New Hope aka Stanislaus City Revisted Part II

In my previous post, I talked about the establishment of New Hope.  http://bwardlehistory.blogspot.com/2012/05/new-hope-aka-stanislaus-city-revisited.html
This post will explore why it was so short lived.  This blog explores why New Hope was so short lived.  Returning to the book written by Earle Williams  I am including most of the quote because it explains this better than I could.
 It was truly a Garden of Eden and the little band of Mormons named it New Hope, and went to work.  They had all come well armed with small arms, rifles, and fishing gear, but one man in a few hours could get the whole settlement enough food to last for a week.  They had come intending to stay and the little schooner that had brought them, the first probably that had ever ascended the San Joaquin river, was loaded with wheat, a wagon and horses, and farm implement to found a colony and put in a crop.
They had brought with them a Pulgas red-wood sawmill which they had obtained at Searsville on the Peninsula, and they soon completed one large log house and two smaller ones on the Western style, sawing the boards from oak logs which they found on the ground.  These boards they used for sheathing, siding, and floor.  They then covered the houses with oak shingles split from the same oak logs.
When the houses were completed they plowed the ground and sowed eight acres of wheat.  They then fenced it in to keep out wild horses, bears and other animals.  They made the fence by cutting up the fallen oak trees, rolling the butts and large pieces into a line and covering them with the limbs.  Like the houses, this was after the Western style; a practice that they borrowed from the native Californians. 
Although the Indians were numerous along the river, there being several tribes of them, the Mormons were never troubled in their colony.  They were always alert, however, and kept a guard around the houses nightly.
The settlement was made and the crops were sowed and enclosed by the middle of January, 1847, and the Mormons rested from their labors, secure in their houses of oaken logs.  But with more than twenty active men, cooped up in the houses in the middle of winter with nothing to do, dissension was bound to arise.  They had become increasingly dissatisfied with their leader, a man named Stout, who, after the sowing of the wheat was done and the land fenced in, made them a speech, substantially as follows, according to Colonel F.T. Gilbert in his History of San Joaquin County, published in 1879:
‘Now boys, we have put in our drop and have fenced it in.  No go to work, each of you, and select a good farm of 160 acres, and fence it in, and we will all go to work to build houses, one at a time, so by the time of harvest you will all have your houses and farms.  But I selected this place; this house and this farm are mine.”
The hostile feeling that had been growing was culminated, and Samuel Brannan was sent for to hear their grievances.  He came and held a church meeting in the larger of the three houses at which a resolution was adopted with great unanimity, dedicating the houses and the farm with its enclosing fence to the Twelve Apostles.  Stout left and never returned; but…Well, it could have been that the Twelve Apostles didn’t want the house and farm.
In locating the settlement there Stout and Samuel Brannan had failed to take into account the rivers.  A mile to the south was the mouth of the Stanislaus, where it flowed in the San Joaquin.  The two rivers then flowed down north into Sturgeon Bend near the Mormon settlement, where the San Joaquin reversed direction and, lopping around completely to the west, follow up another channel for nearly a mile, clear to the San Joaquin-Stanislaus County line, reversed again to the west and flowed down north again... .
To visualize the strange meandering of the river completely it is necessary to fly over it in a small place, as the writer did the other day, or follow the river’s course on a map of San Joaquin County .  From the air and on the map it looks just as if the river changed its mind at Sturgeon Bend and decided to flow, for a while, in the other direction.
