Tag: George H Keller

Petaluma’s Mythical Steamboat Rumble

Steamboats docked at the San Francisco wharf, circa 1850s (photo courtesy of the Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives)

Petaluma was never just about chickens and cows. From day one, the city has been a transportation hub for goods and people. Which was why, legend has it, the town faced its first existential crisis in the summer of 1852.

Established the previous winter, Petaluma found itself unexpectedly confronted by a rival town calling itself Petaluma City. Located just a couple miles downstream on the Petaluma Creek—as the river was then known—the new town allegedly sought to replace Petaluma as Sonoma County’s main shipping port.[1]

Back then, the waterways were the highways. Petaluma Creek was sprinkled with the sails of flat-bottomed schooners hauling game meat, potatoes, and hay from Petaluma to San Francisco.

Flat-bottomed scow schooner with hay on the Petaluma Creek (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

But paddlewheel steamboats—the Bay Area’s main means of transportation—were nowhere to be seen. Robert A. Thompson, author of Sonoma County’s first written history, A Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, claimed deeper water vessels were afraid of running aground, given the creek was actually a tidal slough that rose and fell twice a day with the ocean tides.[2]

According to Thompson, Petaluma City’s strategy for putting Petaluma out of existence turned on luring steamboats up the creek. In the fall of 1852, they persuaded the captain of a steamer called the Red Jacket to pilot his boat on high tide up the creek to their new landing.[3] As the remaining three miles of the waterway to Petaluma were then a zigzagging maze of oxbow bends, seemingly impossible for a steamboat to navigate, Petaluma was effectively left up the creek without a paddleboat.

1860 U.S. Coast Survey map shows oxbow bends in Petaluma Creek from Petaluma City, aka, New Town, at blue star, to Petaluma, red star (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

But Petalumans refused to concede defeat. They managed to convince the Red Jacket’s captain to navigate his boat through the serpentine bends to the Petaluma docks, thus putting an end to the existential steamboat rumble and ultimately to Petaluma City itself. [4]

Robert A. Thompson and his 1877 history of Sonoma County (photo Tuomey’s 1926 History of Sonoma County)

As origin stories go, Thompson’s sounds like a tall tale told over drinks in a local saloon. Little of it holds water. While the creek undoubtedly posed a navigational challenge for steamboats in 1852, the reason they weren’t plying its waters was more likely because, aside from meat and potatoes, Petaluma had so little to offer. But times were changing.

THE FOUNDING OF PETALUMA

In the summer of 1851, a disappointed, 50-year-old gold miner from Missouri named George H. Keller rode into a rugged camp along the Petaluma Creek. Set on a former Miwok trading village called Lekituit, the camp consisted of a few rustic cabins occupied by game hunters and a warehouse for storing potatoes, Sonoma County’s first boom crop, to ship down to San Francisco.[5]

That fall, newspapers in San Francisco and Nevada City began running ads of farmland for sale in the Petaluma Valley.[6] Gold miners—only a fraction of whom made any money—began streaming into the camp, looking to stake their claim in California’s next gold rush: agriculture.[7] To accommodate them, Keller built a makeshift general store, hostel, and dining house beside the creek.[8]

Ad in the Daily Alta California newspaper, November 18, 1851

At the time, the Petaluma Valley, along with another 10 million acres in California, was subdivided into large Mexican land grants. Thanks to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago that ended the Mexican-American War, they remained in the hands of their Mexican owners. But not for long. By American legal standards, many of California’s land grants were sketchy or saddled with disputed claims. That included the 13,316-acre Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio the Petaluma camp sat upon, which had two parties claiming ownership.[9]

To clean up the legal morass, in 1851 Congress appointed a three-man Land Commission to review California’s 813 land grants. The commission placed the legal burden of proving ownership upon the Mexican grant holders. Many of them, unable to pay the exorbitant legal fees, were forced to sell to American speculators, who then subdivided the land grants into farms and ranches for sale.[10]

Like everything during the Gold Rush, investing in real estate was a gamble. Buyers could either purchase a parcel in hopes the Land Commission would ultimately approve the speculator’s land grant claim—a process that could take many years—or they could illegally squat on the parcel in hopes the commission would reject the speculator’s claim. In such cases, the land grant would be placed in the public domain, allowing the squatter to make a homesteader’s claim to their parcel under the Preemption Act of 1841.[11]

Many settlers decided to roll the dice as squatters. Banding together, they organized settlers’ associations, including at the Petaluma camp.[12] It was there, in December 1851, that a group formed the Settlers’ Association of the Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio as a last resort after efforts to contact the rancho’s two rival owners were met with silence. They elected Major Henry P. Heintzelman, a 32-year-old Pennsylvanian who fought in the Mexican-American War.[13]

The association’s stated purpose was to monitor the Land Commission’s legal review process, but their real intention was to support George Keller in making a squatter’s claim to a 158-acre parcel upon which to establish the town of Petaluma.

In the fall of 1851, Keller hired a surveyor named John A. Brewster, who first came to California in 1846 as a cartographer with Captain John C. Frémont, to map out the town on 40 acres of his claim. He then began selling lots at his general store on Washington Street beside the creek.[14] His first recorded sale was on January 3, 1852, to David Flogdell, who purchased a lot at the foot of today’s Western Avenue, where he and Thomas Baylis built the Pioneer Hotel.[15]

John A. Brewster, surveyor (courtesy of the California State Lands Commission)

Keller’s sales were all filed by the Sonoma County recorder’s office, which apparently shared his skepticism that the Land Commission would ever determine a legal owner for the Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio. It helped that Brewster was the county recorder’s deputy clerk, and that Keller’s real estate attorney, a 46-year-old miner from Tennessee named Micajah G. Lewis, was appointed Petaluma’s first justice of the peace.[16]

To make sure buyers understood the risk involved, Keller promised in in his property deeds to defend buyers against lawful claims to their property, “except the confirmed titles of any Mexican Grant of the Government of the United States.”[17]

THE FOUNDING OF PETALUMA CITY

A few months after Keller began selling lots, his lawyer Lewis teamed up with Heintzelman, president of the local Settlers’ Association, to create Petaluma City. As a third partner, they brought in Colonel James B. Huie, 53-year-old businessman from Kentucky who operated an auction house in San Francisco.

Ad for San Francisco auction house of James B. Huie & Co., Daily Alta California newspaper, July 22, 1850

The three men then entered into a deal with Mariano G. Vallejo to develop Petaluma City on 600 acres of Vallejo’s 66,000-acre Petaluma Rancho that extended from the eastern bank of the Petaluma Creek to Sonoma.[18]   

Land grants around Petaluma and Petaluma City (“New Town”), including Vallejo’s Petaluma Rancho and the Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio, listed here as the Miranda Rancho (map Leander Ransom, Bancroft Library)

They centered the new town around Vallejo’s Landing on the creek at the end of Casa Grande Road.[19] Site of today’s Rocky Dog Park, Vallejo used the landing during his operation of the Petaluma Adobe to ship hides and tallow down the creek to San Francisco for export to Europe.[20]

Left, the original street grid of Petaluma City, 1852 (Sonoma County Deed Records); right, colored outline of the original street grid imposed on a current map of the area, with the original bends in the creek in blue (courtesy of Terry Park, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

Cash-strapped after the Mexican-American War decimated his cattle empire, Vallejo took half interest in Petaluma City’s development—the odd numbered lots—apparently hoping he had found himself a new cash cow.[21]

Petaluma City (aka New Town) circled in red on Vallejo’s subdivisions of his Petaluma Rancho land grant, Rowe & Rowe map, 1850 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

Within a month of filing the development with the county, Lewis sold his interest to Huie, retaining a handful of lots as a passive investor.[22] Huie and Heintzelman then opened a realty office at the southeast corner of Washington and Main streets, across from Keller’s store, and began selling lots to Petaluma City. Locals quickly nicknamed the development New Town.[23]

Contrary to Thompson’s account, it doesn’t appear Petaluma City’s developers were looking to usurp Petaluma as the creek’s head of navigation. There were no signs of bad blood between them and Keller, in fact, Lewis continued to serve as Keller’s real estate attorney.[24] It was more like a poker game with the Land Commission dealing the cards. Everyone knew Keller held a weak hand with his squatter’s claim, and Petaluma City’s developers were merely hedging their bets.[25]

