TRAILS TO FRANKLIN TOWN

September 19, 2024September 21, 2024 Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Once upon a time Santa Rosa had a rival village next door named Franklin Town.

Or not.

The often-told story goes something like this: In the early 1850s, before there was a place called Santa Rosa, Oliver Beaulieu founded a village somewhere near the Carrillo adobe. He named it Franklin after his brother. A church was built and there were a handful of businesses (tavern/inn, blacksmith, etc.) plus a like number of houses. In 1853 Julio Carrillo, along with three other men, laid out a street plan about a mile to the west for a town they called Santa Rosa.¹ After it was declared the new county seat the following year, the denizens of Franklin began rolling their buildings to Santa Rosa on wheels. By 1855 or so, all of them – including the church – had been moved. There was nary a trace of Franklin left.

Twenty years passed before any of that Franklin history was told, although that’s not particularly surprising. When it faded away there was only a single weekly newspaper in the area (the Sonoma County Journal in Petaluma) and even Santa Rosa was scarcely mentioned in its pages – why waste ink on a defunct settlement? But once local area histories began being written in the mid 1870s, there was always a passage about Franklin. As the years went on those mentions kept getting longer as historians cribbed from their predecessors and tossed in more details. If you added up all the varied claims (transcribed below) there were up to three stores, a couple of taverns, a hotel, a blacksmith or two, the church, a wagon shop and a saddle tree factory.

None of the historians cited where they got their information, and only one could have possibly visited the short-lived Franklin (Robert A. Thompson, who began living near Petaluma in 1852). At the same time, that lack of a firm narrative also lends the story an air of mystery – which is why we’re still talking about it today.

Questions abound: What appeal did Santa Rosa have that Franklin lacked? Why were the residents quick to abandon it? Did Beaulieu actually intend to establish an incorporated town? And what’s the deal with the name “Franklin Town?” That’s just the top of the list.

We know some answers and can make reasonable guesses at others, but there are also blind alleys. Beaulieu supposedly had about half a square mile surveyed, but the map is lost (if it ever existed). He moved to Santa Clara County and years later a lengthy profile appeared in that county’s history book. Subjects paid a good deal of money to get their bio and picture in those “mug books,” so it’s a sure thing it tells his lifestory as he wanted – and it didn’t mention Franklin at all. As for the story it was named in honor of his brother, that didn’t appear until 1880 and came from a non-local historian who cranked out a book for a different county every year.²

Oliver Beaulieu, Oliver Jr., and a woman believed to be his second wife, Elise Pinard Beaulieu c. 1860. Image courtesy Sonoma County Library

Come the 20^th century, the story of Franklin became further muddled. One historian said most of the buildings were “small split redwood shanty-style” dumps without doors or windows.³ (Henry Beaver, who had a two-story brick house would like to have a word about that.)

Assumptions about its general location grew fuzzy; one historian placed it a mile east of the Carrillo Adobe. Hunting for clues as to where it was, SSU grad student Kim Diehl chopped through a tangle of deeds with cryptic landmarks such as a “fir red oak” and “where the road formerly crossed the creek.”⁴

Even rough map identifiers such as the locations of roads aren’t always helpful. Unmarked trails became roads and some of those roads took more than one name over time. The earliest historical description put Franklin at the “junction of the Sonoma road with the Fulkerson lane.” Okay, so it’s an easy assumption that “Sonoma road” is the road to the town of Sonoma – but where was “Fulkerson lane?” Was it the same as the “road to Mark West’s farm?”

Without ranking those historians by their hits and misses, let me just repeat that the internet has brought researchers an age of miracles and wonders. Rare maps are just a click or tap away, and the power to completely search heritage newspapers turns up references where no one would otherwise look. Thus with the aid of the three annotated map segments below, here’s the Executive Summary of Frankin’s location:

Franklin Town was close to the present site of the Flamingo Hotel and Hillside Inn, catty-corner from the Carrillo Adobe and across Santa Rosa Creek. This was near the intersection of three major roads/trails leading east, west, and north. The Sonoma Road is roughly the same as Highway 12. What they called the Bodega Road is now Fourth St. Fulkerson Lane – AKA Russian River Road and Cemetery Lane – is known today as Bryden Lane, which then passed the Rural Cemetery on its way towards the Old Redwood Highway.⁵

2024 map courtesy MapQuest

1877 map from Historical atlas map of Sonoma County, California (SOURCE)

1866 map from Map Of Sonoma County California (SOURCE)

A high number of cartography errors are obvious, such as the distance between the Sonoma Road and Santa Rosa Creek. But we can still situate the Carrillo adobe with some accuracy. We can narrow down the approximate location of Franklin Town as being consistently described on property later owned by Lucas and Simms. (The Carrillo adobe is represented by the icon and is not pictorially accurate to what it looked like).

The name has a more complex explanation, but one key to the puzzle is that it was referred to as Franklin Town and not simply Franklin. Yes, it’s possible it was in honor of Beaulieu’s brother who had a name which was sort of similar (see fn. 2) but it’s more likely that Beaulieu wasn’t the person who named it. Evidence suggests it was actually called that because of a guy named…Franklin.

A quick refresher in 1850s Sonoma County will be helpful. The area was sparsely populated yet steadily filling up with settlers who were homesteading farms and cattle ranches, but only a lucky few had legal title to their places. Some leased acreage or had other deals with the landowners but most were squatters, possibly unaware who actually owned the land. (Here’s an excellent contemporary summary of the “squatter difficulties” at the time, plus an account of visiting the Carrillo’s at their adobe.) The squatters were in turn scammed and exploited. Charles Justi – who we’ll meet again in a few moments – thought he owned 500 acres near Glen Ellen but ended up with just 40. Violence was not unheard of; a deputy sheriff was killed near Healdsburg and a confrontation at Bodega Bay came close to a shooting war.

All of that meant plenty of ongoing legal doings. And since the county courthouse was then in the town of Sonoma while most of the squatters lived north of there, the Sonoma Road was one very busy thoroughfare. It was a time-consuming trip by buggy or horseback; two hours between (future) Santa Rosa and Sonoma was considered good. Should your land claim be further north – say, near Geyserville – add a couple more hours to that.

Along that entire length of road there were only three places for a traveler to stop – remember: no Santa Rosa yet. Part of the Carrillo adobe was used as a tavern called “Santa Rosa House,” which lasted until sometime in 1853. About three miles further along modern Hwy. 12, near the turnoff for St. Francis Road, was Bear Flag House. Owned by Bear Flagger W. B. Elliott (absolutely no relation to this author) this was a tavern and a very significant place in early county history. Even before official statehood the Democratic party hob-nobbed there to decide how they would administer the county and who was to run for office. Any researcher looking into pre-Civil War politics in Northern California should beeline to learning about what went on there.

But those taverns were just a room in someone’s house and it’s not clear whether Elliott’s was even open most of the time, as he also had a cattle ranch near Mark West. Until he reached the town of Sonoma, the only chance for our weary traveler to rest came when he reached Half-Way House, about two miles south of today’s Kenwood.⁶ Here was an actual hotel where you could stay the night, have a hot meal and likely a hot bath. It would soon be a main stagecoach stop, in part because there was a barn where the drivers would board horses.

The owner and operator of Half-Way House was William F. Franklin.

Is he the Franklin in Franklin Town? The strongest evidence comes from a primary source: His son, William Jr., who lived here at the time and returned for a visit in 1925, when he gave an interview to the Press Democrat. He was adamant it was named after his dad.⁷

While Franklin Town and Half-Way House were a few miles apart, it’s easy to see how there could have been a connection. William Franklin was well known because of the hotel and in the 19th c. unincorporated spaces often became associated with the name of an early settler. Many are still in use today: Dillon Beach, Eldridge, Schellville, Marshall, Stewarts Point, etc.

Nor was there much distinction in the early 1850s between (what we call today) the Valley of the Moon and Santa Rosa Valley. The countryside all looked about the same and was used the same – a patchwork of small family operations aimed at producing things to feed San Francisco. Given that Franklin’s hotel was a rare landmark, it’s not completely surprising people might have associated a swath of eastern and central Sonoma County as being an unofficial district known as Franklin.

That would go far to explain why the earliest references to the settlement were Franklin Town and not just simply Franklin – it’s the same way we use today “the town of Sonoma” or “Sonoma City” to distinguish it from the overall county.

Pondering what they called the village in those days is like a parlor game; it’s fun, but really doesn’t mean much. The question of why Franklin Town was abandoned isn’t so trivial, in major part because generations of historians have mused it offered serious competition to Santa Rosa emerging as the dominant community in the area. One historian even went so far as to (irresponsibly) suggest there was an untold “Dark Tale of a Lost City.”

Yes, the residents of Franklin Town did migrate to Santa Rosa, but it wasn’t because the Franklinites were seeking the ceaseless joy of living near the jail and courthouse. Santa Rosa’s gravitational pull began even before the vote to make it the county seat. There were a combination of factors why it happened; Santa Rosa did have features that made it a more desirable place to live, while at the same time Franklin Town began facing setbacks that made it harder to remain there.

We credit the founding of Santa Rosa to Julio Carrillo and three ambitious shopkeepers turned real estate developers. True enough, but Franklin Town couldn’t compete because it had nearly reached its limits for growth – the area where Beaulieu and others expected Franklin Town to grow was prone to flooding.

