Volume 035-1 - January 1981 (6 pages)

Transcript editor observed, “There are two things very few women can do with. success. One is strike a true blow with an ax and the other is throw straight.” That same month twenty-eight horses and four oxen were required to haul a ten-ton spur wheel from Virginia City to the Scotia Mine. Large blocks of granite were hauled from Rocklin to serve as a foundation for the big engine. In February an Abstemious Association was formed in Grass Valley to encourage one month of abstinence from liquor. In March a banquet was held “in compliment to their success,as well as in jubilation over the fact that a cruelly long month had drawn to an end.” Among business licenses issued in Nevada County in March, 66 were for taverns. At the beginning of April the epizootic disease was prevalent among horses. Three treatments were suggested: A tablespoon of chloride of potash to a gallon of water given three or four times daily, tar water, or “rowell the horse in the shoulder witha tar rope.” Also in April, a telephone line was being stretched from the Holbrooke Hotel in Grass Valley to the Scotia Mine (and Johnson's Hardware.) It was expected to be extended to other mines soon. After the phone at the Holbrooke was connected with Marysville telegraph, 35 miles distant, the sound of a violin in the valley office was “distinctly conveyed’’ to the telegraph office in the Holbrooke. On a Sunday evening a group met at the hotel to witness the operation of the telephone. Phones at Smartsville and Yuba City had been attached. During a conversation between all points, voices reportedly “seemed as if they were coming up from a deep mining shaft.’”? From Marysville, guitar and violin music was heard as well as singing. At Grass Valley piano and singing was contributed. Suddenly a fine male voice burst into song. Each end complimented the other on the quality of the rendition but the vocalist turned out to be on the Scotia Mine phone. LET THERE BE LIGHT Frank B. Rae, agent from the California Electric Light Co. of San Francisco that controlled Brush Electric Light Company Patents on the Pacific Coast, arrived in Grass Valley in late April. He proposed electric street lighting, but city trustees had just signed a three year contract with the gas company. However, Nevada City was seriously considering electricity for illuminating their streets. The cities of Denver, Salt Lake City, Wabash, Akron, Galesburg, Illinois and parts of New York City were already lighted with Brush equipment. Previously, North Bloomfield Mining Company and the Excelsior Company at Little Deer Creek had been operating at night with electricity. Rae estimated that six lights would be required to light all of Nevada City. At the end of April, trustees agreed to appropriate $2,000 toward light machinery if citizens would subscribe $1,000. One lamp was installed on the flag staff of the Pennsylvania Engine House and three on the courthouse for the experiment. The dynamo-electric machine at Allan’s Foundry was started at 8:10 on the night of May 6 and soon the lights flickered on. The result was disappointing because it was a brilliant moonlight night. Two nights later stormy skies contributed to a better test. City dads agreed to try two months of lighting. K. Caspar called on citizens who had subscribed for electric lights to collect cash and late in May a contract was awarded for an iron mast to be erected in front of the courthouse on which to hang the lights. But at the end of July the trustees voted not to buy the six light machine, as it failed to illuminate all of the city. A large machine was too expensive. All electric light script was returned to subscribers and Rae was given $100 for his efforts. THE HANGING OF AH LUCK During the winter of 1879-80 Ah Luck, alias Charlie Lock, had a quarrel with Ah Gow over the sum of $8 and, with another Chinese, waylaid Ah Gow on the Truckee Bridge. The victim was not only shot, he was mutilated with a knife and hatchet. The alleged killers were traced to Boca in a snowstorm and apprehended. (Ah Luck had been acquitted of killing another Chinese two years before.) In the murder of Ah Gow, Luck was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, while his companions were sent to the penitentiary for life. In February of 1881 Sheriff E£.O. Thompkins was sending out invitations to sheriffs all over California to attend the hanging on April 8. On the 7th the Sisters of Mercy from Grass Valley visited the condemned man. A close watch was being kept over him so he would not commit “harikari.” Ah Luck died a VUatholic. Father Thomas J. Dalton, Father Daniel Meagher and five sisters stayed with him until his time arrived. He was said to be the first Chinese in Nevada County to get the death sentence. Ah Luck had arrived in the US in 1874. While incarcerated in the county jail he was credited with helping prevent a jail break. Just prior to his death he asked to see his coffin and expressed satisfaction with it. He made a speech in English from the scaffold, protesting his