by Richard H. Bullock The Fowler Family

Transcription

1 The Ship Brooklyn Story - Volume 2 by Richard H. Bullock The Fowler Family The Fowler family consists of the mother Jerusha H. Ensign Fowler and her four sons, Thomas W. Fowler, George E. Fowler, John Sherman Fowler, Jr., and Charles D. Fowler. Jerusha H. Ensign Fowler is the daughter of Elias Ensign and Jerusha Taylor Ensign who were discussed in Chapter Thirty-seven and she had been born in 1820 at Westfield, Hampden, Massachusetts. Nothing is known of her earlier life or the circumstances of her joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with the rest of her family. It is known that she met 1 and married a young man by the name of John Sherman Fowler 28 January John S. Fowler had been born in Newark, New Jersey 12 July 1819, and as a young man had heard the message of the Elders and joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He and Jerusha started a family right away and the first born, Thomas W. Fowler, arrived late in 1840 at Westfield. Joining the family in 1841 another son they named George E. Fowler soon followed by Jr. on 18 November The next to arrive, Charles D. Fowler, came on 9 August As they heard the call from Orson Pratt to leave America the Fowler s agreed it seemed time to leave with the others, but John suggested that Jerusha and the four boys travel with her parents, Elias Ensign and Jerusha Taylor Ensign, on board the ship Brooklyn. John felt this would be much easier and safer than traveling the overland route to California. Little could he have know that Jerusha would lose her father Elias Ensign, a sister Eliza Ensign, and their youngest son Charles D. Fowler to the ravages of disease, their bodies being buried at sea. John sadly bid his family goodbye on 4 February 1846 from the deck of the Brooklyn and jumping aboard the escort vessel Sampson he returned to New York City as his family disappeared in he distance. Little did he know that it would be some nineteen months before he would see them again at. Typical Wagon Train on the Plains 1 FHL , Index to marriages Westfield, Hampden, Mass. and Jerusha H. Ensign, both of Westfield, declared their intentions 26 Dec.1839, published 29 Dec.1839 and married 28 Jan.1840 by Rev. David Wrig 1

2 left New York City immediately and traveled to Nauvoo, Illinois hoping to join the wagons trains that were preparing to leave for the West. He arrived in February 1846 and immediately received his patriarchal blessing from Asahel Smith and became a member of the Second Quorum of Seventies. He worked hard to help the Saints prepare to leave Nauvoo that spring and his efforts were rewarded when Brigham Young invited him to join in the First Pioneer Company that would be traveling to the West. He received his assignment in the first Ten of the Pioneer Company and accompanied Wilford Woodruff, Orson Pratt and George A. Smith among others. He sometimes took notes of the speeches of the Elders as they held meetings when Thomas Bullock fell ill. But John also had his turn with sickness as well. th Tuesday, June 29. Many of the brethren have gone down sick within the past three days and a number more this evening. They generally begin with headache, succeeded by violent fever, and some go delirious for a while. Brother Fowler was seized this afternoon and this evening is raving. It is supposed by some that the sickness is caused by the use of the mineral saleratus or alkali picked up at the lakes and surface of the land and it is considered poisonous. Some consider also that we inhale the effluvium arising from it, which has the like effect. It appears to be an article which ought to be used with great care if used at all. There has been no case considered dangerous yet, nor any long duration. 2 He felt sad that day when he met Samuel Brannan on the grasslands of Wyoming and heard of the death of his son and his wife s kin. He could see little hope of making a comfortable living in the Great Salt Lake Valley and he wanted to see his family again, so he convinced Sam Brannan to let him travel to California with Brannan s party. Brigham Young had no objections so traveled another nine hundred miles before he would be reunited with his dear wife and family. He found them struggling to make a living at. The young boys were overjoyed to see their father again after such a long separation and they clung to him every waking minute for days after his arrival. Little is known of John s method of providing for his family in except that it appears he went into the liquor wholesale business. I have located a number of records in the H. H. Bancroft Library that indicate he got heavily into debt by not collecting for his liquors at the time he delivered them to his clients. Some examples are: 1848, May 25 to Mr. Towsand Enclosing Bills to be collected 2 Carter, Kate B., Heart Throbs of the West, Daughters of Utah Pioneers, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1945, Volume Six, page 295. From the William Clayton Journal of

