The John Muir Newsletter, Summer 2002

o NEWSLETTER John Muir\u27s Aunt Mary by Roberta M. McDow ost people acquainted with the life of John Muir are probably aware that his father Daniel and Daniel\u27s sister Mary were orphans. In 1885, John wrote in his obituary for his father: His mother was English, his father Scotch and he was born in Manchester, England in the year 1804. When he was only six months old his mother died and he lost his father also a few months later when an elder sister became a mother to him and brought him up on a farm that belonged to a relative in Lanarkshire, Scotland... While yet more boy than man he suddenly left home to seek his fortune with only a few shillings in his pocket, but with a head full of romantic schemes for the benefit of his sister and all the world besides.1 Although John mentioned Margaret, his maternal aunt, in his autobiography, he didn\u27t write again about his father\u27s sister. His aunt Margaret, he wrote, had a precious lily-bed in the corner of the Muirs\u27 Dunbar garden that the future naturalist loved to visit.2 His father\u27s sister lived in Lanarkshire, too far away to see often. In fact, it is probable that John never saw his aunt Mary while he lived in Scotland. John\u27s first biographer, William Frederic Bade, quoted extensively from Daniel\u27s obituary in The Ancestral Background, the first chapter of his two-volume work.3 He relied on the knowledge and memories of John\u27s family and friends to expand on the details given in the eulogy. By March 1920, a little over five years after John\u27s death, Bade had finished the draft of the first chapter. . . .but I am leaving it open for the discovery of new matter, 4 he wrote to John Hills from whom he hoped to learn more about the naturalist\u27s maternal ancestors. Sarah Galloway, John Muir\u27s sister and David Galloway\u27s widow, was one of Bade\u27s valuable resources. I have looked carefully over the paper you have sent me and find little I could change, she wrote to him in 1922. A change she did suggest concerned Daniel\u27s age at the time of his mother\u27s death. . . .he was nine months old you have it six, 5 she corrected. Another interesting exchange occurred between the biographer and Sarah in May 1923. A careful researcher, Bade consulted her about a scrap of paper he had found in the family documents on which the surname of Daniel and Mary\u27s mother had been written Hague, not Higgs. 6 The maiden name of our father\u27s mother was Sarah Higgs, she replied. In my school girl days I wrote the name Hague because I liked it better, but that is not the name. 7 At the time of this exchange, Sarah was eighty-seven years old. Bade was able to obtain information from a family member who was even older. She was an aged daughter of Mary Muir, Grace Blakeley Brown. 8 Bade does not say how he obtained this data, but it is from her that he learned the Scottish farm to which Daniel and Mary were taken was situated at Crawfordjohn, about thirty-five miles southeast of Glasgow. \u27 A better picture of the Muirs\u27 ancestry was emerging. Bade concluded that the naturalist\u27s name appears to have [been] taken from his paternal grandfather, a Scotchman by the name of John Muir. But beyond that it may be doubted whether a search of Scotch parish records. . .would reveal more than another bare name. 10 The elder John Muir, a soldier, married Sarah Higgs, an English woman. Two children were bom to them, the younger in 1804. Sarah died when the younger was nine months old, Bade wrote, here deviating from the obituary and accepting Sarah Galloway\u27s correction. Three months later, the elder John died and the children went to a farm that belonged to a relative in Lanarkshire, Scotland. Bade mentioned an allegation that the farm was owned by a relative of Sarah\u27s, but he did not agree or disagree with this assertion.12 Although the naturalist was the subject of the biogra- (continued on page 5) U IM EVER S I TFftTif- OR page 1 E=» /V O I R I C 7 News & Notes John Muir\u27s art collection set for Saint Mary\u27s College exhibit by Steve Pauly Beginning August 17, Saint Mary\u27s College in Moraga, will exhibit many of the twenty-two paintings John Muir displayed in the Martinez Ranch House. His collection included twenty William Keith paintings and two Thomas Hill paintings. All but four are mountain landscapes. The collection began with Muir\u27s mother-in-law and father-in- law, Louisiana and John Strentzel, who received a Keith painting from Mrs. Jeanne Carr. Over the years, Muir added paintings of his favorite mountain scenes. Images of Tuolumne Meadows, Mt. Shasta, Yosemite Falls, Vernal Falls, Mt. Rainier and Muir Glacier (Alaska) graced the walls of the mansion along with portraits of Dr. and Mrs. Strentzel, a charcoal sketch of Muir\u27s younger daughter Wanda and a sketch of Santa Barbara Mission. The exhibit runs through February 23, 2003. John Muir and William Keith first met in Yosemite Valley in 1872. An instant and life-long friendship was bom between the two who both were bom in Scotland in 1838. Muir guided Keith to Sierra, Cascade, and Alaska mountains and urged Keith to make true-to-life paintings of the landscape. The Muir collection was first seen by Keith biographer Brother Fidelis Cornelius, F.S.C., during a 1908 visit to Muir\u27s Martinez home. At the time, Cornelius was a novitiate at the Christian Brother\u27s Martinez Seminary and was interested in