To the east of the Mormon settlement was Laird Slough, trending northward from a point well above Grayson past the settlement and back into the San Joaquin well below San Joaquin City.  At times of flooding at the mouths of the Stanislaus and Tuolumne this slough had relieved the pressure by allowing surplus flood water to by-pass Sturgeon Bend and the main San Joaquin channel, but river sand had blocked its entrance near Grayson.
A little above the settlement the Stanislaus river turned sharply to the south as if to meet the San Joaquin at a sharp angle.  At the point where the Stanislaus burned a narrow channel trended directly across to the outer perimeter of Sturgeon Bend, by-passing the mouth of the Stanislaus at flood tide.
The by-pass was short, steep, and direct.  So violent were the overflow waters coming through it that they had at times past created a giant whirlpool at Sturgeon Bend, gouging out a great river hole in the soft sands there, where the San Joaquin reverses itself to the south. 
When Samuel Brannan selected the sylvan river terrace for settlement of New Hope the rivers must have been low and the great river hole at Sturgeon Bend quiescent and at rest, it great depths teeming with fish of every description, from great sturgeon weighing in excess of 600 pounds to the lowly cars and catfish; ...just as the writer has seen it more than fifty years ago.
Certainly Sam Brannan or any of his little bard of Mormons did not realize that a great rainstorm coming down out of the north over the western slope of the snowy Sierras would cause the Stanislaus to rise quickly to flood proportions.  Continuing south the storm would cause in succession, raging torrents to rise and flow down the steep mountain channels of the Tulumne, the Merced, the Kings, and the Kern, all of these rivers joining the San Joaquin in the low, flat valley.  And finally, if the storm should progress that far south, there were the headwaters of the San Joaquin river, bringing with the melted snows from the great mountains to the east of the southern San Joaquin Valley.
Sturgeon  Bend on the San Joaquin river was only a mile east of the future site of San Joaquin City, and very close to the beautiful river terrace where the colony of Mormons had made their settlement in the fall of 1846.  It was a place where all the rivers met, and in the spring of 1847 they met with a vengeance, river crowding on river and meeting a high tide until the outlet of the Stanislaus river was blocked.
The Stanislaus backed up and spilled its waters down the steep, narrow overflow channel that sped them at  great speed and pressure into the outer periphery of the reverse curve of Sturgeon Bend, creating a giant whirlpool of water that tossed its sands high on the banks around its outside circumference, building its own walls to contain itself.  But the inevitable happened, the pressure becoming so great that the water finally broke over its self-made rim as if from a giant whirling goldpan...
It was the spillage and the break from the counter-clockwise rotation of the waters of Sturgeon Ben that flooded the river terrace where Sam Brannan’s Mormons had built their houses, seeded their wheat, and enclosed it all with the California fence in the spring of 1847.
It must have been a time of terror and privation for them, but they did escape with their lives.
After that the group was disheartened and afraid of the power of the river, and they disbanded.  By the summer of 1847 only one man remained and he was gone by November.
So in this essay we are given two reasons for the failure of New Hope, the internal grumbling of the party, but also the flood of 1847.  I want to explore a third reason, the direction of the Lord through his prophet, in another blog.
http://bwardlehistory.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-hope-flooded-out.html

