, one might conclude, from
the fact that there is half a dozen or more times as much barley on the roll as
there is wheat, that more barley than wheat was raised. One familiar with the
conditions might guess better than this, and he would be supported by facts
which do not appear in the assessment roll. The assessment was taken in the
spring; barley was used for horse feed; the wheat crop, which was really much
larger than the barley crop, was planted before the assessment was taken, and
the crop was grown, harvested, and marketed and out of the way before the next
assessment. Even the seed wheat was not on hand but in the ground. Henry Nelson,
who came to Merced Falls in March, 1854, and was in the flour mill business with
his father from the fifties on—his own experience in that line ended only in
1893—is authority for the statement that there was much more wheat than barley
raised.

   Cattle are obviously the most important product. We find a majority of the
Spanish stock cattle, assessed usually, at $15 a head —Texas longhorns, Mr.
Nelson says. He relates that in 1859 he and two other young fellows rode over
from Merced Falls to a rodeo just down Bear Creek from J. M. Montgomery's
ranch—the present Wolfsen Ranch, about eleven miles in a straight line up Bear
Creek from Merced, and about four from the Mariposa boundary—and that there were
10,000 or more cattle at the rodeo. It is significant that the Mexican official
known as Juez de Campo, or "judge of the plains," was retained by the Gringo
successors of the Mexican, and we can read in the early minutes of the county
where four citizens were appointed by the board of supervisors as such. The
minute entry is found on page 25 of minute Book "A," and it was at the session
of May 5, 1856: "The Board then appointed John Sylvester, John Ruddle, Jr., S.
R. Dehart, and Bates Dehart, Judges of the Plains." The De Harts were West Siders.

   But though the Spanish cattle were numerous, there were a good many American
cattle. Not a few had been brought across the plains. We find quite a number of
work oxen, valued pretty uniformly at $50 each. That oxen continued to be used
for some time in the county is evidenced by the fact, related by Mrs. Dora
Shillington, a deputy county clerk today, that her mother, Mrs. Joseph Heacox,
of the Robla neighborhood, now in her fifties, came here at the age of one year
from San Francisco in an ox cart.

   John M. Montgomery is assessed for 1700 sheep—the only sheep on the roll. It
is probable, however, that the Panoche Ranch was used for sheep; it is
noteworthy that the two assessments covering that ranch (4444 acres to Brent &
Crittenden on page 87, and 17,776 acres to Alex Forbes on page 89) are the only
property assessed to these owners. The usual practice nowadays would run sheep
on this West Side hill range in the early spring, and drive them to other
pastures as the grass failed, and this would most likely occur before the time
of assessment in the spring. Very likely it so occurred in 1857.

   An interesting study which would throw some light on how people lived in
those days would be to work out the total assessments on the three items of
"farming utensils," "house & kitchen furniture," and "fire arms." The two former
were almost unbelievably small in amount and valuation, the last nearly always
present. Henry Nelson states that nearly every man carried a six-shooter, and
relates that on his return from one trip from their mill up to the vicinity of
Sonora and Columbia, he had two with him because he had left one behind on a
former trip and was bringing it home. He did not make the last trip up without
going armed again. Whether he ever had occasion to use a revolver himself or
not, he was at least present in Snelling one day in the late fifties when three
men were shot. This is probably the same occurrence referred to in Peter Fee's
diary early in 1858, where he states in one line that three men were killed in
Snelling.

   It is noteworthy that pretty much everything was assessed, including money on
hand, accounts, notes, money at interest, and three dogs. But, query: Weren't
some dogs missed? This assessment of dogs, even though there are only three
mentioned, and most of the canine population must have been missed, still
indicates that the system, born no doubt of the county's stern necessities, was
to assess pretty much everything. We have noted that money on hand, money at
interest, notes, and accounts, were not overlooked. We note also that so far as
we can judge, the personal property was assessed at what was probably a lot
nearer its full market value than is the usual practice in assessing today. The
fact that these were the days when the fabulous mining prices prevailed—or
occasionally occurred, for it is doubtful if the extremely high prices which we
sometimes hear of ever really prevailed in the sense of being the usual run of
things—may lead us to concede that some of the values may have been higher than
the assessments. We nowadays must look of course at the personal property; we
shall find it quite impossible to put ourselves back in our imaginations
sufficiently into a time so different from our own as to understand the land
values of what was in actual time only two-thirds of a century ago.

   We have seen how J. M. Montgomery, easily the richest man of the county in
1857, with nearly 5000 head of stock, was assessed for only 640 acres of land—at
one dollar an acre! We note that about three-quarters of this one section is
located, and is the ranch, or part of it, now well-known as the Wolfsen Ranch.
The balance was on Bear Creek, but otherwise undescribed. Old-timers remember
that Montgomery had a water-hole on Bear Creek just about where the city of
Merced now stands, and it seems that he owned forty acres of land to control the
water-hole. It is probable that the other three forties not described may be
similarly accounted for. In 1862 he patented 240 acres where Merced now is.

