George Belden Crane - Whose portrait, at seventy-three years of age, will be found in the body of our work, first saw the light
in the State of New York, sixty miles north of the city of that name, and eighteen miles east of the Hudson River,
in what was then, 1806, Dutchess County, now Putnam. His father was Belden, and grandfathers Zebulon Crane and
David Paddock. To follow him in his delineations of the educational facilities, business conveniences, and industries
of the people generally, so near the commercial emporium of the nation, we obtain a graphic account of the manners
and customs of the people who were familiar, practically, with the hardships of the War of Independence, and their
immediate descendants. These, when contrasted with the present state of things in those relations, give us in a
condensed view a clear idea of our wonderful growth during the six central decades of our country's history from
1820 to 1880. And to follow him in his wanderings after leaving the Empire State at the age of twenty-six, till he
became a permanent resident of our El Dorado, we become familiar with the spirit and instincts which justifies the
oft-quoted declaration of Bishop Berkeley: " Westward the Star of Empire takes its way." But preparatory to this,
and to show our boys what persevering energy can do in achieving a good practical education, with but little of
the advantages they now enjoy, we will listen briefly to his recollections of the character of his first " going
to school," sixty miles from New York City. The schoolhouse was a mere shanty; a fireplace in one side, a
door in another, a broad plank framed into the other two sides, sloping down towards the center of the room for
a writing table, and the central part filled with seats without backs, from eight to twelve feet long, made of
slabs brought from his father's saw mill on the west branch of the Croton, the water of which river now supplies
the great city of New York. On these seats the little boys and girls would sit, study, go to sleep, fall off, and
get whipped for falling, while the larger ones would sit at the writing table, keeping the " master " busy much of
the time " mending" their goose-quill pens. He remembers having heard it urged by parents who felt they could not
afford their children the use of tallow candles (and no other were known) to study "o' nights," that Martin Van Buren,
born and educated not far away, and who had become a great lawyer, used to get " light-wood" to see by in night
study. Like about all the boys in the Eastern and Middle States in those early days, he would work on the farm in
the summer, after getting old enough to work, till he was fit to enter what is now called a high school; and the
winter after his sixteenth birthday, a certificate of competency from the school inspectors placed him in the
proud position of a teacher. The ruling wages for common school teachers at that day was $10 to $12 a month and
board. Four years later we find him in the Medical Department of the State University in the city of New York;
then soon a licentiate, practicing medicine and surgery in the central portion of that State; then, in 1832,
a graduate of that college; then wending
his way westward, traveling from Albany to Schenectady on the first passenger railroad in that State, or in the
United States; then on board a canal boat drawn by horses, at the rate of fifty miles in twenty-four hours, to
Buffalo, at which place he was told that a new town called Chicago, had just started near Lake Michigan,
which "might become something of a place," and that he had better go there and grow up with it. He left the
steamer at Cleveland, Ohio, however, thinking this Chicago, a name and place of which he never heard before, was
too far beyond the limits of civilization. From Cleveland, in 1832, he rode on a boat on the Erie and Ohio Canal,
to Chillicothe, which canal was finished only to that place, forty miles north of the Ohio; thence by stage to
Portsmouth, the southern terminus of the canal, near the mouth of the Great Scioto River, near where had been,
some thirty years before, the Little Scioto Salt Works, about which a few words will show our youth the possibilities
within their reach. Four youngsters worked there, relieving each other day and night, keeping up the fires. One of
them, "Tom." Ewing, became United States Senator; another, "Bob" Lucas, Governor of Ohio; another, " Joe" Vance,
also became Governor of that State in 1836, and the fourth, his informant, was one of the pioneers in the
development of the great iron interests in southern Ohio. They should remember in this connection, President
Garfield, at a later date, on the canal tow-path. Here, on the border land, between North and South, he saw
cropping out the feud destined thirty years later not only to destroy social harmony, but to convulse our
whole political fabric. With the Southern settlers on the Ohio side, " Yankees " were in bad odor. An
old " Tuck-a-ho," as the Southerners were called, without the remotest idea from what State our friend hailed,
told him that York Yankees were the meanest kind. He had never before heard the then opprobrious epithet " Yankee "
applied to any but New Englanders, save but by English writers. Here (in Scioto County) he followed his profession
between four and five years, marrying, meantime, the oldest daughter of Daniel Young, a pioneer from New Hampshire
