RICHERD DYER:  Mrs. Black, what was it like in crossing Curtis creek?  Curtis creek wasn’t as, didn’t carry as much water as Solomon’s creek, but what about crossing it?

AGNES BLACK:  Well it was much better.  We had the covered bridge on Curtis creek and it was just something we don’t see anymore and as a child I can remember of the going through the covered bridge and a horse and buggy with my mother and the horse trotting through the bridge and the boards would make a funny noise.  As we’d drive through it’d just always, waited to go through the bridge there because it was so, such a funny noise the horses hoofs on the boards.  We just really liked it and it was a well kept bridge the county men on, worked on the road kept that bridge up very well and it was not until… I think about 1918, just before America went into World War I, was it changed to a cement bridge, which is still there.

DYER:  Now the covered bridge was where the old cement bridge is then, on Tuolumne road then crossing Curtis creek.

BLACK:  The bridge that’s there now is the latest new one.  There’s still another old bridge there.  The covered bridge was just above that and it made quite a curve going in through there and coming out onto the road again.  There’s three bridges right there.

DYER:  So the covered bridge then followed the contour of the land around…

BLACK:  That’s right.

DYER:…where the old bridge is now, but its never used.

BLACK:  That’s it.  It was just above the old bridge, just a little bit above it.  So it curved in with, like you say “the contour of the land,” and it was just a wonderful bridge to cross and we…

DYER:  Do you have any photographs of that old bridge?

BLACK:  I don’t have a one. 

DYER:  Yeah, its too bad that there all gone now.

BLACK:  Its such a shame.

DYER:  Just a few of them left in the state now.

BLACK:  Yeah, and not a picture, we never had a picture of that bridge.  However, I’m going to inquire of the Detton family and see if they ever had one, or the McCauley’s.  They lived right near the bridge and it might have been that they had taken a picture or two and it might be that the historical society might have a picture of that bridge.  It was one of the covered bridges and then later on Solomon’s creek had a bridge, but I don’t remember if it was a covered bridge or not.  I don’t ever remember ever going through a covered bridge on Solomon’s creek. 

DYER:  So then next to home here, what about the old road through the Black property, or Stogdill’s ranch, Wards Ferry or Blanket creek?

BLACK:  Yes, now there were three roads here.  There was one road that went through from Lambert ranch and went out to the Tuolumne highway and it went through the northwest end of the property and it was used by the Lamberts as a sort of a shortcut to go out to the highway, or to the main road.  And then there was Blanket creek road, which was used by everyone coming from the Wards Ferry area or Blanket creek as it was known.  And they used this here teaming and it was quite steep here at the house at one time.  There was a ravine went down through over here opposite of where we’re sitting and it was very deep.  The water came down to the field in the winter and it was just like a creek, so it was quite a deep ravine to cross over and then when up the steep hill and met the main highway from Tuolumne.  Then the other road, the residents of Blanket creek made a shortcut and they came up through what is now known Gerald Kelly property.  It was a piece of property to the, belong to old Dan McCauley and now it is owned by Gerald Kelly and the road went right through his place and out onto the Tuolumne highway facing Pickering lumber company.  He came right out on the road there.  So it gave three roads here in this area to come out from Blanket creek and Wards Ferry.

DYER:  Now would that be from Mr. Kelley’s property to where the Sancta property used to be?

BLACK:  Just this side of it.  You came out right in the highway, before you reached the Standard turn off. 

DYER:  Oh I see, so that would have connected conveniently with either Standard or with the lumber mill.

BLACK:  That’s right.  It did.  And anyone driving from Wards Ferry, with was a very old road and was traveled through by residents of Groveland if they ever wanted to come over.  They had to cut through the old Wards Ferry road and ferry across the Tuolumne river and then cut up through the old Kelly, uh, McCauley, it was McCauley property then, and they cut up into Tuolumne highway , which we used to call the main road at one time.  So there were three roads that lead from Wards Ferry and Blanket creek to the main road from Tuolumne to Sonora.

DYER:  As I understand it, the old Wards Ferry road, which as you related is one of the oldest roads in the county, was one of the primary routes to Yosemite.

BLACK:  That’s right, and it lead from Sonora down back of, um, which is now the radio station, turn off there.  And it lead down through the, cross Solomon’s creek and then Curtis creek and then right on over through Blanket creek and right down to the Wards Ferry, um, Wards Ferry which said “ferry to cross” at that time.  And it was very steep and very rough terrain to travel over by horse and buggy or wagons and the “ferry to cross” and then went right on up into Groveland and right over to Yosemite.  So it was quite a winding road and a very interesting road.