   With the taking up and claiming in actual ownership of land only along the
creeks and the river, which we have already observed; with this taking up of the
water-holes; with Henry Nelson's description of the rodeo which he attended just
below Montgomery's ranch about 1859, where there were 10,000 cattle; and with
the cattle trains which we have seen John Ruddle and McPhatridge and others
bringing across the plains, we have a fairly sound basis on which to reconstruct
the order of things in those early times. We have seen that only townships and
sections were surveyed in the fifties; and we have seen in the 1857 assessment
roll that except along the river— and it is the Merced which in those days is
"the river"—scarcely any land is described except by giving the names of the
adjoining owners and the stream it is located on. Of Montgomery's 640 acres on
Bear Creek about three-quarters is described by section, township, and range;
but it is almost, if not quite, the only piece so described except the land on
the Merced River. As early as 1857 the foundations are already well laid for the
bitter war which was waged later between the cattle men, long monarchs of pretty
much all they surveyed of this unsurveyed public land, and the new wheat-raisers
who ten years later began to come into power. In fifteen years we shall see them
strong enough to wrest the county seat from Snelling and put it in the new town
on the new Central Pacific Railroad, and this too in a three-cornered race in
which both Merced and Livingston received more votes than Snelling.

   We must bear in mind, however, the fact that from the beginnings the
settlements which crept down from the hills fell into two groups, the one along
the river and the other centering around what was afterwards to be Plainsburg,
along the creeks further to the south. That the settlements along the creeks
counted up to a good deal is shown, perhaps as clearly as by anything else, by
the fact that the line dividing the county into two townships was drawn, not
with the river settlements constituting the whole of one township and the creek
settlements the other, but half-way between Bear Creek and Mariposa Creek, with
Bear and Burns Creeks at the least grouped with the river settlement. It seems
easily possible, therefore, that had the first county seat been located
somewhere near Plainsburg, as a lot of people think it was, instead of pretty
well down to the western edge of the creek settlements, there might never have
been a second county seat at Snelling and a third at Merced.

   There was no Plainsburg then; from the 1857 assessment we learn of town lots
only in Snelling, and there were not many assessed even there. Merced Falls
could not be called a town, Henry Nelson says; there were only about half a
dozen families. There were the Nelsons, who ran their flour mill; there was
Charles Murray, just above them, who had a ferry and later a bridge; above
Murray was John Phillips, with the ferry which was taken as the point for the
new county's boundary to cross the Merced River; and on an acre of land on
William Nelson's farm was R. B. Hall, the lawyer, with his family. Hopeton, at
first called Forlorn Hope, consisted of seven or eight buildings, a church, a
blacksmith shop, and about four dwellings—about as it is today. There was no
town on the West Side, there was none on the railroad—and no railroad for it to
be on, and not to be any for fifteen years.

   The next towns which were to come into existence had hardly been thought of
yet, and have been all but forgotten now. It is a reasonably safe guess that one
couldn't find three pupils in the biggest geography class in the county today
who ever even heard of Dover or Chester, and the name of Hill's Ferry is saved
from as complete oblivion only by the fact that there is still a Hill's Ferry
bridge. These little towns along the San Joaquin existed only for the period
during which the river was an avenue of commerce; and that period did not begin
until there was something bulky and heavy to transport, which meant almost
entirely grain, and it ended when the East Side got its railroad in 1872 and the
West Side its line in 1889. And that year 1889 was thirty-four years after the
organization of the county and thirty-five before today.

   Towns were extremely few and extremely small. Life was frugal to a degree
with which we of the present day are not familiar, even the least wealthy of us.
Two Miscellaneous libraries"—a term which appears to have been the
classification for everything but lawyers' and doctors' libraries—are all that
were assessed in 1857. Libraries are heavy to move by ox team in a six months'
trip across the plains. We do learn from other sources that Samuel Scott had a
considerable library in his fine place in the Merced River bottoms, but the date
may well have been, and probably was, considerably later than 1857.

   We have already commented on the very small assessments on household and
kitchen furniture. They ran somewhere about the same as the usual assessment for
firearms (scarcely more), which were most commonly six-shooters. And farming
"utensils" were evidently very few and very simple, for the assessments on them
are also exceedingly small. These "utensils" obviously did not include such
large implements as reapers and threshing machines, for we find them separately
assessed. At least three threshing machines at this date afford some basis on
which to estimate the extent of grain-raising; Nelson's flour mill at Merced
Falls, with its market in the mining country in the hills from Sonora to Coarse
Gold, affords us another.

   One who reads the assessment roll of 1857 can hardly fail to be struck with
the fact that the names make a far different list from, say, the index to the
last great register—different in the character of its names, that is. To be
sure, many of the early names still persist, but it is in what is not on the
early list rather than in what is on it that we find the difference. With the
exception of a very few Spanish names—which the English-speaking new-comers
sometimes wrestled with in vain, as we have seen—the names are practically all
American of the sort that were brought from England. Swedish, Portuguese,
Italian, Greek, and Japanese names, which we have now, are conspicuous by their
absence. Even the Irish for the most part are missing; they came, most of the
early ones, in the late sixties, when the country was beginning to bloom forth
as a great grain field and the no-fence law was but a few years in the future.
There was a Thornton on the roll, located on the Merced River, but County Clerk
P. J. Thornton, whose father came here in the late sixties, does not know of
him; he was of another family. For the most part, it may be said that the early
pioneers were of the same stock which found the country east of the Appalachians
crowded and unduly civilized at the time of the American Revolution, and sought
elbow room in that other Far West two thousand miles to the eastward of this one
along the Sierra foothills.

