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THE MANY DEATHS OF COWIE AND FOWLER PART II

Jeff Elliott 3 Comments

The first versions of the Cowie/Fowler story were written close to 1846, as detailed in part one of this article. The later versions were primarily the accounts which popped up between 30-50 years later, and over time new details emerged – or, perhaps, were just made up:

LATER AMERICAN   Bancroft’s scholarly California history set began appearing in 1884 and was a great reference, but it wasn’t cheap or easy reading – eye-crossing footnotes crammed with minutiae sometimes filled entire pages. A well-funded library might include that sort of deep resource but most of our California ancestors learned everything they knew about the Bear Flag Revolt from the county histories which began to appear around the same time. Those books were found in many homes because they were mostly vanity bios of locals who paid the publisher to be commemorated as an absolutely remarkable person. The chapters about state history were filler to lend the books gravitas and the same text was reused across all editions.

The Cowie/Fowler section from the 1880 Sonoma County history (which is the same for the histories of Marin, Alameda, Stanislaus, San Benito, etc. etc.) displays the mishmash of information found in these books. Although sources aren’t mentioned, nearly everything there came from three newspaper articles.

The bones of that narrative came from the Henry L. Ford memoir trusted by Bancroft, so that’s the good news about the county histories version. Long after Ford had died, a friend of his edited a paraphrased version which appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin (unknown date) and the Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel on March 11, 1876. Here is that summary of what Ford remembered, a mere five years after the events:

On Thursday, the 18th, Lieutenant Ford sends two men, named Cowie and Fowler, to Fitch’s rancho for a keg of rifle powder. Before starting, he cautioned them to avoid traveled roads, as he apprehended the possibility of trouble from native Californians. The men observed this caution for about ten miles, when for some reason they struck into the main road to Santa Rosa. When within about two miles of that place they were surprised by a party of Californians, and were put to death in a shocking manner…on Saturday, the 20th, Lieut. Ford orders Sergeant Gibson to take four men, and by night repair to Fitch’s rancho, and learn, if possible, the whereabouts of the missing men, and get the powder. These men went as directed, and obtained the powder, but could learn nothing concerning the missing men. On their return, just at daylight, as they are passing Santa Rosa, they are attacked by three or four Californians; they turn upon their assailants and take two of them prisoner and bring them with them back to Sonoma. From the prisoners they learn the fate of Cowie and Fowler, who were butchered in the most horrible manner.

The county histories also pulled information from an 1874 article which appeared in the Santa Rosa paper. The account published in the Sonoma Democrat, transcribed below, was widely reprinted in other papers at the time. In this short, unsigned article, it was revealed some thought the drawing on the flag “looked more like a hog than a bear,” Cowie supposedly sewed the flag, and other little fun flaggy facts. Its significant contribution to the Fowler/Cowie story in the county books was identifying the location of their bodies (more or less) as being on a particular farm off modern-day Chanate Road. The original article additionally claimed they were captured a short distance from Rincon Valley.

Source #3 was lifted from a San Francisco newspaper item concerning “Three-fingered Jack” (he either lost another digit somewhere or maybe everyone was miscounting all along). This time the county histories copied the paper’s entire section on the Cowie and Fowler’s killings with brazen plagiarism, sometimes changing a word here and there but usually not. The worst of it was that the story they were stealing was a lie.

Although the 1853 newspaper prefaced their version of their murders by stating it was “substantially” the same as what was published “in the local papers of this place, in 1846,” this was far more horrific than the original tale told in the Californian which is included in part one. From the Alta California newspaper of July 31, 1853:

…the two young men above named started to go from their homes, near Sonoma, to Bodega. On their way, not far from Petaluma Creek, they encountered a party of native Californians, all armed, by whome they were taken prisoners. They were kept guarded until the next morning, when a council was held to determine their fate. A swarthy New Mexican named Padilla, and a Californian called Three-fingered Jack, were most active in denouncing the prisoners as only deserving death, and their counsel prevailed. The unfortunate young men were stripped, bound to a tree with the lariats of their captors, and for a while the inhuman wretches practiced knife-throwing at their naked limbs, in the manner that savages are said to torture their victims at the stake by experiments with their tomahawks. The men prayed to be shot. The fiends then commenced stoning the victims. One stone broke the jaw of Fowler. A miscreant advanced, thrust the end of his riata through the mouth, cut an incision in the throat, and then made a tie by which the jaw was dragged out! The perpetrator of this horrible cruelty was Jack. Cowie, who had fainted, had the skin stripped from his arms and shoulders.

Both men were now slowly dispatched with knives. Nothing can exceed the sufferings in the slow torture to which they were subjected. Pieces of flesh were cut from their bodies and crammed into their mouths. They were eventually destroyed by cutting out their bowels.

The first local history actually written by someone local was the the booklet-sized 1884 Santa Rosa history by Robert Thompson, publisher of the town’s Sonoma Democrat. He offered only two short paragraphs on Cowie/Fowler, but introduced several memes which have endured, primarily that their bodies were found by an Indian named “Chanate,” which supposedly meant, “blackbird.” If accurate, that man wasn’t from anywhere around here.8

Thompson also wrote they were captured near where Richard Fulkerson lived in 1884. The county atlas from a few years earlier shows him owning several disjointed places north and east of Santa Rosa, including a large parcel near Rincon Valley, which may confirm the 1874 story. Fulkerson also owed all the land around (what became) the Rural Cemetery and the road north passed right through the middle of it – thus a possibility they were caught in the vicinity of today’s Franklin Avenue.

But the most intriguing nugget was presented like a throwaway – that Juan Padilla’s militia had commandeered the Carrillo family rancho. Here is what Thompson wrote in full:

…Cowie and Fowler were captured by Juan Padillo, [sic] who had charge of a band of marauders, and had taken possession of Señora Carrillo’s residence, the old adobe on Mrs. F. G. Hahman’s farm, near Santa Rosa.

The two unfortunate men were captured near where Mr. Richard Fulkerson now lives. They were then taken up the valley, above the County Farm, where they were shot. Their bodies were mutilated and thrown into a stream, a prey for the wolf and the coyote. A charitable Indian named Chanate–in English, Black Bird–less a savage than the slayers of poor Cowie and Fowler, went up and told Moses Carson of the condition of the bodies, and he came down and buried them beneath a pine tree.

Shift forward several years and it’s the 50th anniversary of the Bear Flag Revolt. On June 14, 1896, Thompson gave a lengthy speech in Sonoma, published by Santa Rosa’s Sonoma Democrat as “Conquest of California.” The Indian was now named “Chanati” (nope, still not a Pomo word) and was no longer alone; now he and Mose Carson, “with the aid of other friendly Indian hands buried the bodies of these poor men beneath the pine trees.” In this telling Cowie and Fowler were held captive at the Carrillo adobe overnight, then taken to the place of their execution the next morning because Doña María Carrillo “objected to any violence to the men on her ranch.”

…They were taken to the Carrillo adobe house on Santa Rosa creek, now the Hahman farm, and were kept there all night. Mrs. Carrillo, who owned the place, objected to any violence to the men on her ranch.

On the morning of the 19th they were led out by their cruel and heartless captors. They were taken up the little valley on which the county farm is situated beyond the line of Mrs. Carrillo’s ranch, a point then and now one of the most unfrequented places near Santa Rosa. It is a lovely spot at the mouth of a little cañon which opens from the Rincon ridge into Pleasant valley.