3 I wish that you would see to the collection of the articles I send to you as soon as possible. P.S. Mr. Miken Foley is my agent in settling my accounts. J. S. Fowler #1 San Francisco S. Snow To For liquor thirty dollars #2 Gay Carmell To For account thirty-two dollars $32.00 #3 San Francisco Guinvie To th th March 6 & 7 to Thumpayne A. Liquor $12.00 th th March 6 & 7 Liquor 4.50 $16.50 #4 Domingo Taylos To th th March the 6 & 7 to liquor $11,379 #5 Lewis Taylos To th th March 6 & 7 to liquor $8,627 nd May the #6 Markein Taylos To Accts. Fifteen dollars and thirty seven cents nd May #7 Manuel Sanches et al To To liquor $4.00 to one fare of Dantalons Cloreth $8.00 $

4 #8 Antonia Taylos To to liquor six dollars & fifty cents $ These scraps of paper at Bancroft Library indicate that John had outstanding notes in the amounts of nearly $20,000.00, no small sum for those times. There is no indication that the notes were ever collected. Did pass along the apparent loss to his suppliers? It is not known. Apparently he did well enough that when the Gold Rush started and Brannan started to gain his wealth in Sacramento, Fowler received an invitation to join forces with Brannan in building and operating a hotel to be called the City Hotel. John had made good friends with Samuel Brannan during the long journey from Great Salt Lake City to Sacramento and he and Brannan went into partnership. They apparently acquired the needed lumber from the failed flour mill venture of Sutter and soon had the $100,000 hotel in operation. The City Hotel had a grand opening in September of 1848 and it involved an abundance of free whiskey and wine, and it was said that whole baskets of champagne were thrown from the balcony during the celebration. It became an immediate success, netting Brannan and Fowler about $30,000 per year. Early Apostles Lyman and Rich frequented the City Hotel whenever they were in Sacramento. On Saturday the 19th Lyman traveled to Sacramento on the Senator meeting (John S.) Fowler, a business partner of Brannan, in the operation of the City Hotel. Upon their arrival, Lyman was lodged at the Mormon-owned hotel, Sacramento s first. The flood waters which had inundated the area were receding, as observed by Lyman the following day. On Monday, the Apostle visited Captain (Jesse D.) Hunter, a Battalion leader who with his family was living on raised floors above the (flood) waters. The City Hotel was Sacramento s first. A two-story wooden structure, it faced the river front and is prominently pictured in the drawings made of Sacramento s Embarcadero in It was started in June of 1849 and completed in September, being built by Sam Brannan with John Fowler as his partner from materials left over from Sutter s flour mill at Natoma. The mill had been started by the Battalion Boys but abandoned the previous year when the gold rush began. The hotel s cost was reportedly $100,000. On the 4th of July of 1848, a celebration dance was held in the recently begun building. Two hundred men are said to have vied for the attention of but 18 women, the men having paid $32.00 a piece for the sport. As the Rhoads family in the area had a large number of girls, and Mormons were not adverse to dancing, it might well have been from among these that some of the 18 were recruited As Brannan secured most of his original capital from the Saints in California, the City Hotel might well have been considered a Mormon hostelry, though it was publicly in Brannan s name. This may be the reason it was so frequently used by Lyman and later Apostle Rich. 4 Jerusha had remained behind at to give birth to a new baby in early 5 November of 1850 but the child didn t survive, dying on 13 November They had named 3 file at H. H. Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California. 4 Davies, J. Kenneth, Mormon Gold - The Story of California s Mormon Argonauts, Olympus Publishing Company, Salt Lake City, UT, 84105, 1984, page Alta California, Monday 18 November Thanks to Kerry Petersen for this clipping. 4