DYER:  So like the real raw west!

BLACK:  It certainly was.  And I might tell you, Mr. Dyer, that on this old Wards Ferry road, which now stands the old Methodist church.  It was there, I’m sure it must have been there about a hundred years ago.  I don’t know exactly when it was built, but it was there before my mother and father came here and it is still being used and its on the old Wards Ferry road.

DYER:   Is that the Morgan Chapel?

BLACK:  The Morgan Chapel.  And that’s the old church and the graveyard is right across from it and its very interesting to go on that back road. 

DYER:  Well I’m sure Mr. Stogsdill had to do something other than just take care of his fields and orchards.  Did he have other vocations that he practiced to supplement his income?

BLACK:  Not that I know of.  The only other income that he would have had would be to help in the hay season with the thrashers and there were other farmers out here that had large grain fields and all the hay was, the biggest part of the hay was sold to the Standard lumber company and to the Liver stables in Sonora.  And the only other way that he would have made any money would be to possibly do a little mining on the creek and work with that other farmers.

DYER:  Is there any evidence that the prospectors found any color along Curtis creek in this area here? 

BLACK:  Oh yes, there was.  Now, at one time this creek was mined by Chinese and they left here and they certainly didn’t finish there job in mining because after them came the white people or Cornish miners and many of the Cornish mined up and down this creek. They certainly didn’t become rich, but they did find quite a bit of gold.

DYER:  Surly you remember some of the stories about Mr. Stogsdill: the type of person he was, was he a God fearing man, was he a rather difficult man to get along with, or what were some of the stories that you remember Mrs. Black?

BLACK:  Well as far as I understand from some of our old neighbors here, he was a rather course old gentleman.  Didn’t visit very much and as far as I have heard he did not go to church; he stayed here most of his time here, just working on the ranch and probably visiting with the neighbors, but he didn’t do any other, have any other social life.  As far as I know he was a tall, lanky sort of a fellow but very well built, a big strong looking German fellow and he was kind to his neighbors as far as Mr. Dutton told me, but he was sort of a lone person.  He had no family until he married the old widow Lambert.  Then he helped raise those four boys.  I often wonder how many years they were married; I haven’t looked up the dates or tried to find out any information on the length of their marriage, but from what I understand he was good to the Lambert boys.  So he must have been a good, hard working old German fellow.  He, from the evidence of our old cellar under the house, he must have had his own wine, kept his own wine down there and that shows he had plenty of food there because of the cupboards that were down in the cool cellar and the hooks that are still on the wall.  So evidently he was a man that fed his family quite well after he married Mrs. Lambert.

DYER:  So what we really have is then a man from the old school.  A man who believed in hard work and a man who was, I suppose, the typical rugged frontiersman of the old west who took care of his own needs, helped his neighbors, and lived a good life.

BLACK:  I just think that’s what he must have been.  I would like to have seen some pictures of him or heard more about him, but evidently he didn’t do anything that was outstanding because very few of the people speak of him anymore or any of the old-timers didn’t know him very well.  So he must not have been a man of a social life, or a church goer.

DYER:  When did he finally dispose of the property? 

BLACK:  He sold the property to A. W. Wiggly in 1904.

DYER:  Well, what happened to Mr. Stogsill after he sold the property?  Is there any record of were he lived or what he did until his death?

BLACK:  No, I haven’t found out where he went.  I would rather think that the Lambert boys, some of the Lambert boys must have taken care of him because their mother died and I would think that some of the boys might have watched over their stepfather. 

DYER:  A. W. Wiggly.  What does A. W. stand for?

BLACK:  Well, as far as I get from my records its Augustus Washington Wiggly and he’s and old gentleman that came from Texas and he’s evidently wanted to settle in Tuolumne County or California thinking it might of a better place to live.  And he was born in Georgia in 1860 and he came to California, or to Tuolumne County, in 1899 and it said he operated a dairy in which he later bought in 1906, uhh, 1902, until he sold it to Mr. Harvey in 1906, my father.

DYER:  That wasn’t the property that we’re now on though was it?

BLACK:  That is. 

DYER:  Oh, I see.

BLACK:  Yeah, Mr. Wiggly bought from old Mr. Stogsdill the whole hundred acres, which Mr. Stogsdill must of sold some to Elmer Hill, which shows in the abstract and kept one hundred acres and he sold the one hundred acres to Mr. Wiggly in 1902 and uhh….

DYER:  1902 or 1904?