   The liberal display of firearms on the 1857 assessment roll seems to have
been necessary against both man and beast. Peter Fee records in his diary, under
date of January 23, 1858: "Three men kild at Snellings. Snow"; and Henry Nelson
was in Snelling when the shooting occurred, and recalls that Charles Bludworth,
the first sheriff, was one of three whom three others attacked, and that the
attackers lost two and the attacked one man. It is related of Dr. Joshua
Griffith that he successfully defended himself against two Mexicans and shot
them both. Judge E. N. Rector recalls hearing his father tell of a hunt for a
grizzly near the Neil Ranch. A party of men were after a big bear with dogs, and
routed him out of a tangle of briars. The bear came out cuffing right and left
at the dogs, and the men retreated hurriedly before him—all but "Bill" Neil, who
was mounted on a mule. It was not Bill, but the mule, which stood its ground.
Neil was ready and anxious to get away from there; but the mule stood still
before the oncoming bear and pointed his long ears at it.   The mule was slower
than its rider in reaching the conclusion that almost anywhere else was a better
place than in front of that bear. When the mule did reach a conclusion, it
agreed completely with the one his rider had already arrived at; and he turned
and bolted, with Neil sticking earnestly in place.

   We have seen how the assessment roll indicates the location of the bulk of
the population near the Mariposa County line. We must bear in mind that the main
avenue of travel north and south in those days was what is commonly called the
old Millerton Road, which ran from Stockton out eastward to the foothills and
then followed the edge of the hills down by way of Knight's Ferry, Merced Falls,
and Newton's Crossing to Millerton. Millerton was the first county seat of
Fresno County, and took its name from the early Fort Miller; the location was
where the San Joaquin debouches from the foothills, near the present little town
of Friant. This old road was the boundary line between Merced and Mariposa
Counties from Merced Falls to Newton's Crossing. It would scarcely be correct to
say that this was the main avenue of travel up and down the San Joaquin Valley,
for it was not to the Valley so much as to the foothills that travel was bound.
Travel out across the Valley, what little there was of it, was difficult on
account of sand, mud, and swollen streams. The obstacles offered by the streams
tributary to the San Joaquin on the Sierra Nevada side, which Fremont had
brought so forcibly to his attention in the spring of 1844, continued to be
serious until the railroad came, at least. County Clerk P. J. Thornton relates
that in the late sixties his father hauled the lumber from Stockton which was
used in building the house, or a part of it, which still stands on the Alfarata
Ranch, and that he went from Stockton to Banta and crossed to the West Side, and
then came down that side of the San Joaquin where the road avoided the rivers of
the East Side, and crossed back again at Dover above the mouth of the Merced.

   It was with the foothill country that the people of the new county in the
plains had most of their dealings. We have seen that Nelson's flour mill found
most of the market for its product there, and we have seen also how W. L. Means
earlier hunted elk and antelope in the vicinity of Robla and sold the meat at
the mines. In addition we have found that many of those who were the earliest
pioneers of this county came first to the mines of Mariposa, and down here later.

   We have an interesting document of the first decade of the county's history
in the diary of Peter Fee. Fee was a Norwegian by birth. We have seen his name
in the list which the Merced Express published in 1880 of the then Merced County
residents who had been in California since its admission to the Union on
September 9, 1850; and we have Henry Nelson's recollection that Fee lived at Mt.
Ophir in 1855. His diary covers the five years from 1858 to 1862 inclusive, and
early in that period he moved to the Merced River a short distance above
Snelling. We learn from Fee's statements in the diary that he himself was born
in 1818. He refers several times to G. Fee, evidently his father, born in 1786,
who clearly lived with Fee and his family. In one place he records that G. Fee
built a fence around a haystack.

   The incidents of Peter Fee's life, recorded from day to day during these five
years, give us many glimpses of how and where people lived in the Merced County
of that time, and in Mariposa also. It is the record of a man of untiring
industry. He has a page of "Rules copied from the ancient Fee family journal" in
the front of the book, the second of which reads, "Never be idle; if your hands
can't be usefully employed, attend to the cultivation of your mind"; and he
lived up to that maxim faithfully. The diary is too long to be given in anything
like its entirety; but it is well worth making generous selections from. He
gives two pages to a month, and almost always merely one line to a day. At the
top of each page is written the year and the month, and down the left the day of
the month and the day of the week, the latter abbreviated.

   "On "Januari 1, F., P. Fee & Forbes went to Mariposa. 2, Sa., Fee went to
Mersede and back. Frbs Barly 200 lb. 3, S., Fee wisit Mt. Ophir. Forbes left. 4,
M., Fee left for Coltervill, staid at Youngs." This is the whole of the first
four days. He was necessarily brief; he abbreviated. His spelling indicates a
man who learned English after he was grown up.