In her last will, Doña María Carrillo referred to the land above Santa Rosa Creek as “the swamp.” Sold to Beaulieu after her death, he in turn sold it to John Lucas.⁸ When Lucas died and the farm was subdivided and sold off years later, an overview printed in the Democrat described more than half as “bottom land.” The crossroads may have stayed reasonably dry but more at risk was the section around today’s Proctor Terrace. Concerns about its flooding can be found when the deal was made to accept the adjacent Rural Cemetery to be the local graveyard. The citizen’s committee top concern for that specific location was “not subject to overflow in time of high water.”

The year 1853 was pivotal in the conflicting futures of Santa Rosa and Franklin Town. In the latter’s favor the church was built (the first one in the area) and the nearby trading post at the old Carrillo adobe was busier than ever. Over in Santa Rosa, Carrillo and the other three began laying out streets for their possible future town.

There are no local newspapers from that year, so we don’t get to eavesdrop on the arguments being made for one location over the other. But we do know the winter of 1852-1853 had been extremely wet (according to San Francisco weather stations), with Nov-Dec setting close to the all-time record. If the swamp/bottom land was indeed underwater, that had to influence plans to continue development around Franklin Town.

Meanwhile, Santa Rosa was forging ahead with new construction. In early 1854 a small hotel opened along with a general store. A Masonic Lodge was chartered, which was quite a big deal considering the village only had three houses. (Petaluma wouldn’t establish their Lodge until the following year, despite being far larger with several hundred residents.) Most importantly, Santa Rosa had a livery stable and Franklin Town didn’t. In that horsey age when nearly everyone rented horses and buggies to travel, having a stable nearby gave Santa Rosa a major advantage.⁹

Few seemed to recognize it at the time, but the scales tipped decisively towards Santa Rosa later in 1854, when the Board of Supervisors made it the county seat. Gentle Reader might assume that would be a net advantage for Franklin Town, as it was now “closer to the action” (as it were). Not so. Traffic on the Sonoma Road dropped sharply. No more squatters en route to the Recorder’s office stopping somewhere to wet their whistle. Gone were plaintiffs heading to court when their horse threw a shoe and needed attention from a blacksmith.

The first to cut his losses was Elliott, owner of the Bear Flag House. The tavern stayed around (it’s shown on the 1866 map) but he and his family resettled in Lake County sometime in 1854. The next major landowner to go was Beaulieu, who moved to San Jose in 1856. That same year the church was taken to Santa Rosa “on wheels and hauled there by six yoke of oxen.”

Sadly, the history books don’t always tell those parts of the story accurately. Instead you’ll find the writers compress the timeline and portray events happening closer to 1854 than they often did. The worst offender was Robert A. Thompson, who offered the first account about Franklin Town and claimed “within the year [1855] all the houses in Franklin were moved to the new county seat.” There was no parade of buildings trundling their way westward; the church and a couple of houses may have been the only structures that were moved and it happened later.

Nor did business and development in Franklin Town abruptly cease. Ads in the Democrat show Henry Beaver continued operating his brickyard there until at least 1858. Sterling T. Coulter (AKA “Squire Coulter”) built a home in 1854, though sometime later he did roll the place to Santa Rosa, where it first stood on Exchange Avenue and then another location for over fifty years – so much for the town being nothing but shacks.¹⁰

–

THE FORGOTTEN MR. FRANKLIN
William Francis Franklin was born in England in 1817 or 1818. He came to the area from Australia in 1852 and built Half-Way House, although the census and a for-sale ad suggest it was 1851.

William Sr. became a naturalized U.S. citizen at Sonoma in 1858, just a few days after he first advertised to sell the hotel. As he continued efforts to find a buyer, he became secretary of the Sonoma Quicksilver Mining Company which had a mine at Pine Flat near the Geysers. In 1861 the company held monthly meetings at Half-Way House and was eventually sold to New York investors.

When Ann attempted to divorce William in 1869 they were no longer living together. In the 1880s they both became indigents, with him at the Sonoma County Poor Farm and she receiving a county stipend in Petaluma. William found work as some sort of engineer in San Rafael, but died in 1890 as a resident of the Marin County Poor Farm. He is buried in an unmarked grave at the cemetery there while Ann has a proper tombstone at Petaluma’s Cypress Hill.

But the worst shortcoming in those histories was failure to write anything about the village’s (supposed) namesake, William Franklin. Even if the place really was an anglicized version of one of Beaulieu’s many Canadian brothers – which seems like a stretch – Half-Way House was still an important landmark in early county history and deserved a nod.

Half-Way House remained open as the other early settlers moved on, but it wasn’t by choice. Franklin first placed an ad in the Democrat listing it for sale in 1858 and kept running the classified intermittently for years, becoming more desperate (“…will sell the above place VERY CHEAP FOR CASH!”) as time went on.

Apparently William and Ann separated in the mid 1860s, with her continuing to operate the hotel after it was leased to neighbor Charles Justi.¹¹ William still owned it until 1868 when the county auctioned it off because of an unpaid tax bill of $8.18 (less than $200 today).

By then, Franklin Town was certainly gone. Beaulieu sold most of the property ID’d as the village to John Lucas in 1857, although Coulter, Beaver and possibly others still owned parts of the dwindling settlement.

So what should obituaries for Franklin Town say? To my mind there are three takeaways:

It was never a “rival” or in any way a challenger to Santa Rosa’s emergence. As discussed above, the first Santa Rosa area settlers invested in core businesses – store, stable, hotel, etc. No one in early Franklin Town seemed to have such ambitions, perhaps because potential flooding limited opportunities for development.

Aside from the brickyard and the saddle tree maker, Franklin Town’s commerce centered on servicing travelers going to and from the town of Sonoma. It was like a laissez-faire version of a modern highway truck stop – a place where you could knock on a door to buy a quick snack or flagon of cider, have a guy grease your squeaky wagon wheel, visit a proper outhouse. Once Sonoma was no longer the county seat that traffic dried up. After that happened in 1854 those residents and their little businesses drifted away with none to take their place.

The church filled an important social function as a gathering place for settlers all over central Sonoma County, being at such a well-known crossroads. When it moved to Santa Rosa in 1856 Franklin Town lost its final excuse to exist.

Franklin Town came and went quickly; anyone wanting to bookend it can summarize the years 1851-1859 as pretty likely. There were scarcely more than a handful of buildings counting the church. For a settlement so short-lived and tiny it may seem unusual that historians kept its memory alive, but the novelty of moving a “town” makes for a good story.

Perhaps, too, the historians spoke to former residents who can be forgiven for waxing nostalgic about what it was like. Although just a mile or so from where Santa Rosa would claw its way into existence, Franklin Town was still an untamed place. William Franklin’s son told the Press Democrat deer and antelope were then plentiful, and “a few minutes of fishing would suffice to catch a bag full of trout.”

Small though it was, there was also a sense of community. When the Coulters celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1904 the PD printed a notice they hoped the event would be also a reunion with their old friends who remembered Franklin Town:

Fifty years ago on that date in the old Santa Rosa, then known as the town of Franklin, Mr. and Mrs. Coulter were married, and it is hoped that when they celebrate the important occasion the honored pioneers will have the pleasure of having as their guests several of those who were among those present at their wedding day in the old town, in 1854.

¹ See “CITY OF ROSES AND SQUATTERS” for more on Santa Rosa’s founding

² Although there are easier explanations for the name, among his eleven siblings Oliver had an older brother, François Xavier Beaulieu, b. 1805 Quebec, d. 1875 Detroit, who had no known association with California and was not mentioned by Oliver in the Santa Clara mug book profile. Oliver Beaulieu could neither read nor write according to the 1860 census, which might explain why his name was also spelled as Boulieu, Boleau, Boliew, Boulieu and Bolio

³ Gaye LeBaron et. al., Santa Rosa: A Twentieth Century Town, 1985

⁴ Kim Diehl, Oliver Beaulieu and the town of Franklin, unpublished, 1999 and 2006 errata

⁵ Confusing everything further, the city thought it would be a swell idea to rename part of Cemetery Lane to Franklin Avenue in 1893, although it’s nearly a mile away.

⁶ “Half-Way House” was a common name for a roadhouse at the time. There was another on the road between Santa Rosa and Petaluma, which appears to be the original name for Washoe House between 1859-1861.

⁷ The timeline in the PD article is confusing because it doesn’t mention his parents separated in the 1860s, with William moving to Santa Rosa and the family going to Glen Ellen.

⁸ Diehl op. cit. pg. 19

⁹ As noted here previously, James P. Clark bought Julio Carrillo’s “stall and buggy shed” and turned it into the Fashion Livery Stable – an operation so big it would take up the entire city block where the Roxy movie theater complex is today.

¹⁰ Sterling Coulter’s house was moved again in 1872, this time to lower Fourth Street midpoint Wilson and A streets, where it continued to be used until 1925 and was demolished to make room for a new office building.

¹¹ Charles Justi (1806-1885) was the retired captain of the Georgiana, a Sonoma Creek-San Francisco sidewheeler. For reasons unclear, editors had trouble getting his name right; Half-Way House appears on the 1866 map as “Justin’s Hotel,” and the Democrat newspaper took to calling the vicinity as “Justa Station.”

