RICHARD DYER:  This is Richard Dyer from Columbia Junior College.  We’re at the Black Ranch, east of Sonora and the date is August 15^th, 1973 and I’m sitting on the porch with Agnes Black and Agnes has agreed to talk about the former owners of the Black Ranch.  So Agnes, why don’t we start by talking about James Starksdill and maybe you can give us an idea of where he was born and what he did before coming to this country.

AGNES BLACK:  Well Mr. Dyer, as far as I know he was born in Germany and I know nothing of his family or parents, but I understand he came from Germany to Canada and then to California and of course to Tuolumne County, where he settled on this ranch now known as the Black Ranch.

DYER:  Now do you know about the time he left Germany or about the time he arrived in Tuolumne County?

BLACK:  No, I don’t know when he left Germany or when he arrived, but I know that he had this ranch in 1872. 

DYER:  Is that because it’s recorded somewhere, the date 1872?

BLACK:  Yes, it shows it on our records of 1872. 

DYER:  What record are you…

BLACK:  I’m referring to the abstract and title that has been kept since 1872.

DYER:  Now is that a homestead, uh…

BLACK:  That’s ah, it was a homestead.  He took this up during the Homestead Act.  It was, the Homestead Act was signed into law by Rutherford B. Hayes, who was the president of the United States. 

DYER:  Mm hmm.

BLACK:  And evidently Mr. Starksdill started here and proved up on the place and received his patent in about 1875.  I think he received his full patent as it shows in this abstract.

DYER:  Mm hmm.  But he was here then for a few years before receiving title to the land.

BLACK:  That’s right.  As far as I understand from the old timers, he was here at least eight… five to eight years before he proved up on the place.  So he built part of this house in order to live here and, and start farming.  And as I understand it he had horses and cattle and raised quite a lot of hay and put in a large orchard.  The orchard must have been at least eight acres of orchard.  He had riparian water right that served his irrigation purposes.

DYER:  Now for the benefit of those who are listening, what do you mean by “riparian water right?”

BLACK:  A riparian water right, as I understand it, was a right taken out by the miners many years ago before this place was even patented.  A riparian water right is something, um, water right that is given to the person proving up on the land.  As long as there’s water in the creek, which is Curtis Creek in this, on this ranch, and he was able to take out twelve inches or more as the riparian right called for.  He could take as much as twelve inches or if he needed more he could have more, but in later years it was up down to just twelve inches of water but its still called a riparian water right.

DYER:  Now that comes from Curtis creek, which is, we can hear it in the background actually.

BLACK:  That’s right.

DYER:  And was it by a pipeline or by open ditch that…

BLACK:  Open ditch.

DYER:  And he had twelve inches, which means that that would irrigate a sizable orchard I suppose.

BLACK:  Oh yes, it would serve to irrigate at least uh, twelve inches would irrigate at least fifty acres, easily, by open ditch.  But as it was the land was hay and part of the ranch was not able to be irrigated because the ditch did not go high enough to let the water to run down.  But what he did irrigate was about six to eight acres of orchard along with an acre of garden and the dry land was farmed into, with um, oats and thatch and wheat and it was a hundred and twenty acres, as far as I understand, Mr. Stogsdill had.  And later he purchased more and sold it then to a man by the name of Elmer Hill, which was…

DYER:  Sold some of this addition property?

BLACK:  Uh, ninety acres was over here across the road and it is now owned by Wes Tinnam.  But he had that and sold it to Elmer Hill, which is also in this abstract.  So…

DYER:  Now getting back to the water right that he had, were there not other ditches around that were used during the 1870s and 1880s, ditches that went near the property? 

BLACK:  Yes.  There was the old Kincaid water ditch which went up around the property, in fact it went through the property and around the hillside where we’re facing.

DYER:  It would be just across what is now Wards Ferry Road…

BLACK:  Yes.  It was Blanket Creek Road and now they call it Wards Ferry.  And it was the old Kincaid ditch and it went clear down as far as the Shamit Mine, but it also fed into the old Kincaid Lake, or reservoir as they called it.  So there was two ditches rounding this ranch and the Kincaid Reservoir was storage for water that irrigated the farmland down as far as Algerine.