New Hope aka Stanislaus City Landing

In the Fall of 1846, 20 Mormon pioneers, who had come to the Bay Area, after taking the Ship Brooklyn around South America, to The Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and back to San Francisco, made an effort to establish a colony at New Hope, on the banks of the Stanislaus River, just above the confluence with the San Joaquin River.  One of the things that has puzzled me was where exactly did the pioneers of New Hope land in 1846.  There as a plaque at Moss Landing, which indicated it had taken place just beyond there.

I was reading some material, unpublished, loaned to me by Sister Haskins from the Ripon Ward: "Tales of Old San Joaquin City: by Earle E Williams.  It indicated they had landed at Whithall Slough:

The Mormon's New Hope, or Stanislaus City, preceeded them all.  It never lived to really become a city.  New Hope was an agricultural colony of twenty-some-odd Mormon pioneers; established on the north bank of the Stanislaus River in November of 1846.  These Mormons were from the Ship Brooklyn.  They had been outfitted by Samuel Brannan and sent up the San Joaquin river in a little sailing schooner, the ship Comet.  Just upriver from the present Mossdale Bridge, where the tide water gives out, the schooner took the east branch, or what is now called the Whithall Slough, and landed the party of Mormons and their gear on the east bank.

I checked the map, and discovered this is a place I go past two times a day on the Ace train.  If you look at the pictures, the river goes to the right and follows a farm field, while the water strait ahead is the slough.  It actually doesn't go very far.

From here they had a journey of a few miles to where they had decided to start their colony.   Continuing the narrative:  The party then proceeded towards the Southeast for about six miles towards a location on the north bank of the Stanislaus River, about one and a half miles up from the river's mouth, where it empties into the San Joaquin; a location that Sam Brannon previously selected.

There is a plaque just outside Moss Landing State Park that commemorates this event.

Book Review: Route from Liverpool to Salt lake City

This book is available through Google Books as a free ebook.  It was published by the Church in England in 1855 and included the story of a trip made by Frederick Hawkins Piercy.  It includes illustrations he made of the journey.

http://books.google.com/books?id=k4VDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA10&dq=liverpool+to+salt+lake+city&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PtikT6v4KOGaiAKIheXXAg&ved=0CFoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=liverpool%20to%20salt%20lake%20city&f=false

This book is important historically for several reasons.  It is organized in such a way as to include the history of the journey; but in the footnote section includes an 1855 historical version of the places passed and the people met.  This includes church history, death of the prophet and biography of Brigham Young. But this also included the history of the cities and states he traveled, and other points of interest.  Piercy did not travel the traditional route.  He traveled to Nauvoo and Carthage and we have his sketch of the ruins of the temple, and a couple of Carthage.  He also sketched the mother of the prophet and a couple of his sons.

Revisiting Drawbridge: Video

This is a video of the Ace Train gong through Drawbridge, The Bay Areas only ghost town.  It includes my narration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya37AR4yQ8A&context=C405084aADvjVQa1PpcFOJqn7mLHjPf079dQipD9fHUE_53zDPdpE=

Historical Documentary Movie Summary

Most of these movies have an historical flavor.

***** 2016 Obama's America
***** The Battle for Midway: National Geographic
****^ Treasures in Heaven: The John Tanner Story
****^ Lincoln
**** Faith in Every Footstep  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1zDMnx56SM  Mormon Pioneers
**** The Disappeared  (documentary)  Argentina and the Disappeared
**** The Ghosts of Machu Pichu; Nova
**** A Story of Strength (History of Church in England)
**** Taylor Swift: Journey to Fearless
**** 9/11 2002
**** Paper Clips (about the Holocaust)
**** Extreme Christmas Trees,
**** The Flight that Fought Back
**** Pearl Harbor:Legacy of Attack: National Geographic
***^ Stonewall Jackson: Biography
***^ Overview of Church History
***^ A New World: Book of Mormon Documentary(You Tube)
***^ Overview of Church History
***^ John Baker's Last Race (BYU)
***^ Secrets of the Viking Sword
***^ The Emmett Smith Story (BYU)
***^ Bee Gees; In Our Time
***^ Pistol Pete Maravich: The LSU Years
***^ The American Experience: The Donner Party
***^ Abraham Lincoln's Assassination
***^ Gimme Shelter (documentary) (musical)  The Rolling Stones and concert at Altamont Pass
***^ The Crossing  George Washington portrayed by Jeff Daniels  (this is dramatized history)
***^ The New World: Nightmare in Jamestown: National Geographic
***^ Fletwood Mac: Rumours
*** Ken Burns: The West: The People,  Empire Upon the Trails,  Speck of the Future,  Death Runs Riot,
*** Road to Zion: British Isles
*** Simon and Garfunkel: The Harmony Game
**^ Simon and Garfunkel: Songs of America
**^ Brothers: On Holy Ground  (9-11 movie)
* The 11th of September: Moyers in Conversation (documentary)
* September 11 (documentary)  9/11 from an Islamic view point
* When the Bough Breaks (documentary)  About African American low-birth weight