BLACK:  No, 1904, pardon me.  1904.  He came here in 1902 and evidently helped with the dairy or dairying part of this and he may have rented it for a time from Mr. Stogsdill.  It doesn’t show on the record but it said that he bought it in 1904 and then he sold it to my father in 1906 and Mr. Stogsdill had cattle here and evidently milked some of them and then Mr. Wiggly must of sold milk to the neighbors or to the Standard lumber company, if it had started by that time because Mr. Wiggly had quite a few dairy cows here when my father bought it from him.  It must have been twenty dairy cows.  So then my father added more and started a larger dairy after 1906. 

DYER:  So when Mr. Wiggly acquired the property he intended to make it into a dairy.  Did he have any other activities that you’re aware of?  Did he continue selling the produce from the fields or the fruit?

BLACK:  That’s what he did.  He still sold the, kept the gardening going and the apples because when my father came here in 1906 he came in August and the garden was just in full bearing and fortunately it was because it gave my father a good income right at the very beginning because the tomatoes were all ripening.  The vegetables, the corn, the beans and everything were right ready to sell and my father was selling every week for, probably twice a week, into the Victoria Hotel right at that time.  So Mr. Wiggly had left my father a good start; there was at least twenty five head of dairy stock, besides two hundred chickens and a good garden and this great big orchard that Mr. Stogdill had already planted.  So…

DYER:  Do we know very much about the Wiggly family?  Was he alone, or did he…?

BLACK:  No he wasn’t.  He was here with his wife and he also had a brother.  He came here, and the two brothers worked around the ranch for the two years and they both became homesick for Texas so just sold out as quickly as possible and left.  They didn’t stay here to make very many friends.  They, right now, have a relative living in Tuolumne who is Dorothy Wiggly Kellogg and many of the old-timers here know Mrs. Kellogg as one of the historians and she’s living in Tuolumne and she has a family there and she still is in contact with the relatives in Texas.

DYER:  Mrs. Black do you have any idea what Mr. Wiggly paid James Stogsdill for the property, for the one hundred acres?

BLACK:  Well, I don’t think he paid any more than about $1,800.  Possibly $2,000, but it couldn’t be much more than that or even that much because Wiggly sold it to my father for $2,500.  So he couldn’t of paid Mr. Stogsdill very much for it. 

DYER:  Then your father came here from England shortly before purchasing the property? You mentioned the late 1890s?

BLACK:  Yes, my father arrived here in 1895 from Devonport, England.  And he settled, arrived in Canada, but he didn’t stay in Canada very long.  He came immediately to San Francisco and my father was a cabinet maker and he studied that in England and he brought all of his tools with him and did some cabinet making in San Francisco, however he didn’t care to much for the job, for cabinet making, so he hired out at a carpenter on the old Miller Mucks ranch, which is uh, they call it the west side of Modesto and Turlock.  Its out on the old west side, Miller Mucks ranch, as everybody knows.  So he worked there for many years.  I say many years, for several years carpentering and helping with stock and everything on the ranch.  And soon he went into Stockton and took a job with the street cars.  He liked the street car work and he got a job with a Mr. A. J. Hooper, who was the head of the car barns in Stockton at that time.  And he worked two years for Mr. Hooper and there was another gentleman by the name of Mr. Baker.  I believe his name was Ralph Baker and he worked with him on the street cars and they decided to come up into Tuolumne County and homestead some land which they had heard about. 

DYER:  So that would have been early 1900s then?

BLACK:  Yes, it was uh, my father homesteaded up near what is now Jupiter and Rose creek, in that area.  He homesteaded a place in, I believe he and Mr. Baker took the land in 1898.

DYER:  He was not, your father was not married at that time?

BLACK:  No, no.  He homesteaded a place and built a beautiful two room log house on the property and he proved up on the place and then he sent for my mother, who was still in England and she arrived in Stockton in June of 1901 and they were married at the Hooper residence in Stockton, California.

DYER:  What is your mothers name Mrs. Black?

BLACK:  My mothers name was Henrietta Anna Williams. 

DYER:  After their marriage then they moved to Tuolumne County?

BLACK:  Immediately, they immediately came up to there homestead in the mountains and stayed there for two years.

DYER:  So that was at Jupiter then?  That was the…

BLACK:  Yes, at Jupiter.  It was a little ???...

DYER:  It was over in Calaveras County then?

BLACK:  No, no, its right in our own county.  Its right up by uh, north of the South Fork river crossing.