to southern Ohio, author, while member of the Senate of the former State, of the first legislative enactment
which separated Church and State in New England, and subsequently a leader in the development of the
great iron interest in Ohio, president of the Ohio Iron Company. The health of his wife demanding a change of
climate, the winter of 1836 found them in North Alabama, where he continued to live, enjoying the professional
patronage and social kindness of a superior class of people, till he found his constitution about broken by hard
labor in what was then not only a hot, but a highly malarious climate. Seeking restoration to health in a higher
latitude, we next find him on the right bank of the Mississippi, in Pike County, Missouri, a place and people made
at a later day conspicuous by California emigration. However this distinction originated, or whether creditable or
otherwise, he is quite free to confess or boast that for more than a decade of years he was a citizen of a
county from which hail such men as United States Senator Henderson, J. O. Broadhead; the late Republican
candidate for Governor, Patrick Dyer; the present Lieutenent-Governor of that great State, R. A. Campbell;
three Congressmen, and one Presidential Elector, whose name was in everybody's mouth during the
Hayes-Tilden imbroglio, besides our own John F. Swift, Commissioner to China. And in this connection, while
averse to referring to his professional credentials before the public, he states en passant, the fact
that while a citizen of Pike County, in 1848, he had, unsolicited, the honor of being one of the two or three
physicians of that State on whom the medical department of the University of Missouri conferred the Honorary
Degree of M. D. Like other old men with progressive instincts, he likes to compare the past with the present,
and draw the contrast. Returning to his native State and county, after twenty years absence, he found the labor
of weeks compressed into as many days. Rapid railroad transit to the city had superseded the wagon and the old
North River sloop, and we soon find him in this far-away region, encouraging the march of improvement by a
substitution here of railroad for wagon and steamboat; but with the preparatory steps to this, begins that
future of his history with which Californians are more immediately interested. Succeeding generations who will
live amidst the splendid surroundings which are destined to distinguish our valley and mountain sides, will be
curious to know how their ancestors reached the western coast before its waters were stirred by steam and the
thousand of miles of mountain spanned by railroad. While a vast majority of the early immigrants boldly encountered
the hardship of crossing the continent with their teams, others crossed the Isthmus, or sailed " direct," as it
was called, though in fact an exceedingly circuitous route " round the Horn." In January, 1853, we find the subject
of this narrative, with family and effects, on a staunch thirteen-hundred-ton clipper, sailing far toward the
coast of Africa; then, from a south-east, the good ship "tacks" and takes a south-west direction, and in forty
days rounds the "stormy cape;" seventy days farther sailing their ears were cheered by the welcome words," Land, ho!"
from the mast-head, the second sight of any portion of old terra in sailing fourteen to sixteen thousand miles.
It proved to be Mount St. Helena, our friend little dreaming then that he was destined to assist in pioneering
one of the most important industries of the State nearly under its shadows. Turning back, the Farallones were
soon in view, and near which the clipper surrendered to a pilot that met and conducted her through the Golden
Gate. And here we would gladly indulge in his description of what San Francisco was then, with its surroundings,
with the shores of the bay, Oakland, ferry facilities, etc., and contrast with the magnificent proportions to which
all these have attained; but an account of his journey to Santa Clara and San Jose must suffice for the present.
Competition in travel and transportation at that early day protected the public against the robberies of soulless
monopolies, and if extortionate prices became unendurable a rival line or business would soon regulate and bring
them to a healthy standard, even though great sacrifices were made in bringing things to a proper balance. On the
3d of May, 1853, for twenty-five cents he was taken to Alviso by steamer, and on by stage to San Jose, the seven
miles of staging meanderdering in every direction over the unfenced plains, to find the dryest ground after an
unusually wet season, and enabled him to see for the first time the ground squirrels and coyotes about which he
had read and heard so much. At San Jose he lived and prospered for four years, when, his wife conceiving that the
prevalent north winds aggravated her cough, he relinquished the charge of the City and County Hospital and a large
private practice, and sought a more healthful change in Napa City. Here the luxuriant growth of Mr. Patchet's
vineyard attracted his attention, but his reading of French and German authors on vine culture led him to inquire
whether a fine wine could be produced by an adobe or any kind of superior grainproducing soil It was claimed
that vineyard ground should be selected more with reference to the quality of wine it would make than the quantity;