There were a number of pine trees in this dreamy and lovely little vale. Here poor Cowie and Fowler were dragged. Destitute of human sympathy, reckless of consequences, the cruel captor, Padilla, three-fingered Jack as he was called, bound them with rawhide riatas to two trees. They were hacked with knives, riddled with bullets, and not satisfied with this their dead bodies were mutilated and dishonored in a brutal manner, and were then pitched into a rivulet which ran down into the beautiful vale below. The outraged bodies were discovered a few days after by an Indian named Chanati (Blackbird) who, less a savage than Padilla, told Mose Carson of their condition. Carson came down, and with the aid of other friendly Indian hands buried the bodies of these poor men beneath the pine trees…

As before, there was no mention of where he learned this stuff, which no one had mentioned before.

LATER CALIFORNIO   There is no more important resource about Alta California than the five volumes of memoirs General Vallejo presented to Bancroft in 1875. They were even translated into English. But the University of California has never published any of it, which (in my humble opinion) is a disgrace to the school. But at least sections related to the Bear Flag Revolt are available online and are worth reading in full.

There are several surprises in Vallejo’s section on the Cowie/Fowler incident and it has to be remembered he did not know about any of this firsthand, as he was locked up with his brother and others at Sutter’s Fort.

According to the General, the men were captured much farther away from Santa Rosa, on the Yulupa Rancho (think somewhere around SSU or a little east). They were tied to trees while riders were dispatched to contact the Californio ranch owners supporting the defensores asking them to meet that evening to decide what to do with the prisoners. Vallejo said nothing about them being moved to the Carrillo adobe or elsewhere and as mentioned above, he was very clear Juan Padilla and Ramón Carrillo were commanders of separate militias.

As the assembled group was discussing the issue that night, “Three-fingered Jack” Garcia interrupted the meeting to announce he had just killed Cowie and Fowler. “I thought you here were going to decide to free the prisoners and, as that is not for the good of my country, I got ahead of you and took the lives of the Americans who were tied to the trees,” he said, according to Vallejo.

Yet another variant of Fowler/Cowie story was passed down through the Carrillo family:9

When Thomas Cowie and George Fowler (members of the Bear Flag Revolt) came from Sonoma to Mark West Creek to get ammunition stored there and stopped at Rancho Cabeza de Santa Rosa, they accepted hospitality and, in return, committed all kinds of atrocities. They included the raping and killing of Ramón’s wife before vigilantes (defensores) could arrive to help the Carrillo family.

The Señora didn’t want trouble on her property and begged everyone to leave. The vigilantes took Cowie and Fowler up the hill to the north of the rancho (the location of the Sonoma County Hospital). These murderers were killed but first were given some rough treatment in revenge for the crime they had committed at the adobe.

Rape and murder are accusations not to be thrown around lightly and if such an awful thing happened, the burden of proof begins with explaining why absolutely no one ever wrote about it. Ramón’s letter from the Petaluma hills, written only two or three days after his wife was supposedly murdered, does not mention her and displays no emotions towards the Americans – it is a cool, dispassionate message written as a diplomat seeking a peaceful armistice.

Likewise, it’s inconceivable Vallejo wouldn’t mention the killing of a family member (she would have been the wife of his brother-in-law). In his memoir he complained at length about the uncivilized behavior of the Bears and told the story of Damaso Rodriguez, an 80 year-old retired soldier who died after being badly beaten up at Olómpali, a “…venerable old man who had fallen as a victim of the thirst for blood that was the prime mover of the guerrilla men.”10

Nor is there any real evidence he was married. All the Carrillo family book stated was, “…Ramón married a beautiful girl named Rosita but no records have been found of the marriage. They must have been married in Sonora, Mexico because Ramón went to Mexico about that time. It is recorded that they went to a dance together. As they danced so beautifully together, everyone applauded.” Ramón did marry (or remarry) about eight months later.

The Rosita rape/murder story is so threadbare there’s nothing more to discuss about it – except for the fact it is still being discussed. Gaye LeBaron has written it up for at least forty years (it was a section of her 1988 Valentine’s Day column entitled, “The Avenging Lover”) and it has become de rigueur to raise it as a possibility whenever Cowie and Fowler’s deaths are mentioned. I object to this strongly; it turns their killings into a simplistic tale of Carrillo and his fellow Californios seeking revenge. And to preview the wrapup below, I believe this is an historic injustice to Ramón Carrillo, who appears to be just about the only major player in the Bear Flag Revolt cast of characters who comes out smelling like roses.

José Ramón

Ramón died in 1864, shot in the back while riding his horse on the road near Cucamonga. A couple of weeks later a letter from his brother Julio appeared in the Santa Rosa paper, denying the “infamous falsehoods” which were being spread about Ramón (more on this letter below). In the following weeks other letters appeared testifying to his good character. “He was not a desperado,” wrote a man from Sacramento. “He possessed too high a sense of honor and self-respect to have ever been connected with outlaws.” True or no, newspapers statewide had reported he was a notorious bandito.

In the months before his death it was reported the “Ramon Carrillo gang” was being hunted by the Los Angeles Vigilance Committee for supposedly killing a deputy in Santa Barbara. Some authors have suggested Carrillo was shot by a “vigilante” seeking to avenge Fowler/Cowie, but it’s clear from the contemporary papers that people were wondering whether he was murdered by someone part of the LA Committee, infamous for lynch mobs which mainly killed Latinos.

“Jose Ramon Carrillo, who has acquired much notoriety of late, has signified his desire to come in and surrender himself to the law, provided he can have a legal examination and trial, without falling into the hands of the Vigilance Committee,” reported the Alta California on Christmas Eve, 1863. Two months later the paper said it was believed “…he was skulking in the mountains with some twenty or more adherents, and that the military in this district had orders to shoot him on sight. Rumor now says that he will join a company of volunteers for the U. S. service, and that he has always been a good, true and loyal citizen.” Shortly thereafter, two members of his “gang” were nabbed and promised to squeal on their hideout.

Whether or not he was actually a highwayman is not a debate to have here – but before judging anyone who lived in Southern California during that era, read a new book, “Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles.” Imagine the most violent Quentin Tarantino movie and multiply the senseless brutality by ten.

Why Ramón chose to leave Northern California and his family is unknown, but after he and his men retreated with the Mexican soldiers after the battle at Olómpali, Carrillo continued moving south. He appeared in San Diego during August where he gave his testimony, then taking a part in the 11th-hour battles in Chino and San Pasqual shortly before the Mexican-American War came to an end in California. In February, 1847 he married Maria Vicenta Sepulveda Yorba, a widow with a large ranch and four children – together they would have another eight. The ranch near Mount Palomar ran large herds of livestock and horses, was an important stagecoach stop and included a trading post. He was a U. S. postmaster for a time and in the early part of the Civil War, was a scout for the Union when there were fears that the Rebels were about to invade Arizona from across the Mexican border. Quite a bit of detail about this side of his life is documented on a webpage from the San Diego History Center.

It sounds like a thoroughly mundane life, but José Ramón Carrillo was far from being a mundane man; he famously killed bears armed only with a knife and proved to be an excellent commander in the war with the Americans. It’s his fearlessness combined with lawless, turbulent conditions in Southern California which gives the “Carrillo gang” stories any credibility, and helps explain why his story came to be completely entangled with the myth of Joaquín Murieta.

Murieta was an actual robber who had a small gang that stole gold and horses in the Gold Country between 1852-1853 and killed at least 20 people, mostly Chinese immigrants. Said to be among those riding with him was a man named Carrillo plus…wait for it…our old friend, Four/Three Fingered Jack. The public was so frightened of these men that the state legislature created the “California State Rangers” to track them down. In July, 1853 the Rangers had a shootout with a group of Mexicans in the Central Valley and claimed they killed Murieta, sawing off the guy’s head and Jack’s hand as proof.

