Despite Ichabod Goodwin’s personal request for his son-in-law’s leave to be extended beyond six months, on January 5, 1866, a curt and disappointing reply came from the Adjutant General’s Office at the War Department and was forwarded to Lt. Gen. U.S. Grant.
“Approved,” for six months, Grant wrote.1
Not realizing William A. Winder had already been granted the lesser leave, William M. Stewart, a U.S. senator from Nevada and mining magnate, also wrote to Secretary Stanton on William A.’s behalf on January 9, 1866. “I do not ask you to transcend any of the regulations” of the War Department,” he wrote, all the while flattering Stanton by saying his is an “admirable and unsurpassed system.” Stewart writes that he hopes Stanton might overlook army regulations in this case, but because William A. was refused a twelve-month leave by Grant he suggests that William A. “would be thankful for six months time.” Importantly, Stewart adds, “If the refusal was caused by any charges which may have been preferred against Capt Winder will you be kind enough to inform me, as I do not think he is informed of them if there be any, and in order that he may have an opportunity to, as I have every confidence that he can entirely disprove them.”2
It was not Stanton’s call to make. It was U.S. Grant’s. Surely Stanton knew full well that there were no charges against William A., but perhaps with the infamous Confederate Winders jailed, on parole, or indicted for war crimes, Stewart might have feared the worst for him. And rightly so. The suspicions that hectored and haunted William A. throughout the war have caused Stewart to say that at the very least, if any charges were the cause of the refusal of a twelve-month leave, might he and William A. be informed? As usual, there was no response.
*
William A.’s post as a recruiter in Newburgh, New York, ended. He must head west once again, ride the tide, and catch the copper, and he needs to do so quickly if he is to bring his wife and son back to California. This time it would be different. No more disgrace, no more suspicions. On January 20 he left New York for California with Samuel Storer, a Portsmouth lawyer who was married to Abby’s sister, Sarah “Sadie” Parker Rice Goodwin. Like William A., Storer was seeking a new beginning, “as he had some difficulty in establishing a lucrative practice in Portsmouth.” For a short time Samuel, Sadie, and their young daughter Mabel had lived a hard prairie life in Peotone, Illinois. That didn’t last. Sadie was ill. With a small child to tend, she hurried home to Portsmouth, to her mother and father and her sisters.3
As for Samuel Storer, he was intoxicated by the sunlit promise of California, and wasn’t William A. going to make a fortune? Their plans were to build homes for their families, bring them to California immediately thereafter, and live side by side. Abby would have her beloved sister Sadie and her niece Mabel close by. Willie and Mabel would thrive. It would be perfect. It should have been perfect.
*
William A. was eagerly awaited in California, as is evident in the continuing correspondence from Breed & Chase to Ephraim Morse in San Diego. However, high hopes expressed in the correspondence give way to concern and finally despair at William A.’s inability to pay for the supplies provided to him:
San Francisco, Feb 2, 1866
Friend Morse,
The N Y steamer arrived today but did not bring Capt Winder as you expected Probably he was detained, and will be home next steamer. Shall be glad to see him when he comes.
Breed & Chase4
On February 11 William A. and Sam Storer arrived in San Francisco to good press. “Captain Winder’s Del Fino [sic] copper mine is progressing nicely and will soon be paying,” the Daily Alta California reported.5
Breed and Chase agree. All seems well so far.
San Francisco, Feb 17, 1866
Friend Morse,
Capt Winder arrived by last steamer . . . and seems in good spirits & I think has his business in satisfactory shape. . . .
