Captain Thomas Fallon of Santa Cruz, San Jose, and San Francisco '
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CAPTAIN THOMAS FALLON OF SANTA CRUZ, SAN JOSE, AND SAN FRANCISCO ' a summary of research conducted by Joseph A. King to date, for presentation to the History Aits Advisory Committee of the City of San Jose, California, at a meeting at City Hall on Monday, August 27,1990 by Joseph A. King © copyright 1990 by Joseph A. King, 1161 Nogales St., Lafayette, California 94549. All rights reserved. No pari of this paper may be reproduced except by journalists and reviewers who might want to quote brief passages in a magazine or newspaper. 1 PREFACE Two years ago I had never heard of Captain Thomas Fallon. It was while doing research for a chapter in a book about Irish immigration to Canada and America that I first came across his name. While working on the California chapter, I found that no less than three different "Captain" Fallons had been credited by one source or another with having led a rescue mission to the unfortunate Donner Party, who had experienced terrible tragedy in the snows of the High Sierras during the winter of 1846-47. In attempting to sort out the three historical Captain Fallons, I came across California Cavalier: The Journal of Captain Thomas Fallon, an attractive book by Tom McEnery. It is a fictionalized biography, but it seemed evident that the author had done considerable historical research. There are many footnotes pointing to exact sources of information and, although the author notes that "the Journal is a work of fiction" (Captain Fallon did not actually keep a journal), he also says that it is "as firmly based on an exploration of Thomas Fallon’s life and personal letters as possible." Nevertheless, I had questions about some of the adventures involving historical events that McEnery had credited to Captain Thomas Fallon. For example, I had already established that the actual leader of the 4th rescue mission to the Donners was one Captain William O. ("Le Gros") Fallon, a huge and fabled mountain man, not the Captain Thomas Fallon to whom McEnery had given credit, nor the Captain Jeremiah Fallon, a pioneer Irish settler in Alameda County, who some local histori ans (and an inscription on a plaque in the cemetery of old St. Raymond’s Church in Dublin, California) credit with the rescue. The research had become fascinating and I began working tentatively on a paper, "The Three Captain Fallons." In that connection I obtained the address of Tom McEnery from a colleague in Irish studies who informed me, to my surprise, that McEnery was the mayor of the City of San Jose. I wrote Mayor McEnery a letter (Oct. 13, 1988), explaining my project, raising some questions, and asking assistance. Shortly thereafter I was happy to receive a phone call from the mayor. We chatted cordially for perhaps twenty minutes. It was flattering, I thought, that the mayor of a major city would take so much time from a busy schedule ("I always have time for the Captain," he said). It was even more flattering that he suggested we meet for lunch, and I was delighted that he had, so he said, a number of Fallon letters (to and from relatives back East and in Canada) that he had obtained from a descendant. He had genealogical information that no one else had; he said that Fallon’s parents were "Joseph" and "Mary." He was, I thought, the custodian of priceless resources, keys to further research, and he agreed to share them with me, much as I offered to share with him copies of any documents in my possession that might interest him. I suggested we put off our meeting until I prepared for him a bibliogra phy/description of items in my possession. He could pick what he wanted, I would make copies, and then we would meet-for him to share with me. I kept my part of the agreement. I spent a few days preparing a rather extensive bibliography with notes, which I mailed to Mayor McEnery on Dec. 10, 1988, with a cover letter. It was evident from the notes that I had some doubts about McEnery’s facts and inter pretations of events, and I asked some questions in my accompanying letter. This is routine among scholars who are supposed to "gladly lerne and gladly teche." The mayor never acknowledged receipt, although I wrote him courteous follow-up letters on March 9, 1989 and January 11, 1990. Although disappointed, I charged his silence to the urgencies of his office. / 2 Meanwhile, I had put on hold "The Three Captain Fallons" paper, which I had intended to give this year to an annual conference of scholars interested