The next year a small book appeared: The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit written by a man named John Rollin Ridge. This was entirely a work of fiction, gleaned from hearsay and newspaper articles over the years. The plot had Murieta being nearly whipped to death, his wife Rosita raped and his brother hung on false accusations, all within the first dozen pages. The rest of the book described how he hunted down and killed the Americans responsible. Here Jack was Murieta’s savage henchman and the Cowie/Fowler story was rehashed to show how heartless he was (now he also was credited for cutting out their tongues and “punching out their eyes with a knife”). “Carillo” was named as part of the gang, and twice the book had Murieta stopping by the rancho of “José Ramune Carrejo.”

That book received little notice (only a single copy is known to still survive) but shift forward five years to 1859, when a version was serialized in the popular Police Gazette along with topnotch illustrations. Almost entirely plagiarized, among the small changes was the detail Murieta’s wife was raped AND killed in front of him.

Suddenly the Murieta story became a sensation. It was translated into Spanish with the setting moved, as appropriate, to different countries. Over the following decades plays were written and dime novel publishers churned out knockoff stories about “the Mexican Robin Hood.” You don’t have to squint very hard to see the “Zorro” character emerging here.

The tale evolved over time and lent itself to both blood ‘n’ thunder action stories and lost love romances – the most prominent of the latter being a book-length poem published in 1882, “Rosita: A California Tale.” Here Rosita was not the spouse of Murieta, but one of his followers named Ramón.

Finally, it’s worth noting a 1910 best-seller, “Celebrated Criminal Cases of America” flatly claimed “Murieta’s true name was Carrillo” without offering any proof. This new spin has trickled down to today; do a Google search on “Joaquín Murrieta Carrillo” to find hundreds of places – including Wikipedia – which state matter-of-factly that the terrorist outlaw was indeed a Carrillo.11

How to make sense of all this? The problem with the Cowie/Fowler story is that there is too much information. They were headed to Healdsburg/Bodega/St. Helena; they were killed by torturers/firing squad/Garcia alone.

All that’s certain is the story we tell today has an undeserved certainty. In the earliest accounts about half the time it was stated they were headed towards Bodega; after the 1874 Sonoma Democrat article appeared, it was settled fact they were going north to the Fitch Rancho. The same anonymous article established they died at a very particular spot, and that’s where we’re looking for them today (without much luck). Ten years after that a local history introduced the character of Chanate, and now the story always includes the friendly Indian. Similarly, the sufferings they endured became more awful. The original 1846 account was gruesome but only a few lines long; by the time it was retold in 1853 it was much longer because more horrific details were added, and that was the version used in all those county histories. The story kept building up like layers of sediment in slow moving waters.

Digging out provable truth after 170 years seems as unlikely as the odds we’ll be digging up the bodies in the foreseeable future, but a good place to start might be looking closely at the mutilation story.

As discussed above, it’s doubtful any of the Bear Flaggers actually saw the bodies of Fowler and Cowie until almost a month had passed. Yet in that gap there were four descriptions of the mutilations (counting the version printed in The Californian, where the latest news cutoff was the Battle of Olómpali). That Baldridge hadn’t heard the story suggests it was only being spread by a faction of the Bear Flaggers, who passed it on as gospel truth to newcomers, including Frémont’s men. So where did they learn about the horrible things done to the two young men? The only source could be prisoner Bernardino Garcia – or more likely, what someone heard a comrade say about what Garcia said. Thus a key part of the story rests on the honesty and truthfulness of “Four Fingered Jack.” Swill that distasteful thought around for a moment.

Add to that: Even when their whereabouts were discovered, the bodies had been buried by Chanate and the other helpful Indians, according to the popular Thompson version. Did the Bear Flaggers take time out from the war to dig them up and do a field autopsy?

Next to consider is the means of death. Slow torture goes along with mutilation so again, raise your hand if you think old four-fingers was telling the whole truth and nothing but. Vallejo’s version, with Jack sneakily killing them while the rancheros debated what to do, certainly sounds reasonable although that would place their graves somewhere near the SSU campus. But I’d put my money on Ramón Carrillo’s account – that he turned them over to Padilla who had them shot and buried.

I’ve come to believe Ramón Carrillo is the only player in the Bear Flag drama with an unassailable character. Once it’s understood his militia was on patrol separate from Padilla’s group, more of the whole story makes sense. He argued with Padilla over keeping them prisoners but lost. Later, Comandante Castro told Carrillo he backed Padilla’s execution of them. When testifying to these events he easily could have simply told the judge they were killed and left it at that; instead, he made a point of registering his dissent.

When other prisoners fell into his hands, it seems Carrillo did not turn them over to Padilla. Bear Flaggers William Todd and “the Englishman” were captured on a mission shortly after Cowie/Fowler but were not harmed. Carrillo wrote to his sister they were then being “detained in our camp” and when the two militias reconnected at Olómpali, Carrillo testified, “After joining Padilla I proposed to him to set free his prisoners, and he did so before the fight.” (Todd ran to safety under the line of fire but the other guy apparently was too frightened to budge, hence his new nickname: “The dumb Englishman.”)

Another alternative reading worth a ponder: Carrillo might have dropped Fowler and Cowie off with Padilla and did not learn what happened to them until a few days later, when the two militias again met up at Olómpali. Ramón’s letter to his sister from the Petaluma hills did not mention their fate, instead noting “…we have never thought of doing the least damage with our arms, as we have not done up to the present…” implying he believed no blood had been spilled. And after Ramón’s death his brother Julio wrote an impassioned letter to the Sonoma Democrat (transcribed below) which seems to support that idea, insisting Ramón  “…was not even aware that these men had been taken prisoners until after they had been killed.” That’s not completely true since he apparently captured them, but it didn’t mean he stuck around for their deaths.

Julio’s 1864 letter about his brother continued with this observation: “The act was disapproved of by all the native Californians at the time, excepting those implicated in the killing, and caused a difference which was never entirely healed.” That simple statement was the single most profound thing anyone had yet written concerning the events of the summer of 1846.

When the Bear Flag Revolt began William Ide penned a manifesto declaring they were establishing a multicultural utopian California Republic. Ramón wrote to his sister that his aim was only to protect the rancheros and hold Ide to his promises. Then someone on the Californio side killed Fowler and Cowie. Then someone on the American side killed the Haro teenagers and their elderly uncle. Lofty principles were forgotten and it became a neighborhood gang war, each side hunting the hunters on other side. And like in a gang war, both sides wanted to absolve what they did by claiming the other guys drew first blood.

Those unhealed wounds and regrets lingered for decades. Vallejo’s 1875 account of the Bear Flag Revolt is filled with resentment against the Americans; he had been a good friend to the settlers both personally and professionally yet they treated him abusively, ransacked his house and threatened to kill his family. Neighbors who stood on different sides still had to live next to each other after the dust settled and it became American territory, but it wasn’t sometimes easy. Antonio Coronel – a prominent Mexican who crossed paths with Ramón Carrillo in Southern California – was up here in 1849 and went out for a drink with a friend to a Sonoma saloon. As summarized from his memoirs:12

One day he and compadre Juan Padilla were waiting for the wet January weather to clear, when a former Bear Flagger began to bully Padilla for having served as Bernardo Garcia’s henchman in the wartime atrocity against Cowie and Fowler. Padilla insisted that the charge was a lie, and the American replied with an assault. After a severe beating, Padilla lay in an upstairs room, hovering near death for several weeks, while below his accuser continued to threaten his life. Only Coronel’s good reputation and the intercession of friendly Americans restrained the former Bear Flagger.

