There are
many true things in the book Ghosts in the Gulch. If you are local, you can find them, as they
reference things that exist today in the Monterey Bay Area.
Andrew’s story has been updated with some facts. There were three Andrew Jackson Sloan(e)s that served in the Mexican War. One of them later enlisted in the Union Army and died a hero’s death during the Civil War[29]. The second Sloan later became a Confederate soldier and died in September of the same year as our A.J. His grave is in Arkansas[30]. The third moved to Texas and raised a family, remained and died there at a nice normal old age.[31]
Recently found was news article on Andrew. He came via wagon train as a guard over Nobles Pass Trail, one of the first wagon trains to try this easier route to Oregon.(see Author's Notes in the book Ghosts in the Gulch for complete citation). He became an inhabitant of Unionville, Nevada, Humboldt County (now known as Pershing County) and may have mixed with Mark Twain.[see Ancestry.com for citation] His brother Uriah traveled there in 1862 to visit him.
Andrew’s story has been updated with some facts. There were three Andrew Jackson Sloan(e)s that served in the Mexican War. One of them later enlisted in the Union Army and died a hero’s death during the Civil War[29]. The second Sloan later became a Confederate soldier and died in September of the same year as our A.J. His grave is in Arkansas[30]. The third moved to Texas and raised a family, remained and died there at a nice normal old age.[31]
Recently found was news article on Andrew. He came via wagon train as a guard over Nobles Pass Trail, one of the first wagon trains to try this easier route to Oregon.(see Author's Notes in the book Ghosts in the Gulch for complete citation). He became an inhabitant of Unionville, Nevada, Humboldt County (now known as Pershing County) and may have mixed with Mark Twain.[see Ancestry.com for citation] His brother Uriah traveled there in 1862 to visit him.
Research into this family also led to a de-bunking of the ghost sighting that began all of it. It would appear that A.J.’s nephew, Charles Towne, born after AJ’s death, had crossed the road to survey a property he took on as collateral against the credit his grocery store had extended.[32] Since the sighting took place at noon on a weekday, this explained much. Charles Towne’s photograph shows a tall thin man. A prominent journalist of the 20’s and 30’s, Ernest Otto, often described his childhood memories of Charles Towne as clad in rancher’s garb, which ironically is that long coat and wide brimmed hat.
It is Evergreen Cemetery herself, that coughed up the final intriguing clue. Andrew’s headstone alongside his mother’s headstone, appear to be identical in type, carved by the same maker, and set in at the same time. An excavation done this year during a routine restoration verified this. But it was our canine search team that dealt the final card. And that, for now will be revealed as the story's series unfolds.
(spoiler alert follows)
For example, there
IS a French Restaurant in New Almaden just outside San Jose. It HAS been there
since 1861. It’s called La Forêt. The
wine cave mentioned in the novel exists on the Summit of Highway 17 at ByingtonWinery. It is not old, but new. Go see it! (The wine is not bad either…) (spoiler alert follows)
Evergreen
Cemetery in Santa Cruz does have a workday, though sadly not with the support of the local
Homeless Services Center. The Evergreen Archive Team is tireless and has been
actively promoting history and events at the Cemetery. Spooky Tales , an annual event for over thirty years, was retired.
It had its final debut that ended with a Zombie Flash Mob. You can
book private tours about the cemetery or attend one of our four annual events: Quing Ming (The Chinese 'sweeping of the graves' holiday in April, Memorial Day, Legacy Day in September, honoring our families and their living descendants, and Dia de los Muertos on November 1st. We have volunteer workdays as well and encourage you to visit the webpage.
I found and excavated that broken piece of
A.J.’s headstone on a tip from an Evergreen historian, Robert Nelson, now
retired, and I do volunteer there and help research the many interesting folk
interred there.
Hawaiians
have been coming here since it was discovered you could get from Santa Cruz to
Hawai’i in 2-3 weeks of sailing. Today, wakas
and the outrigger club from Santa Cruz, launch such trips in the summer.
