LITMIR.BIZ

      A notable death preceding that of Kinsman's, was that of Mrs. Jennie E. Mace, pioneer of 1855-56 and widow of Capt. R. P. Mace (April 24, 1894). She died July 17, 1916; he was a California '49er. Death, in the home of over forty years of residence, removed in Mrs. Mace the oldest pioneer woman of Madera County. Her first California home was at O'Neal's, and during her sixty-one years in the valley, she saw Fresno, Merced, Mono and Madera Counties come into existence and the cities of Fresno and Madera spring out of the plains. She was a native of Ireland, born in August, 1837, and with her father, Andrew Cunningham, and her mother, came to Indiana when only a few weeks of age. She married in 1855, John Gilmore, and the honeymoon was passed on the journey to California. She settled at O'Neal's, where she lived nineteen years and where a daughter (Mrs. Tillie Gilmore-Brown) and two sons were born. Her marriage to Capt. Mace occurred in 1866. She was a much beloved woman, who was noted for many acts of charity and benevolence, was prominent in the Methodist Church, South, and in 1869 was one with others, to organize at Fort Miller, one of the first Sunday schools in the valley, the abandoned guardhouse being the place of meeting. In possession of her faculties to the last, she could talk interestingly of experiences from the viewpoint of the good wife, the respected woman and the honored mother of two families.

      Capt. Mace's adventurous career started with a sea voyage as a cabin boy from Boston to New Orleans, thereafter with a companion he spent a roving season with a French trader among the Comanches. At Independence, Mo., he joined the trading train of the American Fur Trading Company en route to Bent's Fort on the Arkansas. He accompanied Robert Isher, noted scout, trapper and trainer of Kit Carson, on the volunteer journey to Taos, to convey important messages for 180 miles to Charles Bent, one of the four brothers, trailing through the hostile region of the Utes. The journeying was done by night with concealment in canyons by daylight. The return to the fort was with escort of trappers and hunters. Mace continued in the employ of Charles Bent for six years as a trusty scout, carrying express from Bent's Fort to Fort George on another dangerous trail and taking his life in hand on every journey and on one occasion holding five Indians at bay.

      For two years with Kit Carson he hunted the buffalo for meat for the 400 employees of the fur company, chasing the bison over the present site of Denver, Colo., and also being at Pueblo, that state, when the first adobe was raised for a trading post. At twenty-three he returned to New Orleans, continued for three years as clerk in a wine house and at the outbreak of the war with Mexico was among the first to volunteer and for three months served under Gen. E. P. Gaines. Louisiana being requisitioned upon for a regiment. Mace returned to New Orleans on leave, recruited the first company for that first regiment, was appointed captain — hence the title that remained with him through life — was the senior in rank and served until the treaty of peace. He also served in quelling an Indian uprising in Yucatan. The gold discovery attracted him to California and the year 1849 saw him in San Francisco (Yerba Buena) camped in Happy Valley, south of Market street, afterward the manufacturing and foundry district, headed soon for Rose's Bar on the Yuba and with varying success mining for twenty years. Later at Millerton, he and a company spent three years building a race to turn the San Joaquin River for mining. They first struck it rich, making from a few buckets of dirt, $900 and $1,000 a day for several days, but the bed soon played out. He had also a quartz lead at Fine Gold Gulch. This was mismanaged and destroyed in his absence. The later No-Fence law practically ruined him so he killed his live stock to dispose of it. He rented and managed the hotel at the ambitious settlement at Borden which once aspired to be the county seat of Fresno County, continuing from 1874 until 1876, when Madera was founded and he was one of the first to buy town lots. Madera eventually crowded Borden off the map. In 1877 he built the Yosemite Hotel in Madera, stopping place for Yosemite Valley travel via Raymond, and when it was destroyed by fire he erected the standing brick structure that faces the railroad depot. Capt. Mace was justice of the peace for years and served for three terms in the state legislature.

      Running allusion is made to his career to emphasize the spirit and character of the men who were the prominent pioneers of Fresno. They were men that did things. It was not the period for mollycoddles.

      Thomas Sprecherman, also known as "Tom Jones," who came on the Chowchilla as a miner in 1849, and John Besore, of French descent and an early pioneer, have been on the list. They and Thomas J. Dunlap, popularly known as Jeff Dunlap, all Fresnans, became Maderans after county division because they lived north of the San Joaquin River line.