Towards the end of the 19th century the Americans had come to memorialize all things about the Bear Flag Revolt, particularly the story of how the flag was designed and the martyrdom of Cowie and Fowler. Conflicting views were not welcome; during the 50th Bear Flag anniversary, Robert Thompson ranted at length about Bancroft being a “biased historiographer” and “self-constituted historian” who was “unfair to the pioneers” by not being properly deferential to Frémont and the other Americans – even suggesting he would regret his words if some of the more kick-ass original Bears were still around to teach him a thing or three.

Forgotten was that many Americans at the time had mixed feelings about ousting the Mexican government, with Bear Flagger Baldridge plainly saying it was an injustice. Forgotten was that the American settlers were not in real danger or acting in self-defense. And forgotten was that no matter how noble their original ideals, the Bear Flag Revolt was part of a war of aggression – and as Americans we like to think we denounce countries who do things like that.

1 All references to H. H. Bancroft in this article refer to his History of California Vo. 5 1846-1848 published in 1886.

2 Officer Gillespie and Other Military Officers from the Pacific Squadron’s Dispatches to the Secretary of the Navy, George Bancroft, MS 89, Reel 33. National Archives, San Bruno, California. Cited in Scheiner (see sidebar)

3 October 1856, New York Evening Post cited in Walker, Dale; “Bear Flag Rising”, 199;  pg 132-133

4 National Archives Squadron Letters cited in Warner; The Men of the California Bear Flag Revolt and Their Heritage; 1996, pg. 183. The second prisoner was named as “Blas Angelino” in that correspondence of Grigsby and Montgomery on July 16 and 18. Ford said he took the prisoners with them as he and the irregular volunteers went in search of the Californio militia and ended up at Olómpali. He did not explain why; perhaps he feared they would not be adequately safe in the Sonoma jail or maybe he anticipated he might need  them as hostages to trade for the missing Bears.

5 The Fitch property was Rancho Sotoyome, which encompassed modern Healdsburg and lands to the east, including all of the Russian River nearby. Henry Fitch, married to the eldest of Doña María Carrillo daughters, was not a player in the Bear Flag story as he and the family lived in San Diego where he was part of the local Mexican government.

6 The party of Bears who confronted the soldiers at Olómpali were the rescue party for Todd and the other man. Todd was released unharmed at the start of the battle, but strangely, there is no conclusive answer about what happened to the other guy, who was reported as both killed and rescued. His name was Francis Young but usually mentioned as “English Jack,” “the Englishman” or specifically, “the dumb Englishman.” He was actually Canadian.

7 Vallejo’s “Historical and Personal Memoirs” vol 5, cited in Rosenus (see sidebar) pg. 147-148

8In regional Pomo vocabularies around this area, the word for “blackbird” varies slightly but always begins with a “ts-” sound (crow was consistently “Kaai”). In Southern Pomo, for example, the present location of Windsor was called “Tsco-le-cawi” which meant, “blackbird water.” The closest I can find to “Chanate” in any historic word list is “Chel-hay,” which was a name for a valley oak sometimes used in the Healdsburg Pomo dialect.

9 “History and Memories: the Carrillo family in Sonoma County” by Alma McDaniel Carrillo and Eleanora Carrillo de Haney; 1983

10 Damaso Rodriguez – a career soldier and who was 64 years old, not 80 – was an invalid and had been on the payroll as part of Vallejo’s small retinue in Sonoma for about nine years. While Bears may have indeed beaten him up in front of his family, Osio does not mention this incident in his history of the battle at Olómpali. Nor did Rodriguez apparently die from cause, as several days later he filed a claim worth $1,243 with the U.S. for cattle and other property stolen by Frémont’s men. (The U.S. did honor some Bear Flag-period claims like this when a receipt was provided – see Bancroft p. 462.)

11 The introduction to the University of Oklahoma edition of Ridge’s original book has more details on the twists and turns of the Murieta story. The author suggests the notion that Murieta was really a Carrillo came from a 1909 Overland Monthly article supposedly written using “authentic sources.” There it’s stated both Joaquin Carillo [sp] was Murieta’s real name, then a few pages later that Carillo “was also an alias of their chief.”

12 Pitt, Leonard; The Decline of the Californios, 1970; pg 50

 


SIDEBAR: HUNTING THE ELUSIVE BEARS
The story of the Bear Flag Revolt may be captivating, but the confusion surrounding the Cowie and Fowler episode shows how little is really known for certain.


The main problem is few primary sources are available. At the time there were no newspapers published in California – it would be three months before the pro-American “Californian” broadsheet appeared and offered the first detailed accounts of what had happened (the full Cowie-Fowler report can be read in issue five). Another obstacle is that for thirty-some years the Revolt was treated as an odd little footnote to the Mexican-American War. Letters from the aging Bears sometimes appeared in papers and the Revolt was sometimes given a page or two in profiles of John Frémont or memoirs about the Gold Rush, but it wasn’t until historians Bancroft and Josiah Royce paid attention and it was glamorized in the flood of county histories that it gained traction as an important event in its own right. That’s a long time for details to fade and myths to develop; imagine what we might believe today about the JFK assassination, for example, had little been written about it before the year 2000.


The chapter of General Vallejo’s memoir on the Bear Flag Revolt is available online and is worth reading in full, even though he was a prisoner during most of this time and learned details second hand. Bancroft considered William Baldridge’s “‘Days of ’46” as “by far the most valuable and complete” account of the Revolt and it’s given due emphasis here. For anyone interested in researching further, Bancroft offered a lengthy discussion of Bear Flag sources as well as scooping up every scrap of information he came across about Cowie and Fowler. A single-page PDF of that summary is available for download through the Comstock House digital library. An 1890 magazine article, “The ‘Bears’ and the Historians” was helpful in sorting out the evolution of the myths surrounding the Revolt.


The best overall book on the events is Alan Rosenus’ “General Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans” written in 1995. Antonio María Osio’s 1851 “The History of Alta California” is now available in English translation and along with Vallejo’s chapter, offers the Californio viewpoint (Cowie and Fowler are not mentioned). Also very useful is a thesis written by Patricia Campos Scheiner, “Californio Resistance to the U.S. Invasion of 1846.”


A list of works best avoided would be long, but near the top would be the books written by and about the “Commander” of the California Republic, William B. Ide: “Who Conquered California?” and “Scraps of California History.” Both were published around 1880 by his brother and based on their conversations before his death in 1852 and a long, descriptive letter he supposedly wrote quite soon after the events. But as described in the previous article, Ide was an alarmist who promoted fear to justify his actions. And historian H. H. Bancroft found those books are “…everywhere colored by a violent prejudice, sometimes amounting to a mania, against Frémont, whom Ide honestly believed to have robbed him of his fame as a conqueror and founder of a republic.”

