Soon after we settled in Los Angeles I was very sick, due, I fear, to
the hasty swallowing of half-chewed raisins when my foraging expedition
to the pantry was menaced by an approaching mother. She did not know
for several hours about my disobedience of her law against “swiping”
food between meals,--if I were really hungry I would be glad to eat dry
bread without butter or jam,--but the punishment for sin was as sure as
it was in the Sunday school books. I sat for a long, long time screwed
up in a little aching knot in front of the Franklin stove before I was
ready to admit an excruciating pain. I think now-a-days it would have
been called appendicitis.
The doctor took heroic measures: caster oil, tiny black stinking pills,
steaming flannels wrung out of boiling vinegar and applied to my
shrinking abdomen; awful, thick, nasty, white, sweetish cod-liver-oil.
I survived.
I was only seven, and not used to staying in bed for a month at a time,
so papa, sorry for me, day by day, told me the story of his life. He
told me about his home, the brick farm house at Norridgewock on the
Kennebec, the same river that I had seen when I was in Maine.
When he was a little boy there were no matches and no kitchen stoves,
so that his mother had to cook before an open fireplace, and the
clothes for all the family were made at home. His mother spun wool from
their sheep and wove it into cloth and dyed it in the great indigo pot
that stood when she was not using it just inside the shed door. When
they killed a cow for beef they saved the hide, and then in the fall a
traveling shoemaker came to the house and made boots for them, right
there where they could watch him.
When papa was six he secretly learned to milk one of the cows and
then with great joy exhibited his prowess, only to be informed that
thereafter it was to be his daily chore. Another duty that fell to him
about this time was to take care at night of each two year-old whenever
its place in the cradle was taken by a new baby. Somehow the oldest
child in the family, Francina, managed to escape the usual fate of an
oldest daughter, that of secondary mother.
The most wonderful hat that papa ever had was made by cutting down a
white beaver of his father’s--possibly a “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”
campaign hat. Once when it was worn on a berrying expedition he hung it
on the limb of a tree for safe-keeping--and then could never find the
tree and precious hat again, a tragedy of youth.
Papa drew an amusing picture of himself at ten years of age in his
“Sunday-go-to-meeting” clothes. His trousers came half way between
knee and ankle, his jacket was short and round, his collar so high he
could not turn his head, although he could rest his neck during the
long service by using his ears as hooks over the top of the collar. A
stove-pipe hat completed the outfit.
During those evening stories while I was convalescing I learned many
things about the boy’s life in the far-away Maine, of his many cousins,
of his schooling, and why he elected astronomy in place of French at
Bloomfield Academy; of the years when he taught school or worked on a
farm and then of his decision to go to California. He told me of the
sea voyage and the stay in Panama, of San Francisco, and of the life
in Volcano, the little mining town; of the return to Maine and of the
journey west across the plains, driving sheep and cattle. He told me
the story in detail until he reached Salt Lake City, and then one
evening something intervened, I was well again and the absorbing tale
was postponed and then again and again, never to be taken up.
Three years later, Uncle Ben, one of the travelers across the plains,
died; in a few years more father was gone, and I suddenly realized how
little I really knew of the venturesome expedition of the young men. So
I wrote to Dr. Flint, the survivor, asking that he tell me something of
their pioneer experience. He replied that he had kept diaries on both
journeys and that I was welcome to see them at any time. But before the
opportunity came he too had died, I was in the thick of a very busy
life, and his letter was forgotten. Twenty years later I found it and
immediately asked his son to see the journals, but their existence was
not known. A holiday devoted to a search among old papers was rewarded
by the discovery of the valuable documents.
And so, while I cannot recall all the detail of the charming tale
my father told me, I am able, because of these records, to give an
accurate report of how the cousins came to California and brought
across plains, mountains, and deserts to this Pacific Coast some of
the first American sheep, and thus were instrumental in developing an
industry that for many years was of great importance.
