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    Lafayette
    Lafayette
    Lafayette
    Ebook192 pages47 minutes

    Lafayette

    By Mary McCosker and Mary Solon

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    About this ebook

    Today’s Lafayette is a modern East Bay suburb with a long and intriguing history of people, agriculture, and commerce. The story began in the summer of 1846, when Elam Brown and 13 families left St. Joseph, Missouri, in wagon trains and embarked on a sixmonth journey west to establish new homes and lives. By February 1848, Brown and his family had purchased the Rancho Acalanes in Contra Costa County from a San Francisco financier and had established the settlement that would later became Lafayette. Gradually Brown sold his land to other settlers, and the community began to grow. Eventually homes, stores, roads, schools, and churches were built. In these pages, the genesis of Lafayette, along with the story of its creators and early residents, is revealed in stirring early imagery.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJun 20, 2007
    ISBN9781439618264
    Lafayette
    Author

    Mary McCosker

    Showcasing vintage images from the Lafayette Historical Society archives and other historical sources, this book depicts the early settlement and the growth of the town and its people. Longtime residents Mary McCosker and Mary Solon of the Lafayette Historical Society present this work in the spirit of chronicling and preserving Lafayette’s history for future generations.

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      Book preview

      Lafayette - Mary McCosker

      McNeil.)

      One

      BEGINNINGS

      The Saclan, a Miwok tribelet, lived in the area of present-day Walnut Creek and Lafayette. With the arrival of the Spanish explorers in the mid-1700s, the Saclan people began to leave the area due to death from foreign disease, flight from the Spanish missionaries, or missionization in San Francisco or San Jose. By the 1830s, the Saclan people had disappeared from the region.

      Explorers from Spain first visited this area in 1772. Later, after the Mexican army defeated the Spanish and removed them from California, the Mexican government rewarded its soldiers for exemplary service, often gifting them land. Candelario Valencia, a sergeant in the Mexican army, was allowed to petition for land west of Mount Diablo, which was granted to him in 1834. He named this land Rancho Acalanes after the Saclan Indian tribe that had lived in the area. He ran cattle on the land but never planted crops on it. He sold it to William Leidesdorff, a land speculator from San Francisco, in the mid-1840s, perhaps to pay off a debt.

      Elam Brown, a farmer who had lived in the eastern United States, decided to seek fertile land in California after his wife died in 1845. In May 1846, a wagon train of 14 families and 16 wagons led by Elam Brown left St. Joseph, Missouri, heading west. The journey took about six months, and several members of the group died of illness along the way, including Isaac Allen, one of the wagon train’s cocaptains, leaving his wife, Margaret, a widow. The wagon train reached Sutter’s Fort in California, and many of the train’s members left to settle in other parts of the state. Elam spent the summer of 1847 in the San Antonio/Canyon redwoods of Contra Costa County whipsawing lumber. Finding that the Rancho Acalanes was for sale by Leidesdorff, Margaret and Elam, newly married, purchased the rancho for $900 (including 300 head of cattle). A portion of the money used for the purchase was carried to California, hidden in an eight-day clock belonging to Margaret. The Browns were among the first American settlers to farm in Contra Costa County.

      This sketch by Louis Choris, drawn while in San Francisco in 1816, shows the faces of two Saclan Indians, a tribelet of the Miwok. Saclan people had short bodies, broad shoulders, and long, coarse hair. They painted their faces during celebrations, and women often tattooed their faces with lines to indicate the number of children they had. (Courtesy Contra Costa County Office of Education.)

      These arrowheads were found in the creeks near Lafayette Circle by longtime Lafayette resident Bill Wakeman when he was a young boy. Thought to be from 1,000 A.D., they were used for hunting by the Saclan peoples, who traded with neighboring tribelets for the obsidian. Bone, stone, and wood were also used in arrow making. (Courtesy Bill Wakeman.)

      Tule houses were simply constructed from willow branches stuck in the ground, lashed together with willow bark at the top, and covered in tule grasses and leaves. The size of the hut depended on the number in the family. Saclan villages consisted of family units of 65 to 75 people, all that an area could easily support in food and clothing. (Courtesy Contra Costa County Office of Education.)

      Willow bark skirts were worn by Saclan women during the warmer months of the year. Men and children usually wore no clothing at all, but in the winter months, both men and women often coated their bodies with mud to insulate themselves from the cold. (Courtesy Contra Costa County Office of Education.)

      Acorns were used as a staple food for the Saclan, and many months were spent every fall gathering and storing these nuts for the winter ahead. A large oak tree could yield 300 pounds of acorns a year. Acorns were served as soup, mush, in biscuits and bread, and were gathered and stored in granaries and woven baskets until winter. (Courtesy East Contra Costa County Historical Society.)

      To eat the acorns, it was necessary to leach out the tannic acid. The acorns were shelled and the meat pounded in the mortar bowls worn in the bedrock. The pounded acorns were put in baskets and then rinsed as many as 20 times with hot water, a process that might take several days. (Courtesy East Contra Costa County Historical Society.)

      Most of the Saclan life was spent out of doors. Within each village was a central place where meals were prepared and men sharpened weapons and planned the hunt. The Saclan were not farmers. All food was foraged or killed. Nuts, grasses, and other plants were gathered or dug from the ground to eat. They drank water from the streams. (Courtesy Wilma G. Cheatham.)

      Saclan men hunted deer and other indigenous animals, often disguising themselves for the hunt. To mask their human scent, they rubbed their bodies with bay laurel leaves. Insects, especially grubs and larvae, were collected as well as snails and grasshoppers, which were roasted on hot rocks before being eaten. (Courtesy Wilma G.

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