 

A TRUE HISTORY OF THE BEAR FLAG

The circumstances connected with the transfer from Mexico to the United States of sovereign power over the territory of California is of absorbing interest. As time goes on this interest will increase, and the historian of the future will search wearily through the dusty records of the past for facts which at this time may be obtained from active participants in those stirring scenes. We have the following statement from a former citizen of this county of the facts connected with the raising of the Bear Flag, why it was made and of what material. These facts can be established by persons now alive. They are of peculiar interest to the citizens of Sonoma county. The neighboring town of Sonoma was the scene of the event, many of the participants were afterwards our neighbors and friends, some of them still reside among us. On the morning of June 14th, 1846, about daylight thirty-three armed men, who had organized in Napa Valley the previous day, arrived in the town of Sonoma, the headquarters of the Mexican military commandant, Gen. M. G. Vallejo. This small band had selected from their number Capt. Merritt, of Sacramento Valley, to lead them. They entered the town, meeting no resistance; went first to Gen. Vallejo’s quarters, arrested him, his brother Salvador, and Victor Prudon, Alcalde of the town. They sent them as prisoners under guard to Sutter’s Fort. The rest of the revolutionary party remained in possession of the town. Among them were three young men, Alexander Todd, Benjamin Duell and Thomas Cowey. A few days after the capture in a casual conversation between these young men, the matter of a flag came up. They had no authority to raise the American flag and they determined to make one. Their general idea was to imitate, without following too closely, their national ensign. Mrs. W. B. Elliott had been brought to the town of Sonoma by her husband from his ranch on Mark West creek for safety. The old Elliott cabin may be seen to this day on Mark West creek about a mile above the Springs. From Mrs. Elliott[,] Ben Duell got a piece of new red flannel, some white domestic, needles and thread. A piece of blue drilling was obtained elsewhere. From this material, without consultation with any one else, thes-e three young men made the Bear Flag. Cowie had been a saddler. Duell had also served a short time at the same trade. To form the flag Duell and Cowie sewed together alternate’ strips of red, white, and blue. Todd drew in the upper corner a star and painted on the lower a rude picture of a grizzly bear, which was not standing as has been sometimes represented, but was drawn with head down. The bear was afterwards adopted as the design of the great seal of the State of California. On the original flag it was so rudely executed that two of those who saw it raised have told us that it looked more like a hog than a bear. Be that as it may, its meaning was plain—that the revolutionary party would, if necessary, fight their way through at all hazards. In the language of our informant, it meant that there was no back out; they intended to fight it out. There were no1 halyards on the flag-staff which stood in front of the barracks. It was again reared, and the flag which was soon to be replaced by that of the Republic for the first time floated on the breeze.

The Americans were short of powder. It was known that Mose Carson, a brother of Kit and Lindsey, who at the time was Superintendent of the Fitch ranch, had at that place half a keg of powder. Just after the flag was raised, Thomas Cowey and a man named Fowler volunteered to go to Russian River and secure this powder. They came up the valley and attempted to cross the Rincon Valley to avoid Santa Rosa. Within a short distance of this place they were surprised by the Mexicans and both were killed. Their mutilated remains were afterwards found and they were buried where they fell, upon the farm now owned by John Underhill, two miles north of Santa Rosa. No stone marks the graves of these pioneers, one of whom took so conspicuous a part in the event which gave to the Union the great State of California. Alexander Todd still lives in the State and will confirm this statement in every particular.

– Sonoma Democrat, August 8, 1874

 

The Murder of Ramon Corrillo.

EDITOR OF SONOMA COUNTY DEMOCRAT:

I desire through your paper to brand, as it deserves, a foul aspertion [sic] upon the name of my brother, Ramon Corrillo, who was recently murdered in a most cowardly manner near Los Angeles.

[..]

But I wish more particularly to call attention to an old charge, which I presume owes its revival to the same source, to wit: That my brother, Ramon Carrillo, was connected with the murder of two Americans, who had been taken prisoners by a company commanded by Juan Padilla in 1846.

I presume this charge first originated from the fact that my brother had been active in raising the company which was commanded by Padillo, and from the further fact that the murder occurred near the Santa Rosa farm, then occupied by my mother’s family.

Notwithstanding these appearances, I have proof which is incontestable, that my brother was not connected with this affair, and was not even aware that these men had been taken prisoners until after they had been killed. The act was disapproved of by all the native Californians at the time, excepting those implicated in the killing, and caused a difference which was never entirely healed.

There are, as I believe, many Americans now living in this vicinity, who were here at the time, and who know the facts I have mentioned. I am ready to furnish proof of what I have said to any who may desire it.

JULIO CARRILLO

– Sonoma Democrat, June 4, 1864

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TWO MARTYRS FOR THE FLAG OF THE BEARS

Jeff Elliott 2 Comments

Three things about the Bear Flag Revolt you probably remember from school: It started in Sonoma; people thought the bear on the hand-painted flag looked more like a pig; a couple of Bear Flag rebels named Cowey and Fowler were killed. How, why, and where their deaths occurred remains a mystery and the details are still highly controversial, even over 170 years later.

Cowie and Fowler became instant martyrs to the independence cause, in great part because it was said they were horribly tortured to death while being held prisoner. Generations of history buffs have sought to find where they are buried, both to honor them and to determine if there’s any truth to that story. The latest quest for their graves has been led by researchers Bill Northcroft and Ray Owen and involved archaeologists and anthropologists from SSU. The Press Democrat has offered several articles on the search.

This article explores only the impact their deaths had on the Bear Flag Revolt. The following article looks at what was written about the incident at the time and how their tragedy developed into the stuff of myth. If you would like more background on the whole Bear Flag story, a very good summary can be read at history.com and Wikipedia provides tons of detail. The virtual museum at bearflagmuseum.org is also a good resource (The domain is now a gambling portal – 2024). But an important detail commonly overlooked is that there wasn’t much unanimity on either side prior to these events:

THE CALIFORNIOS   There were roughly 8,000 Mexican-Californians in the territory of Alta California during 1846. (Writers at the time interchangeably called Hispanic Mexican citizens “native Californians” or simply, “natives,” which has caused confusion in recent years among authors who presume it’s a reference to Native Americans – a term coined during the 1960s). Personally generous and hospitable to the American outsiders, their government in the 1840s regularly called for all immigrants to be expelled. Some, including members of Santa Rosa’s Carrillo family, were fiercely loyal to the provincial government. Others, including General Mariano Vallejo, remained neutral or aided and abetted the rebels, believing California would fare better under American control after decades of neglect from Mexico – and Spain before it.

THE AMERICANS   Those writing about the 1846 events called all 2,000 non-Hispanic immigrants in Alta California the “Americans,” although about one out of four was English, Swiss, Prussian or another nationality. Some became Mexican citizens by marriage or service in order to own land; others had ill-defined notions of “Manifest Destiny” – that this place rightly belonged to the U.S. and Americans should be entitled to do what they like. Nor did all support taking up arms against Mexico; Bear Flagger William Baldridge believed “making war upon the Californians was an act of great injustice” and “a large, if not a majority of Americans then in California” feared it was too much of a risk they would end up “killed or driven out of the country in a short time.”

In the first week of June, 1846, Northern California was rife with rumors that Commandante General José Castro had an army marching towards the North Bay and was destroying immigrant homesteads along the way. It wasn’t remotely true but to many it was completely believable; in March Castro had issued his most bombastic proclamation yet, calling John C. Frémont and his men a “band of robbers” and appealing to Californios to take up arms. “…I invite yourselves under my immediate orders at headquarters, where we will prepare to lance the boil which (should it not be done) would destroy our liberties and independence…”

The American’s fears seemed confirmed when it was discovered General Vallejo was sending Castro 170 government horses (which the settlers hijacked intercepted). Seeking leadership from Frémont, the famous U.S. Army Captain told them he couldn’t let himself or his forces get mixed up in anything, but it would be a swell idea for the civilians to take some prominent Mexican nationals hostage in order to provoke Castro into an act of war against the United States. Then all non-Californios could immediately evacuate California as war raged. Simple, really.

Amazingly, some twenty men went along with this (non) plan. Several believed Frémont wasn’t serious about staying out of the action and would soon gallop to their support; others, including William Ide, felt war was coming to the area regardless and it would be better to strike first, but didn’t trust Frémont as he had walked away from a similar confrontation earlier.

Off they went from Frémont’s camp north of Sacramento headed towards Sonoma, the only military outpost in the region. Since they would be outmanned and outgunned by the Mexican garrison ready to fight with cannons, they needed the advantage of surprise. They stayed off the main roads and used animal trails to cross the ridges, traveling through the last night. Along the way the picked up another dozen volunteer revolutionaries.