5 the child after the son who had died on the Atlantic ocean in 1846, Charles D. Fowler. Jerusha became pregnant again with their sixth child and gave birth in late 1851 to another son that they named Frank. Jerusha finally got her little girl on 20 January 1856 and she would later have a seventh son they named Warren in late These last three children were all born at Sacramento. John became one of the early businessmen to take supplies to the mines, charging one dollar a pound for freight. He made a very good profit and paid his teamsters well for their hard work, $200 per month to transport supplies from Sutter s Fort to Coloma. He averaged a 50% profit. One time when his teamsters returned from a particularly difficult trip, John rewarded them with a special dinner. He went into Brannan s store and saw two-pound tins of oysters on the shelf. He was told they were $12 a tin. John bought them all to feed his returning men, nearly wiping out his profit for that trip. 6 When Samuel Brannan attempted an 1851 filibuster in Hawaii to take over the islands, became one of those that Brannan invited to join his party. The Hawaiian politicians saw through the ruse and the expedition failed in Brannan s efforts, resulting in significant losses to those who were involved. This may have been a turning point in John S. Fowler s fortunes. He next tied his fortunes to building a theater in Sacramento that he called the Tehama nd Theater. The theater faced upon 2 Street between I and J Streets. He put most of his own money into the construction and took out a mortgage for the balance from Talbot H. Green. As the theater neared completion in 1850 he placed an advertisement in the Placer Times 22 April 1850 announcing the completion and inviting all to a great ball. The ball had a good initial attendance but the theater soon began to fail after his 1851 trip with Brannan, and by February th 13 his interest in the theater sold at a sheriff s auction to satisfy the mortgage held by Talbot H. Green. 7 In 1850 Fowler was elected vice president of a group of Sacramento citizens who drafted resolutions urging that Sacramento City be selected as the State Capitol, and the resolutions succeeded in 1854 after several aborted attempts. He next resorted to being a real estate agent for his old friend Brannan as advertised in the Sacramento Union of June He barely made enough to keep his family fed during this period and his health started to fail. He suddenly died of consumption 12 April His obituary reads: Pioneer Deceased... A meeting of the Pioneer Assoc. is called for 2 p.m. today, to attend the funeral of from the Baptist Church on Fourth Street, at 3:00 o clock. The deceased was one of the merchants at Sutter s Fort in , has resided in this city ever since and was liberal, benevolent, social and clever -- too much so for his own good. He leaves a family consisting of a mother, wife, and six young children in destitute circumstances Baldwin, Jeanne, The Epitaph,, Spring Sacramento Transcript, 13 February 1851 Sacramento Union, 14 April 1860 Page 3 Col. 4. 5

6 Grave site area of Sr. He accompanied Brigham Young on the Pioneer Company to Salt Lake and then went with Brannan to San Francisco to meet his wife Jerusha Fowler. Sacramento City Cemetery. Photos by Author The Probate Courts settled the estate of and it consisted of only a little furniture and some clothes that the Court assigned a value of $ Jerusha filed a protest with the Court as the amount seemed much to high to her but nothing apparently changed. John was buried in the Sacramento City cemetery at location B 116, Tier FF, Grave 48. His wife and children soon were forced to leave their home and took up residence at Diamond Springs Township in El Dorado county, just south of Hangtown, now Placerville. The author and his wife walked both of the cemeteries at Diamond Springs and couldn t locate any markers for any family named Fowler. There also was no additional historical information in Diamond Springs for the Fowler s. 6

7 Diamond Springs is located just southwest from Placerville and started out as a boomtown in 1850, when over one hundred houses were built by Missouri settlers in just a few weeks. What made Diamond Springs different from the many other gold mining towns is that from the very start it seems to have been settled by families and not just miners. They loved the area for its farming potential as well as the mining. In 1856 a fire destroyed the entire town and this time the residents re-built their homes and businesses out of stone and brick. In 1860, when Jerusha and her family were living here, it became one of the stops for the Pony Express. By the time the 1860 census had been recorded, none of the original 1850 citizens were still living in the town. In the year 2000 the population of Diamond Springs is still only some 4,888 people. Apparently Jerusha owned or operated a hotel or boarding house in the town as a means to earn a living. Her mother Jerusha Ensign also lived there with her in 1860 but seems to have died by the 1870 census. I am unable at this time to tell when or where Jerusha Fowler died but it is likely near Diamond Springs. There were dozens of small gold rush towns in the area. Thomas W. Fowler Thomas W. Fowler is the eldest of the Fowler boys, having been born about As a young man of only six, he and his smaller brothers were quite a handful aboard the Brooklyn and were always seeming to be getting into trouble or giving them a hard time. After they arrived at Yerba Buena the family moved to and relied upon the assistance of others to make their way in life. Jerusha had grown fond of the Spanish children that played with her boys as they grew. Thomas is counted with the rest of his family in Diamond Springs Township, El Dorado County on 2 June 1860 as being twenty years of age. In looking through the history of El Dorado County the author located a biography of a Thomas Fowler that may be our young man. If so he had a very active and wealthy manhood. In 1878, Hon. Thomas Fowler embarked in the enterprise of mining. His perseverance and energy are worthy of public recognition. Fowler undertook the development of the Empire 7