Breed & Chase6
A pattern was emerging. Winder was traveling from San Francisco, dipping in and out of Old Town to see Morse, assuring him that all is well, and then going to Baja to supervise their copper mines. “Will you or Capt. Winder write & say whether he is able to pay or not,” Breed and Chase finally write.7
Despite William A. being in arrears with his debt to Breed & Chase, there was more positive press for his mines. He now has a partner. The San Diego correspondent for the San Francisco Daily Bulletin wrote, “Capt. Winder and another gentleman have just returned from the mines of the southern frontier. They report everything favorable, and intend returning to make a more extended survey shortly.”8
The other gentleman, as the newspapers will soon trumpet, is Gen. William Starke Rosecrans, now a celebrity in California and the proponent of a railroad line, a great line that would link the East to the West, with a terminus in San Diego. With Gen. John C. Fremont’s millions made in the gold fields at his disposal to buy up the “franchise and rights of the Kansas Pacific Railroad . . . the Memphis and Little Rock . . . and the Memphis and El Paso,” he would be able to have a “great consolidated line running from Norfolk” to the jumble of pueblo lands, adobes, and shacks at land’s end in San Diego. Although Rosecrans later aided in the formation of the San Diego Gila Southern Pacific and Atlantic Railroad Company, hopes were high, but disappointments, impassable roads, squabbling, and legalities collapsed the effort to bring travelers and settlers to where “dreams of greatness were being born of visionary railroads.”9
Here again was the chimera of prosperity and promise, this time in the guise of the imagined whistle of a great locomotive, clacking and rumbling along. Rosecrans, with his dreamed-of railroads, and Winder, with his mines flourishing in his mind, arrived in San Diego. “The whole population got together, raised the flag under which he so gallantly and bravely fought through one of the most gigantic rebellions that the world ever saw, fired one hundred guns . . . [and] gave him [Rosecrans] the freedom of the city.” The next day “he took his departure for the Delphina copper mine, in Lower California. The owner of the above named mine, Capt. W A Winder, Third U.S. Artillery, accompanied him. . . . I trust that the many and varied resources of this part of California will be speedily brought into notoriety.”10
On April 27, 1866, the San Diego correspondent for the San Francisco Daily Bulletin wrote, “A party of eight men or more have gone down the country as far as the Serlado [Salada] mine—say 180 miles—to put the whole road in good order for hauling ore. Capt. Winder and Gen. Rosecrans are the prime movers in the affair.”11
As a prime mover in this venture and still planning for Abby and Willie to come west to be with him, there was this announcement from the Salt Lake Daily Telegraph’s “San Diego Matters” column: “Some new dwellings are to be built here this summer by Capt. W. A. Winder, U.S.A. and Mr. Storer. Their families are coming from the East to occupy them as soon as completed.” Also mentioned is General Rosecrans, “who will probably soon become a permanent resident of this place [San Diego].”12
With high hopes and good reason to harbor them, William A. wrote to Rosecrans.
“After careful examination of the Delfina Mine [Winder’s spelling] made in company with yourself, [I believe] that the Delfina Copper Co., have it in their power to become one of the leading mining companies in the world.” Winder suggested they take possession of other mines with promising lodes, such as “the Candelaria and the Capitano,” and that the Delfina Company get “possession of, and working these mines for the sum of about ten thousand dollars, the Company will control one of the richest mining districts in the country.” But he needs more time—a longer army leave—to make this plan work.13
Another of Winder’s business partners, the wealthy New York merchant Anthony Gilkison, wrote to Secretary Stanton on Winder’s behalf. “Capt. W. A. Winder now in California, is associated with myself and other gentlemen in New York in a mining property, and I respectfully request an extension of Capt. Winder’s furlough till January 1, 1867 to enable him to complete our business,” Gilkison wrote, offering to send Winder a telegram “so as to enable him to return by steamer.”14
Perhaps Gilkison did wield some influence, for William A.’s leave was extended until October 1, as indicated by a telegram sent at the “order of the Secretary of War.”15
*
But October 1 would be it. Thereafter William A. would have to be reposted. He remained in California for the time being. The local press paid close attention.
The San Diego correspondent for the San Francisco Daily Bulletin wrote,
The Pacific brought down a large lot of freight for the mines in La Baja, and Capt. Winder, with some of the gentlemen who are interested with him in the mines at San Antonio and the Del Fino Mine [Delphina], which is near San Vicente [it was actually at Salada], has gone below by land. They intend to ship a large lot of ore and expect to make a great sensation. The roads have been extensively worked by Capt. Winder’s company, so that between San Diego and San Vicente Mission, a distance of about 180 miles, there is a good wagon road.16
A San Diego reporter also writing for the San Francisco Daily Bulletin noted, “Capt. Winder has returned from below the line and goes up on the steamer to charter a vessel to take a cargo of ore from his mines near San Antonio and San Vicente. He intends to ship 500 tons.”17
William A. could ill afford to stop his headlong dash to riches. He made a fateful decision.