   The "Mersede" which he refers to here he mentions a number of times; of
course it could not be the present town, for this was something like fourteen
years before the town came into existence. He clearly means the river, and in
one place he has it: "Went to the Mersede at Young's." Young's is also
frequently referred to. Young had a ferry across the Merced River. Henry Nelson
remembers it and the sign which directed travelers from the road between Merced
Falls and Snelling to it. It was located about a mile and a half below Merced
Falls, just about where the Merced Irrigation District diverting dam, formerly
part of the Crocker-Huffman system, is now. The sign was at a point on the S. K.
Spears Ranch where the road forked, and read "T. W. T. Young's Ferry. Nearest
and Best Road to All Parts of the Mines South of the River Merced." The sign was
there for a number of years. The building of bridges later put the ferries out
of business. In the early minutes of the board of supervisors there are rather
numerous references to Young's and Phillips' ferries and Murray's bridge; their
rivalry is recorded in the attempts made by each to prevent his competitors from
getting their licenses to operate. The board heard them all and granted them all
licenses, in spite of the imposing array of counsel with which they came before
the county fathers—granted them all licenses and set the amount of the bonds
they had to give, and also fixed the rates they were allowed to charge.
Phillips's Ferry we have already heard of as the place where the county boundary
line crossed the Merced River; Murray's was only a short distance below
Phillips's; both were above Young's.

   We'll follow Peter Fee right through the month of January, 1858. The first
four days have been given. On the 5th "Fee & Forbes campt at Newyears diggins."
On the 6th, "do. & do. do. on the Colterville Turnpike." On the 7th, "do. & do.
staid at the mill. comensed loading." On the 8th, "do. & do. campt at pino
bianco." On the 9th, "do. & do. do. at the Ducth Range." On the 10th (which was
Sunday), "do. & do. laid by." On Monday the 11th, "Forbes turned over, campt on
a mountain." The next day "Fee & Forbes hunted cattle campt in the snow." On the
13th they "campt on the Newyears diggens," obviously on their way home again.
They went back after the freight left the next day, and the day after "staid at
Young's." On Saturday the 16th they "campt at Texas Tent." Texas Tent, or the
Texas Ranch, was the home ranch of the Givens family towards Indian Gulch from
Hornitos. On the 17th they "turned out at Corbitts T. went home. This was
Sunday. The next day they "brought the loads home." Apparently Fee still lived
at Mt. Ophir. He refers early in the diary to the Norwegian Tent, where he
lived, and there are numerous references to a lawsuit with Star & Grimshaw,
which he won, and which was about the place on the Merced River; and he soon
moves down to this place.

   On the 19th "rested the chattle," and then there is a little picture writing,
a small rectangle with diagonals, which we come to learn means a letter. This
was a letter "from McKinley." On January 20 we read "G. Fee 72 years." On the
21st it "raind ould day." It frequently rains "ould nite." These entries are
given verbatim, not with any idea of making fun of Fee's spelling, but rather as
thus retaining better the atmosphere of the times which makes them of interest.
That generation, which had not always learned to spell, laid the foundations of
the schools which gave their children and grandchildren more educational
advantages. On the 22nd "Fee & Forbes brought their load of castings to Dr.
Granvoinet. Rained and snow." On the 23rd is the item already quoted: "Three men
kild at Snellings. Snow." Henry Nelson says: "I was at Snelling one day when
three men were killed. Dr. Goodin, who lived at Fitz-hugh's Ranch, was killed on
one side and two others on the other." On the 24th Fee "drove the chattle to the
Valley & home." On the 25th, "Fee workt o'n the Wagon wheels." On the 26th, "do.
do. & went to Mposa." For the remaining days of the month there are a lot of
ditto abbreviations—referring to the wagon wheels, and on the 31st the
additional entry (it was Sunday), "Fee & Forbes wisit Mount Ophir."

   There is a great deal of mention of places up through the hills. On the very
next day after Fee and Forbes went to Mount Ophir, we read that they went to
Sebastopol, which is the more modern Bootjack. Mormon Bar, Bear Valley,
Princeton, are frequently mentioned, Lewis further south every now and then,
Chowchilla occasionally, Sonora, Knight's Ferry now and then. All through the
country where the bulk of the population then lived and the bulk of the business
was carried on, Fee went with his team. Largely the animals were oxen; whether
altogether, we can hardly tell from the diary. He had horses, and he had a
buggy; his horses may have been only for riding and buggy use.

   The diary records various steps in a lawsuit which Fee had with Star and
Grimshaw about the farm above Snelling where he lived. We read on March 3, 1858,
"the case set for Thorsday the 11th." Judge Creanor had arrived the day before;
it was apparently at Sonora, for he went there February 28 and on March 1
engaged H. P. Barber to attend to the case for $300. On the 16th, verdict for
320 acres and $1 damages. The matter drags for a considerable time and he
finally is put into possession of the property. He records that he moved down
from "the Norwegian Tent."

