Calaveras Heritage Council

The man who was to have the longest connection with the lands in the Flowers Ranch area was Nathan Monroe Flower (a.k.a. Flowers), a native of New York and early resident of Stanislaus County who came to California in 1852 1. By 1860, however, the census enumerator listed Flower, age 39, as residing somewhere near the Flowers Ranch area. His occupation was listed as “merchant” with $1,000 in personal estate, and he was residing with two miners: John Mosher, 50, from Massachusetts; and relative J. D. Flowers, 20, from New York. This was undoubtedly at Two-Mile Bar, where that same year he was assessed for a house and lot, occupied as a store and garden, on the Knights Ferry Road near the bridge.

In 1863, Flower married Mary Ann Spicer, the daughter of Daniel and Elizabeth Spicer, who had taken up a ranch east of the Flowers Ranch lands. In 1865, Flower purchased a 15-acre parcel of land on the right bank of the Stanislaus River at Two-Mile Bar from James Eldredge, one of the owners of the Rancho del Rio Estanislao, for $400 ₂. By 1870, however, the Flower family was residing in Knights Ferry, where Nathan Flower listed his occupation as stock raiser. With Nathan and Mary were their children Edwin, age 6; John, 4; Elizabeth, 3; and Franklin, 1.

In 1877, Nathan Flower patented a 40-acre parcel of land on Littlejohns Creek, just north of the Grant, where he built a cabin. He had purchased the property that year from James L. Gooch, of Stanislaus County, for $340 (northwestern half of the northeastern quarter, southwestern quarter of the northeastern quarter, and lots 2 and 3 of Section 28, T1N, R12E)₃. His assessment that year noted a cabin and brush corral, but the Flower family continued to reside in Knights Ferry, using the cabin only sporadically. In 1880, Flower listed his occupation as “miner,” so perhaps he was residing in the cabin while mining on the creek. Lifelong Copperopolis resident Charlie Stone recalled that the cabin site was marked by a pile of rocks from a stone chimney and a slanting rock in the creek with the names of Flower’s children chiseled on it. Although Flower owned the property from 1877 on, it may have been occupied by earlier settlers without the benefit of recorded deeds.

1. "Recollections of Calaveras Counties First Fair",
   Flower, Elsie
   , Volume X,Xl, San Andreas, CA, (1962)
2. Calaveras County Deed Book N:14
3. Calaveras County Deed book 1:379

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The lands taken up by members of the Callahan family from the 1870s through the 1890s may have been occupied by others in the 1850s and 1860s, but no deeds were located. By 1870, Thomas Harris and Elvira Callahan and their family of six children were residing on their ranch in the northwesterly portion of the Flowers Ranch (southwestern quarter of Section 10, T1N, R12E). That year, Thomas, a native of Ireland, was listed as a 44-year-old farmer with $200 in real estate and $1,475 in personal estate. In addition to Thomas, the household consisted of his wife, Elvira/Ellen, age 42; his blind brother-in-law “McGowan” (McCuon), age 37; and his children, Robert, Susan, George, Ellen, Austin, and Thomas. Callahan was naturalized in Calaveras County the following year and registered to vote at that same time.

Thomas Callahan’s assessment in 1873 noted a house, a barn, a fence, and a stone corral, with a wagon, a horse, a colt, 26 cattle, two goats, five sheep, and poultry. Thomas patented the land in 1885, and Ella M. Callahan (Elvira/Ellen) had patented the northwestern quarter two years previously. Thomas Harris Callahan was listed as a “cloth furnisher” in the 1880 census but as a farmer in the 1888 Great Register. In 1880, he was 56 and residing on the property with his wife, Elvira, a native of Kentucky, age 52; while all the children were born in California: Robert, 26, a rancher; George W., 21, a laborer; and Austin, 15, and Thomas Jr., 14, sheep herders. Daughters Susan, 24, and Ellen, 18, were keeping house with their mother.

By 1887, Thomas was assessed for the 160 acres with a house, a barn, and a fence, as well as furniture, a sewing machine, farming utensils, a buggy, a harness, two cows, two stock cattle, four dozen poultry, and a dog. After his death in 1895, the property, which had been increased to 640 acres, was conveyed to William Bruskey and then to John Manuel, who sold to N.M. Flower in 1897 ₁. In 1900, Elvira Callahan and her daughter Ellen and son-in-law Jefferson D. Boxall and their two children were residing in Copperopolis.

Thomas and Elvira’s son George patented the southeastern quarter of Section 10 in 1888, and their son Austin patented the northeastern quarter of Section 15 in 1891 ₂. George sold his land, which had been assessed for only a corral and a fence, to William Bruskey in March 1902 for $30 (Deed Book 11:423), and Austin sold his acreage to Nathan Flower in April 1894 for $550 (Deed Book 24:245). Apparently, no structures were on the land, and it was used for agricultural purposes in conjunction with the main Callahan Ranch.

