Mariposa Historical Express
A Sketch of Life in Bridgeport
And The Adventures of Uncle Brewer
A Stroll In The Foothills--Cremation Ranch
Nearly opposite the old ruin of a quartz mill below the town of Mariposa, half hidden by thickets of chaparral, buckeye and thrifty young pines, a trail, diverging from the Mormon Bar road, leads across the head of Chicken Gulch, thence over the divide between the waters of Agua Fria and Mariposa creeks and winds along down the hills--a trifle steep at first, then gently undulating--till it merges into the comparatively level or rolling region known as the Buckeye District. At this season the sloping hillsides are carpeted with bright green grasses and decked with wild flowers of every variety of color, and the air is redolent with the perfume of leaf and bud and blossom. Groups of cattle and horses are leisurely nipping the tender blades, and, like their owners, luxuriating over the outcome of the spring rains. Buckeye Creek, from which the school district derives its name, is a tributary of the Agua Fria. In the days of flush times and placer mining there were scattering cabins, tents and brush shanties along its borders. Subsequently the zigzag survey of the Fremont Grant lapped its boundaries over the best of it, taking in a couple of sections of land, including several quartz mines of good repute and most of the localities known to fame-as the Bridgeport, Yaqui Gulch, Guadalupe and Buckeye. The latter was formerly celebrated as a favorite site for camp meetings and at one time divided the honors with Cathey's Valley as a religious picnic ground. It has been the scene of several old-fashioned, earnest revivals and some extraordinary conversions. Little wrecked the pious souls who sang psalms of praise and shouted "hosannas" in those primitive times that the grass upon which they knelt would be stained with blood, and "murder most foul" would be enacted in close proximity to a place by association, made sacred to divine worship.
But so it came to pass, for here, as we emerge from the hills, a bend in the trail brings in view the brush fence, the house, barn and garden, recently owned and occupied by Louis Hebert. Here is its vegetable patch and vineyard--the fruit of his patient toil. Here, from this little lot of half an acre, he made his living. From this place, with his bit of a donkey he packed his vegetables to the Mariposa market. His diminutive form was one of the familiar features of the region round about Buckeye, but the places which knew "little Louis" have parted company with him. There is a ghastly shadow hanging over this cozy, peaceful looking spot. It was recently the scene of a most atrocious crime. Its details, with all the horrors of murder and cremation, have been given to the public, and one of the guilty parties has gone to expiate his crime in the penitentiary. The place where the victim fell, the blood stains on the wall and bedstead, the garden gate through which the body was dragged, and the improvised furnace where it was cremated, are still shown by the officers who ferreted out the crime to the curious spectator. "Cremation Ranch" has become historical. By the trail it is a little over three miles from Mariposa:
Two miles further in the same direction, on the westerly bank of Agua Fria Creek, a few straggling corral posts, the weather beaten frame of a wooden building, which was once a store, a badly wrecked skeleton of a stable, a patched up old shell of a house, which suffices for a shelter for an impoverished family, and two or three Chinese rookeries serve to designate the metes and bounds of an old time mining town known as Bridgeport. As Agua Fria was never an navigable stream, and the place could not have been used as a port, and neither was there ever the first sign of a bridge the annals of the place are barren of any particular significance attached to its name. The survivors among the old settlers who linger around its contiguous territory delight in recounting the thrilling scenes and marvelous events of even date with the era when tradition has it that Bridgeport was a lively place. It had a store, a hotel, a livery stable, blacksmith shop, saloon, butcher shop, corral and an outlying picket of miner's cabins and camps of miscellaneous styles of architecture.
Seth Washburn was the first storekeeper, and the store once did a thriving business. He was a prince among good fellows, as were his brothers John and Henry, who succeeded him in business. Seth returned to his old home in Vermont at an early day, where he died many years ago. The younger brothers remained in California and still have a deserved reputation as enterprising business men and good citizens in all respects. They are the Washburn brothers of the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company.