   His daily life well illustrates the industry, the varied activities, and the
self-reliance imposed by necessity, of the pioneer. He was teamster, farmer,
stock-raiser, carpenter and general mechanic. Witness such entries as these:
"Hauled wood, worked on the wagon, worked on the brake, made two mailboxes,
brought Polly's calf home, the twin caffs born, made an oxyoke, worked on the
erigation ditch, went to the mill (he hauled a good deal of lumber from various
sawmills in Mariposa County), ploughed the garden, planted turnips, peas and
beans."

   He did a considerable amount of work for Col. J. C. Fremont, who was then
living on his grant at Las Mariposas. On the lower part of the last page for
May, 1858, he records: "Fee hould during the mount for Col. J. C. Freemont 7233
ft. of lumber from McNeals mill to Fremonts, $144.66; for houling of 12,000
shingles, $24.00; for houling of 1275 ft. lumber to Mersede, $19.02—$187.69.
Paid cash to D. Clark for shingles, 12,000, $96—$283.68. Paid the 17th July by
Fremont." He records several times that Fremont passed, that he went below, and
so on.

   On July 26, 1858, he writes: "Fee born 40 years ago, 1818," and adds,
evidently referring to the rules from the ancient family journal of the Fees,
"Truht, Temperance." This quirk of reversing the order of the "th" in English
words occurs often—usually he writes "wiht."

   Frequently we find that he put in a part of a day, a day, sometimes more,
hunting cattle, which is eloquent of the unfenced condition of the range in
those days. He records where he attended this and that and the other man's
rodeo, and found one, two, or more head (of his own). The cattle he hunted were
sometimes his oxen— he records it so sometimes—and this is sometimes when he is
away on a trip with his team.

   He makes brief record, necessarily afterwards some time, of important world
events. He did this with the opening events of the Civil War, but the war soon
apparently outran the scope of his little book. Opposite the regular daily entry
on August 6, 1858, he notes "Telegraphic cable landed," and at the end of this
month's record he amplifies this to "The telegraphic cable landed at Trinity Bay."

   On the 10th of this same August (Tuesday), "Fee went to Campmeting at Cathes
Valley," and found it evidently worth while, for the following Sunday, "Fee &
Mrs. Fee went to Campmeting." He and his wife go visiting—chiefly on Sundays,
for he is too busy on other days—sometimes as far away as Auga Fria; and he
frequently records the visits of neighbors to them.

   On the new State's eighth birthday he records that "Fee and Granpar workt on
the Arastras," and ditto the next three days. They put in about seven more days
at this job by the end of the month. "Granpar" was his father evidently; he
refers to him sometimes as G. Fee, and we are told that he was born in 1786. Fee
notes his birthday several times through the dairy, and on one occasion notes
that he was sick and that they had to send to Hornitos for medicine for him.

   The name Grandpa suggests that the Fees had children. We make out at least
two sons, apparently; but we cannot always be sure, from the very brief mention.
On September 24, 1859, he records that Charley was very sick and that they
waited on him all night; and the next day Charley died and was "buried in the
east corner of the field. Rev. Bonsel said the funeral servis."

   From July 9 to 15 we read of what was apparently a small revolution that
Fremont had on his hands. The record is as follows for the week :

   "9 Fr. The Pinetree jumped by a mob. werry warm. 10 Sa. Fee & Mrs Fee wisit
Fremonts Famelie. 11. S. Great exite-ment in Bearvaly. 12. M. Misting volenters
for protektion of F. property. 13. Ti. Fee hould wood. 14 W. The dificulty at
Pinetre setled & the Miners & Setlers left the mine. 15. The Miners & Setlers
trial in Mariposa." There was prompt justice in those days at any rate. On the
19th: "Went to Mariposa. Dst. Court convened.   Fremont comensed work at the
Pine Tree Mine."

   He records usually the number of feet of lumber he hauled. We have seen this
in the statement of the account with Fremont. The figures there indicate $20 a
thousand for the lumber, which was probably the purchase price at the mill plus
hauling. It seems pretty high for hauling, and the account states expressly that
Fee paid cash for the shingles, and that Fremont afterwards repaid him.

   When the Banner, the first newspaper in Merced County, was started, Fee
hauled the press from some earlier plant further north. It is sometimes stated
that the press came from Waterford; Fee's evidence, while it does not absolutely
show this to be incorrect, makes it appear very strongly that it came from
Knight's Ferry. The entries about the matter from the 27th of June to the 2nd of
July, 1862, are as follows: "27 F. Hoed in the garden. Engaged to houl the
press. 28. Sa. Started. Staid at Dr. Both at Toaleme. 29. S. Arived at Nights
Ferry, 5 horses. 30. M. Loaded, started across river. Got a buggy from Linstad
for a horse. Staid at Dingley. Harry Linstad Baker & Salon in Nights Ferry.
Juley 1 Ti. Staid and swopt oxen with Dingley. 2 W. Staid Gallops. Arrived and
unloaded at Snellings & went home."

