The last chapter of the Murray clan migration from Missouri to Rancheria Creek in 1856-7 concluded with the family finding their new homestead site on the flat west of where Beebe Creek and Rancheria Creek meet. The minute they descended from their wagons and horses they knew this was exactly the place they were looking for.
It was January, 1857 when the wagon train and accompanying cows and oxen crossed over Rancheria at Maple Creek and fought their way through the woods back upstream to the open fields that were to become their home. First task in the depths of winter was shelter. First afternoon on the flat they gathered the three wagons in a circle as if still on the California trail. For the dining area the family rigged inside the wagon circle a tarp under which the dinner table was set. Sleeping accommodations were, of course, in the wagon beds. And first duty that evening was to establish the night watch hours schedule to guard stock and people from predatory bears and panthers. Next morning construction of the first permanent installation began, not a home, but a sturdy corral for the livestock.
The wagon trail the Murrays took from Cloverdale to Rancheria was the main exit “road” from Anderson Valley to Sonoma County, principally Petaluma where families and local businesses shopped and traded with the merchants and livestock dealers in this major commercial “city” serving the whole North Coast to Eureka. And the first important visitor the family had was the Mill Creek/Christine first settler, mill owner and freight wagon hauler, John Gschwend. Gschwend and his six horse team came by with a wagon load of redwood boards, probably 1 X 8 inches or so, headed for Petaluma. Cleve asked if he could buy the boards for siding on the home he and boys had started to build. Gschwend said, no, they were already sold, but would be back in few weeks with another load. The Murrays invited Gschwend to stay for dinner, and in an instant, the two entrepreneurs were exploring another business arrangement. Perhaps Cleve could trade his oxen to The Valley’s mill owners needing them to sked logs out of the surrounding woods and down to their mill site log decks.
Cleveland Murray and Susan were loving partners and opposite personalities. Cleve aspired to a life of privacy developing and living on their dream homestead. That’s why he liked having as neighbors the local Pomo people living nearby. They only intruded upon him when it was necessary. At arrival at Rancheria he declared the property was “what I was looking for. Never did like people too close.” Susan and her children were contrarily very social beings, wanting friendly neighbors to visit and chat with. At dinner with John Gschwend that evening she quizzed the guest, “Do we have any neighbors in this area?” Gschwend probably knew every family in The Valley and noted that a number of founding settlers lived hear her, including the Anderson and Beeson clans, J.D. Ball, William Prather, and McGimseys and McFaddens, all families I heard stories about when I first came to The Valley fifty years ago.
Despite winter weather Cleveland and the sons began building the house right after finishing the livestock corrals. Susan reports its foundation was simply log mudsills, no rock walls. The sidewall and roof framing were probably also redwood split timber, the siding was the redwood boards from Gschwend’s mill, as were the roof shakes. The fireplace heating the house was made from Rancheria Creek’s river run rocks and a limited amount of cement Gschwend sold them, along with window glass. The chimney in the photo appears to be brick, likely locally made. Cleveland was afraid of fire in the cookstove area, so that part of the house was simply a dirt floor covered with cured bear skins from their hunting activities on top of earth, probably more comfortable than any Persian rug. Bearskin rugs also covered the flooring for the rest of the house, an excellent form of insulation. Cleveland and the boys Isaac and George even made from local hardwood a weaver’s loom so she could get to work making the family’s clothing.
The location of the house, to the best of my knowledge, was not along Rancheria Creek, but across the meadow west of it and the Cloverdale wagon road (now Highway 128) and against the open side hill protecting the farm from storm winds. The photo in the Grandma 'Stubblefield' book is of poor resolution, so it’s hard to identify its actual design, but it appears to be situated a few yards from the sidehill I describe here. Near the house Cleveland and the boys, using a rope and bucket to extract dirt and rocks, hand dug a shallow well, and though it was a couple of hundred yards from the creek, they hit abundant, clean water at thirty feet. I hope I can find evidence of the well site when I explore the homestead property, now part of Mailliard Ranch.
On April first, a sunny day two months after the construction began, the Murrays moved into their new home. Where Susan planted the Stubblefield rose, the edited book does not reveal.
