Many well-known historical personalities got their start in, made their mark on, or touched the history of California's Gold Country, some right here in Placerville. Take a look at some of the famous, and infamous:
- Phillip Danforth Armour (1833-1901) ~ Phillip Armour, of meat-packing fame, started his career in Placerville, supplying the miners with picks and shovels and meat from his butcher shop. He headed back to the east coast, invested in a packing company, and Armour & Company became one of the world's largest pork processors.
"Hot dogs, Armour Hot Dogs. What kind of kids love Armour Hot Dogs? Big kids, little kids, kids who climb on rocks. Fat kids, skinny kids, even kids with chicken pox love hot dogs, Armour Hot Dogs. The dogs kids love to bite!" - Black Bart ~ In 1877, the Wells Fargo stage was robbed by a lone highwayman wearing a long linen duster and a flour sack over his head. He had a strong firm voice and piercing blue eyes that could be seen through the holes in the sack. From 1875 to 1883, he performed at least 28 robberies. He never rode a horse during his highway robberies; he just walked out of nowhere in some secluded ravine, carrying an unloaded double-barreled shotgun for show. He never hurt anyone and was always polite while committing his crimes, never raising his voice, asking calmly, "Will you please throw down your treasure box, Sir?" One time, when a lady offered him her valuables, he told her that he didn't want her money, he wanted Wells Fargo's money. After retrieving the strong box from the driver, he would use a small hatchet to open it. He acquired a reputation as a poet, or "versifying", as he called it later, because of the poems left at two early robbery scenes, like this gem:
Here I lay me down to sleepTo wait the coming morrow.Perhaps success, perhaps defeat And everlasting sorrow.
I've labored hard and long for bread,For honor and for riches,But on my corns too long you've tred [We had to bleep out this line].
Let come what will, I'll try it on,My condition can't be worse.And if there's money in that box,'Tis munny in my purse.
~ Black Bart, Po-8
The beginning of the end for Bart was November 3, 1883: He waited for the Tuttletown stage, which carried $550 in gold coin and over 200 ounces of amalgam. A young boy who had hitched a ride to go hunting was the only passenger, and he left the stagecoach just before Bart showed up. The box was secured to the floor of the coach and the driver complained that his brake wouldn't work right. To buy time to release the strong box, Bart told the driver to unhitch the team and take them down the road. When Bart finally got the loot out of the box, the driver opened fire on him with the boy's rifle. On his hasty departure, Bart left a few things behind, including a handkerchief with the laundry mark F.X.O.7. Special Detective Harry N. Morse was hired to trace the hanky. He checked at one hundred laundries, and within a week, it had been traced to a San Francisco laundry ~ and then to Black Bart at 316 Bush Street, Apartment 40, San Francisco.
He was 50 years old and dapper in appearance. Seems he was born in Illinois as Charles E. Boles (or Bowles), although he used the name Charles E. Bolton and signed in to City Prison as T.Z. Spaulding. He was intelligent, well-educated, and a veteran of the Civil War who had tried his hand at gold mining without success. So he decided to turn to highwaymanship. As a clerk at several stage offices, he studied the shipments and schedules before he tried his hand at stealing gold, and was quite successful at it for a while.
Sheriff Ben Thorn went to San Francisco to bring Bart back to San Andreas, the county seat of his latest crime. His trial took place in the courthouse that still stands there. He served a little more than four years of a six-year sentence at San Quentin, north of his hometown. He vanished completely into the San Joaquin Valley after his release from prison, perhaps with a big sigh of relief (and maybe with a pension?) from Wells, Fargo, & Company.
- Lotta Crabtree ~ At six years of age, Lotta performed her first song and dance on an anvil at Fippin's Blacksmith Shop for the miners at Rough & Ready. Tutored by the famous Lola Montez, she toured the gold fields for years, delighting homesick miners wherever she performed. She eventually went on to San Francisco and New York, where she died quite wealthy and happy at age 77 in 1924.
- Jerry Crane ~ Dr. Crane has the dubious distinction of being the first to be hanged in Coloma, immediately before Mickey Free was hanged in the town's celebrated double hanging. Crane murdered one of his students named Susan because, as he claimed, he "loved" her (actually, she had unwisely rejected his marriage proposal), although a little investigating revealed that he had a wife and family back East. He was arrested at his home in Ringgold for the murder, and there was a lynching attempt. However, the Sheriff got him out of town and into the Coloma jail. On the day of the double execution, Coloma hired a brass band from Placerville and made quite a celebration of the event. On the gallows, Crane sang some verses he had composed to a popular tune of the day, and just before the trap fell, he said, "Here I ome, Susan!"