   Fe records the flood of January, 1862, which washed away the hotel and other
buildings at Snelling, and which, Henry Nelson recalls, washed away the bridges
at Merced Falls, so that when he returned from a trip to the mines south of the
river he had to take his wagon over on a little ferry boat and lead his mules
across one at a time behind a row boat. Fee's entries about the flood begin on
January 5, Sunday, and continue for eight days. The entries are as follows: "5,
S. Raind and storm. 6," M. Raind old day. 7, Ti. Removed the hay. 8, W. Workt on
the bulkhead; rain. 9, Th. The bulkhead broke away with the flod ... 10, F. The
wather rose op to the house 5 o'clock A. M. 11, Sa. The river rose over the road
took up the barn sable & workhouse. Mrs Fee at Muglers. 12, S. The river faling;
Wilson got out of the tree."

   It took more than a flood to disarrange Fee's methodical and industrious
habits. On the 9th, while the flood was in progress, he records, "Letter
(represented by a rectangle) to Perley, received Starr's answer"; and on the day
after "Wilson got out of the tree," Fee "workt on the coral."

   The Wilson referred to was L. P. Wilson, whose name appears in the list of
pioneers published in the Express in 1880, and who was known to his intimates as
"Hookie" Wilson. Henry Nelson remembers the incident of his being m the tree,
and relates that Wilson and Chris Mugler, both of whom lived a little up the
river from Fee's place, on the north side, had received a distress signal from
someone on the south side, and set out in a boat to the rescue. The boat proved
leaky, and Wilson, who had been a sailor and didn't like leaky boats, climbed
out into a tree. Mugler and the boat landed further down. Nelson saw Wilson in
the tree, where he had to stay all night, so that he must have landed there the
same day when Fee's barn, stable, and workhouse washed away, and when Mrs. Fee
was at Mugler's—evidently for safety. J. C. James tells of this flood of 1861
and 1862 as it conducted itself further down towards the San Joaquin. His
brother, Captain Jones, had a ranch down near the lower Tuolumne. The cattle
were marooned on the higher spots of land, the chickens driven to high perches,
and the men had to build a board bulkhead to protect an adobe house from being
reduced to mud. At Snelling the flood washed away Judge Fitzhugh's house and
several other buildings and changed the course of the river.

   Fee was a pious man. It was his habit, after 1858, to sum up each year in a
few words. In 1859 he writes: "The past year has proved sucsesful to the Fee
Famelie, God be praised." At the close of 1860, "The past year has been a
favereble to the Fee Famelie; a large crop of grain was harvested." The entry at
the close of 1861 doubtless refers in part at least to the war: "By loking back
on 61 and will be remembered as a dark and trubblefild year, but my hope is to
God that Truth and Temprans will triomph in 62." He closes 1862 and the book
with the words, "Notwithstanding the disaster of the flod 1862 has been a
blesset year, Amen."

   There may have been more exalted names on the list of the county's pioneers
than that of Peter Fee, but it is questionable if there was any whose life story
touched more phases of the local history of his time, or more truly represents
those times to us, than the story set forth in the dairy of this versatile,
hard-working Norwegian-American pioneer.

   From what we have seen from these two documents, the assessment roll of 1857
and Fee's diary of from 1858 to 1862, we can get a very fair insight into the
life of the early days of the county, in many of its aspects. Scarcely too much
emphasis can be laid upon the very close connection which existed between the
new county, with its activities creeping out into the big plain of the San
Joaquin, and the mother county in the hills. The new county was creeping out
into the big plain of the San Joaquin, it is true; but its markets, its
associations, the former dwelling-places of many of its people, a large part of
its social connections, and numberless other bonds were across the line. The
activities of the two counties were different in character from the beginning,
from the very nature of their topography; but in many most important respects
they formed one community. The very line which divided them politically from
1855 on, the Stockton and Millerton Road, the main (indeed the only) artery of
travel between north and south, was a bond of union rather than a barrier.

   We see in the early minutes of the Merced supervisors how road after road was
laid out, and how the great majority of them were to connect the
westward-creeping settlements of this county with this main road and the country
on the other side of it. We have seen how T. W. T. Young's sign advertised his
ferry as the best route to the southern mines. We have seen how Fee, after he
moved down from Mount Ophir, still found a great part of his employment in
teaming in the hills or between them and the valley; how W. L. Means, following
the business of hunting near Robla, found his market at the mines; and how many
of those who settled in this county had first tried their luck in the search for
gold—indeed there were so many of them of whom this was true that it may be said
to have been the rule rather than the exception. We have seen how the first
county seat under the oak tree on Mariposa Creek was early abandoned because it
was difficult of access; it was indeed almost on the western frontier of
settlement, too far from the Stockton and Millerton Road to be convenient. If
the West Side, the west three-quarters of the county, in fact, was not entirely
uninhabited, it was almost so; and the notions about it were pretty vague. There
is in the first book of the records of deeds in the county recorder's office a
deed to an undivided one-half of an eleventh interest in the San Carlos and New
Idria quicksilver mine, supposed, the deed recites, to be in Merced County; and
this was after the creation of Fresno County in 1856, which event put New Idria
miles and miles beyond Merced's most southerly boundary.

