Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2006 Settling the sunset land: California and its family farmers, 1850s-1890s Alexandra Kindell Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the Agriculture Commons, Horticulture Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Kindell, Alexandra, "Settling the sunset land: California and its family farmers, 1850s-1890s " (2006). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 1908. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/1908 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Settling the sunset land: California and its family farmers, 1850s-1890s by Alexandra Kindell A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Major: Agricultural History and Rural Studies Program of Study Committee: Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Co-major Professor R. Douglas Hurt, Co-major Professor Hamilton Cravens James Andrews James McCormick Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2006 Copyright © Alexandra Kindell, 2006. All rights reserved. UMI Number: 3244379 UMI Microform 3244379 Copyright 2007 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 ii For Juanita Alice Boynton Ellsworth and Susan Ellsworth, the two women who wanted me to get off the farm, so to speak. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1. FOR THE LOVE OF GOLD AND GRAIN: THE 19 TRANSFORMATION OF THE SINGLE MAN’S FRONTIER CHAPTER 2. MAKING A BETTER CALIFORNIA: BOOSTERS, 75 SETTLERS, AND IMMIGRANTS CHAPTER 3. SEASONS OF WORK: MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN 130 ON THEIR FARMS CHAPTER 4. COMMUNITIES MADE TO ORDER: THE ECONOMIC, 205 SOCIAL, AND MORAL LANDSCAPE OF CALIFORNIA COLONIES CHAPTER 5. POVERTY IN THE PROMISED LAND: RURAL SOCIAL 264 WELFARE AND CALIFORNIA’S POOR EPILOGUE 303 APPENDIX 316 BIBLIOGRAPHY 320 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Historians spend their days writing about the people who are long dead. We pour over dusty time-worn pages to find their voices while trying to make our presence in the narrative obscure. Yet after years of doing this, I must shift from writing about “my farmers” in order to acknowledge those who have helped me with this project. I have been lucky to have many friends and colleagues willing to assist me, which led to a much better dissertation than anything I could have written on my own. I hope that they can see their contributions in the final piece. Of course, I am solely responsible for any errors or faults that lie within these pages. I am grateful to my committee for their patience and insight regarding my dissertation and the process of finishing a doctoral degree. They are Pamela Riney- Kehrberg, Hamilton Cravens, James Andrews, and James McCormick at Iowa State and R. Douglas Hurt, now at Purdue University. Beyond the committee, Dr. Christopher Curtis and my colleagues, Joseph L. Anderson, Paul Nienkamp, Leah Tookey, Megan Birk, and Jenny Barker-Devine supported me without complaint. The hard-working, often underappreciated, staff at several libraries assisted me on a variety of trips to the Bancroft Library, Huntington Library, Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Room, and numerous historical societies and public libraries. Curators and reading room clerks dragged out thousands of pounds of materials for me, and I am thankful for their help. I do need to make specific reference, however, to the staff of the Huntington Library. The Huntington Library in San Marino, California, became the center of my research and writing for the good part of a year. Mona Shulman, Kate Henningsen, v Meredith Berbee, Juan Gomez, Christopher Adde, and Peter Blodgett, all helped me find sources and learn the trade during the most difficult time of my life. They were sympathetic and supportive during the months of my mother’s illness and after her death. I consider the staff at the Huntington among the best in the business, and I now can list many of them among my friends. As other Huntington readers have experienced, the larger academic community of the Huntington proved invaluable as I searched for sources and ideas to make the dissertation historiographically significant. I received tremendous encouragement from my fellow readers, especially, Dick Orsi, Hal Barron, Peter Mancall, Bill Deverell, Sam Truett, Doug Monroy, and Mac Rohrbaugh. I owe each and every one of you a milkshake. Along the road, many of my colleagues became friends, and to these people I am overjoyed to have you in my life as both. Thank you to Gordon M. Bakken, Patrick Barr- Melej, David Marley, Victor Geraci, and Larry de Graaf for being supportive and training me to look beyond the books to find a greater purpose for what we do. I would also like to thank Edward Melillo for pushing me to think beyond the dualities of thought that have hindered me in the past. He read drafts, listened to rants, and prodded me to abandon my pessimism during the final days of writing. Ted also makes the best pesto of any historical materialist I know. I hope that I may continue to grow as a person and a teacher because of him. Over and above the many lunches and dinners contributed by my friends, I must also acknowledge several sources of funding that allowed me to travel up and down California several times. I would like to thank the Garst family who sells seeds to vi farmers and funds fellowships for Iowa graduate students doing research. Phi Alpha Theta, the Western History Association, and the Historical Society of Southern California also supported my research with fellowships. Without these financial contributions, I would have had a much shorter stay in California to the detriment of my research. On a more personal note, I need to acknowledge my family. There is no way I could have sustained the peregrinations and vicissitudes of dissertating without Gloria Cobble and Kristen Hall. During my mother’s illness, I found soft places to land in a new friendship with Gloria and in my relationship with my sister, Kristen. Gloria, Bear the Dog, and Kristen distracted me when I needed relief and demanded my attention as a friend, walking buddy, and sister. Finally, I dedicate this project to my grandmother who died while I was working on my master’s degree and my mother who died while I was doing the research for the dissertation. They always wanted me to achieve more than they had. I can only hope that I have made them proud. 1 INTRODUCTION Jody, a ten-year-old boy, respectfully demanded of his grandfather: “Tell about Indians.” John Steinbeck’s character, Jody Tiflin, lived on a ranch in the foothills above Salinas, California, and imagined an America which no longer existed, one of Indians and buffalo and men who crossed the plains. Jody’s grandfather told stories directed at a generation that had not lived through the heady era of westward migration. The old man set his tales in the Great Plains but he used his adventure-filled stories to fuel his own nostalgia and feelings of loss. He reminisced over the days when migrants fulfilled the nation’s destiny by moving west and brought American ways with them. Repopulating the West with hardy settlers gave the grandfather a sense of national purpose. In Steinbeck’s fiction and in actuality, transplanted Americans recreated homes and farms, giving life to a generation of California-born residents.1 Through the characters of the “Red Pony,” Steinbeck described the significance of America’s fascination with moving west and the impact of its conclusion—the American conquest of land. For the grandfather’s generation, crossing the plains meant starting life again in a wholly new place, an event he viewed as a momentous time for himself, his kith and kin, and the country. While the tales he crafted titillated Jody’s imagination, they only annoyed his son-in-law who knew little else but his life as a “native” of Salinas. Jody’s father, Carl Tiflin heard the reminiscing of an old man, not the emotional loss felt by his father-in-law. Jody’s grandfather viewed the Pacific Ocean as a barrier to the “crawling beast.” The settlers of the crawling beast searched out the geographical boundaries of the continent, while the nation’s leaders negotiated new political borders. 1 John Steinbeck, “The Red Pony,” in The Long Valley (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), 209-26. 2 From the Atlantic to the Pacific, Americans and immigrants spread out west while the countries of Canada and Mexico provided constraints in the north and south. Jody and his father lived only knowing the final outlines of the U.S., while Jody’s grandfather and his contemporaries had been instrumental in helping draw these lines in the nineteenth century.2 Migrating farm families drove Manifest Destiny as politicians debated the merits of expansion in the halls of Congress. Many Americans imagined the West to be a place of opportunity and hope for those striving to improve the lives of their families. Good farm land figured prominently in the plans of easterners, midwesterners, and southerners looking to move on from New York, Ohio, and Missouri. They searched for good soil and a better climate, pushing past each successive frontier for the next best destination.