Part Thirteen: Reprise
By Laile Di Silvestro. Published March 2025.
This is Part Thirteen of a multi-part series by historical archaeologist Laile Di Silvestro. The series started with an astonishingly bold act—two women staking a claim in the remote Mineral King Mining District in what is now Sequoia National Park. The tale unfolds in California in the second half of the 19th century. It was place and time where women struggled to thrive within power structures that favored unscrupulous men. It is a true story. Read Part Twelve HERE.
The past has the audacity of coming back, albeit in a somewhat different form.
Let’s revisit Lizzie’s uncle Joseph Ransom Gilkey, the one who took in the rape victim Lena and her family. In an echo of Frank’s experience in 1881, Joseph found a corpse in 1900. In contrast to Frank’s experience, there appears to have been no attempt to accuse Joseph of the murder. It could have been argued that he had the disposition. He was, after all, blind in one eye as the result of an 1881 gun battle with a man who had led the Tarpey lynching with Melvin and John. Joseph had since, however, become the owner of a beloved confectionary store and acquired a reputation almost as sweet.
It isn’t just echoes of the past that come back to us through time. Solid objects etched with emotion do as well. Remember Charles Wilson, the man who shot Lizzie’s father Edwin in the back? In 1899 the newspapers announced that a Mr. Jefferds found a mysterious package while cleaning up the county auditor’s office. It was a small bundle wrapped in a linen handkerchief that had yellowed with age. It bore Wilson’s name. Its contents were added to a curio collection established by Sheriff Harrelson in 1895. Wilson’s inadvertent contribution included a meerschaum pipe, a single piece of tobacco, a $100 Confederate note, a ten cent piece, a three cent stamp, a lead pencil, a few letters, and two tin-type photographs. By 1899, the sheriff’s curio collection was so large, a separate room was set aside for it—perhaps Tulare County’s first museum.
And finally, there is the powder horn. In 1935, William Lutz drew his last breath in the Monterey County Hospital. He died unmarried and without offspring, but with a fortune of $12,000.00. A judge deemed his closest relatives to be the descendants of his aunt Amy Lutz Gilkey, the matriarch of the California Gilkeys and our Lizzie’s grandmother. To determine who those descendants were, an attorney tracked down the powder horn. The Gilkeys had continued to etch the names of children on it as they were born.
Seven of Amy Gilkey’s grandchildren got the money and a tale to pass on to future generations. But… not Lizzie because she had died ten years earlier in 1925. Her children received nothing.
When the newspapers published the story of the Gilkeys and their powder horn, Lizzie’s name wasn’t even mentioned. She was already gone. Her story was already lost. Or perhaps it was simply waiting to be relevant again.
Perhaps it was waiting for you.
“[…] of them it may be said that they have grown old gracefully, and have seen the happy as well as dark side of life.” —the final words in William T. Gilkey’s 1903 biography
Finis
Read the entire series here.
Sources:
Census records (Monterey County, CA)
Death records (CA)
Guinn, J.M. 1903. “History of the state of California and biographical record of Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties.” Chicago: The Chapman Publishing Co., p. 376.
The Evening Mail (Stockton). “A Farmer Shot.” 21 October 1881, p. 2.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel. “Watsonville News.” 22 October 1881, p. 3.
Daily Delta (Visalia). “A Queer Find: A Package Once Owned by Jailbird.” 23 July 1899, p. 1.
Salinas Daily Index. “Ghastly Find.” 6 February 1900.
Salinas Daily Post. “Trace Heirs by Names Inscribed on Powder Horn.” 8 May 1935, p. 1.
The Californian (Salinas). “Powder Horn Tells Heirs to Estate” 8 May 1935, p. 3.