innocence in front of over 100 observers. MINE ACCIDENTS There were the usual number of mine accidents in 1881 that claimed casualties. On July 26 Richard Wedlock had just arrived on shift underground at the 12th level of the Idaho Mine when he was told that a piece of the hanging wall looked insecure. He sounded it and called the shift boss who instructed him to cut a notch and put in a timber. The boss had been gone but a short time when a ton of rock pinned Wedlock’s lower body to the footwall. He died before he could be moved. On a Sunday early in September at the Idaho Mine, five miners were caught with gold specimens in their dinner buckets and fired. FIRES . A fire at Truckee in August was started by a kerosene lamp at the While House on Jibboom Street, the red light district. It soon spread to Front Street and among other businesses, totally wiped out was the office of the newspaper, the Republican. While the buildings were still burning the merchants were ordering lumber to rebuild. Within a week they were back in business, the crude, hastily constructed wooden strucktures reminding oldtimers of the days of ‘49. A fire in the carpenter shop at Keith's Quartz Mill at the foot of Sacramento Street in Nevada City on August 14 destroyed Temperance Hall and several adjoining wooden buildings. In June of 1880 a conflagration that started in John White’s upholstery shop on Broad Street had leveled the New York Hotel and most of Chinatown on Commercial Street. Bowing to pressure to keep them from rebuilding in town, by August the Chinese had relocated on Washington Road. At the end of March, 1831, one Chinese merchant on Commercial Street was packing to move to Chinatown. This left only two on the upper part of the street. In April water was ordered to be piped to Chinatown, making it more attractive place to locate. However, that water proved inadequate in saving the Oriental community on August 17 when a fire, believed to have started in a drug store when kerosene exploded, destroyed all but one of the 40 or 50 buildings. All the merchants lost their stock. By September a new 30 building Chinatown had arisen. Word was received in October that White, the upholsterer in whose shop the 1880 Chinatown fire had started, had been lynched in Colorado for starting a fire. In the same month Isaac Sanks Jr., son of black Grass Valley pioneers, discovered a fire in Robert John’s blacksmith shop on Mill Street and his quick reporting of it was believed to have saved the town from possible disaster. All adjacent buildings were of

Transcript editor observed, “There are two things very few women can do with. success. One is strike a true blow with an ax and the other is throw straight.” That same month twenty-eight horses and four oxen were required to haul a ten-ton spur wheel from Virginia City to the Scotia Mine. Large blocks of granite were hauled from Rocklin to serve as a foundation for the big engine. In February an Abstemious Association was formed in Grass Valley to encourage one month of abstinence from liquor. In March a banquet was held “in compliment to their success,as well as in jubilation over the fact that a cruelly long month had drawn to an end.” Among business licenses issued in Nevada County in March, 66 were for taverns. At the beginning of April the epizootic disease was prevalent among horses. Three treatments were suggested: A tablespoon of chloride of potash to a gallon of water given three or four times daily, tar water, or “rowell the horse in the shoulder witha tar rope.” Also in April, a telephone line was being stretched from the Holbrooke Hotel in Grass Valley to the Scotia Mine (and Johnson's Hardware.) It was expected to be extended to other mines soon. After the phone at the Holbrooke was connected with Marysville telegraph, 35 miles distant, the sound of a violin in the valley office was “distinctly conveyed’’ to the telegraph office in the Holbrooke. On a Sunday evening a group met at the hotel to witness the operation of the telephone. Phones at Smartsville and Yuba City had been attached. During a conversation between all points, voices reportedly “seemed as if they were coming up from a deep mining shaft.’”? From Marysville, guitar and violin music was heard as well as singing. At Grass Valley piano and singing was contributed. Suddenly a fine male voice burst into song. Each end complimented the other on the quality of the rendition but the vocalist turned out to be on the Scotia Mine phone. LET THERE BE LIGHT Frank B. Rae, agent from the California Electric Light Co. of San Francisco that controlled Brush Electric Light Company Patents on the Pacific Coast, arrived in Grass Valley in late April. He proposed electric street lighting, but city trustees had just signed a three year contract with the gas company. However, Nevada City was seriously considering electricity for illuminating their streets. The cities of Denver, Salt Lake City, Wabash, Akron, Galesburg, Illinois and parts of New York City were already lighted with Brush equipment. Previously, North Bloomfield