In the flush times referred to, there were some very fair placer diggings in the immediate vicinity of Bridgeport, as well as at Buckeye, Yaqui Gulch, Agua Fria and Guadalupe. This was when about twelve feet square on a bar was a claim, and work everyday thereon was the only security for a valid title, unless excused by sickness or unavoidable accident.
How The Bridgeport Miners
Rid Themselves of the Chinese
About the year 1851 the Chinese began to drift into the mines, coming in small numbers at first, and only exciting curiosity by their outlandish costume, sing-song dialect, shaven crowns, almond eyes and pigtail queues. Bridgeport had its quota of Celestial visitors and their numbers multiplied year after year, till in 1856 the hills and gulches swarmed with them and their encroachments upon the gold fields became a subject of serious consideration. The honest miners of Bridgeport and its vicinity took in the situation. They held a meeting, and then and there preambled that their presence was a blight and a curse upon the country at large and detrimental to the interests of the white population in and around the settlement and "resolved" in a few brief sentences of United States language that sentiment since emphasized by San Francisco voluble agitators: "The Chinese must go." The American men of Bridgeport crystallized this anti-Chinese into the simple legend herein quoted, and made it for a brief period the "burning question of the hour." They did not stop at resolving, but an executive committee formally waited on the "big medicine men" of Chinese nativity and warned them to leave. There was a swarm of this obnoxious element there, and their brush shanties, like the occupants, outnumbered those of the Mexicans and for a few days they kicked up a hullabaloo and seemed inclined to remain. Then the boys went for their guns and gave them about time enough to pack their household goods and get up and dust. They dusted. Two or three were a little slow, and mulish about leaving, and they were admonished with heavy miner's boots to hurry up. The brush shanties in which they had been domiciled were burned from the face of the earth.
Let it not be imagined for a moment, however, that the majesty of the law could be defied even at that early day in this county, or that the smoke of the burning bushes was not offensive to the nostrils of the blind goddess. Her myrmidons swept down upon the rebellious camp, and, armed with the necessary writs, they incontinently arrested twenty-two of the party who had been guilty of these irregularities. Eleven of them declined to obey the mandate of the court at first and this involved another serious charge. The entire baten were tried for committing a riot and fined $25, with the alternative of ten days' imprisonment in the county jail.
The eleven obdurate fellows objected to arrest and only yielded at last "because," explained one of them in mitigation of his seeming lack of pluck, "you see, we all knowed Tom Early (the sheriff), to be one of the best fellows in the county, game as a peacock, and bound to do his duty. Then there's old Judge Bondurant, there isn't a better man top of earth. The boys all go their bottom dollar on the Judge, and so we concluded to quit and come in."
Let a juror who sat on the case of the eleven charged with Resisting an Officer, tell the rest of the story:
"We were all miners who were on the jury-most of the crowd from Sherlocks, Colorado and Whisky Flat-Americans representing all sections of the Union; not a storekeeper or saloon man in the crowd. As for ranchers, there were none in this part of the country, and any cattleman would have been "challenged for cause." Of course we wanted to clear the boys. The evidence was closed for the prosecution. There was a hole left for them to crawl out of. Every juryman saw it, for it was big as a house. The District Attorney had neglected to prove that the Sheriff had a warrant or had shown or read one to the accused at the time of the commission of the offense. We were feeling happy over it. I punched Jim Davis in the ribs, and Jim he snickered. Dick Chamberlain rolled his eyes wrong side out trying to look solemn. What do you think the attorney for the defendants did? I'm blest if he didn't recall the Sheriff just to ask him one more question. "Did you," --and he looked wise as a nest of young owls--"did you have a warrant at the time you first attempted to make the arrest?"
