Tag: Mariano Vallejo

Who Was Marshall Lafferty?

The Historical Prequel to Petaluma’s Longest Running Land-War Drama

Jerry or Isaac Lafferty, son of Marshall Lafferty, 1872 (photo courtesy of Pete Vilmur Collection at PetalumaPioneers.org)

Kevin Costner is dressed in a tux, carrying a rifle.

Playing the role of land baron John Dutton in the TV series “Yellowstone,” he confronts a group of Chinese tourists on his property. One of them scolds him, calling it obscene that one man should own so much of the earth. He runs them off with a gunshot to the air.

“This is America,” he shouts. “We don’t share land.”

For the past 30 years, Petaluma has endured its own version of “Yellowstone” over Lafferty Ranch on Sonoma Mountain. It began when the city decided to shut down its century-old water works on the property and convert the 270 acres into a public park. Peter Pfendler, the millionaire owner of 800 acres abutting Lafferty, responded by firing off a shotgun brief to City Hall. Local officials naively brushed it off.[1]

“I think this could be a little war up there in the hills,” said one city council member. “Mr. Pfendler has threatened to call in his posse of lawyers, but you can’t keep 45,000 people off their property.”[2]

Police cars and protesters outside entrance to Lafferty Ranch, 2002 (photo North Bay Bohemian)

This is America. With enough lawyers, guns, and money, one can certainly try.

Faced with a costly lawsuit, the city quickly backed down. Years of plot twists followed—public protests, proposed land swaps, property access battles, backroom deals, ballot fraud, polarized elections, rifle shots, environmental damage suits, Pfendler’s death—making “Lafferty” the city’s longest running class-war series drama.[3]

As with “Yellowstone,” the series came with historical prequels featuring two of Petaluma’s early land barons, General Mariano Vallejo and banker William Hill. Land for these men, as for Pfendler, was not only an object of lust but a source of legitimacy, power, and identity. The more they owned, the more they mattered. 

View of Petaluma Valley from Lafferty Ranch (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

It wasn’t always so. Prior to being “discovered” by Europeans, Sonoma Mountain was inhabited for millennia by the Coast Miwok. In their origin myth, it was an island in a primordial ocean at the beginning of time, a place where the world began. They called it Oona-pa’is. [4]

For tribal members, the mountain was a cultivated garden they carefully nurtured and co-existed with. During hunting and gathering seasons, they dispersed from villages on the valley floor to small encampments on the mountain near fresh water sources, including presumably the two springs comprising the Adobe Creek headwaters on today’s Lafferty Ranch.

Illustration of California natives fishing by John Russell Bartlett (Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)

Then came the colonizers. To their eyes, the land appeared as an uncivilized wilderness upon which to project their dreams, aspirations, and greed. First, the Franciscan padres claimed it for their Sacred Expedition, driving the Coast Miwok into mission servitude and conversion, then the Mexican government secularized the mission lands, carving them up for private ranchos.[5]

Vallejo laid claim to the 66,000-acre Rancho Petaluma, stocking it with imported sheep and longhorn cattle. He shipped their hides, tallow, and wool to Europe and New England, where they fetched good prices for making leather goods, blankets, candles, and soap. After the livestock decimated the perennial native fescue, or bunch grass, it was replaced by Mediterranean annual grasses. Better suited for heavy grazing, they turned the hills golden in summer.[6]

Mariano Vallejo, 1875 (photo Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)

Vallejo lost his herd to American cattle rustlers during the Mexican-American War. To fill his coffers, he ventured into real estate, selling off subdivisions of Rancho Petaluma to land-hungry Americans, many of them disappointed lost boys from the Gold Rush. In 1859, Marshall Lafferty purchased 270 acres on Sonoma Mountain from Vallejo for $52,500 in today’s currency.[7] 

Born in North Carolina in 1808 and raised in Kentucky, Lafferty descended from early colonial stock. At 17, he married Elizabeth Criss from Pennsylvania. The couple had 13 children, eventually settling in Illinois. There, Lafferty served in the U.S. Army during the Black Hawk War, putting down a revolt by Native Americans evicted from tribal land they had secured in a treaty.[8]

In 1850, Lafferty headed west for the Gold Rush, returning home four years later. In 1857, he took his wife and children out to California via covered wagon, initially settling in the city of Vallejo before purchasing property on Sonoma Mountain.[9]

Entrance to Lafferty Ranch Sonoma Mountain (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

Like other “pioneers,” he looked upon the land with the boom-and-bust mentality of a gold miner.[10] The cycle began in the 1850s with a potato boom, which quickly faded because of overproduction and soil depletion. A cattle boom followed, fizzling out in the early 1860s due to overbreeding and competition. Then came the California wheat boom. Accelerating during the Civil War, which cut off Midwest wheat exports to Europe, it went bust in the 1880s due to soil erosion and competition.[11]

