History of Fresno County, Vol. 1 - Paul E. Vandor

Скачать книгу

OF LIVING EARLIEST PIONEERS

      The following roster of surviving pioneers of pioneers was first compiled nearly two years ago. It has undergone five revisions to leave today in January, 1919, the submitted names, for be it borne in mind that the adult pioneer in the territory in 1856, or before county organization, must have been at twenty-one majority or close thereto, and with the sixty-two years added since, would need be, if surviving today, at an advanced age in the 80's. The living are believed to be the following named according to best research:

      Henry F. Akers, of near Sanger; William Albertus Akers, of near Coalinga; Mrs. Sarah Akers-Chambers, of San Benito; Mrs. Mary Agnes Burns, of near Sanger; Mrs. C. P. Converse that was Mrs. Stephen Caster, whose home is in Ishom Valley, Tulare County; Mrs. Lewis Leach, who was the first Mrs. C. P. Converse, and is a resident of Fresno City; Mrs. Mary McKenzie-Hoxie, born at Millerton in 1855; Hiram McDonald, who was chief of police of 5-Point Precinct, Phoenix, Ariz., at last accounts. The last two were in the county as juveniles at organization date.

       Jasper N. Musick

      Jasper N. Musick headed the above list for more than a year and a half as perhaps the widest known of the early pioneers, though the Akers family preceded him in the territory by some three years. Death removed Musick at the age of eighty-five years on June 4, 1918, and two days later his remains were laid away in the little rural cemetery at Academy, where sleepeth so many of the pioneer men and women of the county.

      Familiarly known as "Uncle Jess" because of his lovable character, Jasper N. Musick had experienced all the vicissitudes of early day pioneering, and as a boy the family located at what is now Jefferson City, Mo., at a period when St. Louis was on the map as a trading post. He was the sixth of fifteen children. A brother, Jeremiah, for whom a Fresno residence addition was named (he died in 1904) came to California after the war and engaged in stock raising.

      Jasper and a brother crossed the plains, arriving in the fall of 1850. They made the journey to Salt Lake City with ox teams, but traded for horses as ,a swifter means of progress. Arriving at Hangtown (Placerville, Cal.), they were surprised to behold the traded off oxen that had previously arrived and in a much better condition than the horses. For six years, Musick mined in Amador County with reasonable success, in 1856 settled in Mariposa County, engaged incidentally in Indian warfare and participated in the skirmish on Tule River which quelled the outbreak. Settling at Millerton, he teamed to and from Stockton and the mines, hauling provisions to the latter for five cents a pound with ten days required on the round trip. In 1858 he moved the Fort Miller soldiers to Benicia Barracks on evacuation.

      Later he located on Dry Creek in the stock business with J. G. Simpson, conducting a Millerton meat shop, and each spring drove a band of cattle to Sonora and other mining centers at profit. This partnership continued until 1865, when he took up the sheep business with ranch at Letcher. There he also pioneered in orange and deciduous fruit growing. His residence in Fresno city dated from 1892, and here in comparative affluence he lived a retired life after the whirl and excitement of his younger years. By a first marriage at Dry Creek with a native born of Millerton. Rebecca, daughter of James Richards, a pioneer settler, five children were born, three of whom attained majority. The second marriage in December, 1878, was at Lemoore to Nancy J. Messersmith, whose family came from Cole County, Mo., after the war.

      Mr. Musick was for two terms a county supervisor and chairman of the board for a time. It was during his incumbency that the county-seat removal was effected, a change that he had championed. While a Dry Creeker, he was in 1872 one of the incorporators and organizers and the treasurer of the Dry Creek Academy with ex-Sheriff J. D. Collins as the first teacher, a school of acknowledged repute. Later, building and grounds were deeded to the school district of which Mr. Musick was a trustee for years, and school has never closed doors to its original purpose. In his younger days Mr. Musick was a leader of the Democracy.