Thompson’s story of the steamboat rumble is also dubious. He claims Huie convinced the captain of the Red Jacket (whom he misidentified as Captain Van Pelt) to pilot his boat up the creek to Petaluma City.[26] Huie—who later took credit for introducing steamboats to the creek—more likely convinced the Red Jacket’s owner, Thomas Hunt of the Union Line Company, that the route had sufficient freight and passenger demand to make it financially viable.[27]

Hunt purchased the Red Jacket specifically for Petaluma Creek. The steamer was previously owned by Charles Minturn—aka the “Ferryboat King”—who ran it between San Francisco and Oakland. In September 1852, Hunt bought the boat from Minturn and directed Captain L.B. Edwards to begin making runs from San Francisco to Petaluma three times a week. There were no scheduled stops at Petaluma City, which was still in early development. [28]  

The Red Jacket’s run lasted only six weeks. After returning from a trip to Petaluma on November 2, 1852, it was severely damaged in a storm at the San Francisco wharf.[29] Steamboats would not return to the Petaluma Creek until the spring of 1853, when Huie and Heintzelman bought one of their own, the Soic, which they renamed the Reindeer. They began running the Reindeer three days a week from San Francisco to both Petaluma and Petaluma City, which had developed into a wharf, a couple of warehouses, and a handful of dwellings.[30]

Ad for Reindeer steamboat, Daily Alta California newspaper, March 4, 1854

In the fall of 1853, Minturn began running one of his steamboats, the E. Corning, between San Francisco and Petaluma three times a week.[31] It was his way of marking territory.

Charles Minturn standing before his steamboat the E. Corning, San Francisco, California, about 1852 (Sonoma County Library0

A few months later, he and other major steamboat operators formed the California Steam Navigation Company, assigning members monopolies to various waterways in order to impose higher fees by reducing competition. Minturn was awarded the steamboat monopoly on the Petaluma Creek.[32] He promptly added a second steamboat to the creek, the old Red Jacket, which he had repurchased, refitted, and renamed the Kate Hayes.[33]

THE DOWNTURN

Then California’s first recession hit, the result of overspeculation, a market glut of goods, and a real estate crash. Around that time, Sonoma County’s potato boom went bust, the victim of overproduction and soil depletion.[34] Petaluma, whose population had grown to more than 400 in 1854, began to stagnate, as did, presumably, Petaluma City.[35]

During the recession, founders of both Petaluma and Petaluma City began to depart for greener pastures. Keller was to first to go. In the fall of 1853, he returned to the Midwest, where he joined with a group of developers in co-founding the city of Leavenworth, Kansas. Before leaving town, he granted his lawyer Lewis power of attorney in all future property sales in Petaluma.[36]

Lewis himself ran into financial trouble during the recession, defaulting on a handful of property investments. He left town in 1854, eventually settling in Calaveras County, where he was elected county supervisor.[37]

Heintzelman and Huie continued to operate the Reindeer steamboat until November 1854 when, undercut by Minturn’s new monopoly, the boat was repossessed and sold at auction.[38] The next month, Heintzelman was elected to the state senate, representing Sonoma, Marin, and Mendocino counties. After his term ended in 1856, he departed for Crescent City, where he was appointed government agent for the Klamath Indian Reservation.[39] That same year, Brewster was elected Surveyor General of California and left for Sacramento.[40]

Huie left town shortly thereafter, eventually returning to Kentucky.[41] He passed the development of Petaluma City over to his two sons, J. Thompson Huie, a Petaluma druggist, and Dr. George W. Huie, a Petaluma physician. By then it had failed to develop into much more than a shipping port for farmers and ranchers on the east side of the creek.[42]

In 1855, the Land Commission conferred ownership of the Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio to James F. Stuart, after he cut a deal with Thomas B. Valentine to withdraw his competing claim.

Illustration of James F. Stuart, 1893 (San Francisco Call newspaper)

More than 200 Petaluma landowners forked out $70,000 ($2 million in today’s currency) to repurchase their properties from him. Stuart split the proceeds with Valentine, who, feeling shortchanged, later challenged Stuart’s ownership in court, setting off a complicated legal battle that wasn’t fully resolved until 1874.[43]

1855 illustrated map of Petaluma by L.W. Worth, with an illustration of James F. Stuart’s real estate office at the bottom (Sonoma County Library)

Meanwhile, Petaluma’s economy began to rebound thanks to the Crimean War which cut off Russian wheat exports to Australia and New Zealand, forcing those countries to turn to California.[44] By 1857, the California wheat boom had turned Petaluma into a bustling port town with a population of 1,338. A year later, it incorporated as a city.[45]

But the wheat boom posed a new existential threat to Petaluma. Increased runoff from the farms began to fill the Petaluma Creek with silt, especially at the oxbow bends near town, making it difficult for steamboats to navigate up into Petaluma.

In 1856, John Rudesill opened a new landing a mile south of Petaluma City on the west bank of the creek, which came to be known as Haystack Landing (today Dutra Material’s asphalt plant). Steamboat passengers disembarked there for stages into town, while freight was offload onto smaller, flat-bottom boats known as “mud stages” able to navigate the shallow waters.[46]

Elliot R. Moffet (Joblin Globe newspaper, 1923)

In 1859, the new City of Petaluma commissioned Elliot R. Moffet, a local businessman and owner of the Rambler steamboat, to cut through two of the largest oxbow bends in the creek, including the one leading to the Petaluma City landing.[47] Moffet made the cuts, but not to the satisfaction of the city, which refused to pay him. Saddled with debt, Moffet sold the Rambler and fled town, eventually returning to his home state of Iowa, where he co-founded the town of Joplin, serving as its first mayor.[48]

Illustration of Elliott R. Moffet’s steamboat the Rambler, navigating the Petlauma Creek in the 1850s (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

Moffet’s cut across the bend leading to Petaluma City meant that schooners and steamboats traveling to and from Petaluma now bypassed the Petaluma City landing. That was the final nail in the coffin for New Town. In the early 1860s, Huie’s sons sold off the remaining lots for farmland, and Petaluma City, aka New Town, became history.[49]

1860 U.S. Coast Survey map of Petaluma Creek featuring Rudesill’s Landing (aka Haystack Landing) and Newtown (aka Petaluma City), along with cuts made in the first two oxbow bends in the creek by Elliot Moffet in 1859 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

In 1862, Charles Minturn undertook a new dredging of the creek from Haystack Landing to a point about a mile north called Italian Garden, across from Petaluma City’s landing. In an unintentional but fitting manner, he retired the former Red Jacket steamboat, now known as the Kate Hayes, at the site to serve as landing and freight dock. He then installed a horse-drawn rail line from Italian Garden to Petaluma.[50]

In 1866, after the creek around Italian Garden began to fill again with silt, Minturn extended his rail line to Haystack Landing. The Red Jacket was left to slowly crumble over the years into the mud, across from where it made its first run to Petaluma City in the steamboat rumble of 1852.[51]

******

Special thanks to Terry Park of the Petaluma Historical Library & Museum for his research assistance.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Robert A. Thompson, A Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877), pps. 55-56.

[2] Thompson, pps. 55-56.

[3] Thompson, pps. 55-56.

[4] Thompson, pps. 55-56.

[5] Thompson, pps. 54-55; J.P. Munro-Fraser, History of Sonoma County (San Francisco: Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880), pgs. 131, 259; “From California,” Letter from James B. Huie, Louisville Courier-Journal, December 24, 1849.

[6] “Farm for Sale,” Daily Alta California, May 17, 1849; “Farms for Sale” ad, Daily Alta California, October 19, 1851; “Farms for Sale” ad, The Nevada Journal, November 6, 1851; “Auction Sales by Henry Fitch & Co.,” Daily Alta California, July 11, 1852.

[7] Kevin Starr, Richard Orsi, eds., Rooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture, and Community in Gold Rush California (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2000), pps. 243-248, 278-280; Kevin Starr, California: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2005), pps. 110-111.

[8] Munro-Fraser, pgs. 131, 259.

[9] David Hornbeck, “The Patenting of California’s Private Land Claims, 1851-1885,” Geographical Review, Vol. 69, No. 4 (October., 1979), pgs. 437-438, 443.

[10] Paul W. Gates, 1971, The California Land Act of 1851, California Historical Society, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 1971), pp. 395–430.

