Farnsworth:  Fred Kenny, interviewed at Murphys by George Farnsworth.

Farnsworth:  Ok, now would you trace the beginnings of the ranch up to your ownership?

Kenny:  The beginning of it?

Farnsworth:  Well the--is this going now?

?:  Yeah, but we’ve only got one hour though.

Kenny:  Well, at the beginning they first of it was they started in 1854 - that was the first indication in the abstract of the title made out and authorized by Judge Aurola.  And it had a very varied history.  It changed hands many times.  There were mortgages and loans and everything.  Projects of all kinds.  One party came in and burned thousands of trees down at the end of it then it vanished.
            Many of the old-timers of Murphys are connected with it.  They had portions of it and so forth.  It finally was congealed into [Table Mono?] Ranch, which was named by Missus Adams, who purchased it in 1880.  At least, her husband purchased it, but they divorced after a year in marriage.  Her father was a very wealthy man in Boston.  He bought the place and gave it to her daughter.  And from there-on, ranched on it.  Extensively too, raising cattle and one time had the first Jersey herd in the state.  She imported those from Iowa.  Like all dairies, they wear a person down in no time what-so-ever.  So then, she changed cattle and she was one of the earliest in the mountains with [cattle drives] in 1906, when she first went up there and every year after that with her herd way up on the very summit.
            And, uh, in 1920, I came to the ranch.  I was invited over to take a trip to the mountains.  We both came from Boston, had the same background [know each other you know], you know?  And we became very friendly on that basis.  And when we came back, I stayed on with the farmer of old until he died then I took over.  And from there on, I developed it, took the ranch all over, and replanted and so forth - it was run down considerably.  And started breeding up the cattle until we got a real top third of [derms?].  And from there-on, we ranched as usual, but on a higher base, you know.  Better stock, better pasture, and all those things.  Gradually we added more on, dividing up one hundred sixty-meter homestead lots on the Stanislaus River on what is now known as Camp [Liam?] Road.  And Miss Adams died in 1927 on the range in the mountains and she had left the ranch to me.

Farnsworth:  How old was she?

Kenny:  She was, uh, seventy-six when she died.  She was quite a person.  She was raised in wealth, private schools and private education, but lived just like a man on the ranch.  She did all the working on the place, she handled the rope, all the branding and roping, she would rope a cow or a calf and put it through a hole in the fence.  And she would wrap that around this snuffing pole as quick as a flash and reach out a brand and push the brand into them.
            And she was just like a man.  And when she stepped onto camp she stepped on the ground like everybody else did.  It was a tough life, but she did it.  She strived, you know.  Then, in her seventieth year, showing how tough she was, she went on a six hundred mile horse-back trip from Bryce Canyon to the rainbow Bridge down through Lee’s Ferry.  She was seventy-years-old then and it took us thirty days through the roughest weather, cloud bursts, floods, and all sorts of things.  She gained ten pounds.  But that’s getting away from the ranch, but that shows the kind of character in her person.  She was highly educated, a great musician, and all that.  Still, she preferred the rough life.
            So after she died, I kept right on with the ranch until around 1930.  When the new sanitarium came in, they persuaded me to start a dairy there.  I I couldn’t see any--going to the mountains was a tough job--and it wasn’t worth the cost of it.  It was a wonderful life, though.  So I sold all my cattle then started this dairy.  I rented it after I left.  I thought, “I came along alright, came to it,” then I got to the retirement age.  I saw semi-retirement. I rented the ranch, the pasture and I took care of all the irrigation and all of that.  And, finally, the whole thing became too much so I sold it to this corporation, these prominent people from Stockton.  And I also sold all the property on the Camp Liam Road to the Flint-Gold people, or the Calaveras Cement Company, a branch of the Flint-Gold Company.
            And, uh...but the ranch itself was noted for its wonderful supply of water.  There was the one spring, the main spring was about the highest part of the ranch, fortunately that ran one hundred-fifty gallons of water a minute.  And then, below that, they...below that, we, uh...there were ten inches more water, seventeen springs.  Well, I took over the ranch in 1930.  She died in ‘27.  And it took that length of time, ‘27 to ‘30, to settle the estate because she was well-to-do and she had property in both Massachusetts and California and they got into a hassle over who she should pay the taxes to.  So, uh, that was a great deal of it.  When I came in, it was running wild - one part of the ranch was swamped and so forth, so we had some plan to use every bit of that water and the other springs.  We made a series of ditches and smaller ditches to work it out and finally capped it so we’re using every bit of that water and didn’t have to buy any.
            And, uh, it was quite an interesting thing.  And then I sold and now--[it’s horrible]--I told them when I sold it “I don’t care what they did, I wouldn’t like it.”  And it’s proved that way too.  I lived too close, if you might say.  They ruined some of the most beautiful trees and everything.  They don’t see those things, you know.  They haven’t studied ecology yet.

