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Volume 068-3 - July 2014 (8 pages)
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Page: of 8
NCHS Bulletin July 2014
whilst in the discharge of their sworn duties . . . he again
filed an affidavit, setting forth that, inasmuch as all the
witnesses in the case resided in Yuba County, and as the
crime charged .. . was alleged to have been committed
in the latter county, and as the prejudices against him
had considerably abated, he humbly petitioned the court
to send the papers back to Yuba County, that he might be
tried there. Mr. Sargent being, no doubt, anxious to be
rid of the case, and also anxious to save Nevada county
a large expenditure of money, consented to Barbour’s
proposition, and the case was ordered back for trial in
Yuba.
Thurston vanished from the state, went to Nicaragua,
joined the Fillibusters and died there. Stidger learned
that the Barbour papers had disappeared again, this time
from the Clerk’s Office of the Supreme Court. Stidger’s
inquiries met with silence until January 1858, when
Charlie Fairfax, the newly elected Supreme Court Clerk,
told Stidger the papers were missing from his office.
Once again the papers mysteriously reappeared.
The judgment of the court below was affirmed by the
Supreme Court and the cause remanded. Nevertheless,
the case continued to meet with delay after delay. In his
final letter to the Journal on December 3, 1858, Stidger
reluctantly concluded:
I have no confidence that it ever will be brought to
trial; not because the officers of that county will not do
their duty in the matter, but, simply because I believe
Barbour will stave it off until his term of District Judge
expires—which will be on the Ist day of January 1859—
and then he will probably leave the State. No bondsmen
can suffer, should he do so; as the bond he gave for his
appearance “has long since been numbered among the
things that were.” It may be, however, that after the Ist
day of January next, he will permit the case to go to
trial. After that date Judge Bliss will no longer control
his destinies should he be found guilty, for at that date
Bliss takes the place of Barbour in the District Court,
and John B. Weller I believe will see to it that no one
shall occupy Bliss’s seat who is not a devoted friend of
Barbour.
Stidger guessed right. On January 14, 1859, Judge
Barbour was convicted by a Marysville jury. No record
has been found of what, if any, punishment he received.
In 1860, Judge Barbour moved to Virginia City.
Removal to Nevada County
In the spring of 1855 Gen. James Allen was elected mayor of Marysville, and Judge Stidger was appointed to a
grand jury that indicted 52 gamblers and prostitutes. The
city marshal was ordered to protect Stidger from gamblers who threatened his life. On September 15, 1855,
John Rollin Ridge. O. P. Stidger. (Searls Library)
Gen. Allen was elected State Printer as a candidate of
the American (Know Nothing) Party. A month and a
half later the general and his son, O. P. Allen, bought
the Sacramento State Tribune, with Gen. Allen as editor.
In 1856 he changed the name of the paper to California
American and added Cherokee poet John Rollin Ridge to
his staff.
John L. Stidger, brother of the judge, was a storekeeper at North San Juan. In 1856 Judge Stidger decided to
move his law practice there and in 1857 they were joined
by the judge’s 19-year-old son, James Allen Stidger. In
that same year Judge Stidger won a landmark lawsuit
against E. H. Waterman and others to recover ownership
of some mining claims they had taken from him and sold
for “non-payment of assessment fees.” The editor of the
Nevada Journal lauded the decision, explaining:
One of the most important mining cases ever tried
in our Courts came off before Judge [Niles] Searls, on
Tuesday last....O. P. Stidger, of North San Juan...
avetrred in his complaint that prior to the 5th day of
January, 1857, he was in actual possession of one-third
interest in certain mining grounds, held in common by
himself and other parties—that on said day Waterman
and his Co-defendants ousted Plaintiff from his possessions, &c.; Defendants admitted Plaintiff’s prior possession and ouster, but claimed that the ouster was legal,
made in conformity with the laws and customs among
miners in that neighborhood where the claims are situated—that the claims had been sold for non-payment of
assessments....
The principal points decided were, Ist. That the miners customs could not under any circumstances set aside
or override the Constitution of the United States, and
the State of California. That the Constitution of this
State, and of the United States, proclaimed that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; that if the miners had the power