8 Mine that has proven so rich, and by his own means and that which his influence demanded through his own personal integrity invested nearly $150,000. At the head of a branch of Kaweah River is the Empire Mine. It is a bold mountain which seems to be nearly an entire mass of mineral, as pay rock can be taken out at almost any place on it which is prospected for a few feet. About two-thirds of the way up the mountain is a natural shaft which descends somewhat over a hundred feet and opens into a vast cave. This cave was explored and was declared to be lined, loaded, and filled with the richest kind of silver ore, with well-defined veins running north, south, east and west,, through which nature has run cross cuts and drifts. A party who visited it in 1881 descended into the cave by means of a windlass and rope, in the letter a stirrup for one foot to go into and the descent being through an aperture perfectly straight, but so narrow as to squeeze a large man. The cave was explored for several hundred yards horizontally and reached a depth altogether of about 200 feet, with everywhere the strongest and richest evidences of beautiful silver ore. Mr. Fowler and his associates have spent a great deal of money in opening up the Empire Mine. The mine is really a cave mine, full of air chambers, which aid very much in developing it. They have gone down one shaft 700 feet, in another 800 feet, and run 1,500 feet of tunnels. They have a fifteen-stamp mill. The ore yields from one-tenth to one-quarter gold. The following mines have been prospected and worked to some extent, viz.: the Empire, Silver Lake, White Chief, Maginnis, Crystal and Pinnacle. Ore has been taken out of the Silver Lake Mine paying $200 to $300 per ton. This district yields milling quartz ore and smelting rock also. There are many ledges yet not developed. The town, or mining camp, of Mineral King contains about fifty houses, including the Empire Stamp and Reduction Works. At present[1883], it is in a torpid condition..... The people sought relief from stock damage in the shape of a trespass law known as the No Fence Law. Hon. T. Fowler, who was one of the chief of the cattle owners, managed to get returned as Senator from this District, and became the champion of the cattle men in the Legislature, and so vigorously did he prosecute his designs that he successfully resisted all efforts to obtain the passage of a relief law. With the expiration of his term, however, though he desired to succeed himself and ran again, the people utterly repudiated him, and the result was that the next Legislature gave the much coveted and long-sought law. In the General Election held September 3, 1873 Thomas Fowler was elected Senator, 9 along with Tipton Lindsey. The author has been unable to locate any additional information about Thomas W. Fowler to date. His death date and location of burial have eluded my considerable efforts. George E. Fowler Born about 1841 George and his bigger brother Thomas were undoubtedly best of friends in all their adventures of growing up. They are both shown in the 1860 census with the rest of their family and both are missing in the 1870 census from the family. In this case Thomas had moved on to Tulare county and I locate a record for the death of a George Fowler at Diamond 10 Springs on 6 December 1866, age 25 years. The circumstances of his death and burial location are not known to the author., Jr. John Sherman Fowler Jr. had been born 18 November 1842 at Westfield, Hampden, 9 History of Tulare County, California, Wallace W. Elliott & Co., Publishers, 609 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA, FHL Film List of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Sacramento Daily Bulletin, 1865/66 8

9 Massachusetts, the third son born to John S. and Jerusha Ensign Fowler. He became the quieter son in the family and felt saddened at the loss of the other children in the family. He stayed with his mother and grandmother until they had passed from this life, the former in the 1870's and he latter in the 1860's. In the 1870 census is shown living at home with his mother in Diamond Springs Township, El Dorado county, California. He is shown as being age twentyseven and holding the occupation of a logger. I have located a record of his marriage on 26 November 1869 to a Mary J. Smith in El Dorado county. They may have divorced as I cannot locate them living together in Mary J. Fowler is living in Dutch Flat in 1880 as possibly a housekeeper in a boarding house. In the 1880 census John is shown as being thirty-eight years of age and living in Redwood, Sonoma county, California and being born in Missouri - a recording or transcription error on the records. He is recorded living with a Julia E. Prowes but not as husband and wife. The author was unable to locate his death date or the location of his burial. It appears from the above that sometime in the 1870's when Jerusha apparently died, the family broke up and spread around the State. 9