Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 062-1 - January 2008 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 4 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-19 08:02:14 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:03 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:03

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

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Grass Valley’s Hayti Hill by Michel Janicot HE ENGRAVING BELOW, DEPICTING THE FIRST KNOWN ~~ -~ -_ view of Boston Ravine in 1850, appeared in Gleason'’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion. The small cabin on the left was occupied by Messrs. J. and T. Cracklin, joining which was the market and store of Hollis and Baxter. The left-hand building in the foreground was the Eagle Tavern, kept by John West, on the right of which was the log cabin and the ten-pin bowling alley of B. L. Lamarque and Co., all of which were situated at the foot of Gold Hill. The last line of the caption beneath the engraving also states that “The hill in the background is Isadore Hill, named after a negro, who first discovered a quartz vein on it.”! That hill is the subject of this article. An early-day Argonaut named Edwin Franklin Morse arrived on the scene on September 20, 1850, where he was destined to spend the greater part of his life, until 1896, more than forty years. Morse related that upon arriving at Wolf Creek, “The first person I encountered in Grass Valley was a Frenchman named LaMarque (sic), who attired in a figured white shirt, red sash worn Mexican fashion, and black trousers, made a rather odd and picturesque figure as he stood in the middle of the road smoking a long-stemmed pipe.” Upon learning that Morse came from Boston, Lamarque ees Said that there were “a good many men from that city, in fact the first settlers had come from there and that accounted for the camp’s name [Boston Ravine].” (Boston Ravine was settled by the Boston Company which arrived on September 3, NCHS Bulletin January 2008 ( > Nevada County Historical Society Dullelin VOLUME 62 NUMBER 1 JANUARY 2008 1849, and was led by the Reverend H. Cummings, the first man to hold a religious service in Nevada County. The Boston Company disbanded a year later, in December 1850, “when water failed.”)° Lamarque greeted Morse “very cordially that morning, and invited me to come and stay in the cabin which he occupied with three or four other men, all Yankees, and . gladly accepted.” Bertrand Lamarque, a musician and dance teacher, had purchased the trading post established by Jules Rossiere, another Frenchman, earlier that year. The store was the main outfitting post for the miners and it was there that they came “for news and grubstakes; it was gold for food.” Lamarque had prospected for gold in Mexico and was “the only man on Wolf Creek who had any previous mining experience.”° Morse and some friends worked gravel in a ravine that had been abandoned but they decided that it did not pay them to work it. However, “they suggested that I should take the horse and cart they had used and hire an old darkey, named Isidor and work it. This I accordingly did and made a good profit all winter. The old darkey had been a slave, but as California was a free state he was now free and was saving most of the eight dollars per day wages . paid him, to buy his wife’s liberty,” which was not an unusual occurrence in the mines.° During the Gold Rush, many slaves were brought out from the southern states by their masters and some remained with their former owners for some time even after they reached California. The Shoemaker family, for example, according to Morse, brought out several of their slaves with them; and a Southerner worked a gravel mine below Rough and Ready by the labor of the slaves he brought to the county.’ (Dr. David Shoemaker came to California in 1849, settling in Grass Valley where he lived for many years, afterwards removing to the Anthony House (now Lake Wildwood). I