When they rode into Sonoma Plaza at daybreak on June 14 they found it empty. Not even a guard on duty. The only military presence was General Vallejo and his brother, Salvador. Even the tiny compliment (which was apparently only eight soldiers) was absent, having left to help drive that herd of 170 horses to Santa Clara – and when the horses were stolen intercepted, all the soldiers continued to their destination in Santa Clara.

The rest of the backstory you likely have read many times. As the Cowie-Fowler story begins, General Vallejo has been taken prisoner and Bear Flag “captain general” William Ide has proclaimed California an independent republic. Every day more volunteers are arriving at Sonoma, The Commander of the American sloop-of-war then in the Bay Area has said the U.S. will remain neutral and not supply the Bears with arms or gunpowder. Word of the uprising has just reached the provincial capitol of Monterey but it will be a week before a small division of soldiers will reach the North Bay. Meanwhile, a group of around a dozen local Californios has formed and is roving the countryside, waiting for the regular army troops to arrive so they can together attack the American insurrectionists. Over the Sonoma Plaza flies a newly-made flag with the name, “CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC” and the profile of a bear that looks more like a pig. It is later said that it was stitched together by a young saddler named Thomas Cowie.

Even if the garrison had been fully manned, the Mexican soldiers couldn’t have put up much of a fight. William Baldridge, considered the most reliable of the Bear Flag memoir writers, stated the cannons were in such disrepair they couldn’t be moved very far. The armory was stocked with obsolete English fintlock muskets, too long and heavy to be useful to the Bear Flaggers, and “they had but little ammunition, and that all the powder they had was of a poor quality, being very coarse and dirty.” It was the need for better gunpowder that sent Cowie and Fowler away on their ill-fated mission.

Thomas Cowie was from St. Louis and came West in 1843 with the Chiles party, which also included Baldridge. Cowie spent a few months as a member of Frémont’s troupe and later went to work for another Bear Flagger, Thomas Knight (think Knights Valley).

(RIGHT: Fanciful illustration of Sonoma Plaza. Overland Monthly Magazine, 1896)

Fowler remains a complete unknown. Baldridge and others didn’t know his first name; sometime later it began to be written he was called George. There was a prominent Napa Valley family named Fowler and the Bear Flaggers rested near their ranch before advancing on Sonoma, but if he was even part of that clan he was a distant cousin. While a St. Louis area newspaper later noted the death of former resident Cowie, no hometown papers can be found lamenting Fowler.

It was probably on June 18 when Cowie and Fowler volunteered to fetch the gunpowder and after a couple days passed, a party of five men was sent out. They returned with the powder and a Californio prisoner, who had a gruesome story to tell about what happened to the pair. (Again: This article is just about reaction to the killings; the stories about how they died are covered in the next piece.)

The prisoner apparently also identified a Californio named Padilla as the leader of the guerilla band, at the same time as “we had just learned that that sixty armed Californians were scouring the country west of Sonoma,” according to Baldridge. As another Bear Flagger, sent on an errand to Bodega had not returned, it was presumed this group had captured or killed him as well. A company of about twenty eager volunteers went out in a mission of rescue – or revenge, if the opportunity allowed. They reached Padilla’s adobe (near Stony Point) and burned it, then proceeded south where they bumped into the guerillas, who had joined up with that small division of soldiers sent from Monterey. Such was the “Battle” of Olómpali.

The day after that, June 25, Frémont and his boys finally rode into Sonoma, courageously ready to join the fray on day 11.

Frémont led 134 men – about half of them recruited from the ranks of the Bear Flaggers – towards San Rafael, expecting to combat the Mexican forces (which the Bears had soundly bested at Olómpali with only about a tenth as many men). They didn’t find the troops, but the next morning a small boat was spotted crossing the Bay. Captured were 19 year-old twin brothers Francisco and Ramon de Haro along with their elderly uncle, José de los Reyes Berreyesa. They were killed.

What happened became a matter of great dispute. When Frémont was running for president as the candidate for the newly-formed Republican party in 1856, the pro-Democrat Los Angeles Star newspaper published a letter from Jasper O’Farrell claiming he was there and Frémont’s scout, Kit Carson, wanted to take them prisoners – but “Frémont waved his hand and said, ‘I have got no room for prisoners.'” Other accounts seem intended to absolve Frémont of direct responsibility: Carson shot them because he was ornery and drunk, the captives were gunned down while trying to escape, and in Frémont’s 1886 memoir, he claimed his Indian scouts killed them because everyone was so distraught by the murders of Cowie and Fowler.

At some point the story developed that killing them was proper and necessary because they were murderous assassins. Yes, they were carrying orders to Captain De la Torre, the commander of the small Mexican division – the message concerned details about reinforcements – but now they were said to be an advance force on a mission intent on wiping out the Americans. In an 1870 memoir by the skipper of a ship recruited by Frémont, it was claimed “…they were armed, and had written orders from Castro to De la Torre to ‘kill every foreigner they found, man, woman, and child.’ These three men were shot on the spot: one of them was a notorious villain.”

This wasn’t the only alarming rumor about the Mexicans planning genocide. In his account of the Bear Flag Revolt, leader William Ide lied about a proclamation from General Castro ordering loyalists to “fall on and kill the Bears of Sonoma, and then return and kill the whelps afterwards.” These stories were in circulation at the time and for years later, although historian H. H. Bancroft did his best to knock down the messager-assassin story in his 1886 California history, calling it an “absurd fabrication.” But the “whelps” slander lived on; it can be found quoted in later biographies, 20th century magazine and newspaper articles, and even appears in a novel published last year (2015).

Coupled with the tale of Cowie and Fowler’s gruesome deaths, these rumors became the rallying cry for Americans to band together against the Californios. The peaceable majority of Americans now were hearing fearful warnings concerning imminent threats – marauding banditos roaming the countryside and bloodthirsty soldados sneaking across the Bay and did you hear about what terrible things they did to those two young men. It’s difficult to imagine a more potent mix of propaganda to justify going to war against your actual neighbors.

The history of the short-lived California Republic was mostly locked in stone by the 1880s as the last of the American memoirs appeared. Cowie and Fowler are always in there somewhere – which is remarkable, if you think about it; can you name another war with such patron martyrs?

What we retell today about those events isn’t much different from what they were writing back then, which is to say it is almost entirely just the American side of the story as viewed 30+ years later. Primary source documents are few, and the obstacles to exploring anything about the Californio viewpoint is daunting; for starters, Gen. Vallejo wrote a five-volume set of memoirs in 1875 which were translated into English – but never published.

Historian Bancroft was famously neutral, allowing readers to sort through evidence and come to their own conclusions. But he recoiled at Frémont’s execution-style murder of the old man and teenagers and the notion it was somehow defensible because of what happened to Fowler and Cowie. His contrast of the two incidents, “A MURDER BY FREMONT,” is a must-read, if only for this small passage which casts the Bear Flag Revolt in a different light:


The killing of Berreyesa and the Haros was a brutal murder, like the killing of Cowie and Fowler, for which it was intended as a retaliation… The Californians, or probably one desperado of their number, had killed two members of a band of outlaws who had imprisoned their countrymen, had raised an unknown flag, had announced their purpose of overthrowing the government, and had caused great terror among the people – the two men at the time of their capture being actively engaged in their unlawful service. In revenge for this act, the Bears deliberately killed the first Californians that came within their reach, or at least the first after their own strength became irresistible.

