RICHARD DYER: Agnes, let’s talk a little bit about the changes that you have seen along Wards Ferry Road in the years that you have been here.  First, regarding the different crops that were grown here, what did the early farmers plant in the fields—the basic crops?

AGNUS BLACK: Well, I would say the different sorts of grains like wheat and barley and oaks.  That was the main ones here, and the reason for that was, was so many horses. When Pickering Lumber Company was standard Lumber Company, it was run completely by horses.  The lumber piling was all done with the lumber from the knoll pulled out by horses, all the logging up in the mountains was done with horses, so Pickering Lumber Company, or Standard as I should say, had, I would say, a couple hundred or maybe three hundred head of horses for all of their work. So the farmers here had the grain to raise and the straw from the bedding down of the animals and the oats for the hay.  And the farmers from the edge of the Wards Ferry Road, where it goes down to the river, the old ranch out there was called chambers and Russell Ranch.  It was the largest ranch around here at that time…

DYER: Now, that’s near the drop-off down into the canyon.

BLACK: It is.  Its right as you drop off to go down the grade. 

DYER: go down; take you down to the bridge that crosses Tuolumne River. 

BLACK: …Tuolumne River, that’s right.  And it belongs to Lester Woodums now, but it was Chambers and Russell Ranch.  Whose it was before that, I never did find out other than: two brothers had a mine out there and their name was Burger.  And they are the only ones that I know of that had that property.  So chambers and Russell’s were vet wealthy people that came here from the East.  I believe they came here from Kansas or even further back than Kansas, and they took over this ranch and they raised wheat, oats, and barley.  And they build a beautiful new home which farmers at that time were not able to afford.  But the chambers and Russell’s home was one of the fanciest, nicest homes in this community, anywhere from Sonora to Wards Ferry. 

DYER: Is it still there?

BLACK: Well, I believe Lester Woodums had remodeled it and it was a big two story building, and I believe that Lester Woodums remodeled it and made it into as smaller one, unless it’s been torn down.  I don’t know whether he did the remodeling himself or not. But Chambers and Russell’s; they were winning partners and they had this large ranch and they were the ones that took the biggest part of the summer to thrash and bail the hay.  And I believe that they had most of their own equipment. But they hired quite a few people.  In fact, they had to have other women of the ranches come in and help cook at the farming season—at the thrashing time—because Mrs. Russell was…only one of the partners had a wife and she had to have hired help to tend to the cooking. 

DYER: how large was the ranch?

BLACK: I believe that the chambers Russell’s Ranch was about four-hundred acres—possibly more. 

DYER: So that’s rather large for this area.

BLACK: Yes. Yes it was. It was a large ranch and one thing it did…a lot of it was that river terrain and it ran right down to the Tuolumne River.  And it was one time it was called River Ranch, but when Chambers and Russell’s bought it, we seemed to have changed it to Chambers and Russell Ranch.  There were area up above the river, up on the higher slopes was all good green land.  And it produced heavily.  So Pickering Lumber Company—standard Lumber Company—bought just tons and tons of the hay for the horses. 

DYER: did they irrigate any of the fields?

BLACK: no.  Nothing was irrigated. There was no water, no way to get water up to it.  They only water people had for irrigation was just small gardens, and that was just enough to keep the families.  There were no clover patches and very few alfalfa patches.  Those had had a ditch that might have came from Curtis Creek down through to Algerine.  Those that were on the ditch might have gotten some green grass or clover or something.

DYER: Agnes, do you have any idea of what hay sold for back in the twenties? Today, as I understand it, you have to pay at least sixty dollars a ton, and sometimes seventy dollars a ton.  Do you have any idea what it sold for back on those days?

BLACK: well, the highest that I remember was twenty.  When we first started here in the dairy, and that was in 1934, our first hay that we bought was eighteen dollars a ton. 

DYER: ...eighteen in 1934.

BLACK: in 1934 it was eighteen dollars a ton. And you can’t believe that it was delivered up here from Oakdale fro eighteen dollars a ton.

DYER: they delivered it?

BLACK: they delivered hay eight in our barn for eighteen dollars a ton. In fact, Warden and I were going through some old old things that we were getting ready to throw out or look through, oh, a month or so ago, and we paid eighteen dollars a ton for our alfalfa hay…and today look at the price of it.  So I know that the hay was not more than fifteen and the highest would have been twenty. And I doubt if it ever went that high even for Standard Lumber Company. 

DYER: what about the grains that they used?

BLACK: the grains.  It wasn’t very high either. A sack of wheat…we had lots of chickens when I was small, and my father had to buy the wheat.  And I don’t believe he paid over $1.85 for a hundred-pound sack of wheat.