   It is difficult to grasp the small scale on which the county affairs were
conducted—as must necessarily have been the case with a population numbering
perhaps scarcely two per cent of what it is at present. We read in the early
minutes how the county auditor was paid $125 a year for his services, the clerk
of the board $250, the clerk of the court of sessions $4 a day, and the assessor
$337.50 for making the first assessment, which took him forty-five days. There
were but two judicial townships.; each had two justices of the peace and two
constables, but this liberal allowance of officers was apparently due rather to
the number of miles to be traveled than to the number of cases to be tried.
Their duties were apparently not onerous; we find that Thomas Eagleson, who was
one of the constables, was also a road overseer, and it is fair to infer that
the two offices left him with time to run the ranch near Forlorn Hope which was
assessed to himself and his mother.

   Travel was, to us in these days of paved highways and automobiles, almost
unbelievably slow; Peter Fee takes the best part of a week in midsummer of 1862
in making the trip to Knight's Ferry and returning with the printing press,
though we do have to deduct the one day when he stopped over and "wopt oxen with
Dingley." In view of the difficulties of travel, it is surprising how much of it
there was.

   There were the little landholdings along the river (and "the river" in those
days is used synonymously with "the Merced"), something like about forty-two
sections on the East Side on the ninety-four pages we have left of the original
122 of the 1857 assessment roll— about six by seven miles, if we had it all in
one compact rectangle. "The plains," unsurveyed, without private owners, rich
with grass, were the range of thousands of cattle—Spanish stock cattle improved
already with the intermixture of "American stock cattle" sprung from the
beginnings of great herds which such men as Montgomery, Ruddle, and McPhatridge
drove across the Rockies and the Great American Desert and the Sierras to these
new pastures.

   Even this early the county had become a great stock county, growing towards
that leadership in this industry which enabled a well-informed stockman to say
within the last year or two that there are more cattle shipped from the region
within a radius of twenty-five miles of Merced than from any other equal area in
the world. If the county was growing towards eminence in this respect, it was
also growing towards a peck of trouble. The free range could not last, and when
the public lands of. the plains began to be taken up with the beginning of the
grain-raising days—the beginning of raising it away from the river and creek
bottoms—there was a big readjustment to be made, and a bitter fight to be waged
between the grain-farmers, who wanted the part of the land they desired to work,
and the stockmen, who wanted all of it as they had had in the past.

   It is the cattle industry which explains such assessments as the several we
have seen, where men were assessed for nothing but one horse; these were
doubtless cowboys, vaqueros, or whatever they called them. The cattle business
also, we have seen, was responsible for the largest assessments—such as J. M.
Montgomery's and Hildreth & Dunphey's, which are still in the book, and
doubtless including the Stevinsons, whose names now appear only in the index.

   As was the case in the mines, though to a lesser degree, men outnumbered
women; those who came first were for the most part young single men. Many went
back after a few years for wives; but it was a matter of a few years before the
majority of them established families. We see in the minutes of the supervisors
in February, 1856, that William Nelson presented a petition asking the board to
divide the county into school districts, and they did it—did it very simply,
too, for with the existing lines bounding the county and dividing it into two
judicial townships, it was necessary for them to draw but one new line for the
purpose. The line is described as follows: "Commencing at Samuel Scott's ranch,
thence north to the county line, and from said ranch south to No. Two Township
line." Three school districts were the result, Judicial Township Number One
being divided by this line into District Number One, east of the line, and
District Number Two, west of it, and Township Number Two forming school district
Number Three. William Nelson was appointed by the board the county's first
superintendent of common schools. This was on February 7, 1856. On October 7 of
the same year, in an enumeration of voting precincts for a coming election, we
find one of them described as "School House, M. C." The "M. C." is possibly
Merced County; we find the board's minutes frequently signed So-and-so, chairman
board of supervisors, M. C. But M. C. might also mean Mariposa Creek and perhaps
it should so read. Query: Was there only the one schoolhouse in the county on
October 7, 1856? If there was only one, we should rather have expected it to be
at Snelling; and there is a Snelling precinct in the list, which seems to
dispose of that supposition. Incidentally, this is the first reference we have
seen of the name of the first permanent county seat written without the
apostrophe and us."

   This list of precincts, numbering just a dozen, is interesting. With the
inspectors appointed for the election, they are as follows: Ward's Ranch, J. N.
Ward; Young's Ferry, T. W. T. Young; Snelling, L. W. Talbott; Forlorn Hope, E.
Eagleson; Howard's Ranch, R. S. Howard; Montgomery's, J. M. Montgomery; Neill's
Ranch, Wm. Neill; Thornton's Ranch, S. March; Brown & De Hart, P. B. Brown;
Hildreth's Ranch, John Hildreth; School House, M. C, Wm. Wall, Sr.; Johnson's
Precinct, J. Johnson. We can locate most of these places, and their location
gives us another slant on the interesting question of where the population was
at that time. Ward's Ranch was on Dry Creek; Young's Ferry, about where the
Merced Irrigation District diverting dam is on the Merced River; Snelling, where
it is now; Forlorn Hope is now Hopeton; Howard's Ranch, by the 1857 assessment
roll, is described as 920 acres of land on Burns Creek; Montgomery's was at the
present Wolf sen Ranch on Bear Creek; Neill's Ranch, on the Merced River at
Arundel, is well known now, to all who have been in the county a dozen years, as
the Shaffer Ranch; Thornton's Ranch was 160 acres bounded on the east and north
by Samuel Scott and on the south by the Merced River.