San Francisco, Cal
September 10th 1866
To the Adjt Gen U.S. Army
Washington D.C.
General,
I have the honor to tender my resignation as a Captain in the 3rd Regiment of U.S. Artillery, to take effect on the 30th day of September 1866, and if accepted, I respectfully request the answer may be telegraphed to me at this place, care of R. H. Linton.
I am Sir,
Very Respectfully
Yr obedient svt
Wm A. Winder
Capt 3rd Arty18
An inexorable process was set in motion. Not only was Winder’s resignation letter received, it was submitted to and “approved by command of General Grant . . . and Secretary Stanton.” There would be no Winders left in the service of any army.19
*
Less than one month later William A. sent a telegram from San Francisco to Brig. Gen. Edward Davis Townsend, the assistant adjutant general of the army.
At 1:30 p.m. his telegram of October 5, 1866, was received at the War Department.
To Gen E. D. Townsend, AG
I request permission to withdraw my resignation.
Wm. A. Winder
Capt 3rd Artillery20
If his resignation was successfully canceled, William A. would reclaim his captain’s salary of $115.00 per month. Of course he would have been aware of army regulations in the matter of his resignation, regulations stipulating that as soon as an officer resigned, another officer of similar or lower rank would be appointed, but desperation trumped logic. On October 23 in a few short notes the assistant adjutant general, Lt. Col. John Cunningham Kelton, recorded William A.’s resignation as “successful” and forwarded Winder’s telegram to E. D. Townsend. “Inform him,” Townsend ordered.21
Winder was informed that his resignation was in effect, but he was not willing to accept his official resignation nor was he able to pay what he owed to Morse.
Breed and Chase insist that Morse—struggling with his mercantile business and with a great deal of money invested in the mines—must send them the money William A. owes.
San Francisco, Oct 5, 1866
Friend Morse,
Nothing new in regard to Capt Winder’s business.
It seems now very uncertain when any money will be realized from it. All efforts thus far have failed. Capt is as full of promises as ever tho’ I think not quite as sanguine. We have sent these goods which with previous amounts press very heavily on us. So we wish you to exert every effort possible to raise money. Remit to us every dollar you can collect, borrow or get hold of by return of steamer. And then keep collecting.
Very truly yours
Breed & Chase
P.S.
Don’t pay out another dollar for the mines. Send all the money you can. B22
*
Without ill intent but in desperation William A. has broken their trust. He has tried and tried again to grasp and hold fast to the riches that are always just out of reach. Imagine him now, with the stench of failure trailing him through the streets of San Francisco, dropping in to reassure Breed and Chase that yes, he can be trusted, or avoiding them altogether, as he can only offer promises of payment. And on one of these nervous rambles it is probable that he has gone to his close friend, a San Francisco U.S. attorney and former judge who is a lusty, robust brawler and loyal to a fault to his friend Winder. Like so many others, Delos Lake believed in William A., stood by him throughout all his trials, went on record to affirm Winder’s loyalty to the Union, and advocated his promotion and transfer out of California while suspicions swirled around him at Alcatraz. Now, with or without Winder’s prodding, Delos Lake wrote to Stanton, “I have known Captain Winder for many years, and was fully cognizant of his official course and conduct during the war. I always regarded him as an excellent officer and a loyal gentleman.” And there it was again—the story so often told of a loyal man, as though this very loyalty could trump all legalities, all regulations. “He is highly esteemed in this State, and especially in San Francisco where he is well known,” Lake writes. “His restoration to the Army will be gratifying to the entire community.”23
Although Delos Lake assured Stanton that the entire community would be gratified, that community surely did not include Breed and Chase. With a good measure of anger, they again demanded money from Morse:
San Francisco, Nov 30, 1866
Friend Morse,
. . . Nothing further from Capt. Winder.