DYER: My…

BLACK: It’s hard to believe, but he paid $1.85 for sack of wheat, it was a good price. And the highest—I’ll change it a little form the wheat—but he had a wonderful crop of potatoes one time and he thought it was so wonderful to get five dollars for a hundred pound sack of potatoes…five dollars.

DYER: what would that sell for today? (Laughing) I don’t even want to try to think of it.

BLACK: I wouldn’t figure it.  So the grain was just in the same way.  It was not any higher than…well, you just didn’t pay any more for things then.  We just were cheaper too, of course. And, speaking of the grain and the grain fields around here, that was one of the summer jobs for the young boys.  Whenever the thrashing came along, as a girl, I was asked to help in some of the nearby ranches to help peel the vegetables, set the table, and wash the dishes.  And at one ranch that I worked on, there were eight boys—eight young boys from fourteen to eighteen working on the thresher.

DYER: Well, it would be an advantage to be a large family in those days.

BLACK: Yes, it would have, but…

DYER: …cheap labor.

BLACK: …cheap labor (laughing).  The Richards family, and the Eastmans, and the Murphys; it seemed like they all worked together on the thrashing and the bailing.  The Richards family had a bailer, and the Eastmans had another Bailer so they could get it bailed quickly, and the Murphys had both a thrasher and a bailer.  So they would start with the Murphy family first and do all of their bailing and thrashing and get it done quickly.  Then they would go to the Richard’s, then Eastman’s, and then they’d come over to this ranch, as many of the people of Tuolumne County know, is the Deer Fenced Ranch which is down on the corner going to Jacksonville.  It’s right here on Wards Ferry and Jacksonville road. And it’s…I forget the man’s name that owns it now, but it used to be called Yeomen Ranch.  And in the early days when this ranch had Mr. Stockdale on it, it was Elmer Hill Ranch.  And it…well, there was Elmer Hill and this Old Man Stokesdale their ranches were run close together.  Some way the survey went right to both ranches.  They must have joined or something because it’s both in the old records.  And this old man Yeomen, I think he must have been Jewish.  He looked like it to me as I can remember.  And they had quite a long porch on their house and it was all set up with the tables for the thrashers to come in and a nice cool porch and I had to help with her cooking.  And there were at least eight young boys working on the thrasher and bailing hay at that time. 

DYER: Where was the Murphy Ranch?

BLACK: the Murphy Ranch is as you go on down on the Jacksonville stint road.  You leave Wards Ferry road right here, and cut down to the right and then directly to the left, and it’s in that narrow place where the deer fence is. 

DYER: Oh, that’s called Murphy Road now.

BLACK: I believe it is.

DYER: So it’s named after the family?

BLACK: ...the old Murphy Ranch.  And the Murphy ranch goes down just two miles from the deer Fence Ranch. 

DYER: I see.

BLACK: And they’re right on as you go down over the steep hill, over the PG&E ditch, the Murphy house in on the right hand side of the road.  And it was one of the largest grain ranches—it and the Chambers and Russell Ranch.

DYER: were there ranches in the Hess estates area?

BLACK: On yes.  That was all grain. 

DYER: that was grain.  Was that one bog ranch?

BLACK: …one big ranch.  And the whole family, seems like, owned it; but I believe George Hess was the main owner. And then Raymond Hess was the younger brother and he had most of this end of the ranch where the Aarco service station is.  That was his part, it seemed like.  But George Hess and Charlie Hess were the biggest owners of the Hess Ranch.  And the Charlie Hess bought a large acreage; I believe it was around two-hundred acres or so down on the Lime Kiln Road. And he farmed that fro hay and grain and cattle raising.

DYER: Were there orchards that yielded commercial food...commercial crops of food?

BLACK: Oh yes.  Yes, this ranch was one had a quite larger orchard.  It had about five or six acres of just apples and pears and peaches.  And the Lombard Ranch had quite large apples and pears.  And then when Albert fault bought it in 1921, he put it into all pears—large (___)—there was fourteen acres of pears. And the largest apple ranch was Frank Ralph up near Tuolumne.  That was the largest apple orchard in the county and he was one of our first supervisors and he was a well known apple raises all over the state.  He was well known.  His apples were shipped from here to San Francisco, all over.

DYER: Were they shipped out by the Sierra Rail Road?

BLACK: I believe most of them would go by rail road because there was very few trucks or automobiles there to take them out.   So, and the old Ralph Station up going towards Tuolumne was right near the Frank Ralph Ranch. 

DYER: Is that where the shed is located?

BLACK: that’s right; and that was the old Ralph apple shed. And all of the apples that we know of were shipped by train—Sierra Rail Road. 

DYER: Well, the track goes next to that shed.

