Introduction: Powder Horn – The Gilkey Family Saga.
By Laile Di Silvestro. Published March 2025.
The ephemeral remains of a wire within a small rock monument that once held a mine claim location notice. The wire disintegrated when the author attempted to measure it.
This begins a multi-part series by historical archaeologist Laile Di Silvestro. It starts 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.
In the summer of 1877, a 43-year-old Irish immigrant named Ellen Gilkey and her teenage daughter Lizzie staked a mining claim on an exquisitely beautiful 20 acres in Mineral King. They were taking advantage of new federal regulations that inadvertently neglected to explicitly exclude women from ownership of mine claims. In doing so, the Gilkeys joined about three dozen Mineral King women who thwarted societal norms in a manner that wasn’t to be repeated elsewhere in the United States for two more decades.
The tale of Ellen and Lizzie Gilkey reflects the evolution of law and order in the western United States and the ways in which women negotiated power structures that favored unscrupulous men. It is a very disturbing tale. Indeed, I am tempted not to tell it. Perhaps that hesitation is sufficient argument that it should be told. Let’s begin with an artifact associated with death… and life.
This is Part One of a multi-part series by historical archaeologist Laile Di Silvestro. The series commenced 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 the Introduction HERE.
Not all Gilkey men were bad. And the rest were assuredly not bad all the time, even if they were arguably overfamiliar with the gun.
The women were not strangers to the gun either, of course. Amy Lutz Gilkey, the matriarch of the California Gilkeys, was the first non-native woman to shoot a deer in Michigan’s untamed Plymouth Township. The act was astonishing enough to warrant a note in the township history, along with the first killing of a bear in the township by a non-native man. The township historian didn’t give us Amy’s name, however, and instead just identified her as the wife of Justus Gilkey.
If we are to judge by Justus Gilkey’s electoral success, he was perhaps not considered bad by the majority of voters, or perhaps any flaws in his character were considered irrelevant or even an asset in the new state of Michigan. Or, it could be that there were limited choices.
Be that as it may, Justus acquired elected offices, land, and sons in prodigious proportions. He was the justice of the peace, the town clerk, the tax assessor, the overseer of the poor, the overseer of the highways, and school inspector. This seems impressive, but it should be noted that there were only six or seven families in the area at the time, and three of those were Gilkeys. Regardless, Justus and his seven sons shared their bounty, as well as their time and energy. They donated land intended for the capitol building in Lansing and they built the school.
The wealth and influence the Gilkeys enjoyed in Michigan couldn’t compete with the tales coming from the gold fields of California in 1849, however. The Gilkeys left sparsely populated Michigan and joined about 300,000 others in the gold rush.
The men went first in 1850. They traveled overland on the Oregon Trail to California, and then down to the Sonora District of Tuolumne County. Within a year or two, they returned to retrieve their wives and children. Among the personal treasures Amy carried with her to California was a powder horn.
During the so-called French-Indian War and the Revolutionary War, a gun was useless without a horn-full of black powder at the ready. Before it was rendered insignificant by the invention of breech loading rifles and metal cartridges, the powder horn was an implement of death and life. During the height of its use, the horn helped kill most of the land’s native population not already taken by European diseases, and it helped kill more than 20,000 non-natives battling each other for domination of North America. As the survivors spread west, the horn also helped bring venison, bear, and other flesh to the table.
Museum basements are replete with powder horns. They would be as mind-dulling to study as the plethora of broken tobacco pipe stems if their real and symbolic value didn’t encourage personalization. Much of this personalization proclaimed ownership:
JOHN SMITH
HIS HORN
Many men went further, however, engraving lists of battles, maps, rhymes, flowers, mermaids, ornate scenes…
Alas, the image here is not a portrait of THE powder horn, but rather a powder horn. The author is hoping to track down the descendant who is the current keeper of the horn. Source: Valley Forge National Historical Park Collection; public domain.
Justus engraved his horn, too, but did something seemingly unique.* What others would record in the family bible, Justus recorded on the powder horn—the names of his daughters and sons as they were born.
William Tibbetts (1821)
Melvin Jerome (1823)
Riley Alexander (1825)
Edwin Gilbert (1827)
Samuel J. (1831)
Lydia Rebecca (1833)
Joseph Ransom (1835)
John William (1838)
Mary M. (1841)
Jerome (1849)**
The Gilkeys. This was their horn. And its role in their lives was to be more than symbolic.