Send all the money you can by return of steamer.
Very truly yours,
Breed & Chase24
William A.’s family situation now bears a question mark. With Abby surely aware of and pained over her husband’s misfortunes, she does not come to him. Willie and Abby remain in Portsmouth. Any communications between husband and wife that might illuminate the decision to remain apart—perhaps about his unsuccessful attempt to return to army service or his fears that he will not be able to support them, given the unprofitable mining ventures—are no longer extant. The houses William A. and Storer planned were never built. Separated from his wife by a great distance, William A.’s marriage fractured. The year ends. He must try harder in the next.
*
As the new year of 1867 begins, poverty overshadows William A., like a circling raptor he cannot shoot or banish or pray away. From San Francisco on January 15, 1867, he writes to Pres. Andrew Johnson, telling him he had been “appointed a 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd Artillery in 1848 for services rendered during the war with Mexico and continued in the service until the 18th of last October when my resignation was accepted.”25
William A. perhaps wrote to President Johnson because he knew the president couldn’t abide Secretary of War Stanton. President Johnson wanted to fire him but was met with fierce resistance from the more radical abolitionists, who wanted to see the former Confederacy punished further.
It was well known that Johnson wanted to go easy on the former rebels. Perhaps William A. believed that the Winder name would not fill the president with disgust. William A. boldly continued: “My resignation was tendered while under the impression that the Hon Sec of War was unfriendly toward me. I now respectfully request that my record may be examined by yourself, and if found to be satisfactory I may be permitted to recall it and be restored to my former place. Very Respectfully, Yr. Obdt. Sevt, Wm. A. Winder.”
President Johnson was warring with Stanton and the Radical Republicans who wanted no easy reconciliation with the former Confederacy, no easing of the occupation of southern cities, and notably, new rights and protections for former slaves. So if Stanton wouldn’t ease the way for William A., maybe Johnson would. But because this request is Stanton’s to grant, he must ask his permission.
The president’s short notation on the letter is this: “Respectfully referred to the Honorable, the Secretary of War [sic], who will grant the petition if it can consistently be done. Andrew Johnson, President.” But on the same document, Assistant Adjutant General Kelton added a “report,” or a retort, that is, a tutorial on army rules to a president who clearly didn’t understand this ironclad system. “The resignation of Capt. W. A. Winder 3rd Arty was successful,” Kelton wrote, and it “took effect October 10, 1866. The vacancy has been filled by the promotion of the senior 1st Lieutenant of the regiment. Very Respectfully, J. C. Kelton.”26
The door was closed, or so it seemed. But no one could or would anticipate the persistence of William A., the former captain–abruptly-turned civilian. Since 1846, when he was a civilian paymaster in the U.S.-Mexico War, and when he eventually donned a uniform and got his first rank, the army life was his life, however unwanted, however turbulent it was. Early on William A. had bowed to the will of his father and done what was expected of him. His father’s final communication to him had ordered him to commit suicide rather than remain with the Union. William A. had turned away from his father and, however haunted, was his own man now. But hardship accompanied his independence. He faced setbacks in his family life, his military career, and his business. Something had to change.
*
He was on the move with Rosecrans by his side, far from San Francisco, far from Kelton’s stinging rejection that he cannot get back into the army, far from the urgent dunning by Breed & Chase.
“When you see him [Winder] urge the necessity of getting some money,” they plead. “We feel the want of it every day and all the time. It is a severe strain on us.”27
They are unrelenting. If Winder could have paid, he would have. Morse couldn’t not help either.
. . . Nothing yet from Capt Winder . . . And now the old story. Send us all the money you can by return steamer, as we are in pressing need of it.
Breed & Chase28
Chasing copper and trains, William A. and Rosecrans go to Fort Yuma, then on to San Bernardino, California, a rough two-hundred-mile ride on the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach. During the war, San Bernardino was roiling with secret and not-so-secret rebel sympathizing bands formed to agitate and fight for the Confederacy if need be. By 1867 “the white males in the San Bernardino Valley formed a militia to eliminate the Indians from the mountains.” Hundreds of members of the Serrano tribe were killed over a thirty-two-day period, “driven from their ancient homeland.”29 Into a city of strangers came William A., a man who abhorred the massacres and mayhem and ill treatment of Indians from the time he first served in Florida as a very young man.