BLACK: Yes, it right there.  In fact, that was one of our county places for women to work at that time: to wash the apples and pack them.  There was lots of ladies, and the early…oh, after World War I worked in the apple ranch up there.  So Frank Ralph and his brother Oren Ralph and there was another Ralph brother, and they had the largest apple ranch in the county at that time.

DYER: how did they keep the deer and the grasshoppers from gobbling up all of their…

BLACK: I can’t understand. Today we are losing…all of the little family gardens are just being eaten up with grasshoppers, deer, earwigs.  We never knew what as earwig was until the last few years.  And where they came from I’ll never know, but I believe they have come I with plants from other area.  And as far as the deer are concerned, I can remember seeing deer in our orchards just by six, eight, ten.  There was nothing to see or heard a deer go through the ranch.  But the apple trees seem to have grown big enough to raise apples to be shipped out of here.  And the people had to live on their vegetables.  There was no way to bring vegetables in. 

DYER: What about the animals that were raised?   Were there animals that were raised commercially: beef animals, horses, mules?

BLACK: Oh yes.  Yes.  Mules are, I guess, Henry Sanguinetti probably was one of our biggest raisers of animals and horses and mules and from the early days he packed in, you know, he even took cattle to the mountains and packed in for deer hunter in the fall and he was one of our earliest pack stations, I believe. And I know my brother was just a little boy—young boy—when he started going into the mountains with pack animals with Henry Sanguinetti.

DYER: Now, the Sanguinetti Ranch, then, was largely for animals rather than for different grains?

BLACK: Yes, well, part of the Sanguinetti Ranch was…Joe Sanguinetti was more or less the gardener.  He had the largest garden—I guess it was one of the largest—in the county.  He had…he tended to the garden crop and Joe and Henry and Dave took care of the cattle part.  And I imagine they raised some grain on their place, but it was mostly pasture, and gardening, and their cattle.  And they had cattle taken to the mountains.  They took them every summer to the mountains; but they were driven up by horseback at that time.  The cattle were driven in herds instead of being trucked up there.

DYER: I’ve heard a lot of conflicting stories about the hoof-and-mouth disease during the 1920s.  Did your father say anything about that problem?

BLACK: Oh yes. I well remember that.  My brother, just older than me, was working for Charlie Myers who lives on the Tuolumne highway there with this old house and he had the most beautiful herd of dairy cattle—I believe it was a mixed herd, but mostly Guernsies—and he peddled milk to Standard when the lumber company was just going in full force, and his whole herd was destroyed by the government for hoof-and-mouth.  And I think I was a shame because I really don’t believe that it was that bed in his herd, but every dairy cow that he had—and I believe that he had a good hundred head of cows—were destroyed, buried right there on the ranch, it was large large holes dug with the old type of caterpillar that they had at that time, and they were all quick lined and buried.  Every one of his dairy cows was killed.

DYER: what does the disease do to the animal?

BLACK: well, from what I understand, it was the hoofs rotted off and the mouth swelled so bad they would have died anyway.  So…

DYER: did you see many animals with such a…

BLACK: Well, I only saw Charlie Myers.  We were allowed to go up and look.  Once my father let us go up there because my brother happened to be working there.  And we were able to see the cows, but the only one that I saw—and I still think to this day it was because frightened so badly—and it was all frothing at the mouth.  And as a small girl I didn’t pay any attention to the hoofs or anything, but from what my father said and the Fault Brothers that used to live nearby here, they said that they think it could have been cured, but it was one of those things that was even in the deer population and the herds of cattle that were roaming in the mountains, you see, and they were carrying it.  So I suppose they did have to get rid of some of them to a certain extent, and the strange thing was every person that went in any road that you’d take off one road and go into another, where there were animals, oh, and Pickering Lumber company, before we could go in this town, we had to walk through, what do they call it, sheep dip. 

DYER: Oh, to kill the…

BLACK: Yes, you couldn’t walk from one road and turn and go into another road unless you went through this sheep dip process.  And if you were riding a horse, you had to lead the horse through the sheep dip trough that was big enough and wide enough so that anything and anybody could wade through it. If you had an animal of any kind—a dog with you—you had to force him through it. 

DYER: Oh, through that too… (Laughing)

BLACK: yeah.  And it was terrible.  It smelt something fierce. 

DYER: Well, when they destroyed the animals, did the government pay for the animal?

BLACK: yes, they paid for them, but from what I understand from Charlie Myers, he didn’t receive as much as the cattle were worth, that’s for sure. So at that time he went right out of business and there was no more milk, no more cows from his herd or anything.  There was nothing up there.  His barn was just deteriorated and the poor old farm just didn’t do anymore. 

DYER: were there many dairies in this area Mrs. Black?