Title Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

HISTORIES

THE CITY OF SANTA ROSA. HISTORICAL SKETCH.
Origin of the Name – What it Contains and How it is Supported.
…In the year 1852 A. Meacham and Barney Hoen had a store at the old adobe. They sold goods and purchased Spanish cattle for the San Francisco market. F. G. Hahman purchased the interest of Meacham and carried on the business at the old adobe. Mr. Meacham had bought of Julio Carrillo seventy acres of land, on a portion of which Santa Rosa stands. In 1853 Hartman, Hahman and Hoen purchased this tract of 70 acres from Meacham for $1,600, and with Carrillo, laid off the town. The line between them ran through C street and the center of the plaza. The firm donated the east half and Carrillo the west half of the plaza to the town. Meanwhile a few houses were built at the junction of the Sonoma road with the Fulkerson lane. This was called the town of Franklin. S. T. Coulter had a store, and Dr. J. P. Boyce was the architect and builder of one of its redwood houses. In the meantime Santa Rosa was growing. Hahman put up a store here, and slowly but surely Franklin town gravitated from its base to Santa Rosa. Among the buildings which changed location was the old Baptist church on Third street, which was the first, and for a long time, the only church in town.

– Sonoma Democrat, January 2 1875

SANTA ROSA–CONDENSED SKETCH OF ITS EARLY HISTORY
In the summer of 1853, the question of the removal of the county seat from the town of Sonoma to a more central locality was agitated. A town was laid off at what was then the junction of the Bodega, Russian river and Sonoma roads, just where the cemetery lane unites with the Sonoma road, near the eastern boundary of the city. Dr. J. F. Boyce and S. G. Clark built and opened a store there. Soon after, J. W. Ball built a tavern and a small store. H. Beaver opened a blacksmith shop, C. C. Morehouse, a wagon shop, W. B. Birch, a saddle-tree factory.

In September, 1853, S. T. Coulter and W. H. McClure bought out the business of Boyce and Clark. The same year the Baptist church was built, free for all denominations. Thus early was liberality in religious matters established on the borders of Santa Rosa, and happily it continues down to this day. The only two dwellings were owned by S. T. Coulter and H. Beaver.

Franklin town had now touched the high tide of its prosperity, and was destined to fall before a more promising rival which, up to this time had cut no figure in the possibilities of the future…

– Sonoma Democrat, July 8, 1876

…Early in 1853 J. W. Ball came into the valley; he first located on the Farmer place, on the south side of Santa Rosa Creek. There a number of his family died of small-pox; he then moved over to the Boleau place, where Dr. Simms now lives, and kept there a sort of tavern and store. He bought ten acres of land at the junction of the Russian river, Bodega and Sonoma roads, where the cemetery land now intersects the Sonoma road, and laid off a town there, which was called Franklin-town. S. G. Clark and Dr. Boyce, who had bought out Ball, built and opened a store in Franklin. Ball had a tavern there; H. Beaver a blacksmith shop, and W. B. Birch a saddle-tree factory. In September, 1853, S. T. Coulter and W. H. McClure bought out Boyce & Clark.

The same fall the Baptist church, free to all denominations, was built. For a short time Franklin divided the attention of new comers with Santa Rosa and the “old adobe” [the former Carrillo family home]. The selection of Santa Rosa as the county seat, in the fall of 1854, put an end to rivalry. Within the year following all the houses in Franklin were moved to the new county seat, including the church, which still stands on Third street, between E and D streets. In 1875 it was sold and converted into two tenement houses…

– Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California by Robert A. Thompson, 1877

…In the Spring of 1853, there arrived in the Santa Rosa valley one John W. Ball, who located on the south side of the Santa Rosa creek, but losing several children here from small-pox, which was epidemic in this year, removed to certain land, about three-fourths of a mile from the present city, the property of Oliver Boleau, a French Canadian, a part of whose house (now in the occupation of Dr. Simms) he rented, at one hundred and fifty dollars per month, and opened a small store and public house. The then direct road from the Russian river, the districts to the north of it, and Bodega country, to Sonoma, at that time the only place of export from the county, met at this point, therefore Boleau conceived the idea of here establishing a town. He had about half a mile square surveyed, and named it Franklin, after a brother in Canada; it was placed at the junction of the Sonoma road with the Fulkerson lane. That Spring, S. G. Clark, Dr. J. F. Boyce and Nute McClure bought out Ball and erected a small dry goods store of split redwoods, in size, twenty-four by thirty-six feet, where they continued business until the Fall, when the firm of Clark, Boyce & McClure was bought out by McCluer and Coulter. In the same season John Ball erected a wooden hotel, there being then in town H. Beaver, who kept a blacksmith shop, and W. B. Birch, a saddle-tree manufacturer, while in the early part of 1854 S. T. Coulter erected a dwelling house.

The selection of Santa Rosa as the capital of the county, put an end to all rivalry which may have existed between Franklin, the old adobe, and it. One by one the buildings erected in Franklin were transferred to Santa Rosa, until in 1855 their entire removal was effected; the first house in that short-lived city being now located on Eighth, between Wilson and Davis streets, occupied by J. T. Campbell, while that erected by Coulter is now the Boston saloon, on Fourth street. A Baptist Church, free to all denominations, which had been there constructed in the Fall of 1853, was also moved, and after serving the purpose for which it was originally built, on Third, between E and D streets, was, in 1875, sold and converted into two tenement houses. This was the first church built in the township and city…

– History of Sonoma County by J. P. Munro-Fraser, 1880

…Mr. Meacham had purchased from Julio Carrillo eighty acres of land, just west of the Bolio [Boleau] tract, it being that portion of the present city [Santa Rosa] lying east of the late Plaza. The firm of Hoen & Co., purchased this tract of Mr. Meacham August 9th, 1853 — “Say 70 1/2 acres, opposite Julio Carrillo’s, for the sum of $1,600.” About this time — the Summer of 1853 — it began to be very evident that there was going to be a town somewhere in the neighborhood of the Santa Rosa House [the old Carrillo adobe]. W. P. Ball, a blacksmith, had a shop and small house on the Bolio place. A town was laid out on the land of Bolio, just where what is known as Cemetery lane intersects the Sonoma road.

This was the point of junction of the Sonoma, Bodega and Russian River roads. It was a good town site one would think, and beautifully located. Dr. J. F. Boyce and S. G. Clark built a store there; Ball built another and an inn; H. Beaver started a blacksmith shop; C. Morehouse a wagon shop, and W. B. Brush a saddle-tree factory. The town took the name of Franklin Town — a good name a town of “free men.” But it did not survive. Why, it is difficult now to say. W. H. McClure and S. T. Coulter, present Master of the State Grange of the State of California, bought out Boyce & Clark. The Baptist Church was built. Mr. Coulter and Mr. Beaver had dwellings in Franklin Town. All this was in the year 1853. When the residents of Franklin Town heard of their having a formidable rival close at hand they smiled at the idea…

…A grand joint celebration and electioneering high-jinks feast was held on the 4th of July, 1854, to show up the new town and to get votes for the proposed new seat…After this Fourth of July celebration Franklin Town collapsed; one by one the houses gravitated to Santa Rosa, some on rollers, some on wheels, some otherwise, but all came. The next Spring the purple lockspur and the yellow cupped poppy contended for supremacy on the site fo the hopeful cross-road village of the previous Spring…

– Central Sonoma: A Brief Description of the Township and Town of Santa Rosa, 1884 (SAME AS Resources of Santa Rosa Valley and the Town of Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California by R. A. Thompson, 1884)

OUR OWN HOME
ITS PAST PROSPERITY AND PROMISING FUTURE.
…The next house was built just across the creek from the “old adobe”, on what is now the Dalglish place, by Oliver Bolio. David Mallagh, who married one of the Carrillo girls, kept the first store in the oid adobe. In 1852 he sold out to A. Meacham, who is now residing on Mark West creek, an honored and highly respected pioneer citizen. there was a junction of the Russian River, Bodega and Sonoma roads at the corner of Capt. Grosse’s hop yard, just where the cemetery lane comes into the main road. Quite a cluster of houses gathered about the corners. Bolio, who owned the land, laid out a town there which had the name of Franklin. Dr. J. F. Boyce and S. G. Clark had a store there, and W. B. Brush a saddle tree factory. A good saddle tree maker, in those days, had fortune by the forelock…

– Sonoma Democrat, January 2 1892

RISE AND FALL OF FRANKLIN TOWN.
While Santa Rosa –floral city of the plain–was in early bud, a near-city was growing up–in the night, as it were. Its forefathers called it Franklin Town. Why “Town” and with a big T, has never been told. Only a few of the old guard yet this side of the cemetery gates really remember Franklin Town. As it came, it passed away in the night, or rather, in the morning of its first-day-after.

Its site is just without the present city line on the east, near the reservoir hill. Some day, perhaps, the extension of the boundaries will take in the old place, and then Franklin Town will awake to life–becoming an addition to the Santa Rosa it sought to blight in tender flower. Chiefs of the city in embryo were Dr. J. F. Boyce–venerable “Doc Boyce” who medicined and surgeoned the later Santa Rosans for many a year and eccentric to the point of profanity, which often drove his patients to recover quickly and get him out of the sickroom; also S. T. Coulter — good old “Squire Coulter,” Pioneer Patron of Husbandry, Lord of the Sonoma Grange, and who didn’t believe that the grass and herbs and the trees that bore fruit in their season were first sprouted on the Third Day of Creation, and said even Luther Burbank couldn’t grow things that speedy. Now, deep under the turf these “old forefathers of the hamlet sleep,” and heaven speed their run to the saints.

