goldfields

Here’s a puzzle for you. Is this an early sketch of Sutter’s Fort?

It looks kind of like Sutter’s Fort, but not big enough. It’s captioned “View of Fort Sutter.” But is that really what it is?

I had never seen this picture before. A couple of weeks ago I had a pleasant conversation with a gentleman at the Tehama County Museum History Rendezvous, who asked if I knew anything about it. I didn’t. He kindly shared these pictures with me.

The two drawings are by Titian Ramsey Peale, an artist who accompanied the U.S. Exploratory Expedition (also know as the Wilkes Expedition) on its round-the-world tour from 1838-1842. Titian Peale was the son of American polymath painter Charles Wilson Peale. (I love it that Peale named his sons Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian, after his favorite artists, although I do not recommend that anyone name their son Titian today.)

In the fall of 1841, as the Wilkes Expedition explored San Francisco Bay, Captain Ringgold took some men into the Sacramento Valley. They explored the Sacramento River as far north as the Feather River and visited with John Sutter at his settlement of New Helvetia. The date on these two sketches is October 19, 1841. Is this what Sutter’s Fort looked like at that date?

Probably not. Captain Sutter was in negotiations to acquire Fort Ross. He had need of anything and everything he could get from the Russians: lumber, nails, fittings, tools, agricultural equipment, weapons, livestock, boats — everything. With all that, he told Peale and Ringgold, he planned to build himself a fort.

Why did he need a fort? John Bidwell, who arrived just a month later in mid-November 1841, later stated that Sutter felt threatened by the Mexican-Californians, who had begun to sense that they didn’t need a foreigner in their midst who was gathering other foreigners around him. As Bidwell said, “These threats were made before he had begun the fort, much less built it, and Sutter felt insecure.”

Titian Peale wrote in his journal that Sutter met the expedition and “conducted us to his house.” He says that Sutter “is now building extensive corrals and houses of adobes.” But nothing about a fort.

You can imagine Sutter, hospitable and expansive, telling his visitors about his grand plans to acquire Fort Ross and all its accoutrements, and then build a fort that would secure his position in the heart of California. Peale in response creates a picture of what that fort might look like, with its bastions that resemble those at Fort Ross. “Yes,” says Sutter, “that’s just what I need, except I will make it even bigger and better.” And so he did.

It’s only my conjecture, but it fits what we know of Sutter’s early situation and of the explorers who visited him in 1841. If you are interested in learning more about the Wilkes Expedition, you can read Sea of Glory, America’s Voyage of Discovery: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842 by Nathaniel Philbrick (New York: Viking, 2003). It’s a fascinating tale of exploration from the Americas to Antarctica to the islands of the South Pacific, although the account is skimpy when it comes to the expedition in California. If you really want to get into it, the Smithsonian has made Wilkes’s own account (all five volumes) available online. California is in volume 5.

I am just back from a trip to Chicago and Wisconsin to visit with some of my family. Here’s a picture of my two college girls on an architectural boat tour of Chicago. Nothing beats spending time with grandkids.

On Saturday I will be at the History Keepers and Seekers Rendezvous at the Tehama County Museum, in the town of Tehama, just west of Los Molinos. It’s a fun event with something for every history buff, from spinning and weaving, to flint-knapping, to antique cars and trucks. Live music! Great raffle prizes! Don’t miss it.

I’ll be there with other authors. It’s a great chance to meet the writers who bring history alive. I’ll have my books and books from the Association for Northern California Historical Research for sale. Come and say Hi!

I’ll be at the Dairyville Orchard Festival too, on Saturday October 21st. More music, plenty of yummy food, and artisans from around the North State.

On Tuesday, September 26th I’ll be speaking about local history to the Durham Rotary Club. If you need a speaker for your group, let me know. I love sharing history.

John Bidwell loved casaba melons and always noted in his diary when the first one was ready, usually in mid-August.

Mon. Aug. 25 [1884] First good Casaba this morning.

I grow them too and have harvested a couple of them this month. They are large and juicy and delicious.

Bidwell acquired the seed in 1869 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which frequently asked him to experiment with new varieties.