Farnsworth:  What would you consider the most important period of the ranch?  Which part of the ranch’s history was the most important?

Kenny: Well, I would say from the time Missus Adams picked it over from 1883.  Because from there on it had a plentiful supply of money and something substantial came to be done about it.  It had a very stable ownership, you know.  Money would run out and many things.  [Big Launch?] has gold there, lots of gold, but they took that water and stread it all over those meadows so the mine wouldn’t get it and get water right there and they would have to use their own water and they had always been that way.  So now there’s no mining and, uh, it’s more valuable that what it is.  Every time I was there, and probably more than that, there were agricultural purposes than there is for gold.  Because gold is just momentary; once it’s gone, there’s nothing left.  So there on, a lot of the mining down on [Jenny-Lynn?] had ruined the country there.  Beautiful ranching country.
            The...but that period that Missus Adams started on it, with all the money in the world, you know, to run the thing.  And she, uh, we had a very social life besides the ranching.  At her house, she’d have a brother who’d been travelling two years in Spain and Japan way back in the ‘90s.  And he collected an art collection: tapestries when he was a farmer, and artifacts, swords, paintings, and everything else in Japan.  And he built a small tea house at the back of the house.  Then he was going to build a large building that turned out to be the clubhouse, (or) what we call the clubhouse, and that was going to be a museum.  But the house burned and all the artwork there, but there were a lot left that were saved.  And he died suddenly of heart failure, so she built the clubhouse in his memory.  She called it “The House that Jack Built.”  That was her brother’s name, ‘Jack.’  We had no museum there but we had many social times, private ones, no public affairs.

Farnsworth:  Of…?  Who was in attendance?

Kenny:  Who what?

Farnsworth:  Plural.  Who was in attendance at the social functions?

Kenny:  Mostly a responsible party like clubs and many, many, many, boy scouts came up on weekends.  And we supplied them all with facilities and so-forth and they all slept in the hay loft, quite a thing for boys, you know.  And they came over the years.  Once a year, the children from the children’s home in Stockton came up for a week.  And that was a tough week, but it was a worth one.

Farnsworth:  Were there any people of notoriety that ever stayed or visited the ranch?

Kenny:  Well, most picture people.  A whole many people from around the world came because it was a great place because she had a great collection of antiques - finer types of antiques came from her home in Boston.

Farnsworth:  Can you give me the names of some of these people?

Kenny:  Well, most of the pictures people, yes there were plenty of them.  The very first one was Will Rogers who came.  And Kim Taylor was with him.  And, uh, let me see who else.  Well, there was Henry Fonda, Stephen Fetcher, Janet Ganer was there, and Angie Robinson, Rory Calhoun, Slim Summerville, and many, many others of that….They just did wonderful jobs there, you know.  Just very interesting people.
            And but otherwise we had sportsmen clubs and things like that.  They had the annual coon hunt, which was the big, big thing.  One time there was a thousand people there.

*Farnsworth laughs in incredulity*

Kenny:  Yes!  And when Will Rogers was there, two thousand people came to see him.  They let the schools out to come see him!  The place was literally swamped.  And after that, we had to have police out to tell nobody to come in because they would tear the pears out of the trees and raise the Dickens out of the place.  But we always tried to keep it private; the whole thing was private.  We only invited guests and all those things.  Responsible people like the Masons and the art collectors and all of those and the churches too, the [governor’s?] church with services there and summer sunday school, the Christian Science Church got its start there.  I didn’t care what denomination it was, they’ll do it.

Farnsworth:  Did any of these famous people stay at the ranch for any length of time?

Kenny:  Over nights you mean?

Farnsworth:  Yeah.

Kenny:  No, no they didn’t get up that far.  They got as far as the Murphys Hotel.  Oh, we had very prominent doctors and things like that, but…

Farnsworth:  Okay, let’s go a little bit into the Indians and what sort of an influence that they had on the ranch?

Kenny:  Before we white people came, it was a big ranchería, and there’s indications of it all around, all over the place.  And all the time we’d plow up mortars and artifacts of different kinds and oxen shoes, and I don’t know when they were used - I never heard anyone of oxen being used but their shoes are there in the field.