[11] Donald J. Pisani, “Squatter Law in California, 1850-1858,” Western Historical Quarterly, Autumn, 1994, Vol. 25, No. 3, pps. 291-292; Paul W. Gates, The California Land Act of 1851, California Historical Society, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 1971), pp. 395–430; “The Preemption Act of 1841,” 27th Congress, Ch. 16, 5 Stat. 453 (1841), accessed from www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org; Note: the Preemption Act of 1841 gave settlers the right to purchase 160 acres in the public domain, assuming they squatted on the land for at least 14 months, or made agricultural improvements to it for five years.

[12] “Settlers’ Association,” Daily Alta California, July 27, 1850; “Mexican War letter describing the Battle of the Sacramento, 1847,” California State Library, California History Room, https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/001112803

[13] “General Notices,” Daily Alta California, December 18, 1851; Munro-Fraser, p. 259.

[14] “Pioneer Gone,” Sacramento Union, January 8, 1889; Adair Heig, History of Petaluma (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), p. 29; Munro-Fraser, pps. 259-260; Note: In 1855, the Land Commission decreed James Stuart the rightful owner of the Laguna de San Antonio land grant Petaluma sat upon, after which land owners were forced to repurchase their property from him.

[15] Sonoma County Deeds, Liber A, 1843-1853, Page 579 (original page 5), image 720, January 3, 1852; Munro-Fraser, p. 260.

[16] “Historical: Petaluma Birth and Growth,” Petaluma Courier, October 19, 1892; “Capt. Micajah Green Lewis, USA (1803 – 1893),” Geni.com, https://www.geni.com/people/Capt-Micajah-Lewis-USA/6000000121302494821; “Election Notice,” Daily Alta California, September 5, 1855; “Pioneer Gone,” Sacramento Union, January 8, 1889. Note: Brewster was elected on the People’s Party ticket, which advocated for settlers’ rights. He served one term of State Surveyor from 1856 to 1858.

[17] Sonoma County Deeds, Liber A, 1843-1853, Page 579 (original page 5), image 720, January 3, 1852.

[18] “Died in Kentucky,” Petaluma Argus, February 27, 1880; “Law Report,” Daily Alta California, April 25, 1855.

[19] Ed Mannion, “Casa Grande Road Served as Newtown,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 20, 1957.

[20] Stephen Silliman, Lost Laborers in Colonial California: Native Americans and the Archaeology of Rancho Petaluma (University of Arizona Press, 2004), p. 13; Allan Rosenus, General M.G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), p. 212-13.

[21] Ed Mannion, “Casa Grande Road Served as Newtown,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 20, 1957; Liber A Deeds, Sonoma County, Page 710-711  (original page 208-209) Sonoma County Deeds: deed sale by Mariano G. Vallejo of Sonoma to M.G. Lewis and Henry P. Heintzelman of Petaluma of “undivided half of the town site of Petaluma” as laid down in map by C.W. Rowe. Lewis and Heintzelman to hold even numbered lots, and Vallejo odd numbered lots. Lewis and Heintzelman also deposit an undivided interest in said town to James B. Huie. Signed by Vallejo, Lewis, Heintzelman, and Huie.

[22] Deeds, Liber M, Sonoma County, Pages 171-173  (original page 197-198) Sonoma County Deeds: On July 9, 1852, M.G. Lewis sells James B. Huie for $1,000 his interest in 600 acres known as the City of Petaluma mapped out by Wesley Rowe, being a piece of the parcel conveyed by Mariano G. Vallejo to Lewis and H. P. Heintzelman in deed on June 12, 1852. Lewis reserves for himself 7 lots of 80×100 feet each; Note: Lewis also made an unsuccessful run for the state senate in 1852 (“From the Interior: Sonoma,” Sacramento Daily Union, October 4, 1852; “Election Returns—Sonoma County,” Sacramento Union, November 27, 1852).

[23] Deeds, Liber M, 1852-1855, Sonoma County, Pg. 3, image 230: September 20, 1852, ownership of lots 10 and 12, which on the 1852 Rowe map are beside the creek, in what appears to be marsh land: James B. Huie and Henry P. Heintzelman, joint owners of lots numbered 10 and 12 in Petaluma City, in consideration for one dollar each paid to the other, Lot 10 shall be divided into lots 80 feet, each fronting Front Street and running to the Petaluma Creek. Huie shall have the corner lot situated at Main & Front streets, the adjacent lot granted to Henry P. Heintzelman, and each remaining alternative lot in subdivision is granted to the two parties. The remaining part of Lot 12 running back to Petaluma Creek shall remain for the use of a ferry, owned by James B. Huie, the remaining part of Lot 12 owned by Heintzelman; Munro-Fraser, p. 260: location of Hertzelmann’s office.

[24] Deeds, Liber M, 1852-1855, Sonoma County, Pg. 267, image 366: On August 1, 1852, M.G. Lewis, serving as attorney on behalf of George H. Keller and “signing in fact” for Keller, for the sum of $150 sold lots 17 and 18 in Petaluma to Samuel Terrill (a fellow Justice of the Peace); Deeds, Liber M, 1852-1855, Sonoma County, Pg. 207, image 335: On July 24, 1853, M.G. Lewis, serving as attorney on behalf of George H. Keller and “signing in fact” for Keller, for the sum of $80, sold three lots in Petaluma to James Delaney.

[25] “Land Commission: Claims Filed Since Last Report,” Sacramento Daily Union, June 3, 1852.

[26] Thompson, pp. 55-56.

[27] Ad for sailing yacht Gen. Geo. Cadwallader, Daily Alta California, May 18, 1850: Huie was engaged in the ferry business in San Francisco; “Died in Kentucky,” Petaluma Argus, February 27, 1880.

[28] Ad for Red Jacket, Daily Alta California, August 14, 1852; “Notice,” Daily Alta California, September 14, 1852; Ads for Red Jacket, Daily California Alta, September 24, 25, 26, 27, 30 1852, October 1, 1862; “Died in Kentucky,” Petaluma Argus, February 27, 1880: Huie’s obituary gives him credit for running the first steamer up the Petaluma Creek; Heig, p. 71.

[29] “The Gale Yesterday—Accidents in the Harbor,” Daily Alta California, November 4, 1852.

[30] Ad “For Petaluma,” Daily Alta California, March 2, 1853; “Notice, Daily Alta California, May 27, 1853; Ad for Reindeer Steamer for Petaluma, Daily Alta California, October 13, 1853; “From the Interior: Sonoma,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 28, 1853.

[31] First Ad for steamer E. Corning to Petaluma, Daily Alta California, October 27, 1853.

[32] Wilbur Hoffman, “When Steamers Sailed the Feather,” Sutter County Historical Society News Bulletin, Vol. XVIII, April 1979; Jerry McMullen, Paddle Wheel Days in California (Stanford University Press, 1944), pp. 17-19.

[33] Minturn ad for newly refitted Kate Hayes for Vallejo and Napa route, Daily Alta California, January 10, 1853; Ad for Kate Hayes for Petaluma, Daily Alta California, March 31, 1854; “Historical: Petaluma’s Birth and Growth,” Petaluma Courier, October 19, 1892.

[34] “Commercial Depression 1854,” FoundSF.org, https://www.foundsf.org/COMMERCIAL_DEPRESSION_1854

[35] Thompson, p. 56. Note: Thompson provides the population figure, but avoids any mention of the recession, instead promoting a tale of rising prosperity.

[36] Henry Miles Moore, “Sketches of the Early Settlement of the City and County of Leavenworth,” Western Life (Leavenworth, KS), August 3, 1900; Deeds, Liber A, 1852-1855, Sonoma County, Pg. 833 (original page 93), image 842: on October 26, 1853, Keller grants Lewis power of attorney in all his real estate transactions in Petaluma. Note: it appears that Keller’s son, Garret V. Keller, who remained in Petaluma for a few years, also handled some property sales after his father’s departure.

[37] “Election Returns,” San Andreas Independent, September 4, 1858; “Postal Affairs,” Sacramento Union, August 18, 1884; Deeds, Liber M, 1852-1855, Sonoma County, Pg. 149, image 304; “Sheriff’s Sale,” Petaluma Journal, August 18, 1855; Note: In 1853, Lewis purchased 160 acres from Bartholomew Bojoques for $1,000 on the road to Bodega. In 1855, that property was part of a liquidation sale to pay off Lewis’s debts.