Mon. May 24. [1869]
Planted melons fm Ag. Dept. viz. Cassaba

How they did that year he doesn’t say, but he must have liked the results. They get frequent mention in his diary.

Mon. September 2. [1872]
First ripe Casaba of the season.

Sat. August l5. [1873]
Warmer – 2 fine Casaba melons for breakfast

He sends the melons to friends; he shares them at the table; he even tries to interest a hotel in San Francisco in serving them. In 1879 he noted:

Thurs., October 23. Sacramento
Events: Took casaba melons to Golden Eagle for Grant

That would be President Ulysses S. Grant, who was on a world tour and staying at the Golden Eagle Hotel. Nothing but the best for General Grant.

If you want to try growing your own casabas next year, the seed is available from Mary’s Heirloom Seeds.

John Bidwell wanted Rancho Chico to be more than a wheat and cattle ranch. He foresaw that California could be “one grand fruit orchard”, and he would start on his ranch.

This newspaper report from 1855, only six years after he bought Rancho Chico, shows just how quickly he set to work to realize his vision.

Luckily we don’t have grasshoppers to destroy our fruit crops nowadays.

Bidwell set out his first peach trees in 1852, with a variety of peach pits obtained from Boston that produced good peaches from seed, without grafting. Three years later he had 250 peach trees with fruit, and a thousand more saplings in his nursery. His friend Nelson Blake, who had helped to plant the first trees, wrote in 1853:

How do the Peach trees look that Mr. Barber and myself set out? and the Onions we sowed? Have any of the Apple seeds that I sowed come up this last spring or the Pear or Quinces?

It looks like the apples, pears, and quinces were doing fine by 1855. The figs had been obtained from Mission San Jose in 1851, and were also thriving.

He also got his grapevines from missions and they were doing well. Later he would rip out the wine grapes and switch to raisins and table grapes.

By 1857 many farmers had followed Bidwell’s lead and were growing fine crops of tree fruit.

Of peaches, this season, the variety is extensive, and the quantity produced enormous. Some of the specimens from Smith’s, Hooker’s, &c, &c, near the city, are splendid, but the handsomest specimens of peaches we have seen this year were 1 dozen from the orchard of Major John Bidwell, of Chico, Butte county. They were sent to a friend in this city. His crop this year is reported to be very large. His trees are large and fine, and, strange to say, are all seedlings. [That is, the trees were raised from peach seeds.]

Sacramento Daily Union 5 August 1857

As for the shade trees, locust trees were what Bidwell first planted along the Esplanade. Later they were torn out and replaced with less messy street trees. “China trees” are probably chinaberry trees, a popular ornamental, and “alanthas” must be ailanthus, also known as “tree of heaven.” That tree was first brought to the United States from China in 1874. It was a popular fast-growing garden exotic in the nineteenth century. Now it pops up everywhere and is considered a noxious weed and an invasive species. I guess we have John Bidwell to thank for the ailanthus trees in Chico.

Happy Birthday to California pioneer and Chico founder John Bidwell!

John Bidwell was born on August 5, 1819 in Chautauqua County, New York, near the shores of Lake Erie, 204 years ago.

Bidwell rarely noted his birthday in his daily diary, but in 1898 he wrote: BIRTHDAY (79th) – Florence had an extra good dinner. He was at Butte Meadows, having spent the week camping out and working with a crew on the Humboldt Wagon Road. That day, August 5th, he wrote:

New grade round Beartrap hill – Started to work there at 6.l0 a.m. – returned at 6 l/2 p.m.
finished clearing the gradeway + wife with me all day.

Bidwell was no slacker and he loved road-building. To him a twelve-hour day spent “clearing the gradeway” was a fine way to spend his birthday. He surely deserved that “extra good dinner” that Florence the cook produced. After dinner, John and Annie retired to their little old camping tent.

On August 1st, 1856, The Marysville Daily Herald published their thanks for the gift of a 30-pound watermelon, sent by Thomas Bidwell, younger brother of Major John Bidwell.