*I have not yet found any reference to similar engravings in the powder horn literature.
** These are the names of the children that survived long enough to appear in the census records, and may not represent the actual list.
Sources:
Census records (Wayne County, MI; Ingham County, MI; Tuolumne County, CA; Monterey County, CA)
Voter Registers (Tuolumne County, CA; Monterey County, CA)
Early Michigan histories (Durant. S. 1880. History of History of Ingham and Eaton Counties, Michigan; Ingham County Historical and Pioneer Society. Michigan Historical Commission. 1897. Pioneer History of Ingham County. 1880. Michigan Historical Collections, Volume 2.)
Powder horn literature (Durand, R. 2018. The Historical and Personal Importance of Engraved Powder Horns. Museum of the City of New York; Truex, M. 2014. 15th-18th Century Powder Horns and Flasks from the Collections of Valley Forge National Historical Park. National Park Service.
Newspaper articles (Schiro, F. “Trace Heirs by Names Inscribed on Powder Horn.” in Salinas Daily Post, 8 May 1935, p. 1)
This is Part Two of a multi-part series by historical archaeologist Laile Di Silvestro. The series commenced 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 One HERE.
Appearances matter. When the man who murdered Edwin G. Gilkey was brought out for his pardon hearing, he didn’t have to say a word. He was simply presented so that the prison directors could gaze upon his small stature. It was assumed obvious that the man was harmless and had acted in self defense.
The Gilkey men weren’t harmless. Most didn’t live long enough for their appearance to be officially recorded, however. The ones who did were of average stature (5’6” to 5’9”) with light to auburn hair, fair skin, prominent noses, blue or steel gray eyes, and small mouths with thin lips. As elderly men, they had the slender frame of those who have labored their entire lives. A scar on the side of a nose may have attested to a pugilistic bent.
The next generation of Gilkey males stood out, however, towering above their contemporaries at 5’10” and 6’. We may never know to what extent this was due to the introduction of robust maternal genes or the introduction of prunes to the diet.
But what about the women, you ask? How shall we imagine 43-year-old Ellen Gilkey and her teenage daughter Lizzie on July 5, 1877 as they staked their silver claim in Mineral King? Ellen was an O’Sullivan of pure Irish ancestry. If the photo of Lizzie’s sister Lydia Melissa is an indicator, Lizzie may have had the fair skin and curly auburn hair of her Irish mother. Given the blue eyes of her Gilkey parentage and the phenotypical eyes of the Irish, Lizzie may have gazed out at Sawtooth Peak and squinted at sparkling stones through eyes of startling azure.
Lizzie didn’t inherit Gilkey genes alone. She inherited a close extended family. Justus and Amy, their adult sons, and their families mined and farmed in relative proximity in the Sonora area, and then migrated together to the Watsonville area in Monterey County. When one Gilkey returned to Sonora to mine, others joined him and all stayed in close touch. When John Gilkey died, his brother Joseph stepped in to help the family. Lizzie and her cousins may have shared a sigh of relief at John’s death.
Lizzie’s parents Edwin and Ellen separated from the family in 1870, however, potentially escaping a feud that was to take Melvin Gilkey’s life only a few years later. They didn’t travel far enough to escape the Gilkey men’s murderous temperament, however… or the bottle.
Steel yourself. It is almost time to get to know the Gilkey men better.
Detail of a photograph of Lizzie’s sister Lydia Melissa (Gikey) Noonan and her husband Michael shared publicly by her descendants.
This is Part Three 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 Two HERE.
Our Ellen Gilkey gave birth to Elizabeth Amy on July 19, sometime between 1857 and 1860 in the gold country of Tuolumne County.* By all accounts, Lizzie emerged in a place and time when drunken murders and mob justice were the norm.
Indeed, her early years were haunted by the ghosts of murdered men. This is because Edwin and Ellen Gilkey were living on the Lyons Ranch with their three little girls.
The story perhaps begins in October of 1855 when Lizzie’s uncle William Tibbetts Gilkey was living in nearby Shaw’s Flat as a miner. Edward Fenwick Hunter, a lawyer of notably short stature** and temper, verbally abused Eugene B. Drake, a respected miner, during a legal proceeding. Later in the day, they encountered each other in the Palace Saloon, where Drake threw Hunter to the floor before leaving. Gilkey was outside when Hunter exited the saloon. Hunter pushed Gilkey aside and approached Drake, who shoved Hunter off the sidewalk. This proved too much for Hunter, who threw himself at Drake. Gilkey and others separated the two men, and Gilkey held Drake back, telling him to keep his cool as Hunter pulled a gun from under his right coattail.