DYER:  Now let me see, that must have started up somewhere near Soulsbyville then.

BLACK:  The Curtis Creek’s headwater starts at just above Soulsbyville.

DYER:  And then they took the water there for the Kincaid ditch, down through what is now the Black Ranch and it crossed west into what is now, what would we call it, Lambert Lake?

BLACK:  Lambert Lake.

DYER:  And from Lambert lake it then it cuts south and west to Kincaid flat, or what is now Algerine I guess.

BLACK:  Yes, right on through Kincaid Flat into Algerine.

DYER:  And then another branch of it went down to the Shamit Mine.

BLACK: Shamit Mine.  And it kept the Shamit Mine, other than Woods Creek, what water came down woods creek helped feed Shamit Mine along with Kincaid water ditch.

DYER:  Is that ditch still used?

BLACK:  No, most of it still bears the marks of a ditch, but its not being used anymore.  Most places have either been plowed up or caved in.  There is no more of the ditch to speak of.  You can see the remains of it and that’s all.

DYER:  Yet I noticed you still have water coming from Mr. Stogsdill’s riparian water right coming through your property don’t you?

BLACK:  That’s right.  Our riparian water right is coming down, um, it drops out of the ditch.  Curtis Creek feeds into the ditch and then we take the riparian water right out of the ditch again, which was later changed.  In about 1934 the Pacific Gas and  Electric Company changed it so that it would read twelve inches of water, so that way it had to run out of Curtis Creek into the ditch and then they in turn turned the twelve inches back into the creek for us.  So it is flumed from Curtis creek into our private ditch that runs right here into the ranch.

DYER:  Now is that picked up from Curtis creek just the other side of Tuolumne Road?

BLACK:  No, it picks up right on the north, north corner right directly north, it picks up the water right out of Curtis creek into our ditch exactly north of here.

DYER:  Oh, then it would be south of Tuolumne Road then, quite a bit south, where you pick it up.

BLACK:  Yes, that’s right.  It’s just up here.

DYER:  Where does the ditch go then, after it leaves this parcel, Agnes?

BLACK:  It doesn’t go anywhere, it ends right here into these two reservoirs.  There’s no more ditch here.  Then the ditch from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company had piped it over across the other part of this ranch, which is forty five acres across Curtis creek to the northwest.  There’s forty five acres over there, which is now the trailer park.  And the ditch, the PG&E ditch goes right through the trailer park into Lambert’s Lake.  It feeds, PG&E feeds Lambert’s Lake.  Then its piped out of Lambert’s Lake, back into Curtis creek and goes down to the Grasshill property, James Grasshill property and then again Mr. Grasshill’s water right is taken out of the creek and there is a small dam there which takes off into another ditch and goes clear around the property of Mr. Paul, who now owns that big ranch, Mr. Paul.  And it goes right through his property down by Wes Tinnam’s property and on into Algerine.  And this water that goes down from Lambert’s Lake on down to Algerine is all used for irrigation purposes for the farms that are left down in that area. 

DYER:  Well, going back to Mr. Stogsdill, are you aware of any work that he did to develop this water system?

BLACK:  No, only that he built the ditch.  He dug the ditch and built the flume that took the water out of Curtis creek and it was piped, or not piped, it was flumed into this ditch and it ended right here on our ranch.  He made his own ditch.

DYER:  So it was relatively short.

BLACK:  Yes.

DYER:  Half a mile or less.

BLACK:  Half a mile, not any more.  And that was Mr. Stogsdill’s ditch, then the rest of the water went on over into Kincaid reservoir.

DYER:  Well since this is good fertile soil and since Mr. Stogsdill had the foresight to get water here, he must have had a fine orchard and farmland too.

BLACK:  Yes, I belive he had about at least a hundred and fifty apple trees and they were some of the older apples that you very seldom see anymore.  But he had approximately a hundred and fifty apples, trees, and he had pears, plums, and peaches all together and they were still here when my father took it over in 1906.  All the apples were still here, but some of the older apple trees were just giving up and…

DYER:  Have any of them survived?  I guess you have some older ones here on the property…

BLACK:  Well, yes.  There are six apple trees left on the property now and there put near gone, but the six that are left were of a later group of apples planted by Mr. Wiggly.  He planted seventy five trees and uh, along this area here right in back of the house.  He, these were all newer trees and newer developed apples, like King David and Grimes Golden and Arkansas Black.  That’s the only apples he, Mr. Wiggly, planted.  The rest were here by old Mr. Stogsdill.