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GENERAL VALLEJO AND THE AMAZING BOGGS

Jeff Elliott 1 Comment

Pity the Petaluma Adobe, the Rodney Dangerfield of local state parks; it don’t get no respect. It was on the short list of parks slated to be closed in 2012 but even after a reprieve when the state discovered a hidden pile of cash intended for park operations, it’s not clear whether it will remain open past June of 2014. Through its authentically boring displays, countless urban schoolchildren have learned all that they never needed to know about 1840s cattle farming and the life and times of General Mariano Vallejo, a man known for speeches so stultifyingly dull that he inspired the creation of the Squeedunks.

(RIGHT: The Petaluma Adobe, which was “falling into decay” when it was purchased in 1910 by Native Sons of the Golden West. This 1934 postcard created for its centennial shows the building in markedly better condition than seen in turn-of-the-century photographs)

To make matters worse, the venerable place is being slowly  pecked to death by birds because the state stripped off the adobe plaster in the 1950s. Kids, there’s your homework assignment: Describe what happens to a fragile historic property when decades pass without significant preservation efforts. Now let’s get back on the schoolbus to visit Santa Rosa and the slightly later Carrillo Adobe, which has no preservation plan whatsoever and which the homeless are tearing apart for firewood.

The Petaluma Adobe is what it is, and that’s a glimpse at the agricultural side of California’s Mexican past. Nothing of note happened on the property; General Vallejo himself was only there occasionally, and when he sold it to a farmer in 1857, even that ho-hum link to history ended. Come about a half century later, the section of the property with the old Adobe – “gradually falling into decay,” as a 1910 Press Democrat editorial noted – was bought by the Petaluma branch of the Native Sons of the Golden West, a fraternal lodge open only to men born in California. For them, something very important had happened there indeed: The birth of the first American in the state.

According to the account that appeared in their lodge magazine, The Grizzly Bear,” in November of 1846, General Vallejo came upon a family of settlers camped by a creek during a rainstorm. Vallejo discovered the leader of the troupe was ex-governor of Missouri Lilburn Boggs and insisted they be his guests at the Adobe:


The next morning Governor Boggs’ family were all moved over to the large adobe building on his Petaluma rancho, which was well stocked with horses, cattle and sheep. “Make yourself perfectly at home here,” said General Vallejo, “kill all you want for beef and mutton, and ride all the horses you wish, and if there is anything more you need just let me know and you shall have it.” Just the, or soon after, a wail and a cry from Mrs. William Boggs and general distress of the female portion of the family. A child had been born and apparently dying, if not already dead.

 As quick as a flash, General Vallejo drew his knife, jumped into the corral, and killing a young ram, stripped off its hide while still warm and wrapped that baby boy, who was apparently dead, up in it. Asking the parents if they had any objections to the child being baptized, they said, “No!” “What name will you give him?” he inquired. “Give him your name, General,” they replied, and so that baby boy was baptized by the General and named Guadalupe Vallejo Boggs, when all declared he was dead.

 However, there was a spark of life remaining in him, and he revived, and the child had a second and miraculous birth from the spirit of God.

It’s a ripping good yarn that was reprinted in newspapers over the years, including the paper in the town where Guadalupe Vallejo Boggs raised his family. Unfortunately, none of the dying-baby-ram-skinning part is true. In a 1910 letter to the Press Democrat, G. V. Boggs’ father rambles a bit about the Adobe and mentions that Vallejo showed up a week or two after the baby was born and asked that the child be named after himself. (Baby Boggs got off lucky; Vallejo stuck one of his own kids with the monicker “Napoleon Primo.”)

The claim that the baby was the first American born in California is also silly, considering California was then still part of Mexico and the Mexican-American War wasn’t quite over. It is more truthful to say that this was probably the last child of American immigrants born in Alta California, but that doesn’t have quite the ring.

But the Boggs’ didn’t need to photoshop their image to make themselves appear more interesting; theirs is a family whose trails criss-cross American history so often it is nearly unbelievable.

Patriarch Lilburn Boggs was governor of Missouri during the 1838 Mormon War, where confrontations between non-Mormon settlers and the growing population of Joseph Smith’s followers led both sides to violence and vigilante terrorism. Boggs ended the conflict by declaring “Mormons must be treated as enemies” and ordering the estimated 10,000 Mormons in the state to abandon their property and get out, a directive so extreme that it outraged even Mormon opponents. Nearly four years later, an assassin came close to killing Boggs by shooting him the head while he was reading a newspaper at home. It was widely assumed that the gunman was the notorious Porter Rockwell, a personal friend of Joseph Smith who was called “the Destroying Angel of Mormondom,” but he was acquitted at trial. Years later, son William wrote the family believed Joseph Smith had a death warrant out for him.

(RIGHT: Lilburn Boggs)

Completely recovered from his gunshot wounds, Lilburn and his family joined a wagon train headed west. Lilburn soon was recognized as the leader and the group became known as “Boggs Company.” As they reached the Continental Divide there was disagreement on how to proceed; Boggs’ faction continued following the well-marked Oregon Trail, but some of the others opted to try another route said to be shorter; that faction called themselves the Donner Party.

The Boggs clan settled in Sonoma and Napa Counties and Lilburn, who hoped to spend his senior years quietly as a merchant (and presumably under the Mormon’s revenge radar), became involved with politics in the post-Bear Flag Revolt period when California was not yet a state. He was named Alcalde for all of Northern California, which made him the only recognized legal authority for the vast territory above San Francisco Bay. A story circulated years later that he broke the news about the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, but that’s not true. (Many other examples of misinformation about the Boggs’ family abound and continue today; a well-reviewed academic book published in 2011, for example, claims it was Lilburn who directed his grandson to be named after Vallejo in order to forge a strategic alliance and it was Vallejo – despite his shaky legal status after Mexico lost the war – who arranged to have his buddy appointed to the powerful position of Alcalde. Say what?)

Lilburn’s children became notable figures in their own right. His son, Thomas, spent part of his childhood with his uncle, Albert Boone (did I mention Lilburn’s wife was Daniel Boone’s granddaughter?) who was an Indian trader on the Missouri River. Tom Boggs learned several Indian languages and struck out on his own at age 16, where he worked in the Southwest for the Bent brothers, who were also his uncles. Tom and his wife formed an extended family with Mr. and Mrs. Kit Carson and when the famous frontiersman died, the Boggs’ raised Carson’s five orphaned children. His is another adventure story but it has little to do with Sonoma County; you can read a detailed (if flawed) biography here.

William Boggs was also a kid when he joined older brother Tom and uncles in running their trading post on the Santa Fe trail, then returning to Missouri to marry and join his family in the famous wagon train. It was William, whose son was born at the Adobe, who apparently had the family’s closest association with Vallejo (although the old general appeared in Judge Lilburn’s court both as the accused and aggrieved). William was primarily a capitalist who made a good living buying and selling land. To promote local agriculture he and others incorporated a nursery to propagate and sell plant and seed, with Vallejo as VP and wine-making pioneer Agoston Haraszthy as President and nursery supervisor. William was also a neighbor of Haraszthy, and together they platted the vineyards for his Buena Vista winery.

But what makes William interesting is that he was also the author of letters and essays that are – or should be – priceless to historians who study that era. His short biography of his father reveals the family thought Joseph Smith personally ordered the attempted murder. He wrote a 1907 reminisce of life at the Petaluma Adobe that is often quoted as an important primary source, as well as the letter to the Press Democrat about the birth of his son transcribed below. (He may have been an important writer, but apparently his penmanship left much to be desired; in the PD item the name of the General’s brother, Salvador, is misspelled as “Salvachons,” apparently because the typesetter couldn’t read the old man’s bad handwriting.)