that a small crop from land unfit for the production of breadstuffs would command more money than a large one
grown on rich land. Comparing the physical geography of this valley with that of some of the most celebrated
vineyard regions of Europe, to which we might superadd our confessedly superior climate, he came to the conclusion
that if Nature had specially designed any one spot of earth for vineyard purposes, Napa County had that or those
spots. He had noticed in the books that vineyard property in Europe was regarded as the most reliable for
securing a competency for the support of families, and on a large scale for the accumulation of wealth,
notwithstanding the frequent failure of crops from frosts, excessive rains, oidium, and other diseases, while
General Yallejo assured him that his thirty-year-old vineyard in Sonoma had never failed of a crop and never called
for manure. All this, to which he added a very natural desire to engage in a vocation at once as remunerative
as his profession, and unlike it-freer from unavoidable hardship and exposure, caused him to turn attention
seriously to the question of abandoning the one and engaging in the other. It had not, nor did it on subsequent
reflection and inquiry, occur to his mind that native wines might not prove acceptable to palates accustomed only
to the imported varieties, and, at the best, that it would be a long time before our wines could figure in the
commercial world as a staple commodity - but of that hereafter. The business aspect of the case being settled,
a consideration of much graver character arose: Will the addition of an abundant supply of
the fermented juice of the grape to the intoxicating distilled liquors in general uae as a beverage increase the
amount of drunkenness? An affirmative answer to that question once established, he held that no conscientious
man could feel at liberty to engage in the business. But an appeal to history, sacred and profane, and a
reference to the habits and state of temperance of the human family throughout Christendom, clearly led to the
conclusion that a pure wine would not only fail to increase the amount of intoxication among the people, but
would prove an auxiliary to the temperance cause. To justify himself in the estimation of his old associates
in the temperance movement, and in the minds of the friends of temperance generally, he assigns, among others,
the following reasons why he believed, and still believes, that a prohibition of the use of pure wine by the rules
of temperance societies is not only impolitic, but fatal to the philanthropic object of their organization. He
reasons thus: In sacred history we find wine generally associated with the indispensable necessaries of life;
its use never forbidden, but its abuse always condemned. This is a precedent in favor of the use of wine from
which it is strange that Christians ever appeal. Would temperance reformers allow all to drink it, young and old,
as they did in the apostolic age - as they did in the days of Moses, Elias and Ezekiel, without damage to physical
or moral health, so far as we can learn - and employ every agency within their reach to restrict to the artisan
and apothecary distilled alcohol, the happy result would soon be apparent. Distilled spirits, when used as a
beverage, have been proved by experience to be ten-fold more potent in the formation of intemperate appetites
and habits than the undistilled, fermented juice of the grape. This fact, so vitally important to the welfare
of our country, did not escape the sagacious mind of President Jefferson. Encouraging the people of Virginia to
engage in vine culture, he wrote: " In all countries where wine is cheap, drunkenness is rare; but in all countries
in which wine is so costly as to cause people to satisfy their natural desire for stimulants by the use of
distilled spirits, drunkenness is common. "That truly great man and genuine philanthropist was not only a careful
observer of the habits of men and nations, and the causes which led to their different manners and customs, but
he knew that human nature in general demanded something in addition to mere satiety of food. He knew that no
people had ever been found on the face of the earth so savage, or so refined and civilized, as not to be in
possession of something, aboriginal or imported, that was used as a luxury in the shape of stimulants or narcotics
or both. These facts convinced him that it is natural for man, after supplying the necessities of life by food,
to desire to multiply his enjoyments, intellectual and animal, and for the time to exalt them. And the history of
the so-called temperance reform in our own country abundantly proves, that whatever is really and truly founded in
nature cannot be successfully opposed. Over a third of a century had already passed since the
rain left in the wake of intemperance had aroused the alarm of the philanthrophist, the statesman,
and the divine. Appeals had been made in the name of our common humanity, to every class of
people for their co-operation, in efforts to stay the progress of the fell destroyer. Men,
women and children, were induced to pledge themselves to abstain totally from all inebriating
liquors as a beverage, which resulted only in spasmodic and temporary reform, if indeed it did
not weaken the sense of moral obligation, by habituating people to the violation of solemn pledges.