[38] Sheriff’s Sale,” Daily Alta California, November 11, 1854; Auction sale of Reindeer, Sacramento Daily Union, December 2, 1854; “Ellen Craig,” Petaluma Journal, December 15, 1855; Note: Apparently a lawsuit between Huie and John W. Brittan led to the sheriff seizing control of the Reindeer and selling it at auction. The new owners of the Reindeer it running to Petaluma and Petaluma City for another year before replacing it with the steamer Ellen Craig.

[39] Edwin C. Bearss, “Chapter 6: The Establishment of the Klamath River Reservation,” History Basic Data, Redwood National Park, Del Norte and Humboldt Counties, California, U.S. Department of Interior, September 1, 1969. https://npshistory.com/publications/redw/history/chap6.htm; “Office of Klamath Indian Reservation ,July 13, 1857,” California Indian History, https://calindianhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/07_13_1857.pdf; 1855 letter from Heintzelman to Congressman James W. Denver, December 19, 1855, Bartlebys Books.com, https://www.bartlebysbooks.com/pages/books/66219/h-p-heintzelman/reporting-on-the-political-climate-in-sacramento-the-candidates-for-california-secretary-of; Note: During his senate term Heintzelman undertook a survey of Sonoma and Mendocino native tribes for the Department of Indian Affairs.

[40] “Pioneer Gone,” Sacramento Union, January 8, 1889.

[41] “Religious,” Sonoma County Journal, August 2, 1856: the last listing of Huie in Petaluma, where he chaired a group creating St. John’s Episcopal Church.

[42] Ad for George and J. Thompson Huie selling hay at Petaluma City warehouse, Sonoma County Journal, January 29, 1858; Ad for shipping service out of New Town, Sonoma County Journal, August 26, 1859; Ad for 2 large warehouses and a number of lots sold in New Town, Sonoma County Journal, August 20, 1858; Ad for Real Estate for Sale, Sonoma County Journal, October 23, 1863; “Death of a Former Resident,” Petaluma Courier, December 13, 1893.

[43] Deeds, Liber M, 1852-1855, Sonoma County, Pg. 221, image 342, May 16, 1853: Keller ironically sold Stuart a lot in Petaluma in 1853; “The First Fight of the Lobby,” Petaluma Argus, February 25, 1863; “The Miranda Resolutions,” Sonoma County Journal, February 27, 1863; W.W. Robinson, Land in California: The Story of Mission Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 178-179.

[44] Donald Pisani, From the Family Farm to Agribusiness (Berkeley: UC Press, 1984), p. 5-10; James Gerber, “The Gold Rush Origins of California’s Wheat Economy,” December 2010, America Latina en la Historia Economica, 17(34):37-66; James Gerber, “Gold Rushes and the Trans-Pacific Wheat Trade, California and Australia, 1848-57,” Pacific and Pacific Rim Economic History Since the 16th Century, edited by Dennis O. Flynn, A.J. H. Lathan, and Lionell Frost (NJ: Routledge, 1999).

[45] Robert A. Thompson, pg. 56.

[46] First ads for Rudesill’s Landing, also called Haystack Landing: “New Coach,” Petaluma Journal, June 7, 1856; Ad , Petaluma Journal, June 14, 1856; Ad for Kate Hayes, Petaluma Journal, June 21, 1856; “Engines, Mules on Haystack Line,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955: use of small boats for shuttling freight from Haystack Landing; Honoria Tuomey, History of Sonoma County (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1926), Vol, 1, p. 471: Petaluma’s “mud stages.’

[47] “Act to Improve the Creek,” Sonoma County Journal, April 13, 1860; “The Work Commenced,” Sonoma County Journal, August 26, 1859; “Improvement of the Creek,” Sonoma County Journal, October 14, 1859.

[48] “Steamboat Changes,” Sonoma County Journal, November 25, 1859; Not Dead,” Daily National Democrat, December 6, 1859; “He Served as the First Mayor of Joplin Through Appointment,” Joplin Globe, June 10, 1923.”

[49] Ad for 2 large warehouses and a number of lots sold for sale in New Town, Sonoma County Journal, August 20, 1858; Ad for Real Estate at Auction, Sonoma County Journal, October 15, 1858; Ad for Real Estate for Sale, Sonoma County Journal, October 23, 1863; Ad for J. Thompson Huie’s 320-acre Farm for Sale, Sonoma County Journal, September 22, 1864; Ad announcing closing of J.T. Huie & Co. pharmacy, Petaluma Argus, January 31, 1867; “Serious Accident,” Petaluma Argus, March 3, 1876: Huie closes his pharmacy in Petaluma, and presumably the land at New Town, and moves to Fort Point in the Presidio to serve as Lighthouse Keeper.

[50] “Straightening the Creek,” Sonoma County Journal, February 11, 1862; “The Cars are Coming,” Sonoma County Journal, February 19, 1862; “Kate Hayes,” Sonoma County Journal, April 11, 1862; “Projected Enterprises,” Sonoma County Journal, June 13, 1862; “Finished,” Petaluma Argus, July 21, 1864; “Railroad Extension,” Petaluma Argus, May 17, 1866; “Engines, Mules on Haystack Line,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955.

[51] “The Old Steamboat Days,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955.

How Land Sharks Deceived a Methodist Preacher

THE ADVENTURES OF REVEREND WAUGH IN EARLY PETALUMA

Illustration of Rev. Lorenzo Waugh from his published autobiography (public domain)

In the fall of 1852, Reverend Lorenzo Waugh rode into Petaluma aboard the same ox-driven wagon he used to cross the plains from Missouri. An itinerant Methodist preacher for twenty years, he was anxious to put down roots in California as a farmer.[1]

Waugh was not a man easily mislead, but his dream of a homestead in the new Golden State blinded him, as it did many others, to the pool of land sharks awaiting him in town.

Petaluma was in its infancy, founded just months before by one of Waugh’s former parishioners back in Weston, Missouri, George H. Keller. A disappointed gold miner, Keller viewed his new town as a claim on what many surmised to be California’s next gold rush, land speculation. There was just one hitch—the land wasn’t available.

As with the rest of the state’s most coveted farm and ranch lands, the town Keller staked out sat on a large Mexican land grant—one of 24 in Sonoma County—whose private ownership was protected by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which had ended the Mexican-American War. At least, it appeared to be. [2]

The ethos of the gold rush era, according to Stanford University’s founding president David Starr Jordan, was simple: “Whatever is not nailed down is mine, and whatever I can pry loose is not nailed down.”[3]

Many of the estimated 230,000 American settlers pouring into California in the early 1850s viewed the land grants as spoils of war, and therefore, like much of the rest of the West, in the public domain and available for homesteading.[4]

In that spirit, Keller, cheered on by his fellow settlers, claimed 158 acres at the northern tip of a land grant called Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio, which comprised 13,000 acres extending from the west side of the Petaluma Creek into northern Marin County.[5]

He then proceeded to lay out on 40 acres the town of Petaluma, opening a makeshift general store and hostel along the creek at the foot of Washington Street from which to sell property lots. [6]

Illustration of Petaluma looking from the east side of town, 1857 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

By the time Waugh arrived, Petaluma had roughly 50 houses, two hotels, a dry goods store, a livery, a potato warehouse, and a blacksmith. Flat-bottom schooners, loaded with potatoes, meat, and grains, plied up and down the creek, and The Red Jacket, a paddle-wheel steamer, ferried passengers and cargo to and from San Francisco at Haystack Landing, a relatively deep-water dock just a mile and a half south of town.[7]

Despite the fact Keller didn’t legally own the land, many of his sales were recorded by the Sonoma County clerk. That may have had something to do with the fact that the clerk, William Boggs, was both a real estate agent and the son of Sonoma County’s most prominent settler, Missouri ex-governor Lilburn Boggs.[8]

Lilburn Boggs, Sonoma alcalde and former Missouri governor (photo State Historical Society of Missouri)

The former governor came west in 1846 after losing his home and mercantile business in Missouri during an economic recession. He and his family were initially put up by General Mariano Vallejo at his Petaluma Adobe. Boggs then opened a dry goods store in Sonoma, and with Vallejo’s assistance, was appointed alcalde, or judicial and administrative officer, for the Mexican territory of Northern California extending from Sonoma to the Oregon border.[9]

Following the Mexican-American War, Boggs was appointed Sonoma County’s first postmaster, and in 1851 elected to the California State Assembly, along with Vallejo, who had been elected to the state senate.[10]