The steep terrain of Lafferty’s ranch lent itself more to cattle grazing than farming. Its elevation above the fog line and year-round water supply from Adobe Creek also made it feasible for growing imported fruit trees. The orchard had plenty of sunlight as most of the mountain’s native oaks had been logged out. Cut and piled into large mounds, they were covered with dirt and slowly burned to charcoal, which was shipped to San Francisco as a coal substitute for heating homes, businesses, and steam engines.[12]

In 1867, Marshall Lafferty sold his ranch to his two youngest sons, Isaac Newton Lafferty and Jeremiah Henry Clay Lafferty. Isaac left to pursue a teaching career, eventually becoming a school superintendent in Washington Territory. Jerry maintained the ranch, adding a large vineyard to the fruit orchard, and hosting deer hunting parties as well as social dances, where he played the violin. He eventually married and started a family, while continuing to care for his aging parents.[13]

Illustration of Petaluma, 1857 (Sonoma County Library)

Meanwhile, the thriving river port of Petaluma found itself hindered by water restrictions. Early residents near the river drew their water from wells and natural springs, but those buying into the new hillside developments were dependent upon water cart deliveries. The scarcity created a need for careful planning that clashed with the pioneering spirit of the times.Water became money.[14]

In the early 1870s, two groups of venture capitalists launched competing initiatives to pipe water into town from three creeks on Sonoma Mountain, Copeland, Lynch, and Adobe. By 1877, the two consolidated into the privately-owned Sonoma County Water Company.[15]

Adobe Creek near headwaters on Lafferty Ranch (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

In 1888, the Lafferty brothers sold their ranch for $170,000 in today’s currency, purchasing a new ranch in Glen Ellen, where Marshall Lafferty spent his final years until his death in 1892 at the age of 87.[16]

The Lafferty Ranch was purchased by William Hill, president of the Bank of Sonoma County, one of four locally financed banks in Petaluma. The other three controlled by John McNear, Isaac Wickersham, and Hiram Fairbanks. Together with Hill, they were the wealthiest men in Petaluma and also its largest landowners. Hill’s holdings alone comprised 6,000 acres.[17]

Hill was also president of the Sonoma County Water Company. He first purchased the water rights to Lafferty Ranch in 1887, before purchasing the ranch itself the following year in order to secure the headwaters of Adobe Creek for the water company, which he quickly flipped the property to for a nominal $10. For income, the company leased the ranch out for livestock grazing.[18]

William Hill residence, D & 8th streets, Petaluma (photo Sonoma County Library)

Changing hands a few times, the Sonoma County Water Company served as Petaluma’s main water source until 1959, when it was purchased, along with Lafferty Ranch, by the city. The voter-approved bond used to acquire the waterworks also funded an underground aqueduct for transporting water from a new dam on the Russian River to Petaluma, facilitating the city’s suburban housing boom.[19]

Proposals to convert Lafferty Ranch into a community park began with Petaluma’s 1962 general plan. In the early 1970s, Petaluma schools were allowed to use the ranch for limited educational and environmental purposes. Meanwhile, the city continued leasing out grazing rights to the property.[20]

In 1992, the Sonoma Mountain waterworks were shut down after Lawler Reservoir, which Adobe Creek fed into, was declared vulnerable to earthquakes. The City of Petaluma then decided to convert Lafferty Ranch into a public park, launching the longest running political drama in Petaluma history.[21]

A group of hikers touring Lafferty Ranch (photo by Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)

After Lafferty’s adjacent neighbors sought to block public access to the ranch by claiming ownership of a small strip of land between the ranch and the public road, in 2013 the City filed a lawsuit against them, claiming a historic public easement to the land. In 2019, the City dismissed the lawsuit after Pfendler’s widow, Kimberley Pfendler, agreed to no longer finance the opposition to developing Lafferty as a public park. [22]

In 2022, the city began piloting guided hikes on the property through a partnership with the non-profit LandPaths. Many people on a recent hike said they were seeking an experience of the land before European contact. . [23]

Lafferty Ranch is sadly far from that. It remains scarred from two centuries of being logged out, worked, and grazed upon since the Coast Miwok were driven from the area. The upcoming new season of “Lafferty” will hopefully be a quiet drama, one of gradual restoration and renewed stewardship of the land.

Matt McGuire and John Sheehy on Lafferty Ranch (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

******

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier July 7, 2023.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “City Opts to Keep Ranch Land,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 17, 1992; “Ranch Access May Be Stalled,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 7, 1992; “Petaluma Land Swap Foes Won’t Give Up,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 11, 1995.