One feature that shines like a star through this dark Tale of a Lost City, is Franklin Town had a church, then the only church in the county except the Mission Solano at Sonoma. Its faith was Baptist, though all shades of the “two and seventy jarring sects,” as Omar Khayyam phrases them, were welcomed to use that sanctuary for the uplift of any possible sinful citizen of Franklin Town. The willow-bank creek consecrated by Parson Juan Amoroso when he baptized the Indian girl and called her La Rosa — spiritual daughter of Santa Rosa de Lima — splashed and bubbled pure as the Jordan when John came preaching in the wilderness, but it is not positively known that Doc Boyce or Squire Coulter ever availed themselves of the lustral waters flowing by Franklin Town, unless to wash a shirt.

But the finger of doom was writing on the clap-board walls of Franklin Town, Hoen, Hahmann and Hartman — the triple H-builders of Santa Rosa, were housing up C — now Main — street. The diplomatic dads of the coming place got up a Welcome-To-Our-City barbecue, and when the Franklinites saw the hosts of all-invited guests gathering around the Santa Rosa flesh-pots, they also saw the finish of Franklin Town. Soon it was in transit, the Baptist church, on four wheels, led the way like the Ark of the Covenant before the immigrant Israelites herding to the Promised Land, and it afterwards was the pioneer tabernacle, upholding the doctrine of close-communion and total immersion in Santa Rosa, and fitting the aging citizens for another immigration — into Eternity.

– History of Sonoma California by Tom Gregory, 1911:

WILLIAM FRANKLIN AND HALF-WAY HOUSE

HALF WAY HOUSE For Sale.
THE subscriber wishing to leave the State, offers his place, known as the Half Way House between Santa Rosa and Sonoma, for sale. The House is too well known, and too long established to need any recommendation. Apply on the premises, to WILLIAM F. FRANKLIN.

– Sonoma Democrat June 17 1858

Half-Way House For Sale
THE SUBSCRIBER, wishing to leave the State, offers for sale his place, known as the “HALF-WAY HOUSE,” between Santa Rosa and Sonoma. The House has been eight years established, and is too well known to need any recommendation. For particulars, apply premises. W. F. FRANKLIN, Prop’r

– Sonoma Democrat July 21 1859

Fire. —The stable of the Half-way house, W. F. Franklin, proprietor, situated on the road leading from Santa Rosa to Sonoma, was destroyed by fire on Sunday night at eleven o’clock, together with its contents, which consisted of two stage horses belonging to Linihen & Co., proprietors of the Healdsburg and Sonoma line of stages, a horse belonging to a peddler, a quantity of hay and a horse belonging to Mr. Franklin. Through the greatest exertions the hotel was prevented from taking fire. The loss is not less than $1,000. The fire is supposed to be the work of an incendiary.

– Sonoma Democrat, August 8 1861

FOR SALE. FRANKLIN’S HALF-WAY HOUSE!
Situated on the Road from Santa Rosa to Sonoma.
The place is so well known that a lengthy description is deemed unnecessary.
As urgent business calls me to England, I am obliged indispose of my property, and will sell the above place
VERY CHEAP FOR CASH!
W F. FRANKLIN.
All persons indebted to me by note or book account will save expense by settling on or before the 1st December next. W. F. FRANKLIN.

– Sonoma Democrat, October 17 1861

Many of our readers no doubt have observed when passing over the road to Sonoma, from this place, when near the Half-way House, a range of hills lying to the East, and bordering along the Guilicos Rancho, which, with their reddish soil and barren surface do not present a fertile aspect. Well, on these apparently barren hills are to be found a number of enterprising German wine growers, who are busily engaged in cultivating the grape…

– Sonoma Democrat, March 21 1863

Half-Way House. —W. F. Franklin, on the Sonoma Road, keeps a good country hotel. We speak from experience, when we say that Mrs. Franklin, the obliging landlady of that establishment, can prepare as good a meal for the weary traveler, in as short a time, as could be desired by any one.

– Sonoma Democrat, June 10 1865

Against W. F. Franklin and improvements on land bounded Krom [sic: Crone, Kron or Krone] and Williams, east by Napa mountain, south by Warfield, and west by Justi, Sonoma county, California, for taxes $8.18 and costs of suit $16.50.

– Sonoma Democrat legal notice, August 22 1868

Last Sunday, in company with a few friends, we paid a flying visit to the new silver mines on Sonoma mountain. Taking the Sonoma road from Santa Rosa, we drove through the Guilicos Valley to the Half-way House, kept by our old friend Captain Justa…

– Sonoma Democrat, April 10 1869

…[Charles Justi] was captain of the steamer Georgiana, running between San Francisco and Embarcadero in the early fifties, whence he obtained the title Captain. He bought and owned 500 acres of land near Glen Ellen but lost all but 40 acres through litigation and defective titles. For many years the Captain [Justi] and his estimable wife conducted the Half-way house at the old homestead near Glen Ellen, and before the advent of railroads, while the stages were still running to Santa Rosa, did a thriving business.

– Sonoma Valley Expositor, June 9 1899

VISITOR HERE RECALLS DAYS 70 YEARS AGO
Pioneer Tells of Time When Santa Rosa Was Known as Franklin
The earliest history of Santa Rosa, when the village was called Franklin Town, was recalled here yesterday by the visit of William Franklin. Jr., of San Francisco, son of the pioneer after which the first settlement was named.

William Franklin and his wife came to Santa Rosa from Australia in 1852, after having been shipwrecked on the Hawaiian Islands, when his sailing vessel stopped there to secure water. A year was spent in the islands before another vessel could be secured to complete the voyage to California, and during this year the child who came here yesterday, a man of 73, was born.

The elder Franklin settled on the Sonoma-Santa Rosa road, just east of the present city, and with the arrival of others the village of Franklin Town came into being. The subsequent settlement and growth of Santa Rosa finally did away with the old village. Franklin worked for William Hood in his flour mill, first in Rincon Valley, and later in Franklin Town; built one of the first wooden houses in the city on what is now upper Fourth street; and helped build the old Colgan hotel on First street.

The Franklin family later moved to Glen Ellen, residing in the Dunbar district, where William Franklin. Jr., attended school with Nicholas Dunbar, father of Charles O. Dunbar, present mayor of Santa Rosa. John Dunbar, uncle of the mayor, now of San Luis Obispo, and Franklin are the only survivors of the class which Franklin attended, as far as he knows, he said yesterday.

Children of the Dunbar, Box, Justi and Simons families were in the class, as was the late George Guerne and his wife, Eliza Gibson.

Franklin bemoaned the condition of Santa Rosa creek, where, he said, splendid fishing conditions have been destroyed by the dumping of sawdust, tan bark and other debris. In his day, Franklin said, a few minutes of fishing would suffice to catch a bag full of trout. Grizzly bear were then plentiful within a few miles of the city, and deer, antelope and other game could be secured with little difficulty. he said.

– Press Democrat, July 21 1925

PROPERTIES

Another new building of brick will be commenced immediately, weather permitting, by Messrs. Melville Johnson and Jackson Temple, for a law office. It will occupy the site of the old Coulter House, next door south of the bank. This old landmark which long years ago voyaged from Franklin Town to this place, will be removed to a quiet locality more suited to its age and long services. The new building will be 18 feet front by sixty feet deep, one story, divided into three large offices.

– Sonoma Democrat, December 14 1872

Sale of Noted Farm. – The Lucas farm, near Santa Rosa, containing four hundred acres, has been subdivided and sold during this month by Dr. J. R. Sims, acting as agent for the owner. The subdivision nearest the town — within half a mile of the corporation limits containing forty-eight and one-half acres, was purchased by James Seawell, of this place, and Dr. Rupe, of Healdsburg, for $160 per acre. This left two hundred acres of bottom land, fronting on the Sonoma and Cemetery roads, and one hundred acres on the ridge back of the farm. This was sold out in six plats, to suit purchasers, each one taking a strip of hill land as wide as their frontage on the bottom. Richard Fulkerson purchased eighty-two acres, Including the land which lies north and back of the cemetery. Next, Frank Straney bought fifty-nine acres — thirty-two of bottom land. Next, L. B. Murdock, forty-five acres — forty of bottom land. Two parties from Yolo took the next one hundred acres. Dr. Simms purchases the home place, with the rest of the land, between thirty and forty acres in the bottom. The whole tract will net $41,500, which is the largest and best sale of land ever made in the vicinity of Santa Rosa. The Lucas farm was the first settled in this vicinity. On it was the site of the once rival of Santa Rosa, the town of Franklin.

– Sonoma Democrat, December 27 1873

HISTORIC LOCAL BUILDING RAZED – One of the first store buildings to be erected in Santa Rosa, or rather in old Franklin Town, was razed last week on lower Fourth street to prepare for the new Rosenberg building. Few people realized that the little wooden structure had such a history. It was the building in which the late Squire Coulter ran a store in Franklin Town in the ’50s. Later, when Santa Rosa was founded, it was moved to where the Hahman drug store now stands in Exchange avenue, where Squire Coulter occupied it as his business house. Later it was sold and was again moved to lower Fourth street, where for nearly 70 years it has been occupied by various businesses.