1. Calaveras County Deed Book 30:120
2. Calaveras County Land Patent Maps

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Close behind the prospectors and miners came the agriculturalists, families from the eastern states and Europe who saw opportunities for stock-raising and truck garden operations on the open grasslands. Following the decline of placer deposits in the Mother Lode after ca. 1860, ranching became more important to the foothill economy. Settlers established farms in the area where they grew hay, alfalfa, and wheat and planted orchards, Most families practiced a mixed agricultural economy, raising cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry, which supplied them with a steady supply of foodstuffs augmented by vegetable gardens and orchards.

Livestock, however, has always provided the backbone of the agricultural industry, with the practice of transhumance opening up the high country to cow and sheep camps. Upland grazing of cattle, sheep, and goats was an important early historical land use, beginning as early as 1849, with livestock herds annually moved to the mountains during the hot summers, returning to the valleys below before winter. Most of the geographic names in the high country were derived from the summer pasturing of the foothill ranching families, i.e. Tryon Peak, Hiram Meadow, Adams Camp, Wheat’s Meadow, and many others.

Some families established vineyards and produced wines and brandies for personal use and for sale, while others bottled the clear, fresh waters of local springs and sold them commercially. Hops were grown and baked in kilns for breweries that produced local beers and ales. Olive trees were planted and the olives cured or made into oil, in both family and commercial orchards. Commercial winemaking began in 1851, with 1,000 vines set out on the Calaveras River. Mokelumne Hill was another center of wine production, but vineyards were also planted in virtually every community in the early years.

Nineteenth-century impetus for agricultural development came from disenchanted county boosters who blamed mining for Calaveras’ socioeconomic problems and perceived farming as a panacea. A host of problems plagued the county’s agricultural development, not the least of which was the public perception of the foothills as mining territory incapable of fostering anything better than infertile “bedrock ranches.” Local farming never developed beyond a subsistence level and gradually gave way to livestock operations. As the mining economy declined, however, farming gained importance as a family enterprise which helped to establish more permanence and stability in the society.

Location(s)

Close behind the prospectors and miners came the agriculturalists, families from the eastern states and Europe who saw opportunities for stock-raising and truck garden operations on the open grasslands. Following the decline of placer deposits in the Mother Lode after ca. 1860, farming gained importance as a family enterprise, which helped to establish more permanence and stability in the society. Settlers established farms growing hay, alfalfa, and wheat, and planted orchards and truck gardens. Most families practiced a mixed agricultural economy, raising cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry, which supplied them with a steady supply of foodstuffs augmented by vegetable gardens and orchards. Livestock, however, has always been the backbone of the agricultural industry, with the practice of transhumance (taking livestock to the high country to pasture during the summer and returning in the fall to their foothill ranches) opening up the high country to cow and sheep camps.

Commercial winemaking began in the county in 1851, with 1,000 vines set out on the Calaveras River. Mokelumne Hill was another center of wine production, but vineyards were also planted in virtually every community in the early years. Hops were grown and baked in kilns for breweries that produced local beers and ales. Olive trees were planted and the olives cured or made into oil in both family and commercial orchards. Local farming, however, never developed beyond a subsistence level and gradually gave way to livestock operations.

Location(s)

Some of the lands in the Flowers Ranch area near Copperopolis were taken up in the 1850s, with farms and dwellings located on the ferry roads and along Littlejohns Creek. These farms tended to encompass large acreages, with livestock grazing the primary occupation. Shortly after the discovery of copper at Quail Hill, Napoleon City, and Copperopolis in 1860, however, more settlers moved to the area. The rush for gold that had begun with such enthusiasm in 1848 had ended by the mid-1850s, and unemployed miners and merchants were looking elsewhere for their livelihood. The copper discoveries, coupled with the unprecedented need for copper for shell casings for the Northern cause in the Civil War, created a boom that brought miners, laborers, merchants, saloon keepers, hotel keepers, and trades people to the burgeoning Copperopolis community.

An outgrowth of this boom was the settlement of the surrounding lands for agricultural purposes, as farmers scrambled to produce livestock, grain crops, fruit, and vegetables to provide foodstuffs for the hungry hordes. It is interesting to note that many of the early settlers in the Flowers Ranch area were natives of Ireland, perhaps drawn to the area by Thomas McCarty, proprietor of the nearby Log Cabin Ranch and Store, which provided provisions for both local miners and travelers on the Shirley Road to Angels Camp and the Stanislaus River ferries. In addition to farming, however, all of the landowners mined at one time or another ₁.

1. Charlie Stone (Copperopolis native and local historian) Interview of 1992. Notes on file, Foothill Resources, Ltd., Murphys,CA

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