Why were they honored with such a hefty and delicious gift? It seems to have been a case of “no hard feelings.” When the Herald published the news from San Francisco, the compositor had mixed up two stories and put the names of John Bidwell and P.B. Cornwall down as men arrested by the Vigilance Committee, when instead they had been elected to the governing board of the Society of California Pioneers.

It looks like Major Bidwell has been consorting with bad company.

The editor of the Herald, Louis R. Lull (also an SCP board member) promptly apologized. Why he and General Sutter hadn’t likewise been “arrested” he couldn’t say, but he condoled “the other gentlemen in their affliction” and promised that “If we have any influence with the Vigilantes we will exert it to the utmost to secure their release.”

I imagine John Bidwell got a laugh out of the mix-up and told his brother to ship one of their best melons to editor Lull.

What is a man who has just married a temperance wife to do with five hundred gallons of “superior wine”? That was John Bidwell’s dilemma and here is his solution.

Bidwell had never been a drinking man, and once he meet Annie E. Kennedy he swore off alcoholic beverages forever. But on Rancho Chico he had been growing wine grapes for several years and he had a good supply of wine on hand. According to George Moses Gray:

When the General first set out his grapes he planted 300 acres of wine grapes. They were in full bearing, and he had hired a wine expert and had a wine cellar nearly full of wine, some of it three years old. He found out that his wine man had a good many friends, especially when he was working in the wine cellar, and he found out that these friends could not walk straight when they started for home.

George Moses Gray: his reminiscences of the life of General John Bidwell. Chico: ANCRR, 1999, p. 29.

Bidwell had all the vines pulled out and replaced them with table and raisin grapevines. As noted above, he shipped the wine to San Francisco to be used for “medicinal uses” at a hospital run by the Missionary Society. This society was formed by several Protestant churches to serve the poor of the City.

What did Bidwell prefer to wine or any other beverage? He wrote to Annie on New Year’s Day, 1868, “I shall drink to your health today with my favorite beverage, cold water.” As far as he was concerned, cold clear water from Chico Creek was the best drink in the world.

Writing about Bidwell’s old adobe house a few months ago, I posted this picture of Bidwell Mansion, which shows the adobe on the left-hand side and Bidwell Mansion in the center. At the time I said it was an “undated painting by an unknown artist,” but I was wrong about that, and now I am here to tell you about John Frederick Holtzman and his painting.

(I apologize for not giving you a better view of the painting. The glare from the bright light shining on it makes photography difficult.)

It is thanks to John Rudderow and Deana Glatz that I learned so much more about the painting.

John Frederick Holtzmann (he dropped the second ‘n’ in America) was born in Bremen, Germany in 1833 (give or take a year). He immigrated to the United States in 1853 and by 1856 he was in the gold-mining town of Columbia. He was a painter by trade — he could paint a house inside and out, or he could paint a painting of a house. He moved from county to county: various records find him in Amador, Nevada, San Francisco, Sacramento, Yolo, and in 1871, Butte County. He married in 1861 and he and his wife Anna had a family of four children.

During his time in Chico he produced this oil painting of Bidwell Mansion. It features a busy scene of activities on the Esplanade. Our best guess is that that is General Bidwell riding in a buggy driving a spirited horse, along with other figures including several Indians, a carriage and farm wagons.

John Rudderow speculates that Holtzman offered to sell the painting to Bidwell, but for some reason Bidwell declined the offer. Bidwell makes no mention of Holtzman or the painting in his diary.

Eventually the painting came into the hands of Glenda Carpenter of Oroville who donated it to the Butte County Pioneer Museum in 1932, where it hangs today. If anyone out there knows how she came to possess it, please let us know. John and Deana would very much like to trace the history of the painting.

In late 1873 the Holtzman family moved to Santa Cruz County, where they remained for the next five years, until the death of Mrs. Holtzman. After his wife’s death, Holtzman began moving around the state again, finally ending up in Portland Oregon, where he died in 1906.

Holtzman created a number of other sketches and paintings but few of them are available online. John Rudderow and Deana Glatz are seeking other images and more information for a future article about John Frederick Holtzman.

If you know more about Holtzman or about his painting of Bidwell Mansion and how it came to the Carpenter family, please let me know and I will pass the information on.