– Press Democrat, July 26 1925

MISC

Sonoma County Democratic Convention. At a meeting of the democratic delegates of Sonoma county, held at Franklin, Santa Rosa Valley, on the 8th inst., Wm. Ross was elected President.

– The Placer Herald, July 15, 1854

THE BAPTIST GOLDEN JUBILEE …In 1856 the primitive little church building was moved from Franklin to the Santa Rosa that was springing into existence. It was put on wheels and hauled there by six yoke of oxen. On Third street the oxen halted and the church occupied a site west of where the People’s Church now stands.

– Press Democrat, March 21 1902

The distinction of living to celebrate their golden wedding falls to the lot of comparatively few married couples. But when it comes to being married fifty years and living the half century of married life in the same community makes the distinction very unique. If both are spared to see February 21 come round such a novelty will be enjoyed by Mr. and Mrs. Sterling Taylor Coulter of Santa Rosa. Fifty years ago on that date in the old Santa Rosa, then known as the town of Franklin, Mr. and Mrs. Coulter were married, and it is hoped that when they celebrate the important occasion the honored pioneers will have the pleasure of having as their guests several of those who were among those present at their wedding day in the old town, in 1854.

– Press Democrat, February 12 1904

Share this:
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)

Read More

THE FIVE THOUSAND MORNINGS OF THE CARRILLOS

May 21, 2022May 28, 2022 Jeff Elliott 5 Comments

Any progress on saving the Carrillo Adobe? Nope; as of this writing (2022) what walls still exist continue to melt like very slowly thawing snow. The last restoration effort remains the shed roof put over the place thirty years ago, paid for by the Carrillo family and other donors. We should also be thankful the chainlink fence was finally repaired in 2012 after a homeless camp was found to be stealing original timbers from the building to use for firewood and tent poles.

Although it’s destined to be a park someday (right, city hall?) its future rests with the San Jose developer who owns the land and intends to build 162 condos next to it. That project is now called the “Creekside Village Townhomes” and a development plan was filed in 2020 (PDF) complete with blueprints, architectural sections, landscaping, elevation setbacks, chosen paint colors, streetlight designs and all the other trimmings a city would expect for a major housing development. The site plans only specify an outline for a “Future Carrillo Adobe Park” next door.

Devil’s advocate: Why should we even care if those ruins are preserved? We’ve been telling ourselves the same tale about the place for 150 years and frankly, it’s not all that interesting. The widow Carrillo arrives with her many children and they build the adobe. After the family moves out, a group of Americans use it for a store. Before long those fellows dash off to establish Santa Rosa and the adobe becomes a barn, a warehouse, a prune drying shed and other uninteresting things. A joke plaque could read: “On this spot nothing happened.”

It’s tragic we have allowed the adobe to fall into shambles, but it’s just as bad (or worse, in my opinion) that we have allowed its history to be scraped down to those bare bones, shorn of anything having to do with the Carrillos or how their lives were entwined with a significant period of history. Why has this happened?

Part of the reason is because researchers find few primary sources available; there were no memoirs written by or about the founding Carrillo family. Some of the Carrillo children were illiterate (at least in english) which would help explain why there are so few letters written by family members.¹

There are good accounts of visits to the adobe from two english-speaking travelers (discussed below), but other than that the only contemporary accounts are incidental comments made by a U.S. government agent and others passing through the territory.

Such a dearth of original material is somewhat understandable; it was a long time ago – these were events from the 1840s plus a couple of years on either side of that decade. Less forgivable is that later journalists and historians had almost no interest in recording the family’s personal account while they were alive. Many of the founding Carrillo family lived into the late 19th century (two into the 20th), yet there are only a couple known newspaper interviews, both transcribed below for the first time. There’s more than a whiff of racism in that fact, as the Democrat newspaper in Santa Rosa eagerly printed anything having to with non-Hispanics whom they recognized as “pioneers.” The paper even venerated a flagpole because it once waved the Bear Flag over the town of Sonoma, although it turned out that wasn’t even the original pole.

And for the record, that indifference continued into modern times, ending only when Eric Stanley’s 1999 Master’s Thesis made the point that the adobe was historically significant not only because it was such an old building, but also because of the cultural importance of the Carrillo family living there. His writing was later expanded and incorporated into the Roop/Wick Archaeological Study.

That document is the definitive work on all things related to the adobe, detailing also the periods before and after the Carrillo years. It presents a broad picture tracing how they navigated through some very challenging times, including after matriarch Doña María died and the strongly knit family finally crumbled apart – “change happens gradually at first, then all at once,” as Ernest Hemingway famously (but never actually) said.

What follows covers the period from their arrival in the county to when the adobe was sold to the Americans. Those were mainly happy times, when for about five thousand mornings their great herds of cattle and semi-wild horses grazed on the unfenced Santa Rosa plain, puffing clouds of steam in the cool early hours. An upcoming chapter will cover the later years of Marta and Julio, the only children who remained in Santa Rosa and struggled to make their ways in a strange, and often cruel, new world.

–

THE CARRILLO CHILDREN

Although I have made my best effort to verify dates, some sources present conflicting data. Please leave a comment if corrections are needed.

JOSEFA Josefa Maria Antonia 1810–1893
m. Henry Delano Fitch 1829

RAMONA Maria Ramona de la Luz 1812–1886
m. Jose Antonio Romualdo Pacheco 1826
m. John Charles Wilson 1835

LUZ Maria de la Luz Eustaquia 1814–1894
m. Salvador Vallejo 1840

FRANCISCA Maria Felipa Benicia 1815–1891
m. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo 1832

JOHN Juan Bautista 1817–1841

JOAQUIN Jose Joaquin Victor 1819–1899
m. 1849
m. 1875
“Sebastopol Joaquin” Profiled here

RAMON Jose Ramon 1821–1864
m. 1847
Profiled here (partially)

DOLORES Jose de los Dolores 1823–1844
Died at age 21, buried in Santa Clara

JULIO Julio Maria Tomas 1824–1889
m. 1842
m. 1862
Profiled in upcoming chapter

MARTA Maria Marta 1826-1905
m. Jose Joaquin Maria Victor Carrillo Montano 1855

JUANA Juana de Jesus 1829–1901
m. David Patrick Mallagh 1851

FELICIDAD Maria Felicidad de la Angustias 1833–1856
m. Victor Ramon Castro of Rancho San Pablo 1853

“I have seen Doña María Ygnacia robed in a neat calico dress of a French texture, with a broad-brim straw hat made by one of her Indian women, mounted on a horse which had been broken to saddle by some of her sons expressly for her use,” wrote a traveler of the family matriarch.² Such a fine, cinematic introduction to Doña María, who was only 44 when she arrived in Sonoma County, mother to twelve surviving children.

Although this was not long after the Carrillos moved into their adobe in 1839, the family already had created a rancho imposing by any measures. Indian laborers managed by Doña María planted and tended fields of wheat, corn, beans and other crops along with vegetables. Teenager Ramón and another son were wrangling about 3,000 head of cattle and as many as 1,500 horses according to that same early visitor.

It was a remarkable turnaround for the family, considering the death of Doña María’s soldier husband had left them in dire straits four years (or so) past. The story usually goes that she was encouraged by a priest and her son-in-law, General Vallejo, to relocate to Sonoma County, so in the summer or fall of 1837 they trundled 700 miles from San Diego on oxcarts. But in one of the overlooked articles, “Sonoma Valley Before the Gringoes Came,” Marta told the writer they came up by sea – which certainly makes more sense, considering she was bringing along nine children ages four to 23.³

It’s also commonly said they lived for a year or so with the Vallejos before scouting out places to settle. It’s certainly possible some of the younger kids stayed that long overall, but a decision on the location was quickly made. In January 1838, son-in-law General Mariano Vallejo granted her a land grant of nearly 9,000 acres. Prior to that a “log house” had already built on Santa Rosa Creek about a half-mile upstream of the adobe site, Julio said in the interview transcribed below.

Nor was there much question about precisely where the Carrillos were going to live. There was already a heavy-duty stone foundation built some ten years earlier ~~(“the marks where the buildings stood were plainly discernible,” Julio said)~~ which greatly facilitated construction of the adobe. Whether the abandoned footings were intended for a full-scale mission, a satellite “asistencia” – or maybe a military outpost – is an unsettled question. (EDIT: The particular foundation Julio referred to was near the site of the village of Hukabetawi, described below, not the other pre-existing foundation on which the Carrillo Adobe was built.)

Having a ready-to-use building foundation was a great advantage, but General Vallejo probably would have urged the Carrillos to settle in the Santa Rosa area anyway. The secularization of the missions created an ongoing headache for Vallejo, as mission properties were supposed to be given to Indians who had lived and worked there. The missionaries tried to skirt the law by creating popup colonies on land they claimed belonged to the church because. Vallejo evicted them from the Petaluma area with a promise to turn all of Santa Rosa into Mission Indian lands, but granting the entire acreage to the Carrillos was an endrun to the padre’s gamesmanship.⁴

But catastrophe struck before adobe construction could begin. In late 1837 a soldier caught smallpox while on a trading mission at Fort Ross. Vallejo and other Californios were vaccinated and he ordered Sem-Yeto (Chief Solano) and other Indians in his immediate circle vaccinated as well, while trying to prevent an epidemic by quarantining the rest of the Indians living nearby. It did little good; in May 1838 Vallejo sent a notice to all parts of Alta California warning smallpox was raging in the North Bay. He later estimated the disease claimed some 70,000 Indians in the region and Gov. Alvarado said 200-300k were killed “as far as the slopes of Mount Shasta.” A Californio historian wrote at the time they “died daily like bugs.”