It was May 21, 1851, when Amasa and Llewellyn Bixby and Dr. Thomas
Flint left their Maine homes and followed the trail of the gold
seekers. They sailed from New York on the steamer Crescent City, and
met the usual conditions of travel at that period. A retelling of
these facts might become monotonous; the actual experiences of each
traveler were new, and varied according to the personal equipment and
sensibility.
After a week the young men landed at Chagres. They started up the river
on a small stern-wheel steamer, which they occupied for two days and
two nights, during the latter tied up to the bank. At Gorgona they
transferred to a small boat, propelled by the poles of six natives. The
railroad was in course of construction, but not yet ready for use.
All the afternoon of the third day and the entire fourth was spent in
a leisurely tramp over the mountain trail that led down to the Western
port. This walk they enjoyed greatly, observing the strange tropical
land. Several times during the long day they refreshed themselves by
bathing in the clear mountain pools. When from a high point of land
they saw the blue Pacific, they felt like Balboa on his peak in Darian.
While waiting for the S. S. Northerner for San Francisco,--on which
they had passage engaged--a number of days were spent happily,
comfortably, and at reasonable expense in the ancient walled city of
Panama.
The steamer, when it came, proved a very poor means of transportation,
being much over-crowded, dirty, infested with vermin, poorly supplied
with food and leaking so badly that it was necessary to use the pumps
during the entire journey. A stop for a day at Acapulco brought a
welcome change with dinner at a good hotel and an attractive walk into
the country.
They arrived in San Francisco the sixth of July, but made no stop,
going on that afternoon by boat to Sacramento, and from there on to
Volcano Diggings, their objective point. Here they found Benjamin
Flint, a brother of Thomas, who had come out in 1849. Their time from
home was fifty-three days.
Volcano was a characteristic mining town, not far from Sutter’s Mill,
Mokelumne Hill, Hangtown, and other places familiar to all who have
read of those early California days. It was the point on the overland
trail to which Kit Carson was accustomed to conduct emigrants, leaving
them to find their own way from there on to their various destinations.
The wheel marks of the old wagons may still be seen on the limestone
rocks above the town.
After a few months father’s brothers, Marcellus and Jotham, came around
the Horn in a sailing vessel, the Samuel Appleton. Uncle Marcellus
commented in his diary on the monotony of the long trip--“a dull
business going to California on a sail ship.” He spoke of the beauty
of the extreme southern mountains like white marble pyramids, of the
killing of an albatross with a fourteen-foot wing-spread, of the cape
pigeons, “the prettiest birds alive.”
With these brothers came two cousins, making the family group in this
one little settlement about a dozen.
They all of them dabbled more or less in the search for gold, but
gradually turned to agricultural pursuits. Father’s mining days were
limited to one week, employed in driving a mule for gathering up pay
dirt; that satisfied him. He took a job in the local butcher shop at
one hundred and fifty dollars a month, with “keep,” a very important
item in those days of high living cost. He preferred the sureness of
stated wages to the uncertain promise of gold.
Apparently he and the Flints soon purchased the business and continued
to conduct it as long as they remained in Volcano. They were associated
in some way with Messrs. Baker and Stone, of the Buena Vista Ranch,
very fertile mountain meadow land upon which heavy crops of barley were
grown, and cattle were fattened for market.
After a year and a half the three of them, young men between the ages
of twenty-five and thirty, determined to “unite their fortunes for the
undertaking of bringing to California sheep and cattle, more for the
trip than profit.” Consequently, on Christmas Day, 1852, they left for
home, making their way out of the mountains over roads so buried in
snow as to be almost impassable. In Sacramento the river was twelve
miles wide and the streets so full of water that the hack from hotel to
steamer was a flat boat pulled by a horse.
In San Francisco they investigated possible ways of returning to New
York. First cabin was three hundred dollars, “and get across Isthmus
from Panama at your own expense.” The plan adopted was to go steerage
on the S. S. Northerner, the one upon which Dr. Flint and father had
come, then unseaworthy, but now making her first trip after a thorough
overhauling. The fare to Panama was only fifty dollars, which pleased
their thrifty souls, and, as there were few passengers, the third
class accommodations were very comfortable, a great contrast to their
previous experience. They sailed January first.