Next on the family/s homestead development agenda was the kitchen garden and annual crop planting. They placed the garden near the creek making it easier for the Murrays to water the plants and vines. The open pasture between the house and the creek they plowed and planted to wheat to feed the livestock through the next winter. Meanwhile, once the spring farm work was completed, Susan made sure the children started classes at the local school house. Susan’s recollection doesn’t describe the school’s location very clearly. It might have been on the open sidehill at Maple Creek or perhaps further north a quarter mile on the Ornbaun property. Other students at school included McAbees and Hiatts. Now that the home construction was done, the boys Cleve and George, always needing another work project, were aided by John Ornbaun finding employment at the saw mill near the mouth of the Navarro River. Interesting piece of local history unknown to me; I had always heard the first mill at the river mouth was built in the 1890s. This earlier Navarro mill had to be pre-steam and probably water-powered.
Susan herself continued her “professional” practice as local doctor. She performed her medical work on both local settlers and the nearby Indian community, doing everything from simple bandaging and cleaning cuts and wounds, to treating broken bones, and mid-wifing childbirths. In one instance, a local tribal woman died in delivery and Susan took the newborn home and over a week nurtured it back from near-death to vibrant health. An even more daunting medical mission began with a young McGimsey riding up from Kendalls’ Corners to advise his father, Judge John Cox, had fallen off a cliff hunting seagull eggs out at the ocean.. Somehow the boys had gotten the father, compound fractured leg and all, back to their home. Susan arrived armed with her medical kit, and while the boys headed to Cloverdale to find a doctor with surgical experience, Susan used her medicine chest of antiseptic herbs and laudanum to cleanse and bandage the damaged leg and to provide pain relief. This medical teamwork ended up being successful and the judge recovered fully, though with a permanent limp.
And, lo and behold, one day in 1858, age 47 years, Susan found herself pregnant. On January 3, 1859, a boy, Isom Cloda, was born.
In step with her socializing personality, Susan’s memoirs capture in intimate detail over two pages the whole family spending two days in Hopland, staying at the local hotel (Thatcher?). She recounts exactly who danced with whom at the balls those nights and how the Virginia reel worked step by step. It also turned out, Susan reports, that the Hopland dance was also the beginning of her older daughter Mary Ann’s marriage courtship by Charles Porter McGimsey, the judge’s son.
For me the most interesting part of the Hopland festivities story is her recollection of the trip “over the hill.” Her description of exactly where this wagon road from Rancheria lay is unclear to me. It sounds like it followed Beebe Creek upstream from the Cloverdale wagon road, through a pass that takes one down into McNab Creek and Ranch to the “highway” along Russian River connecting Ukiah and Hopland to Cloverdale and south. Because Anderson Valley was both isolated and commercially growing roads were important to its local economy’s development. And most business leaders knew it and even themselves improved their portions of existing roads to support their growing business opportunities.
In this frontier economic growth matter Cleveland continued to be the contrarian settler. In 1859, Mendocino County became independent of Sonoma, and its business leaders turned to building local institutions like a courthouse, school system and better roads. Local entrepreneurs like Port McGimsey, J.D. Ball, Johns Gschwend, John Ornbaun were Valley participants in this movement. Susan’s diary reports Port telling Cleveland how important better roads and road maintenance were to the growth of the community. The passion with which Port discussed the matter with Cleveland provoked the following retort: “…listen here, young man, I spent a long time figgerin’ out where we could come and be away from people. Don’t you young sprouts ruin the whole country and get people all over the place.” In a year or two after this encounter Susan reports Cleveland was talking about moving to find a place with no neighbors.
In early 1865, Susan awoke one morning to find her husband beside her with marble white face and wide open eyes. Cleveland Murray had died at age 65 years.
(Next Week: Susan Murray, Kendall’s Corners businesswoman and socialite.)
Brad, good writing. It is interesting to note that conflicts with Pomos seemed non-existent, or minimal. From what I have read, the Yukis were more combative, and war like. It just shows Indian cultures were more complicated and diverse than we like to assume.