art. The twenty Keith paintings in the home convinced Brother Cornelius of Keith\u27s genius, and he made Keith the subject of much of his life\u27s work while director of Saint Mary\u27s Art Department. The extensive Keith collections at Saint Mary\u27s Hearst Gallery and at the Oakland Museum are the direct result of Cornelius\u27 persuasion and tenacity. After his death, the art collection was divided among Muir\u27s descendants and now is in the hands of his family and several private collectors. ******** In the Winter 2001/2002 issue (Vol. 12, No. 1), The John Muir Newsletter ran a piece on John Muir\u27s Telephone Number by Harold Wood. According to Charlene Perry of the Martinez Historical Society, it was not Muir but Dr. John Strentzel who installed the telephone in what became the John Muir National Historic Site. In was installed, in fact, much earlier than the listing in the 1897 State Telephone Directory — it was operating in 1884! The Contra Costa Telephone Company in that year reported it owned 54 miles of telephone lines and 34 instruments, after three years of operation. One mile of that line served the railroad, while one and a half miles gave Dr. John Strentzel contact with the downtown from his new home, now the John Muir National Historic Site. (Source: A Look Back 100 Years by Charlene Perry, Martinez Historical Society, Martinez News-Gazette, December 28, 1983). ******** Mountain Days, the John Muir Musical, has just completed a very successful month-long run at the John Muir Amphitheater in Martinez, CA. Preceding the performances, a series of talks was held, many of which were given by old friends who have written for the John Muir Center\u27s publication program. They included Ross Hannah (grandson of John Muir), Ron Good (of Restore Hetch Hetchy), Harold W. Wood (of the Sierra Club), and Muir scholars Barbara Mossberg, Michael Branch, Steve Pauly, and Chris High- ■ land. All readers should plan to attend the play and the programs beforehand next summer. * * * * * * * * There will be a November treat for Muir fans in Northern California! On November 2 at Dominican University in San Rafael, at 7 p.m. an exciting benefit has been planned for the Restore Hetch Hetchy project. Lee Stetson, the well- known actor who depicts John Muir throughout the country will give a performance, as will Alisdair Fraser, a fiddler specializing in Scottish and Gaelic music. His stories and songs will introduce the audience to themes of Scottish culture, so much a part of Muir\u27s world. For information on tickets and directions, call (925) 933-4489. ******** ill NEWSLETTER Volume 12, Number 3 Summer 2002 Published quarterly by The John Muir Center for Environmental Studies University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 ♦ Staff ♦ Editor Sally M. Miller Production Assistants .. . Marilyn Norton, Pearl Piper All photographic reproductions are courtesy of the John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Department of Special Collections, University of the Pacific Libraries. Copyright 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust. This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper. i page 2 John Muir In The Central Valley: An Ecological Perspective by Howard R. Cooley John Muir, California\u27s most famous naturalist, crossed the Central Valley of California each time he traveled between the Bay Area and the Sierra. In one of his earliest published articles, Rambles of a Botanist, (1872),\u27 he describes how most travelers remember the valley as a scorched and dust- clouded waste. But Muir was always eager to speak in its praise, all the more because its plant inhabitants are so fast disappearing beneath gang-plows and trampling hoofs of flocks and herds. This of course has come to pass. The significance of Muir\u27s insight has increased with time as the Valley\u27s remaining native plants and animals are threatened by widespread urban development. Early explorers like Jedediah Smith, John Charles Fremont, John Bidwell, and William Brewer, recorded some scenery and plants, but John Muir is the only known early writer to chronicle the full range of habitats in an undeveloped Central Valley. He later wrote that when California was wild virgin wilderness The Great Central Plain of California. . .was one smooth, continuous bed of bloom. . .marvel- ously rich. . .from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles. 2 When Muir first arrived in California in the spring of 1868, he headed for Yosemite by way of Pacheco Pass in the Coast Range east of Gilroy. From the summit, the uncor- rupted view of the Central Valley, he later said, was like a lake of pure sunshine. . .one rich furred garden of yellow Compositae. 3 And to the east rose the Sierra Nevada mountains, clear and bright as a new outspread map. 4 Many a Muir disciple in recent times has sought that shimmering view only to be confronted by a curtain of smog. ■ •■. After crossing Pacheco Pass and descending the eastern foothills of the Coast Range, Muir passed the San Louis Gonzaga Ranch. This was part of the widespread ranchos of Francisco Pacheco, where San Louis Creek flowed east to the San Joaquin River.5 The old St. Louis Ranch was located near the headwaters.6 Writer Edgar Kahn quotes Andrew Hillsdale (circa 1850) as saying that there were no towns, villages, or settlements between San Jose and the St. Louis Ranch, and no human life between there and the San Joaquin River.7 Today much of the former Rancho is flooded under the San Louis Reservoir to add to southern California\u27s water supply. Ganzaga Road leads to the dam. Continuing across the valley, Muir also described the level plain as an ocean of flowers. 