DYER:  Oh, it just is in the county then.  I was thinking it was over in Calaveras, but its just then the northern most portion of Tuolumne County.

BLACK:  I guess you would call it that.  It um… oh lets see, what would you call it… It was Jupiter at Rose creek that’s where the property was situated and then they lived there two years steady, without coming down or, you know, only for their groceries and they came out to Confidence for their mail.  And then the oldest boy was expected and they moved down for him to be born, you might say, and they moved down on Solomon’s creek, a little piece of property there and rented it for a time until the boy was, the oldest boy Rupert, was old enough to go back up to the mountains.  So they went back to their homestead and stayed another two years and then the second boy was expected, the second child was expected.  And they moved back down on the same old Wards Ferry road and the second boy was born and then they decided that was no place to raise children in the mountains and send them to school because it was too far away.

DYER:  What was the second boy’s name, your brother’s name?

BLACK:  Adrian. 

DYER:  Adrian.

BLACK:  And he passed away at the age of four and they moved up here from the little place down on Wards Ferry road.  They moved up here and bought this place in 1906. 

DYER:  How did your father make a living on the Jupiter homestead?  Was he farming there?

BLACK:  No, he made posts and cut shakes and shingles.  There both a little different you know, and he cut all three and then he hauled them out as far as Hill’s and Simon’s, where Hill’s and Simon’s is now and he hauled them out by wagon and sold those and that’s what he made his living with.  He had one full uh, um… timber, I wanted to say, to cut so his posts were easily made and the shakes; he had fine timber for the shakes and shingles.  So he made a good living with that and when he moved down here on Wards Ferry road then he had, he kept his chickens all the time.  He had chickens in the mountains and chickens down here.  So he had a fairly steady income coming in most of the time and kept tow horses.

DYER:  Alright, then in 1906 he acquired the property and additional children were born here?

BLACK:  Yes, four more children were born here.  Ronald, the second, or third boy, was born here in 19… well my father bought it in August of 1906 and brother Ronald was born in October, the end of October.  So they weren’t here very long till they started their family here.  And then I was the next one born and I was born in 1908 and then Colin, the next boy, was born in 1910 and then the other boy Cero was born in 1912 and my youngest sister, the youngest in the family was born in 1913. 

DYER: So six children and five survived childhoods?

BLACK:  Mm hmm… no there were seven children and six survived.

DYER:  I see.

BLACK:  There were seven children born to the Harvey’s. 

DYER:  Do you remember your fathers description of the ranch shortly after he acquired it?  Were there things that he mentioned about it: the property itself, the appearance of it, problems that he might have had?

BLACK: Yes, I quite remember many things.  The field that is across from us now, the center of that field was a natural meadow and he would cut the hay, the meadow hay, the first part of the spring and it was very boggy and wet and hard to cut.  But he managed to get a nice cutting all from that and then pastured it and out around the outer part of the field was all green and you put that into oats for the horse feed for winter.  But he did say, many times, that he wished that he had had the water up where it would irrigate the whole ranch.  At that time there were no sprinklers to be heard of.  Had we thought of, of higher ditches he would liked to have had it up in the old ditch, but it would have taken quite a bit of work to have gotten it back up there in the old Kincaid ditch, which would have watered the whole ranch from that ditch, this whole forty five acres.  But he was very pleased and I believe he and my mother were very happy here because we had fine water, fine air, everything was good.  The trees were bearing in bearing, the garden was, the garden place was wonderful, the deer were plentiful, you could just see them and they didn’t seem to eat up the gardens like they do many peoples today, and the barn was in good condition when he bought it.  It was a wonderful old barn with, made with logs and big wide boards and the machinery was good.  He had everything for a fine ranch and for many years he was very successful in farming.  He and my mother both loved the outdoors and taught us children to learn the same way.  The animals were to be treated properly and not ill-treated or ill-fed or anything, they were, everything on the ranch was treated with goodness and kindness.

DYER:  So in 1906 then, Charles Harvey purchased one hundred acres…

BLACK:  Yes.

DYER: … for about $2,500 from A.W. Wiggly.

BLACK:  That’s right. 

DYER:  Well Mrs. Black this has certainly been interesting and why don’t we just pause for a moment since were almost the end of the tape and then we can maybe finish it up at a later date and we can talk about your reminiscences of this beautiful area.

BLACK:  Well that will be fine, simply fine.

End of Tape

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard

Interviewee: Black, Agnes

Name of Tape: Agnes Black on the Black Ranch (black_a_1_1)

When: 8/15/1973

Where: Black Ranch

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