[2] “This is Your Land­—Mostly,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 23, 1992.

[3] M.V. Wood, “Lafferty,” North Bay Bohemian, October 3-9, 2002; “Chronology of the Lafferty Ranch Controversy,” Laffertyranch.org/timeline

[4] M. Kat Anderson, Tending the Wild (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pgs. 1, 135; Merriam, C. Hart Merriam, editor, The Dawn of the World, Myths and Weird Tales Told by the Mewan (Miwok) Indians of California (Cleveland ,Ohio: Arthur H. Clarke Co, 1910). p. 203.

[5] Anderson, pp. 2-3; Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, “We Feel the Want of Protection: the Politics of Law and Race in California, 1848-1878,” Taming the Elephant: Politics, Government, and Law in Pioneer California, Burns and Orsi, editors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) pp. 96-120.

[6]Alan Rosenus, General Vallejo and the Advent of the Americas (Berkeley: Heyday Press, 1995); Anderson, pp. 76-77; Michael Ellis, “How Our Hills Got Golden,” KQED, July 9, 2010. www.kqed.org/perspectives.

[7] Sonoma County Deeds, Liber 12, page 185, August 1, 1859: sale by Mariano G. Vallejo to Marshall Lafferty for $1,348.75 lot 361 of Rancho Petaluma consisting of 169.75 acres.

[8] Sonoma Index-Tribune, February 20, 1892, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/217655953/marshall-lafferty.

[9] “Prof. I.N. Lafferty,”  An Illustrated History of the State of Washington, by Rev. H.K. Hines, D.D. (The Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, IL., 1893), pages 473-474.

[10] “Opening Address,” Petaluma Argus, October 8, 1870.

[11] James Gerber, “The Gold Rush Origins of California’s Wheat Economy,” http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-22532010000200002

[12] Arthur Dawson, “The History of Sonoma County’s Woodlands,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, January 26, 2017;  J. Charles Watford, “Charcoal Making In Sonoma County,” Society for California Archaeology, https://www.scahome.org/publications/proceedings/Proceedings.13Whatford.pdf

[13] Sonoma County Deeds, Liber 21 of Deeds, page 321, June 29, 1867, and Liber 79 of Deeds, page 603, July 3, 1872; “School Statistics,” Marin County Journal, September 24, 1870; “Prof. I.N. Lafferty,” An Illustrated History of the State of Washington, by Rev. H.K. Hines, D.D. (The Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, IL., 1893), pages 473-474; “Jottings,” Petaluma Courier, February 25, 1880; Jottings,” Petaluma Courier, September 1, 1880; “Agricultural Outlook,” Petaluma Courier, April 13, 1881; “H.C. Lafferty of Glen Ellen Dead,” Sonoma Press Democrat, May 9, 1914.

[14] Alexandra Wormley, Michael Varnum, “Nearly 20% of the Cultural Differences Between Societies Boil Down to Ecological Factors,” The Conversation, June 6, 2023. Theconversation.com.

[15] “Prospect Ahead for Good Water,” Petaluma Argus, May 13, 1871.

[16] Sonoma County Deeds, Liber 113, pp. 279-81 (pg. 787 in online deeds site), January 11, 1888: deed of I.N. Lafferty of Washington Territory and William Hill for $2,400, for half his interest in lot 361 of 269.75 acres of the Rancho Petaluma; Liber 109, pp.634-635, January 11, 1888, deed of J.H.C. Lafferty to William Hill, for $2,400 half his interest in lot 361 of 269.75 acres of the Petaluma Rancho; Liber 113, pp.184-186, April 29, 1887, sale of water rights lot 361 to on Petaluma Rancho by I. N. Lafferty and J. H.C. Lafferty to William Hill for $500 gold coin. (total sale for land and water rights $5,300).

[17] “Sonoma County National Bank, Petaluma, 50th Anniversary,” Coast Banker, Volume 16, Coast Banker Publishing Company, 1916; “William Hill,” Petaluma Courier, July 31, 1902.

[18] “William Hill,” Petaluma Courier, July 31, 1902; Sonoma County Deeds, Liber 113, page 282, January 25, 1888: deed of William Hill selling Lafferty Ranch to the Sonoma County Water Company: $10 sale for 169.75 acres, Lot 361 of the Rancho Petaluma.

[19] “Petaluma Aqueduct Contract Signed,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, May 10, 1960.

[20] “Petaluma’s New General Plan Aired April 25,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 5, 1961; “Commission Approves Ranch Use,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 1, 1970; “Study Trails Agreement Approved,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 9, 1970.

[21] “Petaluma May Mothball ‘Unsafe’ Lawler Dam,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 22, 1992.

