Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 056-2 - April 2002 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 8 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-12 07:19:28 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:01 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:01

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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NCHS Bulletin April 2002 For the next few years newspaper coverage of events in Kentsville was minimal. The anti-Chinese sentiment in Californla was high and it is likely that the Chinese community kept a low profile. The non-Chinese expressed their satisfaction of having the majority of the Chinese outside the city limits. Even those Chinese who reestablished themselves along Commercial Street did not receive much press. After the events of 1881 the newspapers focused on the Chinese laundry “problems” in town as the city tried to move the laundries out to Kentsville. Any other articles reported crimes and violations of city ordinances, and portrayed the Chinese in an unfavorable light. During this period of time, Marshal Baldridge continued to raid opium houses along Commercial Street in an attempt to drive them out of town. The Transcript had numerous articles about the evils of opium and often stated that white men and youths were arrested for frequenting the opium houses. Compared to previous years, it was apparent there was a concerted effort to ignore the Chinese or portray them in an unfavorable light. The popular slogan of the day was “The Chinese Must Go.” In February of 1882 the Transcript reporter visited Kentsville to check up on the annual New Year celebrations and bomb day: At the last fire the Joss House in new Chinatown was licked up by the lurid flames that swept across the sunbaked bedrock and the Mongolians have left its rebuilding until some future day when their purses may have recovered from the contracting influences of the warmness that then prevailed in that benighted quarter. It is probably for the above reason that the customary election of a Joss Keeper, or a religious leader, will be omitted this year, although the almond eyed worshipers do not appear to relish letting the whole world know that the wolf of want has come so close to their door. When he went on his rounds yesterday, the Transcript reporter found several of them too proud to admit to their poverty. The question he put in all cases was not one to be easily evaded. It was, “Why don’t you elect a new Joss this year?” Ah Moon’s response was to the effect that all the Chinese had reached such a high moral plane of late that they did not need any more boosting. Tin Quong intimated that the last one (chosen from the Ah Moon faction) whose term had just expired was such a bold, bad man that his example had done more harm than good and the people wanted a year’s rest from religious leadership in order to build up their shattered morals again. Ah Wah boldly charged that the deacons of the church had traded off all the idols for chickens and brandy. Forty prominent members of the organization gave forty different reasons that were all evasive, and the truth had to be wormed out of Ah Sing, a backslider, who was one of the candidates for Joss last year, and being defeated had soured on his own and all other reformatory institutions. As he put it, “Chinamen no got money to buy Joss House. He spend’ m ali playing polkee and dlinking brandy.” This was a convoluted way of saying that after the fire there was no money to rebuild the Joss House and that there had been some derision in the community. The reporter was also confused about the “organization” of the community. In April of 1882 the Transcript reprinted an article from The San Francisco Report which called for taxing the Chinese out of the city (San Francisco), and imprisoning those who did not pay. The prisoners, it was proposed, would be used to clean and repair the streets. It was proposed that such programs be carried out in all cities along the coast. The Transcript responded: “Over a year ago the City Trustees of Nevada City took the initiatory step in that direction by passing an ordinance which they determined to put in force. All preparations were made to force them to locate their “Chinatown” outside the business portion of the City. A day or two before the ordinance was to go into effect, every house in Chinatown was destroyed by fire, thus relieving the City Trustees from carrying out their programme. The Chinamen after dilly-dallying for about a month concluded that it would not be safe to rebuild at the old quarters, and finally selected a place a half mile away from the business houses of the city, and there rebuilt their town where the bulk of them can be found today. That’s the way we got rid of the nuisance. In July of 1882 the Transcript ran the following, suggesting a similar scheme: Will The Chinese Go? Charley Kent is of the opinion that the Chinamen should move their wash-houses out of ™