“Don’t you draw that pistol, Hunter!” shouted Gilkey.
Drake was trying to draw his own pistol, but it was caught in his clothes and he had to use both hands to get it. Meanwhile, Hunter backed up, cocked, and raised his gun.
Gilkey let go of Drake and jumped aside. Hunter fired.
“Oh, Lord!” said Drake, and he tried to move behind Gilkey. Hunter fired, Drake got off two shots, and Hunter fired again. Our Gilkey ran behind a pile of bricks.
“Hold your shots! Hold your fire!” the onlookers screamed
“I am all right, I have a shot left,” responded Hunter.
Drake, however, was severely wounded in his left arm and right thigh. Gilkey ran to him and helped him get to the doctor’s office. After two amputations, Drake eventually recovered. Hunter was unscathed and walked free.
Now jump forward sixteen months featuring five murders, two of them unsolved, and the presumably accidental shooting of a Frenchman while hunting birds. The Blakely brothers, John and William, had recently purchased the Lyons Ranch from John Lyons. It was after dusk on the evening of February 14. The brothers were having a peaceful supper with their friend, Joseph B. Verplank, when bullets shattered the window. The three ran to the back door, where John took a fatal bullet in the back. William turned to grab a gun in the corner, and who did he see coming through the front door with his gun firing? Why, it seems to have been our short-statured lawyer Edward Fenwick Hunter. His bullet shattered William’s arm, which was later amputated. Before leaving, the murderer (or murderers) burned down the house.
William testified that Hunter was the shooter. Hunter proclaimed his innocence, stating that he had been alone in bed with a sore throat, though no one could attest to that. Despite his initial insistence, William eventually concurred that Hunter wasn’t involved. The sheriff arrested James G. Lyons, the brother of the previous owner of the ranch, his friend M. A. Poer, and a young man named Wallace. They had not been seen near the ranch; however, they were convenient suspects. The public turned against them when it was suggested without evidence that they might also be responsible for four other deaths (including that of Lyons’s partner at his carpenter’s bench and the bird-hunting Frenchman). After several days in jail, young Wallace “was induced to confess the guilt” of his alleged accomplices, who continued to plea their innocence. Lyons and Poer narrowly escaped mob lynching and were executed on December 11, 1857 in front of an audience of 5000.
As for Hunter, he allegedly went to Sacramento, murdered a man in a hotel there, and then moved to Ohio where he continued to practice law.
Edwin, Lizzie, and their girls moved onto the Lyons Ranch and built a home. The property quickly developed a reputation for being haunted, however. Given the execution, one might wonder if the ghost of John Blakely was the only spirit haunting the place. In 1859, Edwin often let five or six miners spend the night in the barn. The men claimed that a ghost in the shape of a 16-foot man would appear at night, toss hay bails about, and chase the men outside. It was impervious to bullet lead. The men eventually ran off in fright and refused the Gilkeys’ hospitality thereafter.
The Gilkeys eventually left as well. By 1868, they had joined the extended Gilkey family in Monterey County, settling for a time in Pajaro where Edwin’s brother Melvin Jerome was nursing the embers of a feud.
Meanwhile, Edwin’s mother Amy died in 1870 and his father Justus in 1872, leaving his walking cane and powder horn to haunt or delight future generations.
Edwin, Ellen, and their girls escaped the violence of Pajaro in 1870, and appeared briefly in Oakland and Centerville. The records suggest that Edwin was traveling under an assumed first and middle name, perhaps with the feud in mind. This feud was about to flame before coming to a violent end.
Sonora, January 1852. Created by Goddard, George H. (active ca. 1852-ca. 1853), British, artist (attributed to) Pollard & Britton (active ca. 1852), lithographer. Courtesy of the UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library.
* Lizzie opted to confuse us in this matter. In an 1912 official government record she testified that she was born in 1860; however, a June 1860 census recorded her as being 3 years old at that time.
** For the record, the author is also of short stature.
Sources:
Census records (Monterey County, CA; Tulare County, CA; Tuolumne County, CA)
Voter Registers (Alameda County, CA; Fresno County, CA; Monerey County, CA; Santa Cruz County, CA; Tulare County, CA, Tuolumne County, CA)
S. Consular Registration Certificate (No. 832, 1912).
Books: Lang, H. 1882. A history of Tuolumne County, California : compiled from the most authentic records. San Francisco: B. F. Alley.