(“Old villages” c. 1800. After the 1838-1839 smallpox epidemic only a few remained. Source: “The Ethno-Geography of the Pomo and Neighboring Indians,” Samuel Barrett, 1908. Art by Jeff Elliott)

By the time the Carrillos moved into the adobe in 1839 the world had turned upside down. In the before-times, the Pomo tribelet in the Santa Rosa area (called the Gualomi in mission records) had an established village known as Hukabetawi – where W Third St. meets N Dutton Ave. – as well as another at the site of Santa Rosa city hall. With so many deaths happening so fast, essential family and community links shattered. Like Sebastopol and Dry Creek, Santa Rosa was now a refugee camp mixing people who often didn’t know each other, with Mission Indians next to those who saw the Californios as no better than the missionaries who treated them like slaves.

The chaos of an epidemic ripping through the area surely put adobe construction on hold for most of 1838, although the vaccinated Carrillo boys probably got the jump on cattle and horse ranching. Farming may also have started by the local Pomo, as smallpox did not reach here until later in the year. In fact, I suspect the Indians who Vallejo initially sent “far away” to quarantine were told to go to Santa Rosa and start work on his mother-in-law’s house, as they had recent construction experience in building Vallejo’s own adobe home. Similarly, Salvador Vallejo – brother of the General and soon to marry a Carrillo daughter in 1840 – is credited with supervising the work and possibly the layout of the Carrillo adobe.

The Carrillo children surely looked back upon the 1840s as the best years of their lives. They were young and strapping; the boys in their early twenties or close to it, the girls starting their teens. The rancho prospered and the new adobe gave everyone plenty of room (what is seen today is just the east wing of the adobe; a north wing collapsed in 1944).

The decade was not without its sorrows. Two of Doña María’s sons died as adults; Juan Bautista was age 24, supposedly due to accidental food poisoning by the Carrillo family cook. Dolores was 21 and possibly died while a soldier. Doña María Ignacia Lopez de Carrillo died on February 28, 1849, and her will is partially transcribed below.

There was also the crisis of 1846. The Bear Flag Revolt caused a few weeks of panic because rumors spread Americans were going to kill all Californios in their sleep – while the Americans feared the Californios were planning same. Worse, the family was defenseless because their protectors, Salvador and Mariano Vallejo were being held prisoner; Julio Carrillo would soon be a captive of the Bears as well. Ramón formed a militia to protect the ranchos from possible attacks and there are questions over whether some critical events played out at the adobe, topics discussed here.

The Carrillo rancho also became a social hub for neighboring Californios. Another visitor described young men hanging around, waiting for an opportunity to race and chase down wild horses in the Carrillo’s substantial herd:

…In front of the house there was a courtyard of considerable extent, and part of this was sheltered by a porch. Here, when the “vaccaros” [sic] having nothing to call them to the field, they pass the day, looking like retainers of a rude court. A dozen wild, vicious little horses, with rough wooden saddles on their backs, stand ever ready for work; whilst lounging about, the vaccaros smoke, play the guitar, or twist up a new “riata” of hide or horse-hair…

The writer continued that after an afternoon nap they mounted up and “…away they all go in a cloud of dust, splashing through the river, waving their lassos round their heads with a wild shout, and disappearing from the sight almost as soon as mounted. The vaccaro wants at all times to ride furiously, and the little horses eyes are opened wide enough before they receive the second dig of their rider’s iron spurs…”

That colorful passage was written by Frank Marryat, who spent several days with the Carrillos.⁵ His visit came in 1850, the year following Doña María’s death so we’re sadly denied a description of her. By then, however, the three Carrillo girls were young women of marriageable age, and we’re treated to a memorable description of “Quilp,” there trying to court 24 year-old Marta:

Breakfast over the Spanish guests were introduced; they were all fine dashing looking fellows, with the exception of one, a short stout man; from the first moment of our meeting war was tacitly declared between us and this gentleman; we found that he was a suitor for the hand of the eldest sister, who, by the way owned a part of the ranche, and I suppose he imagined it was our intention to contest this prize with him; for he commenced at once to show his disapprobation of our presence; we called this fellow Quilp…

Ramón took the writer on an antelope hunt (!) and when they returned to the adobe Quilp was still hanging around, doing his best to impress Marta he was a great catch: “…he would sit down on a stool in the porch, and throwing one leg over the other, would twang the old guitar and accompany it with a Spanish hymn to the Virgin, which being delivered in a dismal falsetto, bore much resemblance to the noise of a wheelbarrow that requires greasing and was about as musical.” (I urge you to read his whole section about the Carrillos. It’s 22 short pages and is great fun.)

Doña María’s ambitious plans for her rancho required a large, year-round workforce, and according to the 1884 Robert Thompson history, “it is said that at the time of the occupation of the valley by Señora Carrillo there were three thousand Indians living in the neighborhood of [Santa Rosa].” That estimate probably came from Julio – Thompson had interviewed him in 1872.⁶ The number is likely an exaggeration, but even if just half that many were here it was far larger than the estimated pre-smallpox population of the original villages in the area, which shows the scope of the Indian diaspora after the epidemic.

By most accounts the Carrillos got along particularly well with their Indian workers. The former Mission Indians would have settled in to rancho peonage easily, being used to field and domestic work in exchange for food and clothing. Traditionalist Indians were accommodated by the rancho having a temazcal (sweat lodge) and those converted to Catholicism must have been exceptionally pleased when at age 13, Marta stood as a godparent at the baptism of an Indian child, which was unusual and not just because of her youth.

William Heath Davis, that traveler who visited the Carrillos early on, worried that among them were several hundred “unchristianized” Indians which might pose a threat to the family.⁷ Doña María told him “she had perfect confidence in her raw help because she treated them so well,” that she kept them well-fed and could speak their language. Julio likewise told historian Thompson the Indians were “…our faithful servants and with their help we were enabled to till our immense fields and drive to pasture our countless thousands of cattle.”

But in her later “Gringos” interview (below), Marta told the writer “occasionally there was a mutiny” which Doña María herself suppressed using her riata/lasso “with the Indians when they were disposed to be ugly.” There is no description of what was done with the protesting Indians once they were roped, but from the context it’s apparent punishment followed.

After Doña María died, this ad hoc Indian refugee community would also fade away quickly. There would be no more livestock, no more crops to tend. There would be no more Carrillos to serve and no more vaqueros and suitors hanging about. There would only be the Americanos, and nobody was sure of how to deal with them.

Around the Twelfth Night of Christmas – a significant holy day in the Mexican Catholic calendar – Doña María saw the shadows of death creeping towards her and wrote a will (partially transcribed below). She would live less than two more months.

Doña María was thoughtful and fair about dividing the lands amongst her children. Three of the eldest daughters – Josefa, Ramona, and Francisca – received no bequests because they were married with their own households. She affirmed Luz already had been given land between Santa Rosa Creek and “the swamp” (huh?) and asked all of the children to regard Luz as the new family matriarch. Although she and husband Salvador Vallejo had their own adobe in Napa, they seemingly spent much of their time at the General’s adobe, judging from biographies.

The three unmarried daughters shared the adobe and land bordered on the south by “El Potrero” creek (eh?) and “the limits of Santa Rosa,” which I’m guessing is approximately E street. The rest of the property belonged jointly to Julio and Ramón. Joaquin – who had his own substantial land grant on the west side of the Laguna – was left a share of the livestock.

Following the Bear Flag Revolt, Ramón took part in the Mexican-American War and remained in Southern California, returning here for a year (or so) after his mother’s death. That was when he met Frank Marryat and settled his affairs with the family, apparently never to return. He sold his interest in the land to Julio for two dollars and Mariano Vallejo gave him $16,672 (over a half-million today) which was presumably for all/most of the Carrillo livestock. Was it a coincidence that sale happened on September 9, 1850 – the day California became part of the United States?

Although there was no more ranching, some farming continued at least through the following year. U.S. Indian Agent George Gibbs came through and described conditions: “…The slovenly modes of cultivation in use, comparatively unproductive as they are, have yet the merit of requiring little or no expenditure of money in wages; the Indians receiving a bare support beyond what they can steal, and then only during the summer.”⁸ Once Doña María was gone, it seemed the Carrillo’s relationship with the Indians quickly frayed.

Nor was that the only change during 1851 that would have saddened Doña María. Juana married David Mallagh, who with a business partner turned the front part of the family adobe into a general store. They also opened a tavern they called “Santa Rosa House” in the adobe. Then later that year Marta, 25 years old and unmarried, gave birth to her son Agobar. The name of the father was never mentioned.

The next year Alonzo Meacham arrived and bought the store (whether the tavern was included is not known).⁹ Meacham petitioned the government to open a post office there under the name “Santa Rosa;” historian Robert Thompson quipped, “Mr. M. is entitled to the gratitude of posterity that he did not call the post office Mallaghsville, Buchanansburg, or some other stupid name of like derivation.”