8 In July, he wrote a letter to his friend Jeanne Carr of Madison, Wisconsin, stating, Florida is indeed a land of flowers, but. . Here, here is Florida!9 There is ample evidence to confirm the Central Valley\u27s former floral diversity and abundance. Fremont (March 1844), after traversing the snowy Sierra Nevada Mountains, entered the Central Valley near the confluence of the American River with the Sacramento. The landscape was a vast waving parkland of tall green grass, huge valley oaks up to eight feet in diameter, and gushing streams. The grasslands were mixed with broad patches of yellow mustard, and miles of yellow and white poppies. The Coast Range was clear and blue on the western horizon. Fremont also recorded herds of deer, huge flocks of ducks • and geese, quail, magpies, and meadow larks. A few weeks later Fremont and his troops headed south, evading Mexi- can-Califomio soldiers by staying on the east side of the Central Valley, crossing the Cosumnes, Mokelumne, Calaveras, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced, San Joaquin, Kings, and Kern rivers, all in flood from snowmelt in the Sierra, and as much as three hundred feet across. Wild berries and grapes were found growing along the banks, and dense groves of valley oak and interior live oak were seen among endless fields of poppies. Fremont wrote, A showy Lupinus adorned the banks of the river. . .The hills were purple and orange, with unbroken beds. 10 They also saw vast herds of deer, pronghorn, and tule elk, as well as wild horses and cattle from the Mexican Ranchos, more ducks and geese, bears, wolves and coyotes. In April they moved into the Tehachapi Mountains and over Oak Pass. Pioneer John Bidwell wrote in 1841 that Never did I expect to see the earth so beautifully arrayed in flowers as it is here. But even as early as the time of John Muir\u27s arrival, plows and sheep had caused a noticeable effect on the natural spread of wildflowers. As Muir later reminisced about his 1868 trek across the Central Valley, he wrote down various aspects in several accounts. In his 1894 book, The Mountains of California, he also told of abundant wildlife including small bands of antelopes. . .almost constantly in sight. 12 And in his personal narrative he recalled, Plovers in great numbers and of several species. . .with snipes and geese and swans. 13 Today in California pronghorn antelope are restricted in their range to Modoc Plateau in the northeastern portion of the state\u27s boundaries. Several wildlife and waterfowl areas are found between Pacheco Pass and the San Joaquin River, watered in part by overflow from San Luis Reservoir. The various species of bees Muir noted as a method for writing about the flowers are now endangered from pesticides and other ecological imbalances.14 After his first short visit to Yosemite in April-May 1868, Muir returned to the Central Valley to find work. Hired by Pat Delaney to tend a flock of sheep, he was allowed a shanty for a home. Foremost on his mind was returning to the Sierra Mountains when he earned enough for supplies, but he knew he must also learn how to keep himself fed as there would be no outposts on which to rely. In a now well-known story from the sheep camp, Muir wrote in his journal in December, 1868: I filled the big cylindrical pot with dough and applied hot coals on the hearth, trusting the result might be bread, but. . .innocent of yeast. . .was found to be black and hard. . .and perfectly solid. It became extremely hard in cooling. . .1 began to hope that like Goodyear I had discovered a new article of manufacture. . .1 told my troubles to a neighboring shepherd, and he made me wise about sourdough ferment, and henceforth my bread was good.15 Once the Central Valley was a land of extensive prairies, composed mostly of perennial bunch grasses, now replaced by old-world annuals. The grasslands were dotted page 3 I scrub, and vernal pools spread over the floor of the (fey in all directions. Spring wildflowers bloomed precisely. The native grasslands and floodplains were a sanctuary for a great variety of wildlife. At Twenty Hill Hollow, between Snelling and La Grange, John Muir had a chance to study this environment in detail from November, 1868, to May, 1869. Here, he again saw antelope and waterfowl, as well as coyote, jackrabbit, ground squirrel, golden eagle, blue heron, house finch, and numerous reptiles and insects. He listed these in his journal, and added, . . .countless forms of life thronging about me. 16 In his journal he also listed a variety of fems, wild parsleys and mustards, violets, geraniums, buttercups, primroses, buckwheat, borage, poppies, gilia, plantain, lilies, and several other flowers including yellow starry Composita. . .the glorious sheet-gold. . .like a sea. 17 When the rains came he reveled in discovering wetlands: January 1, 1869. Every groove and hollow, however shallow, has its stream — living water is sounding everywhere. January 4. Dry Creek. . .overflows in the rainy season. . .In the course of a few hours after the close of a rain, it will retire within its banks, leaving many flat, smooth fresh sheets of sand. January 11. . .all the ground is covered by a film of water. . . January 