Hawaiian culture existed here within the context of its Royalty and sugar wealth,
but its members did not garner acceptance. Even as late as the
1930s, ‘midnight dances’ such as hula,(specifically
referred to on the front page of the local paper), were banned from beaches.[1]
Bonny Doon
Vineyard’s wine Le Cigare Volant wine is
wonderful. You can still see a
sculpture made from the wine label drawing called “Le Cigare” on display at a
restaurant on “the west side” of Santa Cruz. (The restaurant has changed names
twice since the writing of this novel.)
Better yet,
buy a bottle at Shopper’s Corner, our local grocer. You can also taste other
Bonny Doon wineries at the Bonny Doon Tasting Room in Davenport, right off HWY
1. Stop in and see the One Hundred Year old jail behind it.
Shipwrecks
and smugglers’ caves were common place in Davenport and still occur. Abandoned
marijuana bales were found recently on one of the local beaches.[2]
Historical
events of the time, a wonderful source of inspiration, were blended into this
fiction mix. Fiction allowed me to
explore operational theories without having to get what historians like to
have: “a triple fact reference”. For
instance, the town of New Almaden was a rich Cinnabar (mercury) mine and was
continually the target of lawsuits. Abraham
Lincoln did send the Marshal Service there to seize the mine’s accounts and its
operations because he needed the money to fund the Union Army. New Almaden Mine was making millions of
dollars during this time.[3] The effect the Civil War had upon the West
Coast’s economy was immense.
The odd
weather patterns of extreme drought to raging, biblical floods were also
prominent in Santa Cruz news of the 1860s. In a period of two years, Santa Cruz
saw the driest numbers to the wettest conditions, not unlike today.
Russians were here. One guy, Osip Volkov, married
into a Rancho family, had a grant, and promptly lost it[4].
You can see the only remaining building of his adobe out at our local State
Park called Wilder Ranch. A hotel named The Franklin House was owned by A.J.’s
kin, the Harrises, for many years until after two fires that destroyed downtown
Santa Cruz, Sophia, AJ’s eldest sister, then a widow, called it quits[5].
The Guild Family, also A.J.’s kin, were active in local industry. Jonathan
Guild built many of the roads, especially The Soquel Road, (Now called Soquel
Drive) and lobbied for patrols on roadways.[6]
The
Confederate Thieves Tom Poole and Captain Rufus Ingram were real. (Their
proclivities were unknown). The Corralitos Mountain Arrest took place in 1864.
John Adams Hicks, the Sheriff of Santa Clara, did indeed owe his life to a
bullet deflecting pocket watch during the arrest of this mountain rebel camp.[7]
The saga of
Irishman and Santa Cruz Pioneer William Trevethan is its own story and served
to provide me with a lot of inspiration and a possibility of why tensions
between the Protestant dominant white culture and the Catholic Latino community
existed. William Trevathan is listed on the Santa Cruz Census after his
marriage into a Rancho Family as “Guillermo Pacheco.” The name is in
parenthesis, but I can only imagine his insistence at being called this was
enough for the census taker to write it down.
A lot of
truths I found out AFTER I wrote passages, such as the African American cook at
the Harris House. During a census check, I noticed that on the census list for
the Franklin House, the cook was listed as “negro”. I made a guess about the plague of
caterpillars (worms!) and moth outbreak based on my personal experience in
Santa Cruz in 2007 and 2010. It was a shock and hilarious surprise to find a
news article in 1864 that mentioned one outbreak!