[22] “City Joins Lafferty Ranch Lawsuit,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 19, 2013; “Lafferty Proponents Claim New Evidence in Access Fight,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 17, 2013; “Petaluma Forging Ahead with Lafferty Ranch Plans after Dropping Lawsuit,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 6, 2019; Email from attorneys Mike Healy and Lawrence King to John Sheehy.

[23] Sheri Cardo, “Exciting Changes at Petaluma’s Lafferty Ranch on Sonoma Mountain,” Sonoma County Gazette, September 21, 2022.

Tall Tales and Rev. Waugh

THE REAL STORY OF WAUGH SCHOOL

Rev. Lorenzo Waugh, circa 1870s (photo by George Ross, courtesy of the Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

The tall tales regarding Reverend Lorenzo Waugh began a month before his death in September 1900, with a story that ran in the Petaluma Argus celebrating his upcoming 92nd birthday.

The Argus reported that Waugh: 1) built the first Methodist Church in Petaluma at Fourth and A streets, hauling lumber from the redwoods north of town with the same team of oxen he used to cross the plains; 2) was gifted with 320 acres by General Vallejo as a reward for his services as a missionary among the Shawnees; and 3) donated the land upon which Waugh School at Corona and Adobe roads was built in 1864.[1]

Over the next century, these and other apocryphal stories grew, fueled by newspaper articles that relied upon twice-told tales. Waugh was credited with not only donating the land for Waugh School, but also with building the 1865 schoolhouse, alleged to be the first country school established in Sonoma County.

Children with their teacher outside Bethel School (later renamed Waugh School), 1908 (photo Sonoma County Library)

The school itself, originally named Bethel, was reported by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in 1991 to have been initially founded as a religious school in accordance with Waugh’s Methodist beliefs. The paper went on to say it was converted to a public school in 1897, three years before Waugh’s death, at which time it was renamed Waugh School.[2]

None of these stories are true, as the facts assembled below demonstrate.

The Founding of Petaluma’s Methodist Episcopal Church

By all accounts, Rev. Waugh was a moral upstanding and admirable man. Most of what is known about his life however comes from the autobiography he wrote and first published in 1883. None of the 19th century historians who wrote books about Sonoma County— Thompson (1877), Munro-Fraser (1880), Cassiday (1889), Gregory (1911)—mention Waugh in any detail in their biographies of prominent early settlers.

As is true for all autobiographies, Waugh’s life story is selectively depicted through his eyes, with omissions and inaccuracies.

Title page of Waugh’s 1883 autobiography, third edition published in 1885 (public domain)

In the book, Waugh writes that he rode across the plains to California in 1852 with his wife and children in a wagon pulled by a team of oxen. He came not for the gold rush, but for his health, having suffered for years from the long-term effects of malaria, possibly contracted during his time as a missionary among the Shawnee and Kaw tribes in pre-terriotorial Kansas. After spending 20 years as an itinerant Methodist preacher in Ohio and Missouri, Waugh came west with the aim of retiring from the being a circuit rider and taking up farming. [3]

Petaluma’s first Methodist Episcopal Church, constructed in 1856 at Fourth and A streets, was not built by Waugh, nor was he ever one of its resident ministers. He did give sermons from time to time, as well as wed couples and perform burials.

In 1859, he took up what would become his main preoccupation for the next 40 years: traveling the state giving temperance lectures to young people. He also launched that year the Sonoma County chapter of the Settlers’ League, in protest of fraudulent land grant claims and the eviction of homesteaders on the land grants denounced as squatters.[4]

The Gift from Vallejo

After arriving in Petaluma, Waugh purchased 160 acres of farm land near the junction of Davis Lane and East Railroad Avenue in current-day Penngrove, planting a fruit orchard and vineyard. The two men Waugh purchased the land from told him it was government owned, and so available for homesteading.[5]

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. [6].

Unfortunately, the men who sold Waugh his property lied about it being in the public domain. When Waugh learned he was actually squatting on part of the 66,000-acre Rancho Petaluma land grant owned by Mariano Vallejo, he asked for a meeting with Vallejo.

According Waugh’s account, Vallejo agreed orally to sell him the farm in recognition of his missionary work on the Shawnee and Kaw tribes reservations back in pre-territorial Kansas. But first, Vallejo said, they had to wait for the California Land Commission to survey the boundaries of his land grant as part of their legal review of his claim.[7]

Mariano Vallejo, circa 1870s (photo Sonoma County Library)

Since Vallejo was actively selling off other parcels of Petaluma Rancho without awaiting final claim review from the Land Commission, it’s likely his concern with Waugh’s farm was that it bordered the Rancho Cotate land grant, raising some uncertainty as to its exact boundaries.[8]

In 1856, the commission approved Vallejo’s land grant claim (although, like most of the commission’s decisions, the approval was subjected to years of court appeals), clearing the way for Waugh to purchase his farm. For unknown reasons, Waugh failed to make the purchase.