Newspaper articles (Sonora Age. “A Ghost in Tuolumne County.” in Daily Alta California, 12 December 1859)
Websites (Dander, V. 2007. “Death near Sonora CA, 1857- John BLAKELEY, aged 29 years, a native of New York.” https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/blakeley/50/ NOTE: This is a compilation of newspaper articles transcribed by Dee Sardoc.
This is Part Four 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 Three HERE.
You may have noticed that when Lizzie’s uncle William Tibbetts Gilkey intervened in the 1855 gunfight on the streets of Sonora, the local sheriff was notably absent. He did try to maintain the peace and support due process; however, he did so at the risk of his own life. On one occasion a bullet narrowly missed him as vigilantes endeavored to wrest some criminal suspects out of his protection. Despite the sheriff’s efforts, two out of six executions were conducted by lynch mobs rather than government officials.
When William and his family moved to the town of Pajaro in Monterey County* in about 1866 it was no different. He rapidly established the same aura of respectability and reason there as he enjoyed in Tuolumne County.
And vigilante law ruled.
To a certain extent, William had his charismatic, angry, and drunken brother Melvin Jerome to blame for what happened. While William became a well-respected fruit grower, Melvin scraped by as a skilled carpenter and millwright. Melvin railed against a legal system that favored some, actively harmed others, and failed to protect the rest. To be precise, he didn’t just rail against the system, he declared himself the sworn enemy of the men who ran it. And Melvin was known for being outspoken and absolutely fearless.
When Lizzie and her family joined William and Melvin in Pajaro in the late 1860s, the situation was tense. Melvin’s sworn enemies were powerful and arguably corrupt Southern Democrats with bullying, abrasive personalities. After the Civil war, the Democrats had lost some of their power. As the 1868 election approached, these men took action.
Fueled by racism, the men had been allowing Irish and German immigrants to illegally seize the land of Mexican Americans, and indefinitely delayed the resulting court cases. An Irishman named Matt Tarpey was one of the beneficiaries. As the election approached, the Democrats forged naturalization papers to enable these men to vote. Again, Matt Tarpey was one of the beneficiaries. The Republicans allegedly raised $5000 to battle Tarpey and twenty-two other local immigrants. In a showcase trial, Tarpey was acquitted after it was claimed that the Republicans had used this money to bribe witnesses. The next day, all the others were acquitted as well.
Melvin Gilkey, his younger brother John, and their Republican friends were incensed. The Republicans responded with a media campaign accusing the Democrats of treason against the United States during the recent Civil War. The outcome was mixed, but the Democrats regained local control, winning the lucrative and powerful offices of judge, sheriff, county clerk, treasurer, auditor and recorder, and coroner.**
Melvin’s wife Emeline died shortly after the 1868 election. Did the local doctor, the Democrat leader named Dr. Chester Edwin Cleveland, try and fail to save her? We may never know. But it was about this time that Melvin began to threaten to kill Tarpey, Cleveland, and other Democrats.
Tarpey was at this point the recognized leader of the ranchers and farmers of the region. He was about 48 years old, short and stout, with a sandy mustache and balding head. He was also a profoundly racist vigilante. With the support of the local Democrats, he had established the Pajaro Property Protective Society. With Tarpey at the head, the vigilantes rounded up and lynched Native Americans and Mexican Americans, many of whom were assumed to be innocent. The voracity and cruelty of Tarpey and his men shocked many members of the community, and alarmed residents of surrounding regions concerned by the upwelling of mob rule.
Meanwhile, Tarpey had amassed 1500 acres, and was continuing to acquire land and retake property that he had sold. Once again, he was helped by the court system, which delayed the resulting legal cases. In 1873, Tarpey decided to log a section of land he had sold to Murdock and Sarah Nicholson in 1868. The Nicholson’s turned to the legal system for help, but in March 1873, Tarpey placed a cabin there to establish possession.