The US
Marshals did conduct undercover operations in the 1850s-1860s. California in
particular was an extremely active area.[8]
The Marshals seemed a fun and diverse lot, judging by some of the expense
reports I have viewed. Furniture in the San Francisco Office seemed to need
regular repair or replacement, and one Marshal was constantly buying new suits.[9]
Many folk
were using Panamanian isthmus travel in the 1850s, braving yellow fever,
dysentery, malaria, and other tropical hazards because they could easily get to
California in half the time. The Sisters of Charity, who set up an orphanage in
1862 at the Holy Cross Mission above the current downtown, came that way, as did the founder
of the town of Davenport.[10]
The opium
smuggling, a gut feeling I had, ended up being true. AFTER I wrote up my
scenes, I found documentation that a saloon owner from Santa Cruz was on the arrest draft[11]
for smuggling six crates of opium in November of 1865. This was a problem that
continued for many years. Opium was brought in and, well, sometimes seized.
Chinese
migratory habits, burial practices, and harassment are well documented in the
book Chinese Gold by local Historian,
“History Dude” Sandy Lydon. I encourage you to seek out and read this book.
Then stop by Evergreen Cemetery, get a tour and see the Chinese Section and its
lovely new memorial, alluded to within the novel.
Were the
Japanese here in the 1860s? We are not fully sure, though they do appear as
servants in later censuses. Personal
experience of the misidentification of Asian peoples accounts for my belief that
Japanese were often mistaken for Chinese in an era when both races were exotic
and unknown. Even as late as 1941, my
late mother, a Japanese American that went through the war internment process,
had a vivid recollection of the Chinese community wearing buttons that stated:
“I am Chinese.” This painful story of
mistaken identity and the need to hide within other communities to ensure
personal safety still occurs today amoung many visually similar ethnic groups.
A.J. Sloan,
according to the news and a wanted poster (on display at the MAH), was
purported to have been killed by Faustino Lorenzana and Jose Rodriguez in Arana
Gulch, (then known as Rodriguez Gulch[12]),
on February 11th, 1865. Faustino Lorenzana was never caught. No one
knows where his grave is today. Jose’s
charges were dropped in April 1865. [13]
Pedro Lorenzana, who initially confessed that Faustino and Jose had fired
pistols and killed Sloan, was thrown off the pier and drowned after a fire
broke out in the jail one month after Sloan’s murder. This was alluded to in
1895, after the sighting of an “apparition” near Arana Gulch.[14]
Pedro was said to be mentally slow[15]
and to this day, has no grave. He was only eighteen years old.
Faustino
seemed to be a charming bandit. He was
cornered by Sheriff Albert Jones in 1869[16]
but engaged him in conversation; he kept the Sheriff’s horse, and so cool and
carefully, (unlike the stories of a quick shooter with a hot temper) sent the
Sheriff away on foot with this gentlemanly disarming statement: “It is not my
intention to be captured.” Faustino’s
polite theft of the horse,(the horse was returned to Jones) also spoke
of a man who did what was known as a “horse rental agreement”, common in Rancho
times. According to Charles Keiffer, a Castro Adobe descendant, “It was said
that you could go from Rancho to Rancho and never need a horse of your own.”[17]
Jones, however, after walking twenty miles
back to town (and suffering public humiliation that followed), claimed that
Faustino ‘confessed’ to several crimes, one of which was Sloan’s murder. Pardon
me if I don’t take this ‘confession’ seriously.
Working in cemetery exposes you to paranormal groups. Many were very much interested in promoting fiction rather than fact, yet presented
“psychic” impressions as fact. Only one group was interested in the truth, The
Santa Cruz Ghost Hunters, who continue to investigate haunted venues, verifying
history with compelling otherworldly evidence.
Why did I care? I am not native to the area. I am also not Hispanic or
Chinese. Why this man, this place, this cemetery?
The Ghost of Arana Gulch showed up in my
backyard, three months after moving into my home there. A mom of a toddler at
the time, I wrote off this visitation as the result of stress. I kept the story
to myself despite the inquiries by my neighbors who asked me repeatedly if I
had ever seen the Ghost, alongside a most peculiar comment: “You’d be his
type.”
