Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 1 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 23

CHAPTER XIX

"The earlier settlers of the county cared little for politics. They were a plain, hard-headed, sensible people, who worked the placers, tilled the soil, raised cattle, herded sheep, made money, reared large families, feared God, respected the laws and were happy. The interest they took in politics was largely of a personal character, to secure the maintenance of order, the enforcement of the laws and the making of needful internal improvements. It may be that this indifference to politics was due largely to the fact that the county has always had a safe Democratic majority. The early settlers very generally came from the southern states, and at the breaking out of the war their sympathies were with the Confederacy and they voted that way."

These observations, in so far as they relate to the earlier settlers, and written in April, 1891, may be accepted as fairly accurate, though the statement that they "cared little for politics" must be taken with a grain of salt, because with the war influx the political interest was bitter, even vindictive. There was also personal animosity displayed during the period of the war and after. So much so that a time was when a Republican was a lusus naturae as much as ever a five-legged lamb, or a double-headed rooster was, and also when it was not always politic or safe to announce one's affiliations, if .they were not friendly to the southern cause. That cause had in this county and in Tulare and Kern many unreconstructed adherents, whose opinions had not been changed with the result of the war, but had become the more fixed, and probably not without cause, by reason of the indignities heaped upon the vanquished by the carpet-bagging administrations foisted upon the Southern people. The passions and prejudices of men ran high in those days, and the resultant conditions are not to be wondered at.

Leland Stanford, elected governor in September, 1861, was the first Republican chosen to that office in California. For more than a decade after admission into the union, the state was controlled by the pro-slavery wing of the Democratic party. The news of the firing upon Fort Sumter came to San Francisco on April 24, twelve days after the fact, and was sent across the continent by pony express. It stirred up a strong Union sentiment in the state, and the lines were sharply drawn as between northern and southern men. In parts of the state. Confederate sympathizers were largely in the majority, notably in Los Angeles and in various localities in the San Joaquin Valley.

Still there never was a more hospitable, a more whole-souled and a more mutually helpful people than those early settlers of Fresno. This is conceded. A stranger, destitute, or sick, or unfortunate, found himself among sympathizing and helping people, who ministered to his wants, not with the hope of reward, but out the goodness of heart prompted by the spirit of the brotherhood of man. In Millerton was an aged black woman, known the county over as "Negro Jane," who had come as a slave with Henry Burroughs. She was a character, earning a livelihood as a washerwoman, nurse, or whatever came her way. She was the Good Samaritan of the village, and was there a miner in a camp sick, destitute or neglected she was the first to be at his side. "Negro Jane" has long passed away, but there are still some among the living to recall the voluntary acts of charity of this black-skinned sister of mercy.

Hugh A. Carroll was another of the original -Fort Miller garrison and with him came as a camp follower the wife, Elizabeth, mother of the first white girl child born in the county territory. She was of decided masculine character and temperament, as the result of army life associations. She could swear and anathematize on occasions, like a trooper or a pirate, but she had a heart for the sick and afflicted and her memory is recalled for many voluntary visits of mercy to sick and neglected miners. There is the story that with the location of the garrison she and Mrs. Ann McKenzie were the first of their sex in this region, and such a curiosity for the squaws that meandering from the fort in company on an occasion and approaching one of the rancherias they were seized and the squaws rubbed and pinched their faces to satisfy themselves that their skins were white and not painted, believing in their ignorance at sight to them of these first whites, that none of their sex could be of color other than their own. The two women were alarmed at the demonstration. Mrs. McKenzie escaped early in the demonstration but Mrs. Carroll was stripped naked before the dusky sisters satisfied themselves that not only was she white in face but in body also.

Dr. Leach was of a philanthropic bent of mind, and Dr. Chester Rowell, who came to Fresno from San Francisco early in 1875, was of the same stamp. The world will never know the many acts of quiet charity of these two men. No man or woman, destitute and in need of medical treatment or medicinal remedy, ever appealed to either in vain. The names of Mrs. Carroll, "Negro Jane" and Drs. Leach and Rowell are called up in grateful remembrance by old timers of Millerton and Fresno.

Gambling and the prodigious drinking of alcoholic beverages among the Millertonians were no more characteristic of them than of Californians generally in the mining regions. Chapters on this subject are devoted in every history of Early California, and the causes lengthily and plausibly gone into. It is admitted that the prospect of gain before the advent of laws or rules or customs of binding authority and the lack of restraints attracted many vicious and dissolute after the discovery of gold.