DYER:  Did he try to sell the surplus from the grove, the apple orchard?

BLACK:  Oh yes.  All the apples were sold and all the vegetables that were raised here were sold and as far as I understand they were sold to what was called the Victoria Hotel in Sonora, which is now the Sonora Inn.  All vegetables were sold to the Victoria Hotel, and apples.  And then he had a dairy and as far as I understand when old Standard Lumber Company started up… it was not that name then, it was Bedford’s, Bedford’s Sawmill.

DYER:  Mm hmm, I think there was a Bedford that…

BLACK:  Hmm, Bedford… Bedford…

DYER:  I think Bedford had a mill here.

BLACK:  Well, he’s the man that also had the Sonora Court House, the Tuolumne County Court House, built facing his home.  Bedford, it must be Bedford.

DYER:  I thing so.

BLACK:  Anyway, he was the man that started the first mill up here and it was a small mill at the time and I understand his first mill was up on the old South Fork River, way up, and then he moved down further and then Standard Lumber Company bought it under the heading of Mr. Stammits.  Old David, old man Dave Stammits started Pickering, uh Standard Lumber Company.

DYER:  So the Bedford’s Mill then was in operation long before there was a mill in Standard.

BLACK:  That’s right, he was up…

DYER:  Only Bedford’s mill was up along the river then.

BLACK:  That’s right.  He started it way up there, and I sorry I don’t have the proper name, but I don’t think its Bedford.  I’ll, we’ll correct that name latter on in uh, because it’s in the court house.

DYER:  Then evidently Mr. Stogsdill got the necessary lumber from the mill to do any work here and did he have fences or barns, outbuildings?

BLACK:  Well, yes he did.  The barn was all built with poles from this ranch.  I understand that he had his own tools to clean his logs, fix the logs, and he made the barn of solid poles and lumber.  Now whether he got the lumber all from this ranch and the logs were carried to the mill and sawed or not I don’t know.  But this ranch was at one time, the hills were covered with yellow pine. 

DYER:  Yellow pine?

BLACK:  Yellow pine and they were logs, like some of this house that will never wear out.  It was yellow pine and very little yellow pine is in this county now, that I know of.  If some of the timber people know of yellow pine, I just don’t know where it is.  But this, these hills were covered with yellow pine and they were very hard lumber and as you noticed when you went down under the house here that is yellow pine that is under here.  So…

DYER:  You’re using it for the foundation for the house there, the beams that support the house.

BLACK:  Yes, that’s right, and all the barn was built of yellow pine and they were huge logs.  How he got them up there I don’t know, but it must have been by the pulling up of…

DYER:  Using pulleys and hoists?

BLACK:  Pulleys and hoists, home made, because he had no machinery here whatsoever. 

DYER:  Were there neighbors who might have helped him?

BLACK:  Well, the neighbors that he, that helped him must have been the Lambert’s and the McCauley’s and the uh, um… Elmer Hill.  That’s the only neighbors that were around here at that time and where he found any other neighbors I don’t know because Lambert’s owned this ranch and McCauley’s owned that one and McCauley owned this property up here two hun…, uh (correction on her part), eighty acres up here in back of us.  So where he’d find any other neighbors close by, I wouldn’t know where they’d be.

DYER:  So he built his own barn.  Were there other buildings that you uh…

BLACK:  A chicken house, a nice large chicken house, a barn, and this house and that’s all the buildings that were on the place.

DYER:  Did he have it fenced or was it…

BLACK:  Yes, it was fenced.  This was all fenced when Mr. Wiggly bought it and when my father bought it and my father added some center fences and that’s all.  The rest of the land was all fenced and it was all fenced with wire, barbed wire with large barbs on it.  It must have been very old wire at that time and the fence posts were evidently all cut right here because he couldn’t haul them very far.  The posts and the shakes on the house must have been all cut from here because there was nowhere near that he could get any lumber, only Brad, Bradford, not Berford, Bradford’s mill.