Legislation was invoked and superadded to moral suasion, liquor laws enacted and evaded or openly
defied. A generation had lived and died amid the most zealous and energetic exertion on the part
of the humanitarian, political economists and reformers generally, the best of men and women meantime,
ever ready to barter their hearts' blood for the protection of their sons from the drunkard's grave,
and their daughters from drunken husbands. When, after thirty or forty years had been devoted
unremittingly to this cause, a cause that appealed alike to the common interests of society and the
deepest and tenderest sympathies of our nature, its advocates were made to stand aghast by the discovery
that the statistics of poverty and crime caused by intemperate liquor drinking was not only not
diminished but absolutely increased, and it was found by reference to the custom house and returns
of domestic distilleries, that consumption of distilled liquors had also increased pari passu with
the population. From the above facts he was driven to the conclusion, that it is impossible to so
change the nature of the Caucasian, as to induce him to consent to live without the luxury of stimulating
beverages of some kind, and consequently that wisdom and prudence call for such a regulation of his
appetite as it is possible to effect, and this possibility we find in the remedy for the prevention
of drunkenness, hinted at by the sage of Monticello, Mr. Jefferson, "make wine cheap." Experience
demonstrates that the free use of wine from youth to old age in France, Germany, Switzerland and
other countries, inhabited by our own race, where wine making is a leading industry, engenders but
a tithe of the beastly drunkenness which characterize the habits of people where wine stimulation
is more costly than distilled spirits, and we have among us an abundance of superior constitutions,
physical and mental, from those countries, who are living witnesses to the correctness of Mr. Jefferson's
statement. And if further testimony is needful to prove that wine is useful to the world and not
dangerous to morals, we have only to invoke more particularly that of Holy Writ Noah's first enterprise
after leaving the Ark, if we are to accept the account as historic, was the planting of a vineyard. Moses
reserved the choicest of the wines for his priests. David, the "man after God's own heart," said " wine
makes the heart glad." Solomon
was not in favor of red or mixed wine, and cautioned all against using any kind to excess. He knew that good
things could be abused, but the climax of approval of wine drinking we find at the wedding feast in Cana of
Galilee. With all these facts and reflections he naturally concluded that wine making was compatable with a
clear conscience, and the next thing was to seek a locality and soil most likely to produce a superior article.
This he believed he found in the upper part of Napa Valley, and over twenty years of experience has confirmed his
opinion. At that time he could find no one who would admit that vines could be made to grow without irrigation.
Soils too light for the production of wheat and on which water could not be artificially conducted were thought
valueless. A large proportion of the upper valley land was of this character, with some rather fertile spots here
and there. He was made the butt of gibes and jokes for paying six or seven dollars per acre for three or four
hundred acres of this kind of land, one-half covered densely with chemisal brush and on none of which could cereals
or esculents be successfully cultivated, and fruit culture was considered impossible for want of water. In
self-defence he facetiously claimed that his aim was to raise rabbits for market. He procured Mission cuttings from
San Jose, there being no foreign ones in the country, and put them down three feet deep with a crowbar, in the
expectation that moisture at that depth would remain till roots could sprout at the lower end. Tears afterward he
found that these lower ends of the cuttings had neither sent out roots nor even swelled in growth, but roots were
plentiful near enough to the surface of the ground to feel the sun's heat sufficiently. About sixty per cent, of the
twelve acres planted in this way in February, 1859, grew well, and by the next season he had learned to plant with a
spade, and so supplied the missing places, planted many acres in addition, besides cuttings from a nursery of foreign
vines, which by that time he was able to procure in San Jose and from Europe, by the help of Colonel Harasethy, paying
in San Jose $40 per thousand for cuttings ten inches long, and he continued to plant from year to year till he had a
full hundred acres of vineyard. But the above-named, and what remains to be told about the want of a market, etc.,
by no means cover all the difficulties he and his neighbors were compelled to encounter in getting the vine-growing
business in running order in the St. Helena district. To the ravages of
the army of hare, squirrels and cotton-tail rabbits in the destruction of young vines was superadded the opposition
of temperance fanatics. A preacher who was wise above what is written, and who was more temperate than the Savior,
attempted to correct an error of "Him who spake as man never spake," by praying that "God would blight the vineyard
business now "being commenced in this valley." At this point our friend the Doctor vociferated - "spoke out in
meeting," as the newspapers have it - in a voice
audible to everyone in the large congregation, exclaiming, "That prayer won't go six feet high." ' This irreverent
anecdote has gone the rounds of the Press about once a year ever since, correctly adding that vineyard prospects
continued to brighten after the sacriligious invocation for their blight. Before this time, however, his neighbors,
of whom he had but few, began to admit that brush and naked upland was worth something, and it has increased in
demand, and what has proven on trial to be perfectly worthless for cereals and esculent roots will now sell for $100
or more per acre, and yield, when well cultivated in grapes, from two to four or five times as much annual net
profit as the best bottom land devoted to general farming, and bring a large amount of cash to the State for the
sale of wines, instead of sending to Europe to pay the foreign laborer there. He claims the credit of pioneering,
at a large expense to himself, the utilizing of worthless land as a politico-economical measure. But the next and
unforeseen contingency was forced upon him. His cellars, which he had very unwisely dug into the ground, instead of
adopting the present mode, became full, and, unable to sell a gallon in our Bay City, he hauled to Napa on wagons
some twelve thousand gallons and sent it around the Horn to New York for eight or nine cents per gallon freight.