Three
months after my sighting, the Loma Prieta quake hit. A librarian, who was also a neighbor, handed me some information about AJ while we were all waiting for the power to
come back on in our neighborhood, post-quake. I kept the odd notes for many
years, especially the one that said he was murdered near my property and that
he had fought off seven bandidos with a bull whip!
I was
skeptical at first, until I researched the history of my deed. Despite a
cynical window clerk at the County Records Office, I did find, a deed, made at the request of F.A. Hihn, the
founder of Santa Cruz. The land was sold to a neighbor, two days after the
murder. One year later, the land was in
default and sold off at auction by the US Government. During the review of my
own title, I did notice my husband and I signed our papers on February 11th,
something that, at the time, twenty five years ago now, I had not given much
thought to. That was my first connection with the history of A.J. Sloan.
Now, with
grown children away, I can finally find the time to investigate this story and
find out why I saw what I did. (My sighting is mentioned within the modern
story section. You can guess which story might be true or neither…) My connection to
Evergreen is increasing with every found headstone, every found document. A.J.
is one of the many cases that are “unsolved”. A lot of these cases are intertwined with one
another.
[1] Santa
Cruz Evening News, Vol 50 No 21 Front page, column 3 June 24 1932
[2]
http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/crime-law/alleged-pot-smugglers-busted-santa-cruz-beach/nY6ST/
[3] Lanyon,
Milton and Laurence Bulmore, Cinnabar
Hills: The Quicksilver Days of New Almaden, Los Gatos, Ca: Village Printers
1967
[4]
Poitkriots, Marion D, Don Jose Antonio Bolkoff: Branciforte’s Russian Alcade
, Santa Cruz County History Journal # 3,
pps 97-100; Museum of Art and History Publications 1997
[5]
Evergreen Archives, Harris plot biography files.
[6] Santa
Cruz Weekly Sentinel, UCSC Collections, Supervisor’s minutes
[7] Public
library
[8] US
Marshals history website, Record Group 21, Records of District
Courts of the United States
U.S.
District Court for the Northern District of California
Case
Papers, Oaths on Appointment, Correspondence, and Financial Records from the
U.S. District and Circuit Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of
California, 1850- ca 1930
Boxes
1-24, National Archives and Records Administration-San
Francisco
[9] Record Group 21, Records of District
Courts of the United States
U.S.
District Court for the Northern District of California
Case
Papers, Oaths on Appointment, Correspondence, and Financial Records from the
U.S. District and Circuit Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of
California, 1850- ca 1930
Boxes
1-24, National Archives and Records Administration-San
Francisco
[10] Interview, Alverda Orlando, Davenport Historian 2013 July
[11] Record Group 21, Records of District
Courts of the United States
U.S.
District Court for the Northern District of California
Case
Papers, Oaths on Appointment, Correspondence, and Financial Records from the
U.S. District and Circuit Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of
California, 1850- ca 1930
Boxes
1-24, National Archives and Records Administration-San
Francisco
[12]
Surveyors Parcel Map by Thomas Wright, Volume 7 page 254, Deeds of Santa Cruz
County February 13th 1865
[13] Santa
Cruz Weekly Sentinel, col 1 pg. 2 April 8, 1865
[16]
Watsonville Pajaronian, August 26th 1869, Santa Cruz Sentinel
editorial letter, August 28th 1869
[17]
Keiffer, Charles; Docent tour, Castro Adobe, Watsonville 2014
[18]
Evergreen Archives, Tours file, cabinet 2
[19] SC Surf
page 1 column 2 7/25/1895
[20] Reader, Phil Charole
http://www.santacruzpl.org/history/articles/66
[21]
Evergreen docent manual first edition 2002 page 48 (app)
[22]
Evergreen Cemetery Roster, current, 2014
[25]
Sentinel January 1865
[26] MAH
Archives, Branciforte Pueblo papers. December 1864
[27]
Ancestry.com
[28] blog
[29]
Findagrave
[30]
Findagrave
[31] US
Census, Fannin Texas 1860,1870,1880
[32]
Sentinel, 1893
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