in Irish studies. I was still hopeful that Mayor McEnery would make his Fallon file, espe cially the correspondence, available to me. That hope was diminished last June after I learned over the radio that a statue of Thomas Fallon had been commissioned for placement in San Jose’s downtown plaza, and that a number of residents were irate about it. Curious about why San Jose would spend so much money honoring a man who may have been much more of a rascal than a hero, I got in touch with one of the protestors (an attorney) and provided him with a letter about Fallon I was sending to two or three newspapers in the Bay Area. Subsequently, I was interviewed by a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. On the day his article about the Fallon statue controversy appeared (June 11 Chronicle), in which he referred to my research, I finally received a call from Tom McEnery. He was irate, to say the least, and accused me of "damaging the history program in the San Jose schools." We spoke for a few minutes, but it was mostly a heated monologue, and the Mayor never made it clear to me just what specifically he thought was wrong with my research and my conclusions, and just how they could do damage to the pupils in his city. Since then, I have been invited by a member of the San Jose Flistoric Arts Advisory Committee to meet with others at the city hall on the 27th of this month to share research on Captain Thomas Fallon. This paper has been put together rather hurriedly for that purpose, and will be distributed to a very limited number of peo ple. It summarizes my own research to date on the life of Thomas Fallon, and I hope it will be a contribution to the dialogue. It is not complete in any sense and should be considered very tentative. I will welcome any corrections and additions before a final draft is prepared. The paper has also been motivated by a desire to respond to the mayor’s view that I am somehow corrupting the youth of San Jose. I will welcome any factual information I can get, especially from Mayor McEnery, who I hope will one day soon make his own files on Fallon accessible to the com munity of scholars, perhaps by allowing a university or county library to copy them. Let me add that I happen to be an Irish-American. All of my great-grandpar ents were born in Ireland. Seven of them emigrated to America, where they found opportunities and freedoms denied them in the Old World, and where they worked hard and suffered much to lay a foundation that enabled their descendants to lead a much softer life. I am very proud of my Irish and my American heritage, and the values-familial, religious, and other-that have come down to me from those two traditions. I am the author or co-author of two books (and a score of articles) celebrating the Irish experience in America, and another book celebrating Lithuanian immigrants. It is evident, however, that pride in ethnicity sometimes needs to bend to the demands of the historical record. In that respect, I have been led by my research to question the wisdom of apotheosizing Irishman Thomas Fallon in a statue in the main plaza of a major American city. The mayor of that city said (in a letter to the New York Times) that the "event" (the beginning of the American era in California) is being honored, not the "man." But can the huge statue of Fallon, in the eyes of San Jose residents and tourists, really be divorced from the man? Joseph A. King 1161 Nogales St. Lafayette, California 94549 (415) 934-8196 I 3 CAPTAIN THOMAS FALLON OF SANTA CRUZ, SAN JOSE, AND SAN FRANCISCO by Joseph A. King BIRTH The place and year of the birth of Thomas Fallon are clouded'in uncertainties. The year is variously indicated on the records as 1808, 1810, 1819, 1823, 1824 (S.F. Call, Riptide, Padroni Gen, U.S. Cen, Gt Reg Vot, CaptFalHouse). The place is given as Ireland (U.S. Cen, Gt Reg Vot, CaptFalHouse); "north of Ireland" (S.F. Call); Co. Cork (McE); New Brunswick (Riptide). He is even listed as American- born on the 1845 Padron General (census) taken in 1845 for the Villa de Branciforte (Santa Cruz), although he was at the time a British subject, and did not obtain United States citizenship until 1855. McEnery is the only source giving Cork in southernmost Ireland as the birth place. He also writes that Fallon had an uncle who served in the North Cork Militia in Wexford, putting down the Irish rebels in the Rising of 1798. I have been unable to confirm this, nor Cork as the birthplace of Fallon. The surname Fallon is very rare in Cork but common in more northern counties, especially Co.