Instead, on October 25, 1858, two years after the commission’s approval, and six years after Waugh first squatted on the Rancho Petaluma, Vallejo sold Waugh’s farm to two of his sons, Antonio and Jose, as part of a larger 1,039-acre land acquisition.[9]

In his autobiography, Waugh blamed the sale on Vallejo’s lawyer, whom he claimed stealthily exercised his power of attorney during a period in which Vallejo was away in Monterey County, tending to the death of his brother. Vallejo’s brother died in 1856, and while it’s true Vallejo temporarily moved to Watsonville to tend to his brother’s estate, by the fall of 1858 he had returned to his home in Sonoma. His signature, not his lawyer’s, is on the county deed record of the sale.[10]

Three weeks after purchasing the 1,039 acres for $100 from their father, Vallejo’s sons flipped the property for $8,500 to George L. Wratten, the lawyer who served as the notary public on their original deed transaction with their father. A week later, Wratten sold 501 acres of his new purchase at a profit to a real estate agent named George W. Oman. Included in the sale was Waugh’s farm. [11]

A month after acquiring the land, Oman sold off Waugh’s 150-acre farm to a settler named Jacob Adamson for $1,500, and filed a lawsuit to evict Waugh from the property.[12]The property had been reduced from 160 to 150 acres following the Land Commission’s survey of the Petaluma Rancho and Cotate Rancho land grant boundaries).

Waugh’s original farm (circled), lot 376 of Vallejo Township near Penngrove, was sold in 1859 to Jacob Adamson (1877 Thompson Atlas map courtesy of of Sonoma County Library)

Waugh claims he approached Oman with a counter offer, but was turned down. Given that Waugh’s net worth according to the 1860 U.S. census was only $600, it’s possible the terms of his offer came up short.

In 1860, with the eviction lawsuit still making its way through the courts, Waugh again approached Vallejo. According to Waugh, Vallejo offered him 320 acres of lots 286 and 287 in the Vallejo Township as recompense for selling his farm out from under him.

Waugh claimed Vallejo gifted him the property, however the deed records show a murkier series of transactions. [13]

Vallejo first sold the 320 acres to Hereziah Bisel Wilson, a workingman in San Francisco, for $1. A week later, Wilson sold the land to Waugh for $3,200. Given Waugh’s net worth at the time, it’s possible the land was in fact a gift, and that Vallejo used the intermediary sale to Wilson as a means of hiding that from county officials. The terms of transaction remain a mystery however. [14]

1866 map shows in circle Lots 286 and 287, comprising the 320 acres Waugh received from Vallejo, of which he gifted half, lot 287, to his son John; the arrow points to Bethel School (listed as “Waugh School”) at the southwest corner of Adobe Road and Corona roads (1866 Bowers Map courtesy of Sonoma County Library)

The Founding of Bethel School (Waugh School)

In the early 1850s, American settlers in rural areas outside Petaluma created public school districts as a means of taxing themselves to build country school houses, and also to qualify for county and state school taxes in operating them.

Bethel School was most likely established in 1853 or 1854. While one of Sonoma County’s earliest country schools, it was not the first. That honor goes to Iowa School near Two Rock, established in 1852. [15]

Bethel was originally one of three rural schools established in the Vallejo Township, which extended east from the Petaluma River to Sonoma Mountain, north to current day Cotati, and south to San Pablo Bay, comprising the western portion Vallejo’s Rancho Petaluma and the southeastern portion of Cotate Rancho.

Waugh was appointed one of three school trustees to oversee the Vallejo’s Township’s initial schools, along with Judge Stephen Payran and County Supervisor Alexander Copeland, both of whom lived in the township.

Because of the township’s large size, the county board of supervisors decided by 1855 to divide it into three school districts, each named after a founding trustee: District No. 1, the Payran District; No. 2, the Waugh District ; and No. 3, the Copeland District. [16]

Bethel School was the only school in Waugh School District during the 19th century and most of the 20th century. From early on, the schoolhouse served as the district’s election precinct as well as a community center for festivals, lectures, elections, political gatherings, and fraternal groups.[17]

Men outside Bethel School on election day, circa 1890s (photo Sonoma County Library)

The location of the Bethel Schoolhouse in the 1850s and early 1860s is uncertain, as no property transaction could be found in the county’s deed records. It most likely wasn’t located on Waugh’s original farm, lot 386 of the Vallejo Township, as country school houses were usually centrally located within school districts for commuting purposes.