Crossing the Isthmus himself, he met his wine in our great commercial metropolis, but could not find one dealer in
that great city who would buy a barrel of it. Fortunately, he had taken money enough with him, or he could not
have paid the freight by the sale of the wine, every hundred of his coin at that time (1867-8) bringing one hundred
and forty of currency. His white wine, owing to soil, age of vines, or its handling by H. A. Pellet, fermented in
pipes, was mainly very good. His claret not clear. Some of the foreign dealers would condescend to examine it.
Other California wine also was there. But while the wholesale dealers refused to buy, they did not fail to take
alarm. Large sums of money were raised by foreign houses, and special agents sent to Washington to get import
duties on foreign wines reduced. After fruitless delay he determined to seek a market in the west, where Nicholas
Longworth, of Cincinnati, and the Hermon Missouri Company had already familiarized the people with native wine.
Finding at that time that he could not stand the cost of sending his stock by railroad, it was shipped via New Orleans
and the Mississippi to Saint Louis, where he found plenty of native wine made of the Catawba and other American
grapes by the aid of alcohol and New Orleans sugar, a large proportion of which was "gallized." The low saccharine
quality or strength of grapes in every locality in the Atlantic States in which wine was made, compelled the
employment of sugar. Glucose was then unknown. He was told by one of the proprietors of the Croton Point Vineyard,
on the Hudson, that he paid $2000 for the sugar that year for six thousand gallons of Isabella
juice, and the gentleman was astonished to learn that that was more than the whole cost to the California producer
of an equal amount of pure, unadulterated wine, and he said the days of Eastern native wine growing were numbered.
He worried along as best he could in Saint Louis for two years at destructive expense to himself physically and
pecuniarily, realizing when too late, that if he had understood the business like the practical vintners who succeeded
him in that city, that his enterprise would have been a success. But finally, worn out by the sweltering heat and
benumbing cold, he traded his cellar of wine and brandy, which had been largely increased in quantity by importations
from home, for a Saint Louis County farm, which he ultimately lost after refusing $16,000 cash for it, by causes
and complications irrelevant to the object of this Napa County History. Making his effort to create a market for
the product of California vineyards, let him down financially over $20,000 below where he would have been if he had
remained at home and sold during the Franco-Prussian War for such prices as he could then have realized in San
Francisco. But mistakes and errors are unavoidable in all attempts to develop new industries, yet in the present
case he has the gratification of knowing that those who were encouraged to embark in the vineyard business, by his
example have avoided many of his errors and are now not only reaping a rich reward, but have enriched the county
by causing the poorest lands to make larger returns than were realized from the deep alluvial soils before the
inauguration of the vineyard business in our valley, and he has the more selfish satisfaction of realizing that
what was regarded as his folly and want of business foresight in 1860, and for years afterwards, and in spite
of his ignorance of the business and many mistakes, the wine-making enterprise has placed him financially beyond
the contingency of want in his old age. This he is enjoying on his "rabbit patch," within the corporate limits of
St. Helena, in the company of a lady who was the widow of A. J. Grayson, the ornithologist who lost his life while
painting the ornithology of Central America and otherwise developing its natural history in the interest of science.
He made many contributions to tile Smithsonian Institute at Washington, D. C. The former Mrs. Crane, after participating
in the cares and arrangements necessary for the conversion of a "barren wilderness" into a literally "fruitful field,"
was not permitted in earth-life to enjoy the full developments which characterize the surroundings of her worthy
successor, but the Doctor's happy faith assures him that she still regards with lively interest the welfare of her
grandchildren, the McPike family, and hopes they will never be forgetful of the moralizing and industrial lessons
she impressed on their infant minds while she was subjected to the discomforts incidental to laying the foundation
on a virgin soil of comforts and luxuries for time and culture fully to develop, and his realization of this
development now presenting an
aspect so different from primitive appearances and conditions twenty years ago afford him a
pleasure that is not diminished by the fact of having been outstripped by some of his neighbors
in the march of improvement. Then he saw near by a little hamlet of redwood shanties, called St.