Boggs’ reports of Sonoma County’s rich farmlands and mild climate circulated among Missourians back home as well those working the California gold fields. As a result, of the 560 settlers counted in the 1850 Sonoma County census, 108 were from Missouri.[11]

Waugh personally knew Governor Boggs from his time as a Methodist circuit rider in Missouri, and it’s likely both he and Keller were partially drawn to the Petaluma area because of him.[12]

SWINDLED BY LAND SHARKS

Unlike Keller, Waugh hadn’t come to California for the gold. He was hoping the milder climate would alleviate the lingering effects of his malaria.[13] While most early settlers staked out farmland west of town—eager to get in on the potato boom being fueled by San Francisco’s burgeoning population—Waugh purchased 160 rolling acres of wild oats five miles to the north, near current-day Penngrove. “There was not a house in a line between me and town,” he wrote .[14]

The two young men who sold Waugh the property claimed it was government-owned land, and so in the public domain. Under the terms of the Preemption Act of 1841, a squatter had the right to purchase up to 160 acres in the public domain, assuming he resided on the land for at least 14 months or made agricultural improvements to it for five years.[15]

Waugh spent the first winter with his wife Clarissa and their four children crammed into a small redwood shanty that came with the ranch. In the spring, he built a proper redwood house. Having quit the preaching circuit because of his heath, he set out to become a farmer, planting a vineyard and an orchard of 100 fruit trees.[16]

Somewhere along the line, Waugh learned the property was not in the public domain but part of the 66,000-acre Rancho Petaluma owned by General Mariano Vallejo.

Mariano Vallejo, 1875 (Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)

The large ranches were used primarily for raising cattle to supply Alta California’s thriving hide and tallow export business with Europe and New England. As cattle required as much as 30 acres a piece for grazing room, ranches of 4,000 to 5,000 acres were relatively modest enterprises.[17] Vallejo’s holdings were the largest in the area.

Mexican cattle round-up on open range (Bill Murphy, A Pictorial History of California)

In an effort to secure legal title to his ranch, Waugh traveled to Sonoma to see Vallejo.

“I know the place where you have stopped,” Vallejo reportedly told him, “and I do not know whether it is on my grant or not. When the land is surveyed, then we shall know.”[18]

Due to Mexico’s laisse-faire legal system, the land grant deeds were often sketchy, incomplete, and in some cases, fraudulent. The land itself was haphazardly surveyed, if surveyed at all.[19] As more settlers poured into the new state, the legal ownership of the land grants came under increased scrutiny. In 1851, Congress passed the California Land Act, subjecting all Mexican land grant claims to legal review by an appointed Land Commission.[20]

Ostensibly meant to bring clarity to the legal morass, the bill placing the burden of proving ownership on the claimants, effectively putting the grants into play. That opened the door to a host of American land sharks and lawyers who preyed upon the land-rich but cash-poor Mexican grant holders by subjecting them to ownership challenges before the courts that incurred large legal bills.

By 1852, more than 40% of California’s 813 land grants had fallen into the hands of American speculators or else Americans who had married into Mexican families, where the grants sometimes served as dowries.[21]  

Prospective settlers were faced with two options: either purchase property from a claimant, whose land grant ownership might ultimately be nullified by the Land Commission, or else take a chance illegally squatting on the land in hopes that if the land owner’s claim was rejected by the Land Commission, the land would be placed in the public domain, allowing the squatter to make their own preemptive claim to it.[22]

Then there were buyers like Waugh, who unknowingly got fleeced.

Waugh’s 160 acres sat at the northwest corner of Vallejo’s Rancho Petaluma, near the current-day junction of East Railroad Avenue and Davis Lane in Penngrove. It bordered on the adjacent Cotate Rancho land grant, which may have been the source of the uncertainty as to its boundaries that Vallejo mentioned to Waugh.

Plat of the the Rancho Petaluma extending from the east shore of the Petaluma Creek to the town of Sonoma (Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)

According to Waugh, at his meeting with Vallejo, the general made him an offer of the property in appreciation of his work as a minister, especially as a missionary to the Indian tribes in Kansas Territory.

“Now you go right on where you are, if that place suits you,” Vallejo reportedly told him. “If that place proves to be mine when surveyed, you shall have a home, and it will not matter about your money, whether it is much or little.”[23]

The Land Commission completed their review of California’s land grants in 1856, including confirmation of Vallejo’s claim to Rancho Petaluma. But their ruling, like a majority of the claims they approved, was immediately appealed by the State of California in district court. The appeal was dismissed in 1862, but Vallejo would not receive a formal patent on the Rancho Petaluma until 1874, which was also the case for many grant holders.[24]

Vallejo didn’t wait for the ruling of the Land Commission nor of the courts. With his hide and tallow export business disrupted by the Mexican-American War, a cash-strapped Vallejo began subdividing and selling off parts of Rancho Petaluma to American squatters and speculators soon after the war.

Due to the mismanagement of his holdings by his American son-in-law, John Frisbee, Vallejo’s financial difficulties increased as the gold rush wound down and California fell into an economic recession in the mid-1850s, exasperated by a drought.

John Frisbee, Vallejo’s son-in-law (illustration public domain)

As cattle prices spiraled downward, Vallejo accelerated his land sales. By the 1860s, all of Rancho Petaluma had been sold off, including the property Waugh was squatting on—only not to Waugh.[25]

In Waugh’s account, the ranch was sold out from under him by Vallejo’s lawyer,  who exercised power of attorney to do so while Vallejo was away tending to the death of a brother. In his autobiography, Waugh claims the lawyer  sold the ranch to a settler identified as “Mr. O”.[26]

The public record tells a different story.

HOW WAUGH LOST HIS FARM

Vallejo’s younger brother, Juan Antonio, did indeed die in May 1857 after being thrown from a horse at a Monterey rodeo.[27] As the court appointed administrator of his estate, Vallejo temporarily relocated to Watsonville to manage his brother’s rancho . He return to Sonoma in the fall of 1858.[28]

Waugh’s ranch was sold on October 25, 1858, six years after Waugh first squatted on it, and two years after the Land Commission approved Vallejo’s land grant and surveyed its borders. Why Waugh didn’t approach Vallejo at that time to purchase the land, as Vallejo had recommended in their earlier meeting, is unknown.

County records indicate that Vallejo—not his lawyer—sold Waugh’s ranch to two of his sons, Andronico, an indolent Sonoma music teacher, and Jose, a foster son, as part of a larger 1,039-acre sale, for $100, or 10 cents an acre. The notary public who witnessed General Vallejo’s signature on the deed of sale was George L. Wratten, a Sonoma lawyer and land speculator who would later become Sonoma County’s probate judge.[29]

Deed of sale for Waugh’s ranch sign by “Mr. G. Vallejo” in the presence of notary public George L. Wratten of Sonoma (Sonoma County Library)

Less than three weeks after the sale, the notary Wratten purchased the tract of 1,039 acres from Vallejo’s two sons for $8,500 ($258,000 in today’s currency), or $8 an acre. Five days after closing the deal, Wratten then sold off almost half of the tract—501 acres—to a Petaluma realtor named George W. Oman for $10 an acre, generating a small profit of $2 an acre. [30]

Oman was clearly the “Mr. O” that Waugh wrote about in his autobiography. Oman first came to California in 1846 with the Mormon Battalion to fight in the war against Mexico. In the 1850s, he returned to California, settling in Petaluma as a realtor and breeder of draft horses.[31]

A month after purchasing the lot from Wratten, Oman sold 150 acres of his new property to Jacob Adamson, a former gold miner from Tennessee, for $10 an acre, holding onto the remaining 351 acres for himself.[32]

The property Adamson purchased—lot 376 of the district east of the Petaluma Creek designated as “Vallejo Township”—was Waugh’s ranch (the remaining 10 acres of Waugh’s 160 acres may have resided in the adjacent Cotate Rancho).[33]

Waugh’s original property near what became the town of Penngrove, sold by George Oman in 1858 to Jacob Adamson (1877 Thompson map, Sonoma County Library)

Waugh claims he made Oman a counter offer for the ranch, but was turned down. Given that Waugh’s net worth at the time was only $600, it’s probable he lacked sufficient capital.[34]

After taking ownership of the property, Oman sued to evict Waugh from the property, and, according to Waugh, also requested $3,000 from him for damages made to the land. Waugh identified those “damages” as the vineyard and orchard he planted.[35]