Sarah’s husband was away, but that didn’t deter her. On the advice of her lawyer, she recruited the young laborers John O’Neil and John Smith and took possession of Tarpey’s cabin. Sarah, thirty-two-years old, stylish, and slender, was sitting there with O’Neil and Smith, unarmed, when Tarpey arrived on night of March 14. Tarpey shot into the cabin while Sarah and the men escaped out the back. The next morning, Sarah and O’Neil returned to the cabin. Tarpey emerged from the roadside with a loaded rifle. He claimed he fired at O’Neil in self-defense and Sarah got in the way. O’Neil, however, never fired his gun and claimed Tarpey shot Sarah intentionally. Regardless, Sarah took a full load in her torso and died.
In response, Melvin, who had been so opposed to Tarpey’s vigilanteism, became a vigilante. With his brother John’s help, he rounded up a crowd of 150 to 400 people. They disarmed and bound the sheriff, broke into the jail, and removed Tarpey. Outside, Tarpey’s wife and daughter clung to him while his mother and sister wept nearby. As the crowd took Tarpey away, the women followed, crying out in anguish. Melvin took Tarpey to the place where he had killed Sarah Nicholson. There, Tarpey was placed in a horse-drawn wagon with a noose tied around his neck. Melvin gave Tarpey time to declare his last will and testament and bid his farewells. Tarpey asserted his innocence and begged forgiveness. With the crowd gathered closely around so everyone would share the blame, Melvin and his collaborators startled the horse forward, and Tarpey was gone.
Tarpey was gone, but Dr. Cleveland and Tarpey’s other supporters remained. And so did fearless Melvin Jerome Gilkey… for now.
Detail of the “Map of the county of Monterey, Cal”, 1877. Created by Cox, St. John and Markley, T. C. Courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress; public domain.
* At the same time, it was also considered to be in the county of Santa Cruz.
** Delightfully, it appears that a local woman, Charley Parkhurst (a.k.a Charles Darkey Parkhurst or One-Eyed Charlie), registered to vote in Santa Cruz County and participated in 1868 election, thereby becoming the first woman to vote in federal elections…fifty-two years before it was legal to do so. [https://gilroydispatch.com/charlie-parkhurst-casts-a-historic-vote/]
*** In 1873, the media (and public) sentiment was against Tarpey. Two decades later, however his role was romanticized and he was portrayed as a hero. Even his appearance was altered. From short, stout, and balding, he became a “bold, impulsive, dashing Irishman of splendid physique“ (Santa Cruz Sentinel, 12 Oct 1892, p. 2).
Sources:
Census records (Monterey County, CA; Santa Cruz County, CA)
Voter Registers (Monterey County, CA; Santa Cruz County, CA)
Books: Lang, H. 1882. A history of Tuolumne County, California : compiled from the most authentic records. San Francisco: B. F. Alley; Harrison, E. 1892. History of Santa Cruz County. San Francisco, Pacific Press Publishing Company.
Articles: Reader, P. 1995. “A Brief History of the Pajaro Property Protective Society: Vigilantism in the Pajaro Valley During 19th Century.” Santa Cruz: Cliffside Publishing.
Newspaper articles (Marin County Journal. “Murder and Lynching at Watsonville.” 20 March 1873, p. 2; Sacramento Daily Bee. “Murder Most Foul.” 15 March 1873, p. 2; Sacramento Daily Bee. “Matt Tarpey.” 21 March 1873, p. 2; Sacramento Daily Bee. “An Open Letter to His Excellency.” 23 April 1873, p. 2; Sacramento Daily Union. “The Lynching of Tarpey.” 19 March 1873, p.2; San Francisco Chronicle. “Tarpey Hanged.” 18 March 1873, p. 3 [an extensive account]; San Francisco Chronicle. “The Vendetta: A Brother of Matt Tarpey on the War Path. 25 March 1873, p. 2; The Daily Examiner [San Francisco]. “The Woman Murder—Etc.” 17 March 1873, p. 1 [includes Gilkey’s resolution]; The Daily Examiner [San Francisco]. “Woman Murdered; Lynch Law Probable.” 14 March 1873, p. 2; )
This is Part Five 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 Four HERE.
A corrupt coroner can help men and women get away with murder.
Are you perhaps a wee bit trigger-happy after tipping the bottle? Fear not if you have your county coroner in your pocket. He can simply declare the cause of death something other than homicide. Or, the coroner can handpick a small jury to assist in his inquest, and the jurors will deem someone else more worthy of a full trial… or a lynching.
Take, for example, the ghost story in Part 3. It was a coroner’s jury that decided it was Jim Lyons rather than the small statured lawyer who had killed John Blakely, despite a complete lack of evidence.