Farnsworth:  I found them myself!

Kenny:  We had many beads there.  There was a roundhouse down the lower part of the ranch so I would go down there to get my Indian beads.  Didn’t know what it was until an old, elderly lady came and said she was born at the place.  She was Missus Jone-Mach and she and her….No, her parents’ name was John-Mach, I don’t know what her married name was but she was a little girl and she showed me where the roundhouse was.  We knew nothing about it, but the indications in the rocks made the way around of the Indians.  In fact, Missus Adams knew the Indians when they had a camp up on the ridge just above the house.

Farnsworth:  Were they Miwok Indians?

Kenny:  Yes, Miwoks.  That’s all they are up here, Miwoks.  Because there were others back on the mountain and places where they had camped.  You can find indications of where they’d camped out and had meat like that from the clam shells.  Apparently they were very fond of them.
            The Indian, uh, Old Walker, he was the high toculaurem among the Indians, even the Tuolumne Indians.  He was very smart and this book of days would tell us how he would lecture and all of that and it was true!  I used to know him and would come down and sit by the barn door with me and talk.  When he sat up, he sat up like a clam with a stranger came around.  And he would sit there and talk and talk.
            And they worship the sun.  I went up the mountain on horseback one time because I heard hollering and everything and I chased it down to that hill and there was Old Walker on the hillside perhaps two or three hundred yards from this cabin up here on the mountain and he was sitting there with his legs crossed, looking up at a pine tree with his legs crossed and he was just hollering and carrying on [without a thing?].  I stopped to talk to him and I asked “why are you standing there worshipping the sun?”  He said “the sun goes out, no more rain.”  He had it right.
            He came through one time and a man asked him if he would take a message down to Vallecito, four miles away.  They then walk mostly, only a few of them had horses and they were getting along then.  Old Walker must have been a hundred-years-old by then, if all the stories are true about him, and I think they are too.  So the man gave him a dime to take this message down to Moe Sanders down in Vallecito.  So he took it down there.  Moe Sanders found this man on the ranch later on and he told him he gave him a dime when he got there.  They man got a hold of Walker and he said “Walker, you rascal, I gave you a dime to take back down there.  Why did you take ten cents from him?” (Old Walker replies) “Maybe I get thirsty on the other end too?”
            So, poor Walker, he went back and forth and he was quite steady.  He got right up to the end.  But one night, a whole lot of Indians came to the house - it was raining terribly.  And they couldn’t get across the creek--they had a model-T in those days--and a model-T with an Indian was hopeless and the car always got into trouble.  So they wanted to know if I had any lanterns because Walker was dead.  And so I said ‘alright’ and I had a whole lot of lanterns, I gave them each a lantern.  Then they went to walk up to their waist in the creeks to get across.  They went up there and Walker wasn’t dead!  He was highly indignant!  They were thinking he would be dead!
            But later they came back and they told me “you know, he wasn’t dead but he’s pretty sick.”  So I thought I better go up.  So Missus Adams alive them, so her, I, and a lady visiting from the East went up in the car and we get out and we had food for him and milk, fresh milk and everything.  So I went and knocked on the door and said “Walker, it’s Fred!”  No answer what-so-ever.  I was thinking ‘oh gosh I’ve got to go in there and see a dead Indian in there.’  So the ladies wouldn’t go in so I went in and he was in a bunk in the corner of the cabin.  It was all neat, [Merric Deacons] was living with him then, but at the time she was living down on the...ranch down here below the Douglas Flat.  She had been there, but she had kind-of neglected to go up there.  I went in and Old Walker was there in his bunk with a blanket over his head and all and I was sure that Old Walker was dead.  So I went and tore the blanket off his face, you know, and he was staring straight in the air but very much alive and--just bones, he was just bones nothing to eat--so I went in and offered him something to eat.  “Maybe sometime.”  “No!” I said, “you’ve got to have something to eat now.”  So I started a fire on the stove and I had some bouillon cubes and in the heat they were melting those up, you know, and some bread, and I was trying to make it but he wouldn’t do it.  He said “bye-bye” so I left everything on the table right besides his bunk and that bunk had nothing in it but boards, he was laying on boards.
            So I came back and I went to town and in those days, the Indians weren’t given money.  Just only recently have they been giving them money, you know, pensions and somehow.  And they would give them a bill of fair, sort of.  The supervisor of the district had uh, the money and he would give them an order in the grocery store then they, the Indians, would come and get it.  So, uh, they would let the supervisor know and he got a hold of Maria [Taquis], who should have been up there but wasn’t, and she brought it up there.  So she [?] and went up there every day at least to come see him and give him food and everything.  But he died about two weeks.  Then they had the funeral and it was really worth going to.
            All white people go all the time.  I’ve been in this country when the Indians were alive - they’re gone now.  But they would always go to the funeral.  They were one of the family, you might say, in these little towns.  The Indians were a part of it.  And, uh, he was very, very interested in seeing the funeral that day.  When Old Walker died, chief [Homer], I guess it was, and the squaws all sat down in a circle around the grave and they took pebbles--little pebbles--and they surrounded the grave with them.  And then the chief went up there and gave an oration in Indian.  And then he turned to the squaws and the squaws came up to sit down and they just cried their eyes out.  You would hear them a mile away and he’d tell them to stop and let the ceremony go out.  And yes, finally, the white people would go home.Everybody went home.  They respected the Indians because they were good here.  They weren’t bad Indians.  And then the funeral was over but all night long they were hollering, crying.  And I saw that at Sheepranch too.
            And then around in 19--..., close to 1920, I saw the last powwow.  And the Indians, the Gauchos, would come over from Nevada and as they come down they bring pine nuts with them, lots of those in that country, and sell them along the road.  Then they come to Sheepranch and have a powwow.  They built a big circle.  Before that circle, they had regular roundhouses but they were all destroyed by then.  And they make them on fur boughs - a big round place, you know.  They dig a hole, with one on each side, and put a big packing box down upside-down and the chief would get up there and dance on it usually, like a drum, you know.  And then I stayed there practically all night long so they got through.  They gave me permission to, I asked them if it would be alright and they said ‘yes.’  And they would dance and they would play games with a something that they put in their hands and the people on the other side and guess which player would go in.  They [tried] again but the squaws, they have money.  And I found that was so with the Navajos too.  And the Indians in the Navajo country, when they were trading things, they always came to the squaw to get her approval.  But here, they just went around and all around the outside were blankets and things where they were going to sleep that night, you know.