Waugh countersued for compensation on the basis that those were improvements to the land. The legal wrangling dragged on for the next two years.[36]

THE MISSIONARY YEARS

During that period, Waugh’s health improved and he decided to get back out on the proselytizing circuit. But instead of returning to itinerant preaching, he focused on the moral education of children, creating the California Youth Association to encourage the young to “shun the degrading, ruinous habits of using tobacco and intoxicating drink.” Assuming the role of the CYA’s traveling lecturer, he embarked upon what became a never-ending tour as California’s “apostle of temperance.”[37]

Rev. Lorenzo Waugh, “the apostle of temperance” (photo by George Ross, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

Education had been Waugh’s first profession. Growing up in West Virginia, he was asked at the age of 16 to teach his own school class after the teacher was fired for being inebriated. He left teaching when he was 24 to enter the Methodist Episcopal ministry, becoming a circuit rider among small settlements in Ohio and then Missouri.[38]

Illustration of Methodist circuit rider, 1840s (Indiana Public Media)

In 1837, at the age of 29, he was assigned to teach as a missionary at the new Shawnee Manual Labor School in pre-territorial Kansas.[39] Created by the Methodists to separate Shawnee children from the “heathenish” influences of their parents so as to oversee their intellectual and moral development, the reservation school also provided instruction in the “manual arts,” teaching girls domestic skills and boys farming, blacksmithing, and carpentry.[40]

While Waugh painted a picture of the Shawnee happily embracing Christian conversion, the missionaries’ efforts actually sparked dissension and fragmentation amongst tribal members, a majority of whom maintained their traditional spiritual beliefs.[41]

Methodist Indian Mission in Kansas (Kansas Historical Society)

Waugh also served as a Methodist missionary to the Kansa tribe, or Kaw, who, like the Shawnee, had been forcibly removed from their native lands to pre-territorial Kansas. There he witnessed the miseries of reservation life, including alcoholism, starvation, and a devastating smallpox epidemic introduced most likely by missionaries like himself.[42]

In 1840, Waugh returned to Missouri as a circuit rider, covering such small towns like Weston along the Mississippi River, where he presumably met Petaluma’s future founder, George Keller, who attended the Methodist Church.

Illustration of Weston, Missouri, on the Mississippi River, 1840s (Weston Historical Society)

He also became engaged in the new temperance movement sweeping the country, joining two prominent fraternal groups, the Sons of Temperance and the Independent Order of Good Templars, who operated with secret rituals and ranks of membership.[43]

After leaving Missouri to settle in Petaluma in 1852, Waugh became head of the local Sons of Temperance chapter, as well as Grand Chaplain of the state’s division, serving as a delegate to their national conferences.[44]

He also continued his involvement in education, serving as a founding trustee of the Vallejo Township school district that extended east of the Petaluma Creek, where he helped to establish Bethel School, a one-room public schoolhouse at the southwest corner of Adobe and Corona roads (the land for which he did not donate, contrary to common lore, as it was established before he owned property near the site).[45]

Bethel Schoolhouse, 1908 (Sonoma County Library)

In the mid-1850s, the Vallejo Township was divided into three school districts, Waugh, Bliss, and Payran, each named for one of the founding trustees— Lorenzo Waugh, William Bliss, and Stephen Payran.[46](Bethel School was often referred to during the 19th century as the “Waugh School,” as it was the only school in the Waugh School District, but the school was not formally renamed Waugh School until 1925, when residents of the Waugh School District approved a school bond to erect a new schoolhouse).

THE RIGHTEOUS CRUSADER

The loss of his farm in 1858 ignited Waugh’s righteous crusading instincts, which had last flared up in the 1840s during a national schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church over slavery.

In 1844, Waugh had attended the national Methodist conference in Baltimore, Maryland, during which a fight between northern abolitionists and southern congregations resulted in the spin-off from the church of the pro-slavery Methodist Episcopal Church South. in the midst of the acrimonious conference, Waugh managed to wrangle meetings in nearby Washington, D.C., with former U.S. President John Quincy Adams and former secretary of state Daniel Webster, both longtime opponents of slavery.[47]

Upon his return to Missouri, the new M.E. Church South tried to have Waugh relieved of his appointment as a circuit minister, advising him to either join them as pro-slavery advocates or else leave the state. He refused, staking out a position above the fray he called “M. E. conservative,” which viewed both abolitionists and pro-slavery Methodists as extremists.

Instead, Waugh preached separation of church and state, focusing on repentance for sin and reformation from wrong-doing of masters and slaves alike, without assuming any responsibility for changing the existing constitution of the nation.

After being maligned, persecuted, and physically threatened, Waugh doubled down on his stance, writing and printed a pamphlet that outlining his M.E. conservative position, and bravely continued to travel the circuit, distributing copies of the pamphlet and despite drawing the ire of ministers in the M.E. Church South, until his health gave out in 1851.[48]

Waugh’s 1840s pamphlet on the M.E.Church South, reprinted in 2017 by Forgotten Books

That same fighting spirit returned after Oman sued to evict Waugh from his farm. In the spring of 1859, Waugh called for a convention at Petaluma’s Musical Hall to form a Sonoma County chapter of the Settlers’ League. Established in 1857 for the purpose of lobbying elected official to protect the rights of homesteaders, some members of the statewide Settlers’ League had since formed secret societies devoted to defying government authority and terrorizing land grant claimants.[49]

Waugh’s call to action came on the heels of two high-profile legal challenges to San Francisco land grants approved by the Land Commission that alleged to be fraudulent. The law firm filing the challenges, began running ads in newspapers around the state, including in Petaluma, claiming that more a quarter of the approved land grant claims were believed to be tainted by bribery, forgery, and perjury, and calling on settlers to come forward with testimony and evidence.[50]

Settlers’ League ad, Sonoma County Journal, March 19, 1858

With Waugh assuming the position of vice-president, the new Sonoma Settlers’ League pledged to fight all attempts “of cormorants and their parasites” in trying to pass laws to prevent investigations into land grants the commission had approved. Members also pledged not to purchase property held in any of the county’s 24 land grants until appeals of the commission’s rulings were legally “settled and reliable.”[51]

Intensifying Sonoma County’s land grant battles was the wheat boom. By 1860, the county’s non-native population, which stood at 560 in 1850, had grown to 12,000, consisting largely of farmers with more than 200,000 acres of the county under cultivation, much of it in wheat and other grains.[52]

After the Crimean War of 1853 cut off Russian wheat exports to Australia and New Zealand, those countries turned to California for wheat supplies, setting off a minor boom. That boom would explode once the Civil War began, disrupting Midwest wheat exports to Europe.[53]

With so many land grants tied up in court appeals, the growing wheat boom led to clashes between claimants and settlers, turning in some cases into small-scale warfare, especially when claimants resorted to trying to eject large holdings of what they called “squatters.”

Two months after Waugh’s formation of the Sonoma Settlers’ League, the league faced its first call-to-arms in the “Bodega War.”

The Bodega Rancho, 1877 Thompson map (Sonoma County Library)

The 35,000-acre Bodega Rancho land grant had just been claimed by an ambitious, young San Franciscan named Tyler Curtis, who married the widow of the original grant holder, Captain Stephen Smith. Curtis requested the county sheriff evict 48 “squatters” living and farming on his rancho. For assistance, he sent 40 of his own armed “hirelings” from San Francisco to Petaluma via the ferry.

The settlers occupying the Bodega Rancho maintained that Captain Smith had never laid proper claim to the land they occupied. Resentful of being called “squatters” on land they had spent years improving, they reached out to Waugh’s new Settlers’ League.

The morning after reaching Bodega, Curtis and his militia were greeted by more than 250 armed members of the Sonoma County Settlers’ League. After a tense standoff, the sheriff convinced Curtis and his men to stand down. The Settlers’ League escorted him and his hirelings back to Petaluma, where a large crowd gathered to send them off to San Francisco on the ferry with a cannon salute.[54]

Further negotiations for a compromise with Curtis were rejected, and he ultimately sold the land parcels off to the settlers.

Tensions between settlers and land grant claimants further intensified during the Civil War, as Sonoma County split into two factions, with Union loyalists occupying the Petaluma region and Southern sympathizers the Santa Rosa plain.