Rosecrans and William A. are honored guests of a city that condoned genocide. So what might the Yankee general and the man not any longer entitled to wear his captain’s epaulets do for the San Bernardians?
According to a news item, at “about 11 p.m. on May 13, the San Bernardino brass band serenaded the General at Pine’s Hotel, where he was staying. In response, he made a short speech, endorsing the beautiful local valley and predicting the time when a railroad would come through and augment the local population and turn the area from waste lands to blossom like a rose.”30
Talk of roses and railroads aside, while in San Bernardino William A. learned that “gold was found in the placers of Lytle Creek” nine miles from the city, “mainly in river terraces which rise 150 feet or more above the valley bottom.”31
*
Here began another desperate quest for William A., and an uncomfortable, odd pairing arising from the lure of gold. William A. has partnered with Asbury Harpending, the former prisoner he had put in solitary confinement at Alcatraz, the leader of the rebel cell that had commandeered the privateer J. M. Chapman in 1863 in an ambitious but aborted piratical scheme to commandeer schooners and seize San Francisco’s gold stores for the Confederacy. In 1865, unscathed and unrepentant, Harpending oozed north and made a fortune in northern California’s “Havilah and the Clear Creek mining district . . . and laid out a townsite.” He wound up with $800,000, and with these riches, Harpending became a mover and shaker in San Francisco, all before he was twenty-five years old.32
As a San Francisco real estate developer, mine owner, and railroad speculator who “employed General W. S. Rosecrans and a corps of engineers and began a railroad survey of his property in Sonoma,” Harpending owned businesses that cartwheeled from west to east.33
With old hatreds temporarily tamped down, in 1867 the “Harpending Co., of New York, started a hydraulic mining operation . . . the first hydraulic mining site in Southern California and San Bernardino’s most productive mine at the time.” The operation used hoses and a nozzle to direct “high pressure water . . . pummeling the hillsides . . . and sifting the debris for gold.” As an agent for Harpending’s company (according to a vague contact signed on June 10, 1867), William A., along with “forty men, mostly Native Americans, raked the hillsides and unintentionally created an ecological disaster as the filthy water spurted through the flumes and flooded the farms below, contaminating the ground water and polluting streams.” But there was a bit of glory if one ignored the ruined ground and horrified farmers, because for a short time hydraulic mining “produced as much as $2,000 a week in gold.” Then torrential rains came and, with them, the end of the venture for William A.34
After the Lytle Creek failure, William A. settled briefly in Los Angeles, a city cradled by mountains and rapidly growing. The city beckoned to visitors, and people stayed, building homes and buying up the old ranchos. It was emerging as a regional metropolis rivaling San Diego. “Business, ‘which used to come to San Diego, goes to the railroad & then to Los Angeles,’” was the smug retort. How could a little burgh accessed by the occasional schooner or steamer with no proper harbor rival Los Angeles?35
The Central Pacific’s “Big Four” financiers—Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Collis P. Huntington, and Mark Hopkins—made it happen. Having sewn up the railroad market in the northern part of the state, they then turned their attention south. Forming the Southern Pacific Railroad, they set their sights on Los Angeles, and its tracks reached that city in 1876, “thus creating a stranglehold on railroading in California.”36
However, while bankers, magnates, and financiers are fighting for primacy in the railroad business, there are still no tracks laid straight to San Diego, in spite of the efforts of Morse’s San Diego & Gila Railroad.