Book Review: ****Growing Up in Zion

Growing Up in Zion: True Stories of Young Pioneers Building the Kingdom.  This book was written as part of the sesquicentennial of the pioneers arriving in Salt Lake.  It was edited by Susan Arrington Madsen and published by Deseret Book in 1996.  I found it at the Book Exchange on Main Street in Manteca.
I read through it quickly, thinking I will go through it again when I want to use it as a research resource.  It presents people's stories, with the requirement that the be under 19, either from their own histories or journals.  This it does with longer essays, but also short quotes.  It generally covers the area included in the Territory of Deseret.  It has photographs from the era in question, and also has stories from children which were sent into the "Juvenile Instructor."  It covers the period from the Saints arrival in Salt Lake, until the early 1900s.  It has tales of hardship, hunger, dealing with a death, colonization, miracles, spiritual manifestations and daily life.  It has eye witness accounts of the building and dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, The miracles of the Sea Gulls and the devastation of the crickets and grasshoppers, eating roots, thistles and sego lilies.   It talks of the early homes, built with mud roofs which would leak whenever it rained.  It talks of the early relations with the Native American population.
I think I most enjoyed the stories of the Native Americans.  It seemed people were almost always scared of them, but mostly they were just looking for handouts.  In a few incidents they became church members.  And more often they were friends of the Saints.  There was on story when a couple of young men took the cattle to the Uintah Basin to feed because of drought conditions on the Wasatch Front.  The were in the Duchesne area and surrounded by Indians.  The Utes asked,  "Are you whites or are you Mormons."  It gave the impression that had they not been Mormons the Indians would have killed them. 
This book was a quick read and entertaining.  It gives a very good flavor for conditions in the earlier periods of our country.

A History of Argentina's Dirty War

Los Desaparecidos

http://bwardlehistory.blogspot.com/2013/11/movie-review-disappeared.html
I recently watched a movie about Argentina's Dirty War "The Disappeared" about Argentina's Dirty War Los Desaparecidos and the babies of Los Desaparecidos who were adopted by families affiliated with the military government.  This movie is available through Netflix DVD and I watched it in Spanish with English subtitles. It is directed by Peter Sanders.  It is estimated up to 30,000 people disappeared and as many as 400 babies were taken and adopted by others.  Of these babies, 77 have been discovered. 
The dirty war actually started before the military government took over in March of 1976 as the result of a military coup.  Isabel Peron was president before this.  There had been a period of significant terrorist activity in the country.  Some consider the dirty to have started as early as 1956.  In 1956, Peronists attempted a coup against the government, under President Aramburu.  The coup failed, but as a result General Juan Jose Valle was executed.  Many consider him the first "Disappeared."  Vigilantes and Terrorists, in the name of communist insurrection and also in the name of radical Peronists called Montoneros, created an atmosphere were terrorist attacks were quite common. In 1970 the Montoneros kidnapped the ex president Aramburu, and then murdered him.  The government carried out a war with Peronist extremists called the Montoneros and the communist terrorists.  When the military government took over, they became for focused on putting down the insurrection.  However the sweep of the government, in order to get as many insurrectionists as they could, swept into organizations and families from which perhaps extremists had come, but themselves were not involved.  They suspended civil rights, and many were tortured and murdered.  Some were drugged, and then thrown from planes into the river, Rio de la Plata, to drown.  Many were imprisoned at a naval hospital at Campo de Mayo where they were tortured.  Civil rights groups put the number of disappeared as high as 30,000.  Others have the number as low as 10,000.  There were 11,000 cases for which the government later paid retribution.  The communist organizations indicate 5000 of their number were killed, and 5000 Montoneros were also killed.  That leaves up to 20,000 killed who were not directly affiliated with these organizations.  It also depends on when you start counting the disappeared.  Others fled the country in fear, leaving behind their property and homes.  Others were tortured but then returned home (I think these were few.)
The military government ruled from 1976 to 1983.  After losing the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) War the government was vulnerable.  Finally there were elections in 1983 with President Alfonsin elected.  He issued a pardon against those involved in the dirty war, but since other presidents have reversed this policy.  However very few of those involved, torturers and murders, have ever been tried or jailed.