(RIGHT: Detail of photo showing William Boggs and General Vallejo c. 1885 at the Hotel del Monte in Monterey. Vallejo is extending a Mexican flag on a floral exhibit commemorating the soldiers who fought in the Mexican-American War. Photograph courtesy UC Berkeley/Bancroft Library; click here for complete image)

And that’s just the well-known stuff. William also authored a book-length essay about his time with brother Thomas and their “life among the Indians,” with an edited and abridged version appearing in the March, 1930 issue of The Colorado Magazine. Thanks to Google Books, I stumbled across a letter by William  that states Vallejo betrayed Mexico and covertly aided the U.S. at a crucial juncture on the eve of the Mexican-American War. If true, this rewrites Vallejo’s biography and history of the war. And finally, thanks to Bancroft, we know William wrote often for the Napa Register around 1872 concerning the war and the Bear Flag Revolt, suggesting there is likely still more to be found. Undoubtedly William M. Boggs deserves some serious attention from scholars. Any PhD candidates out there looking for a dissertation topic?

If you still don’t have your fill of the remarkable Boggs family there’s grandson Francis, who was born in Santa Rosa and became a pioneer of another sort. He was a theatrical actor who became interested in directing some of those new motion pictures, directing about 200 shorts between 1907 and 1911. He directed L. Frank Baum’s “Fairylogue and Radio-Plays,” a pastiche made from several stories from the Oz books performed in a two-hour stage production that mixed live action with color film and slides. But Francis’ most notable contribution to the history of movies was his opening in 1909 the first production studio in Los Angeles over the objections of his boss in Chicago. Within two years almost all of the big East Coast studios moved to LA as well. If not for Francis Boggs, there may not have been a Hollywood.
 

 PIONEER OF ’46 WRITES OF THE PETALUMA ADOBE
 Reminiscense of the Late General Vallejo

 From W. M. Boggs, one of the earliest pioneers of California and Sonoma county, the Press Democrat has received a letter of particular historical interest at this time. It refers to the “Old Adobe” near Petaluma, which was built by General Vallejo as a summer home for himself and his family, on his big Petaluma Rancho. Mention was made a few days ago of an offer by its present owner, to present the old building to the City of Petaluma. No man is better qualified to speak of the old historic building than Mr. Boggs, as he lived in it in the early part of 1846. Mr. Boggs’ communication is as follows:

 222 Seminary street, Napa City, Jan. 18, 1910. Editor Press Democrat–Dear Sir:

 In looking over the columns of the Examiner today I noticed an item headed “Old Fort Given to City,” presumably to the City of Petaluma by J. A. Bliss of Washington, D. C., nephew of W. D. Bliss, formerly of Petaluma, a gentleman whom I remember well in the early history of Petaluma City.

 I wish to correct a historical error in calling the old adobe building erected by General Vallejo on his original Petaluma grant. “An Old Fort.” I am somewhat familiar with the history of that structure since early on 1846. My father’s family and myself and wife were kindly tendered the use of the building by General Vallejo on our first arrival in Sonoma. It was the first shelter we obtained and it was then not completed. The carpenters were yet at work on the interior. The late Henry Fowler of Napa and his aged father, William Fowler Sr., were the men or carpenters employed to do the finishing work in the building which was a large square building with a court on the inside (the usual Mexican or Spanish style.) The wide verandas above were some twelve feet in width. The walls on the south and east side were not completed, but were covered with tule to protect them from the rain. The front of the main building had wide verandas, and round to the northwest corner of the building. The building was constructed by General Vallejo for his family residence on his Petaluma Rancho, and had been occupied by them before the General tendered it to our family to winter in. The lower rooms were used for storing grain, hides and other ranch products. Some of General Vallejo’s family furniture and other household effects were still in the rooms above, where they were kept for use in the summer when the General and his family came from his town residence to spend the summer months.

 On our arrival in the night at the ranch, General Vallejo had gone ahead of our worn-out teams. He had his Indian servants prepare supper for our families. The tables were spread with linen table cloths, sperm candles were in the chandeliers, and we had a regular Spanish-cooked repast prepared by his old family Indian cook. The General withen on the table, helping all the large family. After supper was served he handed my wife a large bunch of keys to the various rooms, and assigned one large well finished room to myself and wife, in which our eldest son was born on the 4th day of January, 1847. This was a month or two after our arrival. With a few volunteers I had crossed the Bay to enlist in the war with Mexico. While I was away the General came over from his residence in Sonoma to visit my father and family, and he found another young American emigrant only a week or two old, who had not yet been named. He expressed a desire to see the new arrival and on being shown the youngster, he enquired his name. My mother told him he was not named yet and requested him to name him. He replied, if you give me permission to name him, I will name him for myself–Guadalupe Vallejo Boggs. Everyone consented with pleasure. That young man is now in his 63rd year and lives in Oregon and claims to be the first white boy born under the American flag in California. One or two female children were born in Sutter’s Fort probably before or about the same time of year. Mr. Fowler Sr., made a fine redwood cradle for Mrs. Boggs which was a very nice finished piece of carpenter work. The madame expressed her fears as to its durability, the work was so finely executed. The old gentleman said it would last to rock all the children she would have, and it was kept in the family until the baby it was made for grew up and had children of his own and they were also rocked in it.

 Now, Mr. Editor, I did not intend to bore you or wish to occupy valuable space in your worthy journal, although I claim to be the first man to sign the petition to start the Sonoma Democrata when the blank was presented to me by my old friend, Thomas Thompson. My object was to correct the error that the Petaluma house was an old fort. It is so called on their pictorial post cards, and the press also speaks of it as the “Old Fort.”

 General Vallejo never build but one fort north of the Bay, and that was the barracks in old Sonoma, where the “Bear Flag” was hoisted, commonly called the Quartel, and the General told me that he worked on that with his own hands.

 By publishing this you will correct an error that has been published time after time. Sutter’s Fort and Fort Ross (built by Russians) and the Barracks in the northeast corner of old Sonoma plaza, were the only forts built by the Mexican authorities, except the old Presidio, at San Francisco, and the old barracks at Monterey. Don Salvachons’ [sic] now large adobe on the west side of Sonoma Plaza has been called an old fort also, that building was not finished until after we came to Sonoma, and Don Salvachons, the brother of the General built it after we moved to Sonoma from the Petaluma Ranch. A frame addition was added to it on the north side or end facing the street that leads out toward Santa Rosa, and a hotel was made of it and kept by the late Hon. George Pearce and Isaac Randolph, his partner. This building has also been designated as an old fort by ye modern historians. Americans did the carpenter work on both of these buildings after we took the country from Mexico.
 Respectfully,
 WM. M. BOGGS.

  – Press Democrat, January 21, 1910

 A HISTORIC LANDMARK

 Although not as well known as some others, one of Sonoma county’s most interesting landmarks is the huge adobe ranch house near Petaluma, erected by the late General Vallejo during the days of Mexico’s supremacy–“before the Gringos came.” This property, together with five acres of land, is to be presented to the city of Petaluma under an agreement whereby the municipality binds itself to care for and preserve the same. Many historic recollections are clustered about the old structure, which for several years has been gradually falling into decay, and it is gratifying to learn that the building is to be preserved as its importance so well warrants. With the expenditure of a little money, the proper amount of taste, and some energy, the old adobe could be made a great show place, serving as still another attraction for tourists and again emphasizing the fact that Sonoma county is one of the most historic portions of the state. Petaluma owes it to the county to do this now that the property is about to come into her possession, and can doubtless be depended upon to discharge her obligation fully and well.

 – Press Democrat editorial, January 20, 1910

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