Waugh’s farm resided at the far western edge of the Waugh School District, bordering both the Eagle School District in current-day Penngrove to the west and the Copeland School District to the north.

1877 map of the Waugh School District (in tan), with a star marking location of Bethel School and an arrow pointing to Waugh’s first farm at the edge of the district, adjacent to the Eagle School District of Penngrove (map Sonoma County Library)

Bethel School most likely sat originally at the same place it occupied throughout the 19th century—the southwest corner of Adobe and Corona roads, which served as the main crossroad of the Waugh School District, Corona Road being its primary thoroughfare to Petaluma.

The property the school sat on was originally part of a 160-acre parcel purchased in 1853 from Mariano Vallejo by Judge Philip R. Thompson, an elected associate county judge.[18]

Born into a prominent Virginia family in 1797, Thompson came to California during the gold rush.[19] He was soon joined by his nephews, Thomas and Robert Thompson, who went on to edit and publish Petaluma’s first newspaper, the Sonoma County Journal, and then Santa Rosa’s Sonoma Democrat, as well as write some of early history books of Sonoma County.

Judge Thompson, along with two other elected judges, served as the initial judicial body of Sonoma County, whose population in 1851 numbered only 561. Along with their judicial powers, the three were responsible for dividing the county into townships and school districts, and establishing county-owned buildings.[20]

Despite Bethel School’s lack of deed records, it appears likely Thompson donated a small portion of his property for the Bethel School soon after purchasing it in 1853.

As the school-age population in Waugh School District grew, by the early 1860s a larger school house was needed. Waugh’s term as trustee apparently ended sometime in the mid-1850s. The district’s subsequent three trustees—Lorenzo Jackson, John Hardin, and George W. Frick—held a successful tax election in March 1863 to raise $1,650 to construct a schoolhouse that would accommodate 60 to 70 students.[21]

Judge Thompson, who became a real estate agent in Petaluma after retiring from the bench in the mid-1850s, sold his farm due to failing health in September 1864 to an English immigrant named Mark Carr, who had originally settled in California during the gold rush. A month after the sale, Thompson died.[22]The new Bethel schoolhouse opened that fall.[23]

Arrow points to Bethel School (listed here as “Waugh Dist. Schl.”) at the corner of Adobe and Corona roads in 1877 map, directly across from Waugh’s 40-acre farm (1877 Thompson Atlas map courtesy of Sonoma County Library)

The 320-acre ranch Rev. Waugh acquired from Vallejo in 1860 sat directly across the street from the Bethel School property, on the southeast corner of Adobe Road and Hardin Lane.[24]No deed records have been found of Waugh having owned the property the school sat on, nor of his donating it to the school district.

In the 1860s, Waugh gave or sold all but 40 of his 320 acres to his three children, building a home for himself and his wife on remaining acreage at 1515 Adobe Road. In 1890, three years after his wife died, he sold his 40 acres and moved to San Francisco to live with his granddaughter.[25]

The boarded up remains for Waugh’s 1860s house at 1515 Adobe Road (photo public domain)

The Bethel School was often referred to in the newspapers during the 19th century as the “Waugh School.” In 1925, the school was formally renamed the Waugh School, after residents of the Waugh School District approved a $10,000 school bond to erect a new schoolhouse. [26]

Waugh School, 1925-1991 (photo in public domain)

The old Bethel schoolhouse was divided into two structures, and moved to the nearby chicken ranch of Thomas King at 1055 Adobe Road, where it was repurposed as an egg house and a shop.[27]

The new school Waugh School remained in operation until 1991, after which it was sold as a private residence, which it remains today. [28]

******

Thanks to Simone Kremkau of the Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library for her research assistance.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Lorenzo Waugh Visits Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, August 3, 1900.

[2] “Pioneers Bought Vallejo’s Land,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955; “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963; “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 13, 1963; “Mumbly peg’ and ‘Giant Stride,’” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 7, 1991; “Waugh School the Way it Was,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 27, 1991; “Larry Reed and Cinda Gilliland Have Converted the Former Waugh School into Their Residence,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, February 19, 2011.

[3] Lorenzo Waugh, Autobiography of Lorenzo Waugh (Oakland, Calif.: Pacific Press, 1883), pgs. 135, 189; “A Long Life: Short Historical Sketch of Rev. Lorenzo Waugh,” Daily Commonwealth, August 27, 1884.

[4] J.P. Munro-Fraser, “Methodist Episcopal Church,” History of Sonoma County (Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880), pp. 311-12; 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; “Settlers’ Meeting,” Sonoma Democrat, March 24, 1859.

[5] Waugh, pp. 208-209; According to deed records, Waugh’s farm was lot 276 in Vallejo Township of Bower’s 1866 map of Sonoma County.