Helena, occupied by one hundred and fifty or two hundred people, and a landscape devoid of all
ligneous or vegetable growth, except what kindly Nature planted, which have now given place to
vines, fruit, ornamental trees and shrubbery, teeming with wealth and beauty. Then the territory
that now embraces four regularly organized school districts was embraced in one, which led but a
poor dying life for want of pupils. Now, the largest district of the four alone numbers three hundred
and forty-four census scholars, a proportionate amount of school-house room, with convenient and even
luxurious appointments, and he hears the "church-going bell," and counts six edifices within the
town limits dedicated to Sunday-schools, religion and sectarian morality. Then, though but two
hundred rods from the post-office, he was sometimes unable to reach it in consequence of floods
and mire. Now, a substantial bridge and solid road gives him access to that establishment on the
arrival of two San Francisco mails a day, the year round, and he well remembers being shut from the
outer world two weeks at a time by the impassable condition of the road to Napa City. Then, when
traveling was good, the St. Helena and Sulphur Springs people could take a stage at or before sunrise,
connect with steamer at Napa City, and about sunset reach San Francisco. Now, they can leave after
breakfast, do business in that city, and be home at supper time. And the reader in the next generation
will be desirous of learning how these public conveniences were so speedily obtained, and what the
character of our civil service has been to bring about the existing financial condition of the county,
which bids fair to entail a public debt on him and it. If our archives and their records fail to
explain, to forewarn and consequently to forearm our successors against the crooked ways by which
the producers - the creators of the wealth of this county have suffered by designing men, by public
servants and capitalists who betrayed and swindled them in spite of the honest efforts of many
worthy officials to prevent it, it will become a matter of serious regret that the limits of the
present history - a book to which all may have access - prevented a full expose'; but the subject of
our narrative believes that a mere reference here to the history of our railroad, and the fact that
the county was swindled put of its ownership by special legislation; that exorbitant salaries of
officials have been caused and maintained by special legislation; that capitalists have virtually
escaped taxation; that county expenses generally, have far exceeded reasonable limits, and the rod
in terrorem has been held over Grand Juries to prevent investigation of the administration of
county affairs, he hopes will suffice to put the future
voter and taxpayer on the alert, to guard against a repetition of such abuses and against
all attempts to repeal that provision of our New Constitution which prohibits special legislation.
We are indebted to Mrs. G. B. Crane, of St. Helena, for the excellent portrait of the old
pioneer George C. Yount, and also for the sketch of his history which she furnished us, and
which will be found in the body of this work, written by Mrs. Day, of the Hesperian, in 1859,
at Mr. Yount's own home in Napa Valley. Mrs. Crane's fellow feeling for the adventurous is but
natural, and has led to the preservation of the history of many early immigrants with whom she
was personally acquainted. Her own immigration to this coast partook largely of the romantic.
It supplemented on an extraordinary scale her wedding tour, and protracted in a most unusual
manner the honeymoon, till even after the advent of a third party. Much the same may be said
of Mrs. William M. Boggs, of Napa City, who started upon the western journey when a bride of
but a few days. Her father-in-law, ex-Governor Boggs, of Missouri, with his train joined that
of A. J. Grayson, and to their number was also added the painfully historic Donner party,
whose separation from them at Fort Bridger led to their terrible fate. None but the most daring
spirits at that day (1846) would risk their lives on the arid plains, barren mountains and
savage wilderness generally, which separates the great central valley of the continent from
the Pacific Ocean. Of these Mrs. Crane's former husband was confessedly one. His advertisements
in the St. Louis papers of that date soon called together resolute men and women equal to the
emergency. Colonel Grayson and his family went to San Francisco, then a mere hamlet known as
Yerba Buena, in the midst of the Mexican War, which added California to the stars and stripes, and
in which most of the company were destined actively to participate. To narrate her experience in
this and incidents in the lives of prominent men whom the gold excitement brought to and through
San Francisco en route to the mines, would be most interesting to the general reader, but rather
out of place in this local history, although it is within the purview of our subject to add her
statement to the effect that the summer of 1859 she spent on the ground where the flourishing
village of Calistoga now is, while Colonel Grayson was painting the ornithology of the Mount St.
Helena region, the place being then only known by the less musical names of "Sam. Brannan's sheep
ranch" and "Hot Springs" - Aguas Calientes, as the Indians and natives who visited them called the waters.
History of Napa and Lake Counties,: San Francisco, Cal.: Slocum, Bowen & Co., Publishers, 1881
Transcribed by Julie Appletoft, May 2007 Pages 418-429