"I did, and read it to them," he answered. This cooked their goose as a matter of course. It was of no consequence about the argument of counsel. We were too mad to listen to it. When the case was given to us we retired. A more disgusted set of men you never saw. We were out an hour and a quarter. There was no doubt about the guilt of the parties. The only question at issue was what should be done with that fool lawyer. We spent nearly an hour cussin' and arguing as to whether it would be justifiable homicide to shoot him. Finally, as he was a good hearted fellow and owed some of the jurymen small sums which he had borrowed in a poker game, they pleaded for him and we agreed to let up--but boys, don't you make any mistake--for a while we were hot in the collar. Oh! the verdict? Guilty of course, and recommended to the mercy of the court. They were fined $50 each, with the alternative of twenty days' imprisonment in jail. They chose the twenty days and it was a picnic for them all the time. The boys brought them chicken, turkey, ham and eggs, quail on toast, and more wine and whisky than they could get away with."
For a long time after this the Chinese avoided Bridgeport, but as the placer mines became impoverished they gradually slid into their old haunts and the rattle of their rockers was again heard in the ravines.
Old Uncle Brewer--Bringing in Election Returns
Within a stone's throw of the store there is an old dilapidated frame structure which has in turn done duty as a hotel, boarding house and dwelling. It was once the abiding place of a rare specimen of the old-fashioned type of Kentucky backwoodsman by the name of Brewer. Everybody knew him as "Uncle Brewer" and the wife of his youth, who grew old and gray in his companionship, had a joint stock in the cordial acquaintances of her spouse, and answered smilingly to the name of "Aunty." They climbed life's hill together and went hand-in-hand on the down grade, now sleeping side by side on the little green knoll north of their old home.
"Uncle Brewer" was entirely uneducated, but possessed that sterling quality termed hard sense, full of odd similes and with a repertory of original and selected maxims and off-hand jokes, an inveterate yarn spinner, a judge of horseflesh and a crack shot, it is no wonder that he was a feature as camp meetings, sociables, horse races and turkey shoots. A ball at Bridgeport twenty-five or thirty years ago was a gay and festive affair when "Old Man Brewer" headed the management and "Aunty" personally superintended the culinary department. There was not as much style in those days as at the modern hops and germans, but there was more dancing and the eating and drinking were marvelous. The musicians who were not on time by early candlelight were never again employed at a Bridgeport ball. And whoever left the ballroom for home before sunrise incurred the severe displeasure of "Uncle Brewer."
At every turkey shoot within the radius of twelve miles the tall lean form of old man Brewer and his long maple-stocked rifle were present. Next to auntie that old rifle held the choice place in his affections. In recounting its qualities as a shooting iron he always gave it a feminine designation. "She's dead center boys. Hold her on the spot and she's thar. Why, I have killed deer with her so far away that they didn't look bigger 'n a cottontail rabbit; shot 'em clean through, and at the crack of the gun they'd drap too dead to skin, and I'd have to make good time to get to 'em before the meat would spile."
One day he stood looking admiringly at an old "plug" of a horse that the meat butcher used for packing beef. Nobody else had ever discovered any remarkable points about the animal, but Uncle Brewer was emphatic in his comments.
"Look at them shoulders; that loin--that's power and bottom," he observed. "See that hock; that stifle; that clean-cut head. I tell you boys, that's good blood in that old sorrel, 'sure's you're born."
There was a young fellow present who was riding a high-spirited vaquero horse, and he chipped in with a challenge for a race:
"Here's $25 that says I can beat old sorrel with this mustang from the first jump to ten miles, if you want to stretch it out that far. Catch weights, set your pegs!"
The old man's blood was up. "I haven't quite got that much money," he remarked, "but here's $10 on old sorrel, and if any of the boys will ante up the balance I'll size yer pile." The boys "antied."
"I'll ride my own horse. Who are you going to put up on that pack animal?" asked the young chap, "and what's your distance?"
"I am only 70 years old, an' I'll jest straddle old sorrel myself, an' run ye from here to Mariposa by the wagon road--six measured miles to the courthouse, an' the man who gets there first takes the coin," responded Uncle Brewer.