[6] 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.

[7] Waugh, p. 212.

[8] Note: 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.

[9] “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.

[10] Killed,” Sacramento Daily Union, May 29, 1857; Allan Rosenus, General M.G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), pp. 215-218; Waugh autobiography, p. 213. Note: Waugh also erroneously states he lived on the land for 9 years, not the actual 6 years (1852-58), before Vallejo sold the farm.

[11] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 7, page 764, index image 390, November 19, 1858”; November 24, 1858; Book 7, page 795-6, index image 407; Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[12] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 9, page 123, index image 840,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[13] Waugh autobiography, p. 216.

[14] “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 4439, October 11, 1860,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[15] “Iowa School Built Way Back in 1852,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955; Note: the report that Bethel was the first country school house built in Sonoma County most likely goes back to an erroneous news item in the July 17, 1863, edition of the Sonoma County Journal entitled “Laudable Enterprise,” reporting on the initiative of the Waugh School District to pass a tax to build a new schoolhouse for Bethel School.

[16] “Schools in Vallejo (Township),” Sonoma County Journal, February 26, 1858; “Our Public Schools,” Sonoma County Journal, December 19, 1856; “County School Funds,” Sonoma Democrat, January 28, 1858; “Apportionment,” Sonoma Democrat, July 14, 1859; “County School Funds,” Sonoma Democrat, January 28, 1858; “Apportionment,” Sonoma Democrat, July 14, 1859.

[17] “Sonoma County Elections, Sonoma County Journal, August 18, 1855; “Union Meeting at Bethel School House,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, October 13, 1864; “Bethel League,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, February 9, 1865; “May Day Festival,” Sonoma Democrat, May 13, 1865.

[18] “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; Note: Unfortunately, Book K is not included in the digitized database of deeds previously on microfilm, so this is an assumption that Thompson, who located to the Vallejo Township at that time, purchased lot #269 from Vallejo, and that it totaled 160 acres. This assumption is reinforced by newspaper ads from the 1850s that cite Judge Thompson’s ranch as a landmark in the Vallejo Township.

[19] Thompson’s younger brother, Robert A. Thompson, Sr., a former U.S. Congressman, followed him to Petaluma in 1853, before moving to San Francisco where he served on the justices’ court in the 1870s. Two of Robert A. Thompson’s sons, Robert Jr. and Thomas Larkin Thompson, became newspapermen in Sonoma County. Thomas  founded the Sonoma County Journal and was the longtime editor and publisher of the Sonoma Democrat, and later a U.S. congressman and ambassador to Brazil. Robert Jr. served as the county’s longtime county clerk, and also wrote a history of the county in 1877 (Sources: Robert A. Thompson (1805-1876), findagrave.com; “Thomas L. Thompson,” Petaluma Courier, February 1, 1898; “R.A. Thompson,” Petaluma Courier, August 4, 1903).

[20] Robert A. Thompson, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877), p. 47.

[21] “To the Electors of the Waugh School District,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, March 11, 1863; “Enterprising,” Sonoma County Journal, March 27, 1863.

[22] “Deaths,” The Sacramento Daily Bee, October 28, 1864; “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 15, page 254, index image 180,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; “Pioneers Bought Vallejo’s Land,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955: this article states that Mark Carr donated the land for Bernal School from his property, but no records of that donation or sale was found in the Sonoma County database of deed transfers; The deed of sale lists the property—lot 289 in the Vallejo Township— at 145 acres, which is also how it is also reflected on the 1866 A.B. Bowers map of Sonoma County. At some point not found in the deed records, Thompson reduced his property by 15 acres from the original 160 acres he purchased from Vallejo.

[23] “To the Electors of Waugh School District,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, April 20, 1865; “May Day Festival,” Sonoma Democrat, May 13, 1865.

[24] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 10, page 604, index image 439,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[25]Index to Grantors, Vols. 8-12, 1888-1901: March 14, 1890, Book 125, page 330, image 418, Lorenzo Waugh, grantor, John Caltoft, grantee; San Francisco Directory, 1891 to 1892: Rev. Lorenzo Waugh, 1605 Mission Street, along with Edwin and Franklin Waugh; “Peggy’s Pencilings,” Courier, October 1, 1890: Waugh returned to his property on Adobe Road to remove the remains of his young son who died 20 years before, and move the body to Cypress Hill Cemetery; Source of boarded up Waugh home photo at 1515 Adobe Road: “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963.

[26] “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.

[27] “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963.

[28] “New Use for Old Waugh School,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 13, 1991.