Also in 1852 the Carrillos began selling off their inheritance. Julio sold seventy acres to Meacham, which would become the east side of old Santa Rosa (E street to the middle of Courthouse Square). The situation with the three youngest sisters was more complex, as Doña María had left her other portion of the rancho to them jointly. Felicidad owned 337½ acres outright; Marta co-owned portions with Juana and Luz. It was the deed shared with Luz that became a later scandal.

According to the “Gringos” article found below, one day Marta was surprised to receive an eviction notice because her 1,600 acres had been sold. Shown the new deed, Marta – who could neither read nor write – discovered her name had been forged, and the person who did it was Salvador Vallejo, Luz’ husband. Not wishing to cause a family disgrace, she kept quiet at the time and went to live with one of her brothers. That story has been often retold by history writers since.

None of that is true. County records (Book H:115) show that on May 21, 1852, she indeed signed the deed of sale with an “X” and it was properly witnessed. Luz also signed with a mark while Salvador wrote his full name.

This is not to say that Salvador might have cheated her in some other way – such as not giving her a complete share of the proceeds – but the document was not forged. The writer of the 1900 newspaper article must have misunderstood (there was certainly plenty of other villainy in Salvador Vallejo’s life she might have mentioned).

The Carrillo family was also about to lose ownership of the adobe. An old friend of Meacham’s became his partner, before he decided he wanted to be a farmer instead and sold his share to another guy and his nephew. The new partnership called Hoen & Co. turned it into a major trading post. Wrote historian Thompson: “That summer of 1853 business was lively at the “old adobe;” all the freighting was done by pack-mules and it was a purchasing point for settlers up the Russian River valley, and as far north as Clear lake. Trains of pack mules might be seen at all hours either loading or uploading freight…”

Juana and husband David apparently still lived there, and when a smallpox epidemic passed through Santa Rosa their child (Helena Felicidad) died. That loss might have been the reason the Mallaghs decided to sell the adobe and move to San Luis Obispo, where older sister Ramona lived.

They had always rented that front part of the building with the store for $25/mo. Marta – the last unmarried daughter – was living with one of her brothers (according to “Gringos”) and once the Mallaghs were gone there would be no one from the family remaining. With the rest of the adobe vacant, the new owner demanded Hoen & Co. rent the whole place for $300 per month.

Hoen and his partners refused to even negotiate with Walkinshaw, the new landlord.¹⁰ Instead, they went to Meacham, who had bought those seventy acres from Julio a year earlier. Paying Alonzo $12/acre, they set up shop over there and added a new line of business: Selling real estate.

Thus sometime, probably in the early autumn of 1853, came a morning when the Carrillo adobe was no longer anyone’s home. There was no smoke seen rising from the chimney, no smell of fresh tortillas in the kitchen, no shutters open to invite the sun. All was quiet and still, except for the distant pounding of many hammers driving nails a mile further to the west.

NOTE ON THE TITLE IMAGE: Some Carrillo family members on Ancestry and FaceBook have asserted this young woman is Marta Carrillo. It is ~~probably not her or any of her sisters, but it is~~ impossible to prove either way. (EDIT: Eric Stanley has corrected me that the set of images likely did include some of Doña María’s daughters.) It came from a set of daguerreotypes purchased decades ago by an out-of-state collector at an estate sale. The background image is a photograph from the Sonoma County Museum collection titled, “Fountaingrove with hills surrounding Santa Rosa” and has been slightly tinted here for effect.

¹ Some of the children could not even write their names, yet others were literate in spanish and maybe english. In 1864 the Democrat published a well-written english language letter from Julio, while Ramón and Francisca strategized via letters during the 1846 Bear Flag revolt in spanish. Doña María corresponded with son-in-law Henry Fitch. I have not seen copies of any of these documents, so some/all may have been dictated.

² Seventy-five Years in California by William Heath Davis; 1929, J. Howell, pp. 25-26. This passage did not appear in the original form of the book, Sixty Years in California published in 1889. The entire section reads: “Doña María Ygnacia was ambitious, and cultivated large fields of wheat, barley, oats, corn, beans, peas, Jantejas [sic – he meant Lentejas/lentils], and vegetables of every variety. I have eaten from water- and musk melon of a hot summer day in the broad corridor of the homelike adobe dwelling. I have seen Doña María Ygnacia robed in a neat calico dress of a French texture, with a broad-brim straw hat made by one of her Indian women, mounted on a horse which had been broken to saddle by some of her sons expressly for her use, ride over the hacienda and direct the gentiles in sowing and planting seed and in harvesting the same. She supervised the farming herself, but the management of the stock and rodeos was left to her son José Ramon and his brother. José Ramon inherited his mother‘s gift. Although she was the mother of eleven grown daughters and sons, she was well preserved and still looked handsome with all the charms of her younger days. She was of medium height, with all the graceful movements so characteristic of her race.”

³ “‘Sonoma Valley Before the Gringoes Came,’ written for the Sunday Bulletin, March 11, 1900”: undated and anonymous, 7 typewritten pp. Gaye LeBaron Collection, Sonoma State University Library

⁴ The Creekside Village Archaeological Testing Program, Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California by William Roop, Emily Wick, 2008; pp. 75, 278-280, 285-286

⁵ Mountains and Molehills, Or, Recollections of a Burnt Journal by Frank Marryat; 1855. pp. 61-82

⁶ “Narrative of Julio Carrillo as given by him to by Robert A. Thompson editor Santa Rosa Democrat”; 1872. Bancroft Library, UC/Berkeley (READ). The eleven page manuscript is mostly political remarks and gossip from the late 1840s, but has passages about the rancho and Indians, although not the est. 3,000 population. It shows Julio was quite an articulate speaker in english.

⁷ Davis op. cit.

⁸ Roop/Wick op. cit. pp. 287-288. Gibbs’ report reflects his barely concealed contempt for the Californios as well as their use of Indian labor.

⁹ The common story told about Alonzo Meacham held that he was a shopkeeper burned out by the great San Francisco fire of May, 1851. Classified ads in the Alta California show he was first an auctioneer and then had a company selling building stone until September of that year.

¹⁰ Robert F. Walkinshaw lived in Santa Clara and had no other interests in Santa Rosa – he was never mentioned in any of the papers as coming through the area. But a few years earlier he was a controversial figure. In April 1847 he was the sailing captain of the Schooner William, which arrived in San Francisco Bay with a valuable cargo of mining equipment from Mexico, including gunpowder, intended to be used at a mercury mine near San Jose. As this was during the Mexican-American War, the ship was seized by the Americans. The schooner was flying an English flag and in Admiralty Court hearings it was claimed the tools were owned by a British firm. Walkinshaw was a Mexican citizen and members of the firm had lived in Mexico for many years but were still British subjects. Although the judge conceded the vessel and cargo were property of a business based in a neutral country, everything coming from an enemy nation must be taken from its owners as being spoils of war. Military governor of California Richard Mason, however, stepped in and ordered the ship and its cargo released.

SONOMA VALLEY BEFORE THE GRINGOES CAME
(Written for the Sunday Bulletin, March 11, 1900)

Santa Rosa, March 3. – Old and feeble and bent with age, in a little cottage on Fourth street in this city, lives Marta Carrillo, daughter of the remarkable woman whose indomitable energy and intrepid courage blazed the pathway for civilization in this fair valley of the Santa Rosa.

Marta has lived here seventy years. Many changes have occurred in that time – changes swift and wonderful, to Marta, swifter and more wonderful with each passing year – each one leaving the old lady a little more bewildered than did the last. And the one change which Dona Marta cannot understand at all, and, indeed, one which she makes no pretense of understanding, is the sad, stern change in her own condition that bespeaks the fallen fortunes of the house of Carrillo.

Time has passed quickly with Dona Marta, and to her it seems not so very long ago that all this country about here, including the site where now stands the city of Santa Rosa, belonged to her mother, to her brother and to herself. The memory of those old days is to her fresher than those of more recent and less pleasant times. She recalls distinctly the day when her mother’s residence, the old adobe house, now crumbling to decay on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, was the only dwelling in this section, and when the cattle of the Carrillos wandered over leagues upon leagues of this land, which is now parceled out among “the Gringos,” with only a single acre of it left in the possession of a Carrillo.

All Marta’s brothers and sisters are dead. All died comparatively poor. But the name of the family is inseparately interwoven with the early history of this State; one of Marta’s sisters was the wife of General M. G. Vallejo, Military Governor of Alta California; another sister was the mother of Governor Romualdo Pacheco, while a third married Colonel Salvador Vallejo, brother of the general of that name.

In the year of 1826 Father Ventura, one of the founders of the Mission of New San Francisco, or Sonoma, returned to San Diego after spending three years among the Indians of Northern California. Among his friends in the southern settlement were the family of Colonel Joaquin Carrillo. The colonel had died during the absence of the good padre, leaving a rather small estate to his widow and her nine children. When the estate had dwindled, in the course of three years, to an amount so small that the family could subsist upon it only with great economy, Father Ventura bethought him of the beautiful and fertile country, far to the north, where a home might be built and land in any quantity obtained for the taking. The priest urged the widow of his friend to go to this new country far to and north of the Sonoma Mission, picturing its beauties, its adoptability to cultivation, the docility of the natives, who, he said, could be employed at farming and herding. He bade her place her trust in God and the saints, take her family, go to the country he described, and she would be blessed.