One of their problems was the safe transfer of their gold to the mint
at Philadelphia. Express charges were so high they decided to avoid
this expense by carrying it with them in buckskin jackets especially
made for that purpose. They soon found the weight, about thirty-five
hundred dollars apiece, too burdensome, so they appropriated a vacant
state-room, put the treasure between two mattresses and set a guard,
one or the other of them remaining in the berth day and night.
Before leaving the steamer at Panama they packed this gold in a large
chest which contained their blankets and clothing, the extra weight
not being sufficient, in so large a container, to arouse suspicion,
as would have been the case if they had attempted to carry it in a
valise, which, Dr. Flint comments, “would have had to be backed with a
revolver.”
On landing they hired a muleteer to carry the precious box while they
followed on foot, taking pains to keep the pack train in sight most of
the time.
They walked as far as Cruces, spending a night on the way. They were
hardly settled comfortably at the Halfway House, when there arrived a
much bedraggled party, westward bound, containing women and children,
whose thin-soled shoes had been little protection on the rough and
muddy trail. I venture a comment that the granddaughters of these women
with light shoes would have been prepared for the exigencies of such
a trip with knickers and hiking boots. Those were days of gallantry,
so our young men surrendered their place of shelter, and moved on in
the rain to a distant shack, where, at first, there seemed no prospect
of food; later, when the owner of the cabin came in, their recently
acquired ability to speak Spanish stood them in good stead, and they
each were favored with a cup of hot stew.
From Cruces they took a small boat down the Chagres River to Barbacoa,
to which point the railroad had been completed. Here there was some
delay incident to the refusal of a negro to accompany his master
further on the return way to Virginia. He had discovered that by
staying on the Isthmus he would escape the slavery that was his. An
attempt was made to take him by force from the garret in which he had
taken refuge, but was given up when the storming party, as they went up
the rickety stairs of the old building, were met by the very deterring
muzzles of big-bore Mexican rifles. The sympathy of the young Maine
men was, naturally, with the negro. The diary comments that it was a
frequent custom for Southerners to take slaves with them to do the
actual work in the California gold fields.
At Aspinwall passage on an independent steamer was found for
twenty-five dollars, making the total fare from San Francisco but
seventy-five dollars, as contrasted with three hundred dollars, the
first cabin rate.
They stopped at Kingston, Jamaica, for coal. “Llewell stayed by
our deposits” while the others went ashore, just as he had done at
Aspinwall. I am interested to learn from these early entries that the
capacity for “staying by” in times of stress was as characteristic of
father in his young days as it was in later years when I knew him.
Twenty-seven days out from San Francisco they reached New York, and,
taking their gold in a valise, set out at once for Philadelphia. They
arrived at night and went to the Hotel Washington, where they took
a room together in order to protect the valuable satchel. The next
morning it was safe in the mint, where everything was assayed, fifty
dollar slugs, coins from private mints of San Francisco, and native
gold.
Of the experience in Philadelphia, Dr. Flint writes: “January 29:
Got our mint receipts of the value of our deposits. We were dressed a
little rough when we arrived, and at the hotel were seated at the most
inconvenient table. But as we dressed up somewhat and the report of our
gold got more known we were moved pretty well up in the dining room
before we left.”
The next day they went on to Boston where they stopped at the United
States Hotel, a hotel to which my father took me nearly forty years
later, when he escorted me east to enter Wellesley College.
The evening of February first they reached their home, just a month
from San Francisco. The journey west two years before had taken nearly
twice as long.
Since they were among the first to return from the gold fields, they
were objects of great interest to all the neighbors round about. They
had scores of visitors, all eager for news of their own men-folk in
far away California, the land so vaguely known, its great distances so
under-estimated. They assumed that the returned travelers might know
everyone in the new state.
They visited at home for five weeks. “We talked,” says Dr. Flint,
“until our vocal chords could stand the strain no longer and were glad
to start west.”