The crowd cheered lustily, and the old man changed saddles, looked well to the girth, divested himself of his coat and hat, tied a red bandanna around his head, and at the word "go" away they went. No accurate account of this race was ever given in the sporting papers, but Uncle Brewer got there all the same.
"I jest trailed along and crowded him a little till we'd made about a mile and a half," said he, in narrating the event, "then jest as we made the turn on Buckeye I crowded him a little. As we riz the hill I heered that mustang puffin' and blowin'--then directly his tail flew up an' I knowed I had him. Then I let old sorrel out a link or two. Why, gentlemen, when I passed him it was like a Mississippi steamboat goin' by a wood yard. How much did I beat him? About two mile an' a half I reckon. He quit, I'm tellin' ye, bless his soul--he never got to Mormon Bar. Thar's a heap of things I don't know, boys. Book larnin' ain't my style, an' I can't read pen-writtin'; but when it come to horseflesh, I'm thar."
The old man possessed almost wonderful memory. He it was who used to bring over the election returns from Bridgeport. On one occasion there was an unusually exciting contest--a full state ticket, congressional, county and township officers to elect, and any amount of scratching the excitement ran high on local officers--a congressman being considered an even trade for Sheriff, and the entire state ticket in some instances was swapped for Roadmaster. There were about seventy votes polled at Bridgeport, and the election was close. "Here comes Uncle Brewer!" "How about the election?" were the cries as the crowd circled about the bulletin board. "Git out yer chalk and go to work; I'll give ye the figures," was the response, and the old man called the result while one of the anxious expectants did the tallying. It was checkered, but each candidate was called by name, and the vote he received, from top to bottom, without a scrap of memoranda.
"Do you pretend to say that you brought all this tally list of the Bridgeport election in your head?" queried the man with the chalk.
"That's what I say," responded the old man.
"And will you swear to it being correct?"
"You heered me." he replied.
"Well, all I have to say is, I can't see how you could remember it all," remarked the candidate.
"I'll tell you how it is, Josh," rejoined Uncle Brewer, "it's bekaze I've got brains in my head instead of batter."
Some five or six years after the six-mile race episode, a report reached Mariposa that Uncle Brewer was in feeble health. A few of us whom he reckoned among his friends rode over to see the old man. It was at this very season of the year, when the hills and valleys are dressed in their most gorgeous attire, and the mountain air pure as the nectar distilled by the gods. Uncle Brewer was up and about, and arose from his seat outside the door to give us a family greeting, but his step had lost its elasticity and his grasp, though cordial, was not the steady hand with which he held "Betsy" when he drew a bead on a turkey at a shooting.
"Boys," he said, "I have been a little under the weather lately, and have had some quar feelin's around my breast, an' my head once in a while gets to hurtin' me, an' I have a misery in my back, an' I don't eat nor sleep like I used to. Fact is I am broke down--old an' worn out like. It isn't in the course of nature that I can stay atop of the green airth much longer. I reckon I'll pass in my checks before the next snow falls. So you see them four oaks standin' on that hill acrost the creek? That's whar I've picked out a place to be buried. Sometimes I sorter hate to leave the old woman here, but though perhaps I haven't been as good as some people I might have been a heap worse. Don't know as I ever wronged a human willfully. I ain't skeerd about dyin'. I'm waitin' for the word and am ready to go when the Old Master calls me."
And he went about as he predicted. This was fifteen years ago. The "old woman" outlived him a few years. Only last year one of the survivors of the interview with old Uncle Brewer strolled over the hills to Bridgeport and beneath the shade of those same oaks, beside the green graves on the hill, sketched the ragged remnants of Bridgeport and jotted down these memories of long ago.
San Francisco Call newspaper, issue of April 26, 1887
Table of Contents
bridgeport, ghost towns, 49ers, mariposa, california history, mariposa history, legends, bandits, outlaws, lawmen, desperadoes, mariposa county, mariposa county history, mariposa legends, peace officers, historical express, gold r