By that time, Waugh had removed himself from the Settlers’ League, having resolved his land issues thanks to General Vallejo.

THE SAVING GRACES OF GENERAL VALLEJO

While caught up in his lawsuit battle over his farm with Oman, Waugh went to see Vallejo. At their meeting, he claims Vallejo said of the Mormon Oman, “Nothing better might be expected of him, as he was long in league with Joe Smith and Brigham Young, and they were in league with the devil.”

Lachryma Montis, home of Mariano Vallejo in Sonoma (Sonoma County Library)

Waugh also claims Vallejo referred to Oman as leader of the new Settlers’ League.

“Mr. O. too, was head of the Settlers’ league, sworn, of course, to guard and protect all the rights of you settlers, which in his case meant take care of himself and let the devil take the balance.”[55]

No record can be found of Oman’s membership in the league, nor does Waugh mention his autobiography his own leadership role in the group.

Waugh then quotes Vallejo as seeking to make amends for Waugh’s loss of his farm.

“There is a tract of 320 acres near you, a fine place too, nicely watered. A place I intended for one of my boys. If that place will suit you, and make you safe, you go to your attorney, and have him make you out a deed for that land, and bring it to me.”[56]

Waugh claims that when he returned with the deed, Vallejo had it notarized in his presence and paid all the fees, gifting him the land.[57] But, as detailed in the county deed records, the transaction followed a more circuitous route than that, engaging, at least on paper, a third party transaction for Waugh to purchase the land from Vallejo.

On September 29, 1860, Vallejo sold 320 acres comprising lots 286 and 287 in Vallejo Township to a workingman in San Francisco named Hereziah Bisel Wilson for $1. The thirty-year-old Wilson, originally from Ohio and single, had lived exclusively in San Francisco since coming west in the 1850s. He would continue to do so until his death in a city almshouse in 1903. His connection to Vallejo is unknown. Two weeks later, Wilson sold the property to Waugh for $3,200 ($122,000 in today’s currency), at the going rate of $10 an acre.[58]

Where Waugh obtained the money is unknown, as his recorded net worth at the time was only $600.[59] Perhaps Vallejo lent him the money off the books, using the intermediate $1 transaction with Wilson as a means of laundering it, but that is mere speculation.

Waugh’s 320 acre ranch (lot 286) at the corner of Adobe Road and Hardin Lane, which he split with his two sons (lot 287); across the street is Waugh School (1866 A.B. Bowers map of Sonoma County, Sonoma County Library)

The 320 acres that Waugh was deeded encompassed the southeast corner of Adobe Road and Hardin Lane.[60] He split the lot in half, giving the lower 160 acres of lot 286 to his sons John and William, and later sold 120 acres to his daughter Elizabeth and her husband George Allen, leaving 40 acres for himself.[61]

The house he built near the corner of Adobe Road and Hardin Lane still stands, although in s disheveled state. The Waugh family apparently built a second home in front of it in the late 1800s, which is also boarded up.

The remains of Waugh’s original house at the southeast corner of Adobe Road and Hardin Lane (public domain)

Waugh claims that he ultimately won his lawsuit battle with Oman, after a board of arbitrators made Oman withdraw his damages suit, and instead pay Waugh for a “quit-claim deed of the land,” as well as allow him to remove the vineyard and fruit tree improvements he had made from the property.[62] He wrote in his autobiography that while Oman never formally acknowledged his homestead claim, Waugh forgave him, and the two lived as neighbors and friends afterward.[63]

Waugh devoted much of the remaining 40 years his life traveling the state and country as a temperance lecturer, eventually moving to San Francisco to live with his daughter. In 1883, he published a popular autobiography, which saw six printings. He died in 1900 while visiting a relative in Williams in Colusa County, a few days after attending a celebration of his 92nd birthday at the Methodist Church in Petaluma.[64]

In 1925, a new school building was erected on the site of the Bethel School across from Waugh’s former home, and formally renamed Waugh School in his memory.[65]

Rev. Waugh with unidentified child, circa late 1890s (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lorenzo Waugh, Autobiography of Lorenzo Waugh (Oakland, Calif.: Pacific Press, 1883), pp. 208-9.

[2] David Hornbeck, “The Patenting of California’s Private Land Claims, 1851-1885,” Geographical Review, Vol. 69, No. 4 (October., 1979), p. 437.

[3] The quote about the gold rush mentality, is attributed to Stanford University’s founding president David Starr Jordan,  “Whatever is Not Nailed Down is Mine and Whatever I Can Pry Loose is Not Nailed Down,” quoteinvestigator.com.

[4] Donald J. Pisani, “Squatter Law in California, 1850-1858,” Western Historical Quarterly, Autumn, 1994, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 291-292.

[5] Hornbeck, p. 437.

[6] Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), pgs. 21, 29; “Centennial Resurrection,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, March 31, 1876; “Historical: Petaluma’s Birth and Growth,” Petaluma Courier, October 19, 1892; Robert Allan Thompson, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877), pp. 55.

[7] Thos. Thompson, Historical Atlas map of Sonoma County (Oakland, CA: Thos. Thompson & Co, 1877), p. 20; “Historical: Petaluma’s Birth and Growth,” Petaluma Courier, October 19, 1892; Robert Allan Thompson, pp. 54-55; Munro-Fraser, pgs. 131, 259-262.

[8] William Bogg’s name, along with that of his father, can be found in many of the early deeds listed in “Deeds of Sonoma County, 1847-1901,” film #008117705, LDS FamilySearch database. familysearch.org.

[9] William Boggs, “Lilburn Boggs,” F.A. Sampson, ed., Missouri Historical Review, Vol. IV (October 1909-July 1910), pp. 109; Donald Edwards, “Lilburn Boggs,” Portraits of Early Sonoma County Settlers (Sonoma County Genealogical Society, 2016), pp. 15-16.

[10] Claire Prechtel-Kluskaens, “The Nineteenth-century Postmaster and his Duties,” NGS Magazine, National Genealogical Society, January, 2007; William Boggs, “Lillian Boggs,” F.A. Sampson, ed., Missouri Historical Review, Vol. IV (October 1909-July 1910), pp. 109; “First Postmasters,” Petaluma Argus, April 6, 1926; Heig, p. 30.

[11] “Donald Edwards, pp. 15-18; “Gaye Lebaron’s Notebook,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, April 1, 1990.

[12] Waugh, pgs. 135, 189; “A Long Life: Short Historical Sketch of Rev. Lorenzo Waugh,” Daily Commonwealth, August 27, 1884.

[13] Waugh, p. 174.

[14] Robert Allan Thompson, pgs. 18 24, 55; Waugh, pp. 208-209.

[15] The Preemption Act of 1841, 27th Congress, Ch. 16, 5 Stat. 453 (1841), accessed from www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org; Paul W. Gates, The California Land Act of 1851, California Historical Society, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 1971), pp. 395–430.

[16] Contrary to local lore, Waugh did not build the first M.E. Church at 4th and A streets in Petaluma in 1856, nor was he ever standing minister of the M.E. Church in Petaluma, although he did lecture from time to time and perform wedding ceremonies (J.P. Munro-Fraser, “Methodist Episcopal Church,” History of Sonoma County (Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880), pp. 311-12.

[17] Pisani, p. 286.

[18] Waugh, p. 212.

[19] Hornbeck, pgs. 435, 438; Pisani, p. 286.

[20] Paul W. Gates, “California’s Embattled Settlers,” California Historical Society Quarterly, June, 1962, Vol. 41, No. 2, p. 104.

[21] Paul Gates, “The California Land Act of 1851,” California Historical Quarterly, December 1971, Vol. 50, No. 4. Pgs. 402, 408, 410; Hornbeck, pgs. 440, 442.

[22] Pisani, pp. 291-292.

[23] Waugh autobiography, pp. 212.

[24] “The Petaluma Grant,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, February 4, 1862; Hornbeck, pp. 439-440; Pisani, p. 287; Petaluma grant: [Sonoma County, Calif.]: M.G. Vallajo [i.e. Vallejo], claimant; case no. 321, Northern District, 1852 – 1863.: United States vs. Mariano G. Vallejo, pgs. 136.

[25] Allan Rosenus, General M.G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), p. 212-13.

[26] Waugh autobiography, p. 213. Note: Waugh also erroneously states he lived on the land for 9 years, not 6 (1852-68) before Vallejo sold it.