Farnsworth:  Were there any other white men at the powwow?

Kenny:  Only the townspeople, yes.  But they had seen it lots of time but I had never seen it before.  And I knew them very well; I was very friendly with them, used to give them coffee and sugar and stuff, you know.  But they weren’t exactly poor, they had what they needed and always, every year, they grinded acorns.  It was quite an interesting process.  And they gave me a loaf of their bread.  They told me “yes, it’s cooked in the mush stage.  They make it up in the [mayer?] and put it in a basket and they take hot, hot cobblestones--you know--and lift two sticks to lift it out of the fire and drop it in there with a ‘baboom,’ you know.  They would then take the rock out and put another one and it would all cook.  They would take a little --a smaller basket, and they dip some of that hot mush out and take it and roll it out over with a bucket of cold water.  And that would harden it.  And, uh, when it was hard, why I don’t know what they did with it.  They probably had it for later use.  But I sent it home and my nephews sent it to school and they all tasted it.
            There’s no taste to it; no salt, no anything.  An awfully flat-tasting thing.  But those there, they would dump those baskets out once they’ve taken all the mush out of it and [take the backroom] and push the mush out of it and the dogs would all get in and lick them out.

[cut]

Kenny:  All of the local Indians, like the Sheepranch Indians, had their headman.  In the East, the Eastern Indians called them sachems.  There was a big chief over them all.  But Walker was considered the big chief of all of them around and the...they all had their own local [persons], you know.

Farnsworth:  I read that Walker...was the first Indian to see a white man walk into Douglas Flat.

Kenny:  Well, I don’t know.  He possibly did because the people came that way and he lived down there in Duck Bar, down in that country.  That’s very possible that he did.

Farnsworth:  Well, that’s what I read.

Kenny:  Yes, he probably did.  Down there on Duck Bar it shows where he has been.  There’s a lot of rockwork around.

Farnsworth:  Now, where is Duck Bar?

Kenny:  Duck Bar is right on the Stanislaus River, down off the Camp Nine road.  Very close by there was the Abbott’s Ferry road crossing.  And that, I think, is the earlier crossing than Parrot’s Ferry.  The river’s shallow up there.  And they came up through that way and came up right into Douglas.  It’s difficult to see how many white people came across the Tuolumne River and came up through Calaveras and moved down to San Joaquin.

Farnsworth:  Okay.  Let’s flip the tape.

END TAPE
Interviewer: George Farnsworth
Interviewee: Fred Kenny
When: 1971
Transcriber:  John P Hire
Transcribed: 21 May 2020