Reminiscences of Rodolpus Peas Sturtevart Pope about his father - Fabian Pope

On a whaling vessel my father and his father put into San Francisco Bay in the summer of 1849. When they heard news of the California Gold Strike, they quit the vessel, with several others bought a boat, made their way up the San Joaquin River to Stockton, sold the craft there, packed a few necessities, and set out for the gold country. The most vivid experience on the way was sight of a huge herd of antelopes, -- perhaps five hundred. In August, 1849, they arrived in Jacksonville, Tuolumne County.

I know neither the age of my grandfather nor the number of years the two were there. Grandfather died in Jacksonville. Father had him buried in the little cap cemetery on the hill. But not until after they had found gold together – plenty of it.

Father remembered having seen thousands of dollars worth of gold lying in open pan, drying, while the miners trudged off, probably a mile or more, for dinners in their cabins, leaving not a man to guard. Then, back at their pans, the men would shove the dried gold into buckskin sacks and tuck it into their pockets. This in the days of ’49, along Woods Creek, near Sonora.

My father with a group decided that barrels of gold must lie at the spot where the creek emptied into the river. The men formed a company, dug a wide ditch to turn the river. They completed a dam, turned the river, and were just reaching bottom when early rains washed them out. They scattered, pledged to return at low-river season. So, in ’50, my father was back at the appointed place with thirty-six hundred new-found dollars. He spent the entire sum on the project; later seventeen hundred more. The group put in their dam again, dug to river bottom, and found nothing at all. The force of the water was throwing the gold across to a bar on the other side of the river. Father left in disgust and got a claim up on Curtis Creek, where in seventeen days he panned enough to pay his seventeen hundred dollar debt; he continued to average one hundred dollars daily until he tired of the location. But some of his former partners at the river-turning had gone to work on the bar across stream. Father said that, asking those boys how the claim was paying, he’d hear in answer: “Not so good today; we took out only a quart”; or, “Pretty fair; three quarts”. – But he never said that he regretted leaving.

Father once missed another chance. Not far from Curtis Creek he was mining up a gulch, getting big pay every day. Suddenly the paying ceased. Prospecting back a short distance, he discovered a quartz lead on the side hill, and dug a little shaft in which he earned two-fifty to the pan. But heavy rains were filling the hole with water, so, intending to reopen the shaft after the rains, they covered the hole, marked it with a long stick, and undertook sluicing up above. Meanwhile another miner found the lead, opened it up in spite of the rain, took out ten thousand dollars almost immediately, set up a quartz mill which cost them even a larger sum, then never found a penny more!

Father had a partner at his first Curtis Creek claim. His name was Williams. He put patch upon patch to save the price of a pair of overalls, only at the end of about three months to go forth on a prolonged spree, drink up every dollar, when return and repeat. -- One of the saddest of many yarns which Father loved to spin about those early days was the mistake of a certain Jacksonville groceryman. (This story was retold me once by a feeble old man of Jacksonville, whose name was Orket.) The grocery store was constructed of poles. Its roof was brush. When provisions became very scarce, this fellow checked up his prices unreasonably, kept raising them day by day, until on evening a team came down the mountainside hauling a big load of groceries. To get down the steep slope the driver had felled an oak tree at the top of the mountain, fastened one end of a chain around the tree and another to the rear of the wagon. The merchant then cut his prices lower than he’d raised them, even begged for customers; but they had quit him to buy up the wagon-load. The profiteer went broke. He had to walk out of camp. -- Another good story I remember was of a miner who adored his new cabin with a fine fireplace of rock and mud-mortar. But the first big rain washed all the mud out. The chimney collagsed. The fellow then rebuilt with nothing but rock, invited a number of friends over for a mud-ball-throwing, at which they slung so much mud-plaster that the structure stood forever. -- But the rains were not always heavy. In 1850, walking from the mouth of Sonora’s Woods Creek to its very head, a man couldn’t find enough water to scoop up a drink, -- in more than five or six places. That year, Father remembered, not a drop of rain fell until March.

My father had seventy-four years of such eventful living.

He was just twenty years old when he went to Jacksonville. He died in Cecil, Oregon, on April 8, 1904. He had arrived in San Francisco Bay as just Rodolphus Pope; but he died in Oregon as Rodolphus Peas Sturtevant Pope. At one time he had encountered another Rodolphus. Then he took unto himself the “Peas Sturtevant” for distinction.