   The remaining four precincts offer difficulties. At Brown & De Hart's Ranch,
P. B. Brown is named as inspector. In the 1857 assessment roll there is the name
of B. P. Brown in the index, but his assessment is torn out. The De Harts were
West Siders.

  In the chapter on the assessment roll we have suggested that Hildreth &
Dunphey were on the Santa Rita Ranch west of the San Joaquin. However, on that
roll the three assessments preceding and the four following Hildreth & Dunphey's
all contain land, and it is all on Dry Creek, and we have already pointed out
that apparently the assessments were made as the assessor traveled from one
settler to the next. Hildreth & Dunphey are assessed for no land in 1857; it may
well have been that Hildreth lived on Dry Creek in this October of 1856, even if
we were correct in assuming that the 1857 assessment, chiefly of live stock, was
on the Santa Rita.

   William Wall, Sr., is the inspector named for the precinct designated as
"School House, M. C." There is a William Wall assessed in 1857 for 160 acres of
land situated on Mariposa Creek and undescribed. There are also Wall & Brothers;
but they are not assessed for any land, and we therefore have no clue to where
they lived.

   With reference to Johnson's Precinct, J. Johnson, Inspector, there is a James
G. Johnson assessed in 1857, but not for any land, and there is a James Johnson
assessed for 160 acres of land situated on Dameron's Creek, commencing at the
line of Mariposa and Merced Counties and running one mile down said creek. The
assessment before this Johnson's is McDermott & Laughlin's in Section 2,
Township 8 South, Range 16 East; and the one following it is William Newton's at
Newton's Crossing of the Chowchilla. This suggests that "Dameron's" may have
been a mistake for "Deadman's"; but the name is very clearly written
"Dameron's," and moreover the name Dameron is present on the roll, for Moses
Dameron is assessed for 320 acres on Mariposa Creek, bounded north by public
land, east by M. F. Turner, south by Fitzhugh, west by public land.

   Taken all in all, we are again impressed with how almost entirely the
population was close to the eastern boundary of the county. With reference to
the schoolhouse, if the William Wall on the assessment roll is the same as the
election inspector, that structure would appear to have been in the region of
Mariposa Creek. When one finds later that the Pioneer school district was one of
the first four, he is led to wonder if it was not probably the first of all; out
along these creeks the population was probably nearer one hundred per cent a
farming population than even along the river, and perhaps there one should
expect earliest to find school children and a school.

   Incidentally, the Howard mentioned appears to have been the brother of the
Captain Howard who died only recently in Portland at the age of over ninety, and
who took part in the pursuit and killing of Joaquin Murietta. That is, Captain
Howard was the "Howard" of Howard & Brother. The Captain's name was William. The
R. S. Howard who was the inspector for the election in 1856 was apparently the
"Brother." Henry Nelson recalls that when quite a small boy he accompanied his
father with their team and a load of flour on a trip from their mill south, and
that they "got stuck" at Howard's Ranch. The ranch was far enough up Burns
Creek, he says, so that it was on the main Millerton Road.

   We have seen what must have been pretty nearly the first start of schools in
the county; and it may be mentioned in this connection that Henry Nelson
attended three different schools along the river, one at Merced Falls and the
others a little further down, but all above Snelling.

   We have a little information also on early churches and preachers. Mrs. John
Ruddle relates that when her party arrived in 1859, there were a South Methodist
presiding elder and preacher at Snelling. The preacher was Rev. S. W. Davies,
and the presiding elder's name was Blythe. Mrs. Ruddle also states that Rev.
McSwain, Christian Church preacher, was here, and she believes had been here
several years. Their house looked as if it was getting old when she first saw
it, she recalls, and she was there in 1860. This was Rev. Daniel McSwain,
sometimes known as Uncle McSwain. Mrs. Mary J. Little, who came here in 1862,
and who passed away at an advanced age less than a year ago at her home below
Snelling, came out with the same party in which Daniel McSwain returned to
California after coming back to Missouri after his sister-in-law and her
children. His brother had died, and Daniel McSwain brought the family to
California. The name McSwain is a familiar one in the history of the county.
Children of those children who came out in 1862 live here still. The name is
commemorated in McSwain Bridge, across the Merced near Cressey, and in the
McSwain school district; and we shall encounter it in the county's history later.

   We have seen that Peter Fee hauled the press for the first newspaper in the
county from Knight's Ferry and delivered it at Snelling on the second of July,
1862. Something over seven years had then passed since the organization of the
county and the first meeting of its court and supervisors under the oak tree on
Mariposa Creek. Perhaps the beginning of this first paper, the Banner, is as
good a landmark as any to mark the close of this chapter on the early life of
the county.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

HISTORY OF
MERCED COUNTY
CALIFORNIA
WITH A
Biographical Review
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

HISTORY BY
JOHN OUTCALT

ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME
HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
1925

File at: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ca/merced/history/1925/historyo/earlyday196nms.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/cafiles/

File size: 50.9 Kb