With his debt to Morse still unpaid, William A. writes with his usual optimism about an unnamed contact in Boston who has seen the copper ores from the Delphina Mine. “We must be certain to hold on. . . . I think the mine will yet sell for a good price. . . . I will leave no stone unturned to bring us safely out of our troubles,” he writes in a faint, hasty scrawl. It was always about holding on.37
*
In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, amid a bulging household of motherless children and absent fathers, there was a wedding. After a long romance, Susan Boardman Goodwin married a navy lieutenant, George Dewey, on October 24, 1867. On December 20 of that year Sarah “Sadie” Parker Rice Goodwin Storer died of consumption. Sam Storer had left California and gone to Sitka, Alaska, inspired by Secretary of State Seward’s purchase of Alaska from the Russians. There he hoped to make a political future and permanent home for his family. After Sadie’s death, Sam Storer returned to San Diego, leaving the Goodwins to raise his six-year-old daughter, Mabel. Abby Winder was thus critical to her Portsmouth family, for she was chief caregiver not only to her son Willie but also to the other young children living in her father’s house. Resuming her life with William A. seemed impossible.
*
In 1868, floundering and alone, William A. must make his way. He could not bring himself to go back east, however. Perhaps pride stopped him. Or was it something else? He may have felt unable to face Abby in defeat or to face Ichabod, whose faith in him was no doubt shaken, whose constant correspondence to help him seemed not to matter to government authorities. Perhaps he was simply too broken and haunted ever to return to the East? Had he done so, he might well have been sucked into a defense of his late father and his half brother that his Uncle William H. was busy arranging.
With his nephew Sidney still hiding in Canada, William H. proposed to Ulysses S. Grant that, if his nephew returned to the United States, it would have to be with the guarantee that he would not be harassed by military authorities. William H.’s long, rambling letter to the president was followed by yet another fervent defense of John H. Winder as being incapable of “inflicting wanton suffering on anyone.” Grant forwarded William H.’s communication to Secretary of State William H. Seward, who did nothing about it.38
Despite his uncle’s pleas, Sidney Winder remained in Canada until Pres. Andrew Johnson’s blanket pardon on Christmas Day of 1868 “to all and to every person who, directly or indirectly, participated in the late insurrection or rebellion.” Such persons would receive “a full pardon and amnesty for the offense of treason against the United States or of adhering to their enemies during the late civil war, with restoration of all rights, privileges, and immunities under the Constitution and the laws which have been made in pursuance thereof.”39
*
William A. remained in Los Angeles. He formed a new partnership with yet another prominent figure, Col. Charles H. Larrabee, a Union veteran, lawyer, and politician from Wisconsin. Bad health had driven him to move west to California. Good land prospects helped as well. The Daily Alta California reported the particulars after the partners had been advertising for a few months: “Col. Larrabee and Captain Winder have established an agency at Los Angeles, for the purchase and sale of lands in the southern part of the state. Colonel Larrabee has served his country actively in the field in the late war and Captain Winder is most favorably known to our citizens for his faithful services.”40
Their mission was to woo settlers south to San Diego, where land was plentiful, especially since a new community, known as New Town, had sprung from the dirt. Its founder, Alonzo Erastus Horton, a self-proclaimed “Black Republican” and antislavery defender whose religion was “Republicanism,” was a determined visionary originally from Connecticut.41
Self-made, of varied and various occupations in colder climes such as the shores of Lake Ontario in New York State and the area of Lake Winnebago, in Wisconsin, Horton was a “basket maker . . . lumberjack and grocer . . . cooper [and] . . . a saw mill owner” who had eschewed “land rich in water and woods, but locked up in snow in winter.” Now at the age of fifty-three, he’d come to San Diego on April 15, 1867, bedeviled with bad eyesight. When younger, he had been “warned that he had developed consumption and was advised to go West.” Arriving in California, at La Playa, he saw the ruins of the original concept of a new town, “walked through a bush covered area,” climbed a hill, and had a vision of a place where he “could look back on the long, curving bay, one of the world’s finest harbors,” idling and ready for a boom. Ephraim Morse agreed that this new city “must be situated in the same area where so many had failed.”42
Horton asked the county clerk, George Pendleton, to see about “electing a board of trustees who could sell pueblo lands.” Once arrangements had been made for such sales, “Horton purchased 960 acres for $265.”43