30. The whole face of the plains is brilliantly mirrored with pondlets. . . February 10. . .the plain in soak— one shallow lake.18 The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers in their natural state, before dams and artificial levees, flooded annually, and massively about every five years. Sediments deposited during millennia of flood stages produced a natural levee about ten to twenty feet high and out to a mile from each bank. During winter and spring rains these rivers would overflow their banks, supplying rich silt and nutrients to adjacent floodplains up to 25 miles from either side of the banks of the rivers. Floodwater from several prominent floodplains could not drain back over the levees to the river and would remain throughout the summer, or all year. These freshwater wetlands, occupied by water-adapted plants, attracted huge flocks of migratory waterfowl. In an essay entitled Twenty Hill Hollow, Muir described observing a distant view of the grand Sierra. . .along the plain. . .the white row of summits pointing to the heavens. 19 Muir\u27s observations of the floodplain ecology culminated in January, 1875, from the heights of the Sierra. After exploring the geology and topography of the basin of the Feather River, Muir came to the edge of the main forest belt, where revealed before him was, as he notes in The Mountains of California: . . .a beautiful section of the Sacramento Valley some twenty or thirty miles away, brilliantly sun- lighted and glistening with rain sheets as if paved with silver. . .The blue Coast Range was seen stretching along the sky like a beveled wall, and the somber Marysville Buttes [Sutter Buttes] rose impressively out of the flooded plain like islands out of the sea.20 In September, 1877, Muir was a guest at the ranch of California pioneers General and Mrs. John Bidwell on the Upper Sacramento River near Chico. After he expressed his inclination to explore the river, the general had a worker build a raft in which Muir soon set off. Dense riparian forests of willow and cottonwood lined the river banks. Extending out along the margins of streams- and river bottoms grew great forests of cottonwood, willow, ash, sycamore, alder, and box elder, with a lush understory of elderberry, blackberry, wild rose, wild grape, and native grasses. Almost a century later, by 1960, 99 percent of this riparian forest had been destroyed, and replaced with piles of stone to channel flood waters and to curb erosion once checked by the trees\u27 network of roots. Farther back from the river\u27s edge were widespread valley oak woodlands. Low shrubs and herbaceous plants flourished in the shade beneath the dense canopy. Most of these oak forests have also been cut away to allow fruit and nut orchards. On his rafting trip down the Sacramento, Muir observed, Great numbers of birds. His journal lists herons, geese, ducks, shorebirds, .. .pelicans in large flocks. . ., osprey, bald eagle, beaver; and, Salmon in great numbers. Plants listed include buttonbush (Cephalanthus), wild grape (Vitus californica), and a huge old arching sycamore. 21 Muir took a side trip to the Sutter Buttes: six miles to the base, 1,950 feet to the summit, down again to the base, and six miles back to the river — in seven hours! After a brief visit to the Kings and Kaweah basins, where he quickly climbed a 5000 foot canyon wall, Muir built another skiff and rowed down the lower Merced to the San Joaquin and, . . .thence down the San Joaquin, flowing freely in that pre-dam era, past Stockton and through the rule region into the bay near Martinez. He then climbed Mount Diablo.22 And though he does not explicitly say so, we can assume he enjoyed another wonderful vista of the Central Valley, with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from the north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries sweeping in at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into sections fringed with trees. 23 Later, of course, he would live in Martinez with his wife and daughters, and often gaze upon Mount Diablo\u27s mass of purple in the morning, 24 or its winter dusting of snow. In 1888, Muir began editing Picturesque California, compiling a series of essays by several contributing authors. It included a prophetic article on the Delta by San Francisco journalist, Charles Howard Shinn. The Delta, where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers converge in a lacework of channels, is a vast continuation of the once extensive Central Valley rule marshes. With an area of 625 square miles, the Delta originally had native riparian habitat along its waterways with its marshes populated by millions of migratory waterfowl. In his essay, Shinn predicted that, All that now appeals most to the visitor will have disappeared. . .and no Califor- nian of the present time would recognize it. 25 The transfor- (continued on page 10) page 4 7 ^n Muir\u27s Aunt Mary by Roberta M. McDow (continued from page i) phy, Bade also recorded data about John\u27s aunt Mary. When she became a mother to her orphaned brother, she was not a grown woman. She was about eleven years older than Daniel.13 Since the siblings went to Scotland about nine to twelve months after Daniel\u27s birth, Mary would have been about twelve years old when she assumed the role of mother to Daniel. In the course of time, Bade continued, . . .Mary married a shepherd-farmer. . .by the name of Hamilton Blakley, whereupon her new