Mining Company and the Excelsior Company at Little Deer Creek had been operating at night with electricity. Rae estimated that six lights would be required to light all of Nevada City. At the end of April, trustees agreed to appropriate $2,000 toward light machinery if citizens would subscribe $1,000. One lamp was installed on the flag staff of the Pennsylvania Engine House and three on the courthouse for the experiment. The dynamo-electric machine at Allan’s Foundry was started at 8:10 on the night of May 6 and soon the lights flickered on. The result was disappointing because it was a brilliant moonlight night. Two nights later stormy skies contributed to a better test. City dads agreed to try two months of lighting. K. Caspar called on citizens who had subscribed for electric lights to collect cash and late in May a contract was awarded for an iron mast to be erected in front of the courthouse on which to hang the lights. But at the end of July the trustees voted not to buy the six light machine, as it failed to illuminate all of the city. A large machine was too expensive. All electric light script was returned to subscribers and Rae was given $100 for his efforts. THE HANGING OF AH LUCK During the winter of 1879-80 Ah Luck, alias Charlie Lock, had a quarrel with Ah Gow over the sum of $8

and, with another Chinese, waylaid Ah Gow on the Truckee Bridge. The victim was not only shot, he was mutilated with a knife and hatchet. The alleged killers were traced to Boca in a snowstorm and apprehended. (Ah Luck had been acquitted of killing another Chinese two years before.) In the murder of Ah Gow, Luck was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, while his companions were sent to the penitentiary for life. In February of 1881 Sheriff E£.O. Thompkins was sending out invitations to sheriffs all over California to attend the hanging on April 8. On the 7th the Sisters of Mercy from Grass Valley visited the condemned man. A close watch was being kept over him so he would not commit “harikari.” Ah Luck died a VUatholic. Father Thomas J. Dalton, Father Daniel Meagher and five sisters stayed with him until his time arrived. He was said to be the first Chinese in Nevada County to get the death sentence. Ah Luck had arrived in the US in 1874. While incarcerated in the county jail he was credited with helping prevent a jail break. Just prior to his death he asked to see his coffin and expressed satisfaction with it. He made a speech in English from the scaffold, protesting his innocence in front of over 100 observers. MINE ACCIDENTS There were the usual number of mine accidents in 1881 that claimed casualties. On July 26 Richard Wedlock had just arrived on shift underground at the 12th level of the Idaho Mine when he was told that a piece of the hanging wall looked insecure. He sounded it and called the shift boss who instructed him to cut a notch and put in a timber. The boss had been gone but a short time when a ton of rock pinned Wedlock’s lower body to the footwall. He died before he could be moved. On a Sunday early in September at the Idaho Mine, five miners were caught with gold specimens in their dinner buckets and fired. FIRES . A fire at Truckee in August was started by a kerosene lamp at the While House on Jibboom Street, the red light district. It soon spread to Front Street and among other businesses, totally wiped out was the office of the newspaper, the Republican. While the buildings were still burning the merchants were ordering lumber to rebuild. Within a week they were back in business, the crude, hastily constructed wooden strucktures reminding oldtimers of the days of ‘49. A fire in the carpenter shop at Keith's Quartz Mill at the foot of Sacramento Street in Nevada City on August 14 destroyed Temperance Hall and several adjoining wooden buildings. In June of 1880 a conflagration that started in John White’s upholstery shop on Broad Street had leveled the New York Hotel and most of Chinatown on Commercial Street. Bowing to pressure to keep them from rebuilding in town, by August the Chinese had relocated on Washington Road. At the end of March, 1831, one Chinese merchant on Commercial Street was packing to move to Chinatown. This left only two on the upper part of the street. In April water was ordered to be piped to Chinatown, making it more attractive place to locate. However, that water proved inadequate in saving the Oriental community on August 17 when a fire, believed to have started in a drug store when kerosene exploded, destroyed all but one of the 40 or 50 buildings. All the merchants lost their stock. By September a new 30 building Chinatown had arisen. Word was received in October that White, the upholsterer in whose shop the 1880 Chinatown fire had started, had been lynched in Colorado for starting a fire. In the same month Isaac Sanks Jr., son of black Grass Valley pioneers, discovered a fire in Robert John’s blacksmith shop on Mill Street and his quick reporting of it was believed to have saved the town from possible disaster. All adjacent buildings were of