- Elanor Dumont ~ She captured the town's heart when she stepped off the coach in Nevada City in 1854. Because of her great personal charm, the town tolerated her opening a gambling parlor. She became "the Blackjack Queen of the Northern Mines" and made a fortune dealing cards to the miners. She got the nickname "Madame Moustache" because of a downy growth on her upper lip. At 38, she married a small-time promoter, who promptly spent all her money and deserted her. Her life went downhill from there, and she died an ignoble death on September 9, 1879 ~ suicide in disreputable Bodie.
- Mickey Free ~ Mickey Free was Hangee No. 2 in Coloma's celebrated double hanging. He was involved in a cutthroat gang that specialized in raiding and robbing Chinese camps and murdering lonely miners. He was responsible for the murder of a roadhouse keeper. Later, he wrote a confession, "Life of Mickey Free", which was published by the local Empire County Argus paper. At his execution in Coloma immediately following that of Jerry Crane, he cocked his hat over one eye, tossed peanuts into his mouth, and at one point danced a jig, perhaps to the beat of the brass band from Placerville that was playing. However, when his turn on the gallows came, he tried to sing, but broke down completely. Free's grave can still be found at the edge of the Coloma cemetery.
- Lyman Gilmore (1874-1951) ~ A thinker and inventor who lived in Colfax, Lyman Gilmore designed heavier-than-air machines before the Wright Brothers, who flew their airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. Gilmore built a 10-foot sailplane and experimented with gliders pulled by horses. His first plane was a glider with an eighteen foot wingspan. In 1902, months before the Wright Brothers historic flight, it is said that Lyman flew a 32-foot glider with his newly-patented steam engine and flash boiler, but there were few witnesses to his flight. In 1907, he built the first air field in the United States, located at Highway 20 and Squirrel Creek Road near Grass Valley. Gilmore wasn't of the Gold Rush era per se, but his story from the Gold Country is interesting nonetheless.
- Horace Greeley (1811-1872) ~ Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, uttered his famous advice,"Go west, young man!" He took his own advice and campaigned for the presidency across the United States. During his cross-country trek, he was dumped three times by the stage coaches that carried him, once landing in a river. Then, when he reached Genoa on the east side of the Sierras, Mr. Greeley made the near-fatal mistake of telling his new driver, Hank "Quick Whip" Monk, that he was in a hurry to get to Placerville because of a speaking engagement. Hank thus "having his orders" took Horace on a trans-Sierra ride that would go down in history, thanks to Mark Twain and his book Roughing It. En route, when Mr. Greeley's head reportedly began hitting the top of the passenger compartment, he told Hank to slow down, which Hank swears he misinterpreted as a plea to go faster. They landed in Placerville (some say with Horace's head protruding through the coach's roof) in a timely manner. A welcoming committee had gone out to the east of town to bring the presidential candidate into town with dignity and honor. One story states that Hank wouldn't stop, saying, "I've got my orders!" and that his Concord coach roared right into town. Another story says Hank stopped at Sportsman's Hall and Horace got into the waiting coach. In any event, Mr. Greeley was safely delivered to Placerville, and after a brief recuperation from the turbulent flight, he spoke to the townspeople from the second-story balcony of the Cary House on Main Street.
- Francis Bret Harte (1836-1902) ~ At 18, Bret Harte went to San Francisco, then tried his hand at goldmining in the Mother Lode, and ended up back in San Francisco. Although he disliked the miner's life, he wrote stories that accurately portrayed it. Starting with M'liss in 1860, his tales about the frontier and the mines were best-sellers.
- Mark Hopkins (1814-1878) ~ This railroad magnate, one of the Big Four builders of the Central Pacific Railroad, got his start selling vegetables in Placerville.
- James Hume ~ Hume was Chief of Detectives for Wells, Fargo & Co., Placerville's Town Marshal, and the El Dorado County Sheriff.
- Collis Huntington ~ In 1850, Mr. Huntington operated a store in Placerville. He later went on to become one of the Big Four builders of the Central Pacific Railroad.
- Edwin Markham ~ The author and poet, Charles Edwin Markham, lived and taught school in Coloma before attaining world-wide fame with his immortal poem, "The Man with the Hoe." He was also a resident of Placerville and is buried in the City Cemetery on Rector Street.
- Mark Twain ~ Samuel Clemens came west in 1861, traveling with his brother Orion, who had been appointed governor of the Nevada Territory. Sam had worked as a riverboat pilot, printer, newspaperman, and even a Confederate soldier for a very short period of time. He tried his hand at mining in Nevada and California, but was happy to accept a job as a reporter on the Virginia City Enterprise, where he started using the name Mark Twain.
He loved to travel, ending up in San Francisco, but his irrepressible sense of humor got him banned from the city when he annoyed the police chief. In 1864, he visited friends in Angels Camp, where he was told the story about a frog jumping contest that was lost when someone filled one of the famed croakers full of buckshot. The story became the basis for his book The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Mark Twain became an immediate success when his story was published back East. He left California a year later but took with him impressions that influenced his writing for the rest of his life.