      As an evidence of the remarkable faculty that some men are endowed with in the recollection of dates, is cited the incident that on the day of the funeral, June 6, 1918. John C. Hoxie, the late pioneer, recalled on his way to the obsequies to attend them as a pall bearer, that the day of his friend's death lacked only forty-eight hours of the day. June 2, 1856, of his first meeting, as a small boy with Jasper N. Musick at old Millerton. Two days after the funeral was also the incident of the recording of a government land patent to Musick under date of August 30, 1877, and apparently long forgotten.

       Joseph Bums

      At the age of eighty-eight years and three months on December 13, 1918, Joseph Burns died after an illness of five months at his home near Sanger. He was one of the last of the Old Guard, his coming antedating county organization in 1856. He had followed agricultural and pastoral pursuits nearly all his life in California, amassing a competency which permitted him to aid in the development of the county in humble fashion. He was a good citizen, never in public life, never sought political preferment but remained content to follow the unobtrusive career of a farmer, drifting along with the time and the tide, his circumstances benefitted by the natural advancement and enrichment of the region in which he had chosen to cast his lot, undisturbed by the hurly-burly of changing epochs and living more in the historic dead past than the bustling, restless present.

      Joseph Burns was a South Carolinian born, but as an infant removed with parents to Sparta, Randolph county, Ill.. In early manhood and allured by the gold excitement, he came to California in 1852; according to another report in 1854. At any rate he settled in Mariposa county and was a resident of that county even after Fresno was carved out of that vast mining domain. There is little to be told of his early experiences, though after removal to Fresno after county organization it is recalled that like many others he was adopted according to a prevailing practice of the times into tribal relations through the daughter of an Indian chief with a place in history. Cowchiti, as he was known, had to do with the preliminaries of the treaty of peace signed up at Fort Barbour, April 29, 1851, with the rebellious tribes of the valley following surrender to the Mariposa Battalion under Maj. James D. Savage and with the last act in the drama — the bringing in of captives and starved out Yosemites from the fastnesses of the valley. Chief Cowchiti was the scout and interpreter that guided Capt. Boling's company to and from the valley in the pursuit, being the first visit by white men in number to enter and explore the scenic gorge and make its fame known. Cowchiti was looked upon by the soldiery not altogether without suspicion and doubt as to his motives and purposes, but proved faithful to his trust.

      Burns settled on Willow creek, a tributary of Coarse Gold Creek, in Madera county now, setting out there what is said to have been the first peach orchard in this region. In 1862 he married Mary Agnes Lewis, whose father was an herb doctor at a time when graduate practitioners were few. In the year 1869, Burns pulled up stakes and moved to Centerville in the Kings river district and engaged in stock and sheep raising and farming, and also planted one of the first orange groves in that pioneer citrus belt. He and others were associated in the co-operative Sweem ditch enterprise. It was on any scale the first practical irrigation demonstration in the county and with its inclusion in the Church irrigation plan metamorphosed the parched grazing land of the plains into vineyards, orchards and farms.

      The published Burns obituary recorded several glaring inaccuracies. The death was heralded as that of the oldest citizen and pioneer. This was manifestly incorrect. It was declared as "an outstanding circumstance" of his reported marriage in 1862 "that it was the first recorded in the new county of Fresno which up to that time formed a part of Mariposa County." This is obviously also an absurd statement. Equally far from the truth was the statement that "for several years he was the only Republican who cast his vote in Millerton, then the county seat of Fresno County." The distinction of having been the historical "Lone Republican" in the county has been fastened on various persons, now dead, among them the late Judge Charles A. Hart and the late Supervisor H. C. Daulton. Truth is that the subject of the obituary never did vote at Millerton because there were precinct polling places at Coarse Gold and at Centerville even before the Republican party came into existence. If there is a well authenticated historical incident it is the one that the "Lone Republican" of Fresno that gained a state wide name because casting the only Republican vote

Скачать книгу