DYER:  I think we said Bedford didn’t we?

BLACK:  Bedford.

DYER:  Its Bradford.

BLACK:  Bradford’s mill, I knew it would come to me.  Its Bradford’s mill and if he hauled any shakes or lumber it came from the old south fork Bradford’s mill because that was the closest one here.  I do understand from neighbor Carol Dutton, that lived up here just have a mile, he said at one time there was a hand sawmill.  It was uh, with um, you pushed the leaver and the saw went through.  It was ruin by chain or something and it was right above here just about a half a mile and it was on just about where Pickering lumber company is now.  It was down this way farther and it was a sawmill.  Evidently, Mr. Stogsdill had his own logs sawed right there for this house because there was no place for a mill at that time, and Carol Dutton told me that there was a little hand sawmill just above the Tuolumne Road, the Curtis Creek bridge crossing.

DYER:  Well that certainly would have been convenient for Mr. Stogsdill to trade some of his yellow pine for some of there work to uh…

BLACK:  To build his house with, and I think that’s where it must of come.  These posts right here on this porch couldn’t of lasted that long out of just some plain lumber that was…

DYER:  Its clear, its clear wood.  That’s the beauty of it.

BLACK:  Its clear.

DYER:  And that must be what, 4x4?

BLACK:  I would think so.  And to stand a hundred years and have the water and steams that blown against these stand this long, it couldn’t of been anything but good clear lumber.

DYER:  I’ve had some in my house for five years and its already splitting.

BLACK:  Now I wouldn’t be surprised. 

DYER:  Why don’t we talk about his cabin?  This certainly is an interesting home that he, that you have and evidently he started out with a very small cabin at first.

BLACK:  He did.  He started with, what will we call it, the west side of the house?

DYER:  I guess it’d be the west side…

BLACK:  It is, its facing the west.  And he built the fireplace himself.  He built two large rooms and when we repaired the floor, in this, we found that the underpinning of the cabin was not made of logs.  It was made by something like 2x4s and they weren’t, they were good and strong, but for a large family coming into this house they didn’t hold up very good, so we, in turn, remodeled the bottom underneath of this cabin.  So he had two rooms.  It was all, what would you say, twelve inch boards, the wall?

DYER:  One, a true 1x12 rather than about ¾x10.

BLACK:  That’s right.  They were large boards and they were very rough; they weren’t smooth boards at all and they were all put together with square nails.  And on the far side he had an open porch.  There was a roof over it but it was open: no siding up around it.  And he had his well there.  The well was twenty five feet deep and all dug by hand and it was pulled up with a rope on a pulley and that…

DYER:  So that would be right behind the uh…

BLACK:  Kitchen.

DYER:  The second room, or is kitchen.

BLACK:  That’s right.  Evidently he used that for the kitchen and this for a bedroom, this part here.

DYER:  The front room…

BLACK:  The front room must have been his bedroom  and…

DYER:  And that’s where he had the fireplace to…

BLACK:  And that’s where he had the fireplace and I also understand he had a small stove in there, from what Mr. Wiggly told my father. Mr. Wiggly changed the stove, but Mr. Stogsdill had a small stove in the, what I would call the kitchen, but when we came here and as small children, the rod across the fireplace was still there, the iron rod and it had the iron wires or steel, something heavy that didn’t burn, was hanging down from the rod where he hung his pots.  Evidently he cooked…

DYER:  So that was a cooking rod with the hooks with the…

BLACK:  That’s right, he cooked on the old, with the old black kettles and they were still there when my father and mother took over this place.  And then the well water had about, well it was approximately three feet of water in it all the time and every time you’d pull up water you’d get good clear cold water.  But the, in later years it stated caving in, so we gave up the well and dug another one. 

DYER:  So its not used at all.

BLACK:  Its not used anymore. Its all covered in. It was getting too dangerous because it was caving in badly.  So he used that and then evidently when he patented the place and received his patent, which we have, he must of built the rest of the house onto the cabin.