And so Dona Maria Ignacia Lopez, the widow of Colonel Carrillo, with her four girls and five boys, set sail for San Francisco. The family reached Sonoma, where they found the young commander, Vallejo, in charge with a few Mexican soldiers. Dona Maria and her children remained in Sonoma several months. During that time two courtships were in progress, and before the widow left the shelter of the settlement her daughter, Frances Benicia, was wedded to Commandant M. G. Vallejo, while the latter’s brother, Salvador, at that time a captain, espoused Lus, another daughter of Dona Maria.

At that time the country lying west of Sonoma was very little known, except that near the Coast. Nevertheless, Dona Maria determined to follow the advice of Father Ventura and seek a home for herself and children in the then almost unknown land that bordered on the Mission of New San Francisco.

With a band of cattle, a few horses and an ox team, they set out, accompanied by an Indian guide. After two days’ travel they reached a spot that appeared to be suitable for their purpose, and there laid the foundation for what afterward became famous as the Rancho de Cabeza de santa Rosa. The first step was to construct a dwelling. Dona Maria designed the structure and assisted her sons in making the mud bricks and, after they had been dried in the sun, in plastering them together. The result of their labor still stands near Santa Rosa, though the old adobe is now used for a barn and is crumbling away through lack of repairs.

Dona Maria’s executive ability, so unusual in the women of her race, made her the dominant, ruling spirit of the rancho to the very day of her death. It was not long after her first occupation of the land before she had gathered about her a large number of Indians. These she set to work to till the land, to herd cattle, to thresh grain and to do the general work of the place. The Indians were tractable, as a rule, but occasionally there was a mutiny, and during troublesome times the bravery of the pioneer woman is said to have been greater than that of her sons. In those days firearms were exceedingly scarce. The principal weapon was the “rista,” or lasso, which was used against man or beast with equally good (or bad) effect. The long rope with the noosed end was the chief argument employed by Dona Maria with the Indians when they were disposed to be ugly, and though she often faced great odds, it is not of record that the lady was ever worsted in an encounter.

As the years passed the cattle increased in number until they could be counted by thousands. The boys and girls grew to manhood and womanhood. Juanita married Don Pacheco; Marta, the youngest, was as yet unmarried.

In 1840 Dona Maria applied to the Mexican Governor, Manuel Jimeno, at Monterey, for a title to her land. She was given a grant of two “sitios” (leagues) under the caption of “El Rancho de Cabeza de Santa Rosa.” About the same time her son, Joaquin, applied for and received title to the grant known as the “Laguna de Santa Rosa,” consisting of three sitios, adjoining the land of his mother. This made an area of fifteen square miles of land, owned by mother and son.

All went well with the Carrillos until the death of Dona Maria, about 1848. Then the trouble began. The heirs had a disagreement over the division of her estate, which was finally settled, however, principally by the method of the strong arm. Then the Americans began to arrive in large numbers. They cultivated the Mexican habit of gambling, but usually to the disadvantage of the Mexican.

Once divided among the children of Dona Maria, the great estate passed rapidly into other hands. In one way and another the property was disposed of to the Americans, who soon overran the country until not an inch of the original grants was left in the possession of the Carrillo family.

About 1855 Dona Marta married her cousin, Joaquin Carrillo. Their early married life was one or many hardships and privations until the husband by hard work had accumulated a little fortune of three or four thousand dollars. Then they purchased the acre of ground in Santa Rose whereon they now live with their daughter and two little grandchildren.

A few years prior to her marriage, Marta was still in possession of a portion of her share of her mother’s estate. This consisted of 1600 acres lying between Santa Rosa creek and Matanzas creek. These boundaries would now include a goodly chunk of the city of Santa Rosa. One day Dona Marta was served with a notice of ejectment. When she protested she was shown what purported to be a deed to the property, signed by herself. They told her that her brother-in-law, Salvador Vallejo, had effected the sale and he had been paid the purchase price. This was all news to Marta, for, while she could ride a bronco or throw the riata with skill and grace, she had never been taught to write and could not even scribble her own name. But she would not bring disgrace on the family by making complaint, so the purchaser of a magnificent property at one-hundredth part of its value was permitted to take possession, and little Marta, robbed of her birthright, went to live with one of her brothers. The brothers were equally unfortunate; within a few years they, too, had lost their possessions. A few years more and all the children of Dona Maria were dead – all except Marta. But in the meantime love had come into her life and smoothed over the rough places and abided with her through all the years of trouble that followed. And, though lands and cattle and retainers are hers no longer, Dona Marta is happy in the little cottage on the little acre of ground – all that is left of the once vast domain of the Carrillos.

– manuscript copy courtesy the Gaye LeBaron collection, Sonoma State University

LAST WILL OF MARIA YGNACIA LOPEZ CARRILLO (excerpt)

…I declare that I was lawfully married to Don Joaquin Carrillo (now deceased), in which marriage we begot our legitimate children, Josefa, Ramona, Maria de la Luz, Francisco, Joaquin, Ramon, Juan, Dolores, Julio, Marta, Juana, and Felicidad.

I declare as my executors my sons Jose Ramon, Joaquin, or Julio. I declare as legitimate heirs of the property that I actually possess my daughter, Maria de la Luz, Jose Ramon, Joaquin, Julio, Maria Marta, Juana de Jesus, Maria Felicidad de las Augustias. – (The exception of Josefa, Ramona, and Francisca, who have come to have no share in the property willed.) I declare that the property which I actually possess and which belongs to me is derived from the personal labor of my sons and daughters mentioned in the above clause. – I declare the land that my daughter Luz actually possesses, and its boundaries, are the Santa Rosa Creek, above, almost as far as the limits of the swamp which belongs to me; and the width shall be the swamp, above, along the edge of the surrounding hills. –

I command that my house in which I now live be given up, with all its appurtenances, incomes, outlets, furniture, gardens, fences, and cultivated lands to Marta, Juana, and Felicidad; I declare the limits to be the Santa Rosa Creek, below, as far as the junction of the creeks on the North; and on the South, the creek known by the name of El Potrero as far as the limits of Santa Rosa on the East. –

I command that the rest of my property be divided in equal parts between my children already mentioned; my son Joaquin, having received some cattle on his account, shall have these deducted from his inheritance. – (I bequest to Julio the house and lot in Sonoma without this being counted in the remainder of my property.)

I command that the rest of my lands be divided in equal parts between Jose Ramon and Julio. I entrust my daughter Luz with my family, for her protection, as well as my own sons and daughters, they may look on her as sent by their mother. I entrust my sons not to be unmindful of assisting their sisters in all the emergencies necessary to pass through life, as the sisters may assist their brothers to the best of their ability…

Sonoma, January 6, 1849
Maria Ignacia Lopez

– Translated by Brian McGinty, The Carrillos of San Diego: A Historic Spanish Family of California (part four): The Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 4; December, 1957, pg. 375-376

THE OLDEST INHABITANT.
What He Has Experienced in the Past — What He Thinks of the Future — No Failure of Crops for a Period of Forty Years.

Knowing the deep interest felt in the matter of the rainfall, we have interviewed an actual oldest inhabitant, in the person of Julio Carrillo, and give our readers the benefit of his experience extending over a period of forty years, from 1837 to 1877:

When did you first come to Sonoma county, Julio?

In 1837. In the fall of that year my family built a log house on Santa Rosa creek about half a mile above the old adobe now owned by Mr. Hahman. The adobe was commenced in 1838-9.

What is your recollection of the seasons? What years were notably dry?

I remember that the winter of 1838-9 was much the same as this — the nights were cold and frosty. The first rain fell in the month of February.

Did you have any rain in March?

We had some rain in March, but think there was none after that.

Did you have in a crop?

Oh, yes; we had planted wheat, corn, beans and peas.

Did the crop mature?

Yes; we had a fair crop. There was plenty of grass and no loss of stock in this part of the country.

What is your recollection of the following winter?

In 1839-10 there was a good deal of rain. I saw snow for the first time in my life that year, on the Petaluma and Cotate [sic] hill. (The latter is now called Taylor Mountain.) There was no snow in the valley. I had come up from San Diego and having never seen snow, I rode out to the hills to take a closer look.

How were the crops that year?

We had a good crop.

How about the next season?

In 1840-41 we had a great deal of rain and snow on the mountains. In February, 1841, there came a tremendous fall of rain. I had gone from the adobe house, where I then lived, to Sonoma, and could not get back. Sonoma valley was entirely flooded; the water came up to the town. The whole of Santa Rosa valley was flooded. That year a mill that Capt. Cooper was building at the mouth of the laguna, and had nearly completed, was entirely washed away. That was the heaviest rainfall I remember.

Were there any other notable seasons within your recollection, either remarkably dry or wet?

There was but little rain in 1843-4, but we made good crops of wheat, corn and peas.

How about the following seasons?

There was nothing remarkable until the wet winter of 1849-50.

The next very dry winters were 1862-3 and 1863-4, when, as everybody knows, we had more than average crops here, owing to the late spring rains.

What do you think of the prospect this season?

I think it will be a dry year, but it does not follow that we will have a failure of the crop. It makes but little difference about rains now if we have them in the spring, and without spring rains you cannot have a crop, no matter how heavy the rainfall in the winter months. That is my experience. Without spring rains we are gone up; but we have never failed since I have been here in having enough rain to mature a crop.

– Sonoma Democrat, January 13 1877

Share this:
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)

Read More

Share this:

Share this:

Subscribe to SantaRosaHistory.com blog via Email