THE ADVENTURES OF REVEREND WAUGH IN EARLY PETALUMA
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]
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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 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]
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]
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]
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.
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]
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]
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]
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 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.”
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.
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.
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]
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.