BLACK: Yes, as far as I know at one time there was fifteen dairies.  When I out them out there was fifteen dairies. 

DYER: In this area?  Wards Ferry, Standard…?

BLACK: Oh no, in this county. 

DYER: In the county.

BLACK: In the county. In this area there weren’t too many: Mr. Woodums, Mr. Myers, and my father, and Mr. Black in Jamestown.  He was an old gentleman down there; he has no relation to us.  But that’s the only big dairies.  Right in this close area.  But Alvin Silva was about the largest after Charlie Myers. 

DYER: that’s the Silvis Dairy in Sonora. 

BLACK: Yes.  He was about the largest one after Charlie Myers went out.

DYER: What did most of the people do with the milk?  Was it sold as milk, or was it made into other things?

BLACK: Well, it was made into other things.  This creamery was in Sonora for a good many years for the older dairies, and then when Mr. Woodums came in and all, pine crest was starting with the summer vacation tours and all that.  So Mr. Woodums had the Pine Crest area, but he didn’t have the help, I guess, that Alvin Silva had, so Alvin Silva naturally took over most of Pine Crest after that.  And Mr. Woodums went out of the business later.  His health didn’t permit him to keep on.

DYER: How do you keep the milk or milk products cool enough so that they wouldn’t spoil?

BLACK: Well, the best way was a cool cellar.

DYER: …a cool cellar.  You have a good example here in your home.

BLACK: Oh yes, I sure do. Our cellar was a fine cellar.  But I can still remember my mother putting butter—we made butter and sold it here too—and I can remember her having...not…it was quite a square looking little tub of some kind.  And she packed the butter in this and it was let down the well on a rope.  And the butter kept well—just real good—till she took it to town, which she went in twice a week with butter, eggs, and milk, and cream. 

DYER: would she sell to a particular person in town when she took them in, or did she have a rout that she…

BLACK: No, not a route. She sold to people on order, you might call it.  Most people had a doctor bill with so many children coming and big families; there was always a small doctor bill.  So Dr. Bomley’s sanitarium, which is not there anymore, but he took a large amount of our products for his sanitarium there—his hospital.  And we took eggs, butter, milk, and cream to Dr. Bomley.  So, besides making a living on it, it also paid the price of the babies and the doctor bills. And then what extra cream we had, other than what butter we sold, went to the old creamery down on Stockton Street. And the…we had two blacksmiths in town at that time that I remember very well, and they took eggs, butter, milk, and cream.  And they had it on order every week. How much they wanted, they’d tell my mother and that’s she’s bring them the next week.  And then Benny Garrent—you’ll probably, as you go through history of Sonora, maybe you’ve already heard of the delivery stable—Denny Garrent’s Delivery Stable.

DYER: On Washington Street? Yes.

BLACK: Well, they were buyers from my folks.  They bought all of their vegetables in season, while we had the vegetables; all the fruit that we might have had; and butter, eggs, milk, and cream.  Benny Garrent’s both families.  His own family and Mrs. Garrent’s sister was a resident of Sonora at that time and she bought from my folks too. So they had lots of customers right in Sonora, and they didn’t have to peddle, they just had to have them on order and just take them right to the home.

DYER: So most of the products, then, remained in the county. Except some of the apples, I suppose.  

BLACK: That’s right; apples and pears a good many of those went out after the Sierra Rail Road came up through here.

DYER: Were there herds of sheep in the area? 

BLACK: Oh yes, I should say. Sheep, I just don’t know what they did with all the sheep though.  Of course, wool was the biggest thing.  But there again, these young boys in the summer time had jobs of herding sheep to the mountains and they’d stay up most of the summer with the men that owned the sheep and watched them.  Now, there was a man here in the county by the name of Mr. Davis.  You’ll probably remember hearing of Alfred Davis who was our county tax collector for about 35 years, I believe he was. And his father had one of the largest flocks of sheep in the county.  And he lived up where J.K. Williams of Williams Collection Agency lives—right on the corner of Phoenix Lake and Peaceful Valley Road.

DYER: Hm, yes. 

BLACK: the old house right there was the old Davis ranch.  And they had at least five-hundred head of sheep. And they took them to the mountains very summer and brought them down and the young fellows of the county earn part of their summer money from herding sheep and sheering sheep.

DYER: What about goats?

BLACK: Goats…well, as far as I know there was not too many goats. Most all the people had… farmers had a few goats to keep the brush and poison oak down. 

END OF TAPE

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard

Interviewee: Black, Agnes

Name of Tape: Agnes Black on the Black Ranch (black_a_4_1)

When: 1973 04 1974

Where: Wards Ferry Road

Transcriber: Ariella (3/5/09)