The presence and assertiveness of this class, combined with the absence of the repressive influence of decent women and the lack of refined or rational amusements to ease the daily toil, hardships and coarse living, encouraged dissipation and vice. "Gambling and drunkenness became not uncommon," says Hittell, and he is borne out by others, "and ruined many who under ordinary circumstances might have escaped the contamination."

This writer, speaking from personal observation adds: "In no part of the world perhaps was there so much gambling and so much drinking as in California, Not everybody gambled, not everybody dissipated, but so many did, and the gambling and drinking houses were such public and well patronized places of resort that it almost seemed that everybody was given over to these twin vices. Throughout the entire country, wherever men congregated and even where they sojourned with any regularity, and in any number on their way to other localities, there were sure to be places for drinking and gambling, and among the supplies carried into the mining camps liquors and cards and their usual concomitants found a very large and expensive proportion."

When drinking and gambling were so generally the vogue, was it to be expected that Millerton would be the one notable exception? Does it not smack of satire almost, to read in one of the earliest recorded deeds in Fresno County, under date of August 18, 1856, that Levi Steinhoff sold for $350 to Frank Rowe his "right, title and interest to the house or building known as the Temperance Hall," with the 85 x 100 lot in the town of Millerton? "A Temperance Hall" in the town of Millerton in 1856, when whiskey, brandy and gin were sold not by the drink but by the quart bottle and the gallon!

But in extenuation, let it be recalled that these conditions obtained in the days when "every possible luxury connected with drinking procurable in California could be found in the mines, and there was hardly any drink in the world too rare or too expensive for importation into that paradise of indulgence. It is doubtful whether there ever was before so ready a market for the costliest brandies and most exquisite champagnes, and no business afforded such profits as the liquor business," while "hardly a team left Sacramento or Stockton, or train threaded the mountain trails, that did not carry more or less spirituous or malt drink, and hardly a man lived or worked in the mines that did not contribute to some extent to the fortunes of those who managed its importation and distribution."

It is stated that as a consequence of the indiscriminate drinking in those early days delirium tremens became a common ailment, and pathetically humorous in overlooking the superinducing cause of it, is the record of the belief that there .was supposed to be something in the very climate of California peculiarly favorable to "the jim-jams" as they were called. Still it is also of record that while there was a great deal of drinking, there was very little habitual drunkenness among the earliest pioneers. There was a plausible reason for it. The confirmed toper was physically unfit for the hardships and exposure of the across-the-plains, or the around-Cape-Horn journey to California, and the wrecks of subsequent days had not yet become the habitual topers.

To quote history: "But even including those who were so much addicted to gambling and drinking as to deserve the name of gamblers or drunkards — and as soon as they were such they were no longer counted among the heroes of the early years — it may still be reiterated that the pioneers were the most active, industrious and enterprising body of men in proportion to their numbers that was ever thrown together to form a new community. Four-fifths of them were young men, between eighteen and thirty-five years of age, and they came from all sections of the country and many from foreign countries. They all came to labor and found at the mines that to keep on an equality with their neighbors they had to labor."

A noteworthy feature of the times and the conditions was "the extraordinary leveling tendency" of the life, a tendency upon the effects of which, it has been asserted, have been based to a great extent the readjustments and developments on new lines that have constituted the peculiarities of California civilization. As printed history has it: "Every man finding every other man compelled to labor found himself the equal of every other man, and as the labor required was physical, instead of mental, the usual superiority of head workers over hand workers disappeared. This condition of things lasted several years."

The more common and general effect was to level pride, and everything suggestive of the aristocracy of employment. The California pioneer has had" to stand sponsor for much. It is only truth and justice to record that the pioneers that founded the state constituted a race of men, whose superior is not readily found. And in this tribute should not be overlooked the privations, toil, hardships and dangers borne and the civilizing influences wielded by the brave and undaunted pioneer women and mothers, honoring in this category also the delicate and refined women of the South, who cast their lot amidst rough and primitive conditions to battle anew with life after the distressing days following the war, when the future was so blank and desolate in contrast with the comforts and affluence that had gone_ before in the sunny and beloved Southland. Never had men such self-sacrificing and brave helpmates as in these honored early and later pioneer women of California.

By 1865, there was an appreciable increase in the population of the county as demonstrated by the greater bulkiness of the assessment roll.