[27] “Killed,” Sacramento Daily Union, May 29, 1857; Rosenus, p.215.

[28] Rosenus, p. 215-218.

[29] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 7, page 763, index image 390, October 25, 1858,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[30] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 7, page 764, index image 390, November 19, 1858,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 7, page 796, index image 407, November 24, 1858,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; note: the 501.25 acres covered lots 281, 377, and a partial 150 acres of lot 376 in the Rancho Petaluma).

[31] Findagrave.com: George Washington Oman, 1804-1882; Ad for Oman’s prize breeding draft horse John Bull, Petaluma Weekly Argus, April 28, 1864; The deed records of Sonoma County show more than a dozen property transactions for George Oman between the late 1850s and 1870s, and his also advertised sales for Columbus Tustin’s 750-acre orchard and lots in Tustin’s Addition: “For Sale,” Sonoma County Journal, December 3, 1858;

[32] Note: Oman initially put the remaining 351 acres of his purchase–lots 281 and 377–for sale, but ended up living on the property himself (“For Sale,” Sonoma County Journal, December 23, 1860); 1860 U.S. Census lists Oman living in Vallejo Township with a real estate value of $5,000; R.A. Thompson’s 1877 map of Sonoma County lists Henry Decker, a future member of the Petaluma Board of Trustees, as owning Oman’s lots 281 and 377. No record could be found of Oman’s sale to Decker—there may have been an intermediate transaction. The 1880 U.S. Census lists Oman as living at 511 Main Street in Petaluma, indicating he had moved into town sometime in the 1870s.

[33] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 9, page 123, index image 840, January 4, 1859,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; “Death of Esteemed Citizen,” Petaluma Argus, July 2, 1880; Note: [xxxiii] Waugh’s ranch was originally 160 acres. It sat on lot 376 of the Vallejo Township. The sale of lot 376 at 150 acres by Vallejo to his sons is listed as a partial sale, implying the additional 10 acres may have extended into the adjacent Cotate Rancho, and hence were cut from the lot in Rancho Petaluma.

[34] Waugh autobiography, p. 216, 1860 U.S. Census.

[35] Waugh autobiography, pp. 213-14.

[36] 1860 U.S. Census; “District Court,” Sonoma Democrat, June 14, 1860; “District Court: Jury Calendar,” Sonoma Democrat, October 11, 1860.

[37] Waugh autobiography, pp. 218-220; “The Temperance Cause,” Marysville Daily Appeal, June 1, 1860; “M.E. Church in Windsor,” Russian River Flag, June 10, 1869.

[38] Kevin Abing, “A Holy Battleground: Methodist, Baptist, and Quaker Missionaries Among Shawnee Indians, 1830-1844,” Kansas History, Summer 1998, pgs. 120, 127.

[39] Waugh autobiography, pgs. 35-36, 117.

[40] Abing, p. 125.

[41] Abing, pp. 135-136.

[42] Waugh autobiography, 126-131; Benjamin Y. Dixon, “Furthering Their Own Demise: How Kansa Indian Death Customs Accelerated Their Depopulation,” Ethnohistory, Summer 2007, Vol 54, Issue 3. Pp. 488-491.

[43] Waugh autobiography, p. 297; Jack S. Blocker, David M. Fahey, Ian R. Tyrrell, Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History, An International Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2003). Pgs. 272-273, 320.

[44] “S. of T.,” Sonoma County Journal, January 19, 1856; “Grand Division, Sons or Temperance,” Sacramento Daily Union, October 31, 1856; “Grand Division, Sons or Temperance,” Sacramento Daily Union, October 29, 1859; “Sons and Daughters of Temperance,” Marysville Daily Appeal, October 31, 1869; “Father L. Waugh,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, November 5, 1880.

[45] “Sonoma County Election,” Sonoma County Journal, August 25, 1855; “Our Public Schools,” Sonoma County Journal, December 19, 1856; a public school, Bethel opened in the early 1850s on property that was originally part of a 160-acre parcel purchased in 1853 from Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo by Judge Philip R. Thompson: “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book K, pages 176-77, index image 138,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[46] “Schools in Vallejo (Township),” Sonoma County Journal, February 26, 1858; the other two trustees were Judge Stephen Payran and William D. Bliss, for whom the early one-room schools in their respective districts, Payran and Bliss, were also named; Contract for School at Waugh is Let for $8,114,” Petaluma Courier, June 26, 1925; “New Waugh School to Open November 1,” Petaluma Courier, October 16, 1925; “Waugh P.T.A. Plans Old Fashioned Dance, Petaluma Courier, October 15, 1925; “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963.

[47] Waugh autobiography, pgs. 147, pp. 156-160.

[48] April E. Holm, A Kingdom Divided: Evangelists, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era (Louisiana State University Press, 2017), pp. 60-61; Lorenzo Waugh, A Candid Statement of the Course Pursued by the Preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church South in Trying to Establish their New Organization in Missouri (Cincinnati: J.A. & U.P/. James, 1848); Waugh autobiography, pp. 161-172.

[49] “Settlers’ League,” Sonoma County Journal, May 15, 1857; Colonel L. A. Norton, “The Squatter Wars,” Life and Adventures of Colonel Norton (Big Byte Books, 2014),pp. 258-275; Paul W. Gates, Land and Law in California: Essays on Land Policies (Iowa State University Press, 1991), pp. 307-308.

[50] “Legislative,” Sacramento Daily Bee, January 18, 1859; “Strange Developments,” Sacramento Daily Bee, January 25, 1859; “General Land Office,” ad, SCJ, February 25, 1859.

[51] Daily Commonwealth: “A Long Life: Short Historical Sketch of Rev. Lorenzo Waugh,” August 27, 1884; “Settlers Meeting in Sonoma,” Sonoma Democrat, March 28, 1859; “Settlers Meeting,” Sonoma County Journal, March 25, 1859.

[52] “Population of Sonoma County,” Sonoma Democrat, September 27, 1860; “1860 Census: Agriculture of the United States,” United States Census Bureau, p. 10. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/agriculture/1860b-05.pdf

[53] “Varieties: The Sonoma Bulletin Says,” Placer Herald, June 8, 1853; Donald Pisani, From the Family Farm to Agribusiness (Berkeley: UC Press, 1984), p. 5-10; James Gerber, “The Gold Rush Origins of California’s Wheat Economy,” December 2010, America Latina en la Historia Economica 17(34):37-66; James Gerber, “Gold Rushes and the Trans-pacific Wheat Trade, California and Australia, 1848-57,” Pacific and Pacific Rim Economic History Since the 16th Century, edited by Dennis O. Flynn, A.J. H. Lathan, and Lionell Frost (NJ: Routledge, 1999).

[54] “Settler Excitement,” “The Bodega Difficulty,” Sonoma County Journal, June 3, 1859; Jeff Elliott, “The Man Who Stole Bodega Bay,” Santa Rosa History blog, May 17, 2014, http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/2014/05/the-man-who-stole-bodega-bay/

[55] Waugh autobiography, p. 214.

[56] Waugh autobiography, pp. 214-215.

[57] Waugh autobiography, p. 215.

[58] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 10, page 583, index image 428, September 29, 1860,” and “Book 10, page 604, index image 439, October 11, 1860,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; Ancestry.com: 1866 and 1886 Voter Registration records, 1880 and 1890 U.S. Census records; 1903 U.S. Death records.

[59] 1860 U.S. Census.

[60] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 10, page 604, index image 439, October 11, 1858,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; 1860 U.S. Census.

[61] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888: Book 23, page 431, index image 547, April 9, 1868; Book 23, page 362, index image 513, April 10, 1868;” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; “Real Estate Transactions,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, December 22, 1876.

[62] Waugh autobiography, p. 216.

[63] Waugh autobiography, p. 217; note: When Waugh’s sole daughter Elizabeth, born in 1852, was crowned Queen of a May Day Festival held at Bethel School in 1865, Oman served as her Crowning Bishop (“May Day in Vallejo,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, May 4, 1865).

[64] “Father Waugh Passes Away,” Petaluma Argus, September 6, 1900.

[65] “Contract for School at Waugh is Let for $8,114,” Petaluma Courier, June 26, 1925; “New Waugh School to Open November 1,” Petaluma Courier, October 16, 1925; “Waugh P.T.A. Plans Old Fashioned Dance, Petaluma Courier, October 15, 1925; “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963.