DYER:  So he received the patent in 1872…

BLACK:  I believe it was… isn’t that what that says?

DYER:  Or did he receive it… he filed in 1872 and maybe he received the patent…

BLACK:  Let me see the patent.

DYER:  What does it say in that book you have there?  He filed the patent in 1872…

BLACK:  “Patent:  February the 2^nd, 1875” is when he received the patent, so he was here, of course, eight to ten years before that.  “Recorded October the 4^th, 1881 in book A.”  So he must have had it uh…

DYER:  So the official date then, I suppose, when he had title of the land was 1875.  Then after 1875 you mentioned he added other rooms to the original cabin?

BLACK:  Yes.  Uh, four more rooms in this house.  There not very large.  In fact, there were three rooms and when my father took it he had to out a petition it to make an extra room, but there were, there was one large room and two small rooms.  Evidently used for uh, a  larger house supposed to of made a… probably going to get rid of his cabin and keep the house.  But in later years he married a widow—Lambert over here—and she had three boys. 

DYER:  She was the widow of the Lambert’s near Lambert lake then?

BLACK:  That’s right.  The old mans name was Patrick Lambert and as far as I know and understand he came here from Ireland.  And after he died and Mr. Stogsdill married the old widow and they, she moved over here with her three boys and I just don’t know how many years they lived here and kept the boys here.  But I do know that the oldest boy, the second Pat Lambert, moved back to the Lambert Ranch and stated farming there on his own.  And…

DYER:  Now do you know the date of the, the approximate date of the marriage between Mrs. Lambert and Mr. Stogsdill?

BLACK:  I believe it was about 1890.

DYER:  About 1890, and then they had the three boys to help with the development of the ranch.  That was certainly a lot easier for Mr. Stogsdill, not doing it alone.

BLACK: I should say!  I don’t know whether they tried to keep up both ranches.  They must have, because there was stock at the Lambert ranch and there was also orchard at the Lambert ranch, so they must of taken care of both the ranches until the older boy moved back there. 

DYER:  Were the two ranches adjoining each other?

BLACK:  Yes they were.  They, at one time there was not any fence between them at all and then when the young Pat Lambert took over he began building fences so then the two ranches were separated.

DYER:  Do you remember very much about Mrs. Lambert?  Or I suppose now its Mrs. Stogsdill.

BLACK:  No, I don’t remember anything about her, other than what her family, some of her family had told me.  Her, well her granddaughter, who was Lora Carkeet, Marla Lambert Carkeet I should say, was a young girl and was raised over here with her three brothers.  This was the second Lambert family now, there were three boys in that family and one girl and Lora Lambert lived there with her parents until she was about 18 and married a fellow by the name of Carkeet, Martin Carkeet, and she moved away.  But when I knew her, and I was just a very small girl, she had told me just a few things about her grandmother and I knew her mother very well.  I knew Mrs. Carkeet’s mother very well, but the grandmother, I just knew that she was an old Irish lady and she worked hard and was a good cook and raised all these healthy big boys and that’s all I know about the old lady Lambert.

DYER:  Well I’m sure she had to be a good cook to take care of so many boys.

BLACK:  Well, I guess so.

DYER:  Do you remember a description of the roads or trails in the area at the time?  Its obvious that they were not black topped, they didn’t have the lovely bridges in and the well grated bypasses that we see now.

BLACK:  No.  I’ll start with the Tuolumne road.  The Tuolumne road from Sonora to Tuolumne was just a graveled road and Solomon’s creek, where you cross Solomon’s creek now on a nice bridge, you forded the creek at that time and it was about a quarter of a mile above the present bridge.  And many a people that crossed that creek in the high water had an awful time crossing because one lady, going across in her horse and buggy that my father knew, washed down quite a ways before the horse could get back out again.  (tape badness).  As Author McCauley, an old timer around here, was crossing Solomon’s creek on his way home from Sonora in a wagon and team, the creek was so, coming down so heavy with water… (end of tape)

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard

Interviewee: Black, Agnes

Name of Tape: Agnes Black on the Black Ranch (black_a_1_0)

When: 8/15/1973

Where: Black Ranch

Transcriber: Nicol and Ariella (3/5/09)