The Petaluma Adobe’s First Pandemic

by Arthur Dawson & John Sheehy

In March of 1828, three years after leaving Missouri, mountain man James Pattie found himself locked in a Mexican prison cell in San Diego. He and his father were charged with being illegal immigrants. As the months ticked by, Alta California’s first smallpox epidemic began sweeping through the territory. James’ father also died that year while incarcerated, though of other causes. To his son’s good fortune, he left behind a valuable inheritance—a vial of smallpox vaccine.

Learning that Pattie knew how to administer the serum, California Governor Echeandia offered to release him on condition that he vaccinate the inhabitants of California. Accepting the offer, Pattie began traveling from mission to mission, treating thousands of Hispanic settlers and indigenous people on the way. His original supply was augmented by vaccine the Mexicans acquired from Russian ships calling at San Diego and Monterey. From San Francisco he made his way across the bay and overland to the Russian settlement at Fort Ross, where he also administered the vaccine. On his return to San Francisco, Pattie was officially freed. There is no mention in his first-hand account of visiting either the San Rafael or Sonoma missions.

Up until Pattie’s time, California had escaped serious epidemics. This was partly due to its remoteness. The onset of human pandemics has been attributed to the shift from hunting and gathering societies to more settled agricultural communities and cities. Living in closer quarters set the stage for outbreaks of tuberculosis, influenza, measles and other infectious diseases, which over the course of human history have killed as many as a billion people. Like coronavirus, smallpox is an airborne disease that spreads quickly. Coughing, sneezing, and sharing clothing can all lead to infection. In the Old World, smallpox killed three out of ten people it infected and left the rest scarred and sometimes blind.

As Europeans settled the New World, their diseases readily infected the native people, who had no previous exposure or immunity. Over fifty million perished of smallpox and other diseases after European contact; about ninety percent of the original population of the Americas. In the 1790s, back in England, British doctor Edward Jenner tested the idea that milkmaids infected with cowpox, a milder disease, were immune to smallpox. He proved it by inoculating a 9-year-old boy with cowpox and then exposing him to smallpox with no ill effect.
Although the Spanish did their best to screen those they sent to settle

California, international travel remained a primary avenue for the spread of disease. The smallpox outbreak of 1828 was introduced by a foreign vessel that docked in San Francisco. Seven years later, smallpox appeared in Sitka, Alaska, the capital of Russian America, likely arriving on a ship from across the Pacific.

What followed fits a pattern that has been noted since Roman times—epidemics begin in ports of entry and spread from there. Within a year, it had reached hundreds of miles north over much of modern-day Alaska and south into British territory around Puget Sound. The British managed to vaccinate people ahead of the outbreak and stalled the spread of the virus in the summer of 1837. Whatever efforts the Russians made, on the other hand, were not successful in containing it.

Map by Arthur Dawson

Smallpox soon arrived by Russian ship at Fort Ross. By then, California missions had been disbanded by the Mexican government. General Vallejo had taken possession of the Sonoma mission property and established a military presence. In late 1837, before the virus was detected, he sent a cavalry unit led by corporal Ignacio Miramontes and accompanied by Indian auxiliaries, to Fort Ross to bring back supplies for the troops at Sonoma.

Whole villages were struck down without a single survivor. Platon Vallejo, the General’s son and a doctor, described how: “long trenches were dug, none too deep; great numbers of bodies were hastily thrown in and the earth, with equal haste, replaced.” In other cases the dead were cremated. Sometimes the toll was beyond the abilities of the living to handle at all. For years after, the bones of thousands “often left unburied, bleached the hills” of Sonoma and Napa Counties. Chief Solano, Vallejo’s friend, estimated that his tribe, which had numbered in many thousands, was reduced to just 200 survivors. The death toll may have exceeded ninety percent, on par with other places in the Americas.

The epidemic in the North Bay continued into 1839. Pattie’s efforts ten years earlier seem to have given some protection to those tribes to the south. According to Platon, most Mexicans were vaccinated and did not suffer the same fate as the indigenous people. Chief Solano, one of the few natives vaccinated by Vallejo, survived. No one knows why Vallejo never vaccinated his native laborers or native soldiers. Was it prejudice or a lack of vaccine or expertise? As with the coronavirus, an inability to grasp the situation before it was too late, may have also played a role.

Today, we’re all hoping for a modern James Pattie to deliver a vaccine for the current pandemic. After hearing stories from New York and Italy, we can appreciate the terror of those earlier times. Pestilence no longer sounds like an old-fashioned word. But perhaps we can also take heart from the fact that, nearly two centuries after the smallpox pandemic of 1838, Sonoma County’s native peoples are still here. In spite of everything, they have quietly achieved a cultural renewal in recent years—an encouraging sign of how deeply hope and resilience dwell within the human spirit.

A version of this story appeared in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, April 5, 2020.