Within this context, it may not surprise you that Melvin Jerome Gilkey’s sworn enemy was Dr. Chester Edwin Cleveland—the Santa Cruz County coroner during vigilante Matt Tarpey’s reign of terror.
According to all accounts, the two men had hated and threatened to kill each other for years. The seed of the feud is unknown; however, by early 1874 both men were ready to finish it.
The doctor was living alone at this point, drinking away his income. His oldest daughter was married, and his wife and other two children were dead. He was having a difficult time competing with the town’s other physician. Indeed, Chester was so unpopular in his own town of Watsonville that, although he won the countywide election for coroner in 1869, only 46% of the Watsonville electorate voted for him.
Chester’s strong support for Tarpey could not have helped his popularity. As Chairman of the County Central Democratic Committee, he had embraced the vigilante society, and as coroner, he had helped Tarpey and his fellow vigilantes escape prosecution for the lynchings.
After Tarpey’s lynching in March 1873, the town’s Democratic leadership (presumably including Chester) sent a letter to the state governor asking that Melvin and his collaborators be brought to justice, to no avail. Chester ran for county coroner again in November, and lost resoundingly.
Melvin was having his own problems. His wife had died in 1868, and he had a seventeen-year-old daughter and sixteen-year-old son. He had escaped prosecution for Tarpey’s lynching; however, he had recently been arrested and examined for raping his own daughter. His son was soon to be arrested for rape, as well.
Chester lit the final spark by testifying against Melvin in the rape case. Now all that was needed was some combustible liquid.
On Saturday February 21, Melvin came into town in a quarrelsome mood. He spent the day drinking and arguing and was heard to say he was going to kill Chester. At about midnight, Chester declared his intention to kill Melvin, but said he needed to fortify himself with whiskey first. He entered the Tom Scott Saloon, where Melvin was drinking. The two men ignored each other while Chester downed shots of whiskey, then Chester left the saloon. He had made it only to the other side of the street when he declared he needed another shot and returned to the Tom Scott. Again, the two men ignored each other and Chester left. This time Melvin followed him out.
“There’s the [censored expletive] now!” Chester exclaimed.
Melvin approached fearlessly.
“You [censored expletive], I am prepared for you,” said Melvin.
They walked towards each other and drew their guns. They stopped when they were about two feet apart.
They held their guns almost muzzle to muzzle, each one pointing at the other one’s chest. There was no chance either one would miss. And they didn’t.
The women of Watsonville spent Sunday afternoon visiting the saloons and convinced them all of them to close until the men’s bodies were interred less than 24 hours later. When the saloons reopened immediately after the funeral, business was brisk.
Meanwhile, a coroner’s jury briefly met over Melvin’s body from which someone had pilfered his watch and $20. They deemed the deaths a double murder.
Detail of page 2 of the 3 August 1873 edition of The Santa Cruz Sentinel showing Chester Edwin Cleveland as the candidate on Independent Taxpayer’s Ticket. He was running as the Democratic candidate, and lost.
Census records (Monterey County, CA; Santa Cruz County, CA)
Books: Lang, H. 1882. A history of Tuolumne County, California : compiled from the most authentic records. San Francisco: B. F. Alley.
Newspaper articles (The Santa Cruz Sentinel. “Official Election Returns.” 11 Sep 1869, p. 2; The Santa Cruz Sentinel. “Santa Cruz County Democratic Convention.” 22 Jul 1871, p. 3; The Santa Cruz Sentinel. “Election Returns.” 13 Sep 1873, p. 2; The Daily Examiner [San Francisco]. “Bloody Tragedy at Watsonville.” 23 Feb 1874, p. 3; The Santa Cruz Sentinel. “A Bloody Deed: Shocking Tragedy in the Streets of Watsonville.” 28 Feb 1874, p. 1; The Santa Cruz Sentinel. “Watsonville: The Sunday Tragedy: ” 28 Feb 1874, p. 2; Evening Express [Los Angeles]. 18 Mar 1874, p. 3.
This is Part Six 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 Five HERE.
While Melvin Gilkey was hurtling towards his demise, our Gilkeys—Edwin, Ellen and their three girls—took a more peaceable route north to Oakland, and then south to Centerville in Fresno County where the two older girls got married.
In the spring of 1877, three years after his brother’s violent end, Edwin, with Ellen and their daughter Lizzie, finally settled in Sand Creek, Tulare County, about 25 miles north of Visalia. Surprisingly, given the Gilkey animosity towards the landed ranchers of Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties, the family took up livestock ranching.