William A. found his real estate business faltering in the face of Horton’s monopolizing New Town enterprise. With not enough land buys to bring success to Winder and Larrabee’s firm, his partner Larrabee moved on. Winder turned again to the mines. But a blurb in the San Francisco Daily Bulletin of April 14, 1869, stated that at Rosecrans and Winder’s Delphina mine “there was not much copper to be had,” just “a little copper stain in the rocks.” The business of mining was no longer viable for Winder. He must move on.44
*
William A. decided to settle in Old Town. He had a plan. To ease the way with Morse and try to make him understand he could not pay him (though Morse too is crushed by debt), he wrote to Morse, saying, “I am going to tell you something which you will under no circumstances mention to a living soul for the present.” He continued, “The whole delegation from this coast are pledged to get the Southern Atlantic and Pacific road through this winter . . . it is to run from here [Los Angeles] to San Diego. I am to have a good deal of say on the matter.”45
Despite Winder’s admonition to Morse not to tell a living soul about the railroad delegation and his bona fide promise that he would have a good deal of say on the matter, perhaps William A. was unaware that his secret was hardly that. The year before, many “living souls” would no doubt have been heartened and hopeful at the news of a “railroad meeting of the stockholders of the San Diego and Gila Southern Pacific and Atlantic Railroad Company,” with Morse submitting the names of “thirteen stockholders for election as directors of said company.”46 This item appeared on October 10, 1868, in the very first edition of the San Diego Union newspaper. From 1860 to 1868 residents throughout San Diego had had to rely on the steamers or the overland mail to bring them newspapers, as there was no telegraph line to San Diego. It would be old news, yet new to the residents living in near isolation.
The San Diego Union was the creation of William Jeff Gatewood, a recent arrival in Old Town from Calaveras County, where he’d helmed the San Andreas Register. Urged by his brother-in-law Philip Crosthwaite to come south to be with family and with a desire to “do something for Old Town”—New Town’s rapid growth was drawing Old Towners to Horton’s bold enterprise—Gatewood found “quarters [on the Plaza] in a frame building belonging to Jose Altamirano. With an old Washington hand press and a very good assortment of type,” he was in business.47
The “Editor and Proprietor” of the new San Diego Union, the first newspaper in San Diego since before the Civil War, was welcomed. Imagine the excitement that greeted the four-page Saturday weekly, costing “twelve and a half cents a copy, fifty cents a month, three dollars for six months, or five dollars a year.” It was a banner event, led by an editor of conscience whose mission statement to his readers promised that his editorials would always remain neutral. “Neither political tirades, nor personal abuse will find place in the columns of the Union,” he wrote. He also assured readers that his “influence shall be used in urging the people to lay aside the animosities engendered within the last few years.”48
The Union carried a mix of information on local events, such as an announcement that there was a “meeting of the stockholders of the San Diego and Southern Pacific and Atlantic Railroad Company.”49 (Morse was a stockholder.) William A.’s demand that he keep the railroad business a secret was outed in this marvel of a newspaper that advertised wares and services from San Francisco but especially those available at Old Town. Need an attorney? See William A.’s friend “Benjamin Hayes, Attorney and Counselor at Law” at his “office on the Plaza.” How about “all kinds of jobbing and repairing done on short notice”? See “E. W. Nottage, a Tin and Sheet-Iron and Copper Worker.” A notary, a blacksmith, land agents, notices of births and deaths, a bathetic short tale of a fisherman whose adopted child vanished into the sea and miraculously returned, poetry, and advertisements for cure-all nostrums, such as “Helmbold’s Fluid extract Buchu . . . for the enfeebled, incontinent and delicate,” could all be found in the pages of the first edition of the Union. For those seekers of proper medical help, there were two physicians in Old Town: D. B. Hoffman, “Office and Residence on the Plaza,” and Edward Burr, a graduate of Jefferson College, a “physician and surgeon to the County Hospital.”50
Dr. David B. Hoffman, already a town icon, known for his humanity and interest in mentoring other physicians new to the profession, will play a large part in allowing William A. to realize a lifelong dream that would spring to life in San Diego. With Los Angeles and land sales failed and fading, he came back to the small hamlet of Old Town. He cannot, he will not any longer endure the dips and stutters of a life lived atilt—the suspicions, the failures, the shame of his cursed kin.