Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 069-4 - October 2015 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2019-06-07 08:39:42 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:33 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:33

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

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The Myth, the Man and Mystery of the Rough and Ready Secession by Maria E. Brower T HE OLD ADAGE THAT TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN fiction sometimes applies and other times the lines blur. The secession tradition of Rough and Ready, and Ebenezer F. Brundage’s role in it, has been bandied about for 165 years in newspapers, books and magazines. Like all traditions, each writer’s telling has added new details, sometimes dialog, and their own particular slant to the story, making it hard to distinguish fact from fiction. The Original “Eyewitness” Story In 1867 Edmund W. Roberts wrote the first account of what took place at Rough and Ready in 1850 (and almost surely supplied material for a second account in 1880). What is significant about his version is that he witnessed the events, and by 1867, when he wrote about them, he was a universally respected judge and newspaper editor. According to Roberts: “The fame of the rich diggings reached the Sacramento paper, people began to crowd in, and thus commenced the town, about the first day of April, 1850. This section of country was then in the jurisdiction of Yuba county, but neither Alcalde, nor Justice, nor any other peace officer, was in all that region. The population rapidly increased, and soon numbered hundreds, finally thousands, the necessities of some kind of government became painfully apparent, for thefts and robberies, as well as high handed deeds of violence and outrage, and murders, became common; the people assembled in mass, and appointed a committee of three, consisting of H. Q. Roberts, James S. Dunleavy and Emanuel Smith, who were authorized to assume the reins of government as a Committee of Vigilance and safety, whose powers were almost absolute and from whose decision there was no appeal. They had no lawyers then, with technicalities, and as their power was supreme, there was no body to appeal to, in fact, there was no established tribunal of justice nearer than Marysville, which place was then known as Nye’s Landing, and the people of the mountains neither knew nor cared whether an Alcalde lived there or not, and there was no court of higher jurisdiction nearer than the Bay. This provisional tribunal accordingly, and justly, as all accounts go to show, administered justice with an equitable hand, laid out the town, marked off each man’s lot or premises, decided all disputes concerning town lots and mining claims, appointed a Constable, issued writs, heard and decided ‘Nevada County Historical Soticty FZ uttelim eee 69 NUMBER 4 OCTOBER 201 °) causes, calling a jury when the parties desired it, took bonds for appearance from persons charged with crime, (I have one in my possession given by a man charged with horse stealing, and the person appeared and stood his trial,) and punished criminals convicted before them.”! Roberts briefly mentioned the secession movement: “T have not sketched the local excitement arising from .. Brundage’s mass meeting of the people, called in 1850, to organize the State of Rough and Ready, adopt a constitution, secede from the United States, and set up on our own hook an independent government.’”* For nearly 100 years no one disputed his remarks. Popular Legend or Myth Using the California Newspaper Project,* an online database of statewide newspapers I was able to check the Northern California newspapers papers that were in existence in 1850: the Alta California, Sacramento Transcript, Sacramento Placer Times and Marysville Herald. . found no mention of a “Rough and Ready secession.” All of these newspapers were published in towns close enough to have been reached in one day, and word of a secession in Rough and Ready would have been fodder for their readers. I found articles mentioning Rough and Ready on other topics. Although there were 263 hits that came up in my search, the majority were advertisements for the stage lines from Sacramento that made stops in Rough and Ready. Other local historians have spent years looking for historical documentation of the event. When interviewed in 1990 by Charles Hillinger, a Los Angeles Times staff writer, former Nevada County Historical Society President Constance Bear told him: “For years I have searched libraries, written letters to the Library of Congress and the U.S. Archives trying to get information about the Great Republic (of Rough and Ready) to no avail. .. We have no documentation . . . no newspaper accounts, no letters from those who were here describing what went on.. surely if it happened, there must be