The “discovery” of silver in Mineral King in 1873 had drawn many of the local “sheep men” and seasonal shepherds to Mineral King where they filed mine claims. The San Francisco Post wrote of the silver rush that “[p]eople are sometimes scourged with small pox, cholera, two and a half per cent per month compound interest, droughts and many other little inconveniences that vary the monotony and are incident to a hog raising and sheep raising community, but a horn silver epidemic was unexpected.”
Ellen, Edwin, and Lizzie were not spared the “horn silver epidemic.” In July of 1877 they, perhaps inevitably, made their way to the mines.
The Gilkeys found three adjacent claims in the White Chief watershed that had been abandoned by their prior owners. There, eighty million years earlier, quartz had intruded preexisting slate, producing sparkling minerals that must have given the Gilkeys visions of lives of comfort…without sheep. From their claims, they had spectacular views up the White Chief Cañon and out over Lone Horse Cañon to the rows of serrated ridges and peaks beyond. They had two existing camps on their claims to choose from, and water from a spring-fed pond.
Mineral King’s miners had different ways of staking their claims. Some penciled or nailed notices on blazed trees, and some carved trees with initials or numbers. Some simply piled up rocks to create a stone monument. Others created simple stone towers. Some expended considerable effort to build squared walls filled with rubble.
The monuments of Ellen and Lizzie’s mine claim were more subtle. The comprised three rocks; one granite, one slate, and one marble. These rocks were arranged around a wood post, to which the women attached their mine claim notice with a piece of wire.
Yes, Ellen and Lizzie owned their own mine claim. It was the third extension south on the Lady Alice Lode, and it was a veritable mine claim with glistening outcrops that beckoned a pickaxe. They paid $5 to record it.
Female mine ownership was all but unheard of in the 1870s, yet, Ellen and Lizzie joined four other women who claimed Mineral King mines in 1877, and thirty-seven other women who claimed mines during the Mineral King silver rush of 1873-1882.
Do you find yourself discounting the validity of these claims or the women’s ownership role? You wouldn’t be alone. But, yes, these were real mine claims. The women’s ownership was identical to male ownership, and there was no advantage to husbands in having their wives or daughters own claims. And… some women made considerable money off of their Mineral King mine claims.
Ellen and Lizzie did not.
The Gilkeys retained their claims for two years, but failed to demonstrate an annual investment of $100 in 1878. Accordingly, others took over the claims in 1879.
Perhaps it didn’t matter. Soon, Lizzie’s silver fever would be supplanted by a completely different sort of condition.
Stone monument demarcating the center of the northern line of Ellen and Lizzie’s claim. Photo by author.
This is Part Seven 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 Six HERE.
Lizzie Gilkey spent the last years of her youth with sheep.
Her mother and father, Ellen and Edwin, had some experience raising livestock on a small scale. In Tuolumne County they had tended two horses, a milk cow, a steer, and twelve pigs when they weren’t mining. In Santa Cruz, Monterrey, and Fresno Counties, they likely did more of the same sort of small-scale ranching, especially given their frequent moves and the records suggesting that they rented rather than owned land. In Sand Creek, they homesteaded their own land and evidently focused primarily on sheep for wool and meat.
Lizzie’s life at Sand Creek was presumably peaceful in comparison to the violence of Sonora and Pajaro. Perhaps too peaceful. Both her sisters had married and left home, leaving Lizzie on her own to help her mother and father in both house and ranch work. Her oldest sister married in 1873, only a few months before giving birth to her first child. Her other sister took a husband in 1876.
A man lived nearby, however. His name was George Warren Boyd, and he was young. Indeed he was so young, he may have inspired Lizzie to change her birth year in census records to make herself appear three or four years younger.
Lizzie didn’t marry George for money. He was a landless farm laborer on his father’s property when Lizzie met him. Perhaps Lizzie was dazzled by his appearance. Perhaps she needed to escape one or both parents. Perhaps Lizzie and George were actually in love.
The two got married on 29 August 1880 when George was nineteen and Lizzie was twenty… or perhaps twenty-three. Lizzie joined George and his two sisters on his parent’s farm. There, they welcomed their daughter Amy Georgiana into the family in 1881, and and Chester Allan in 1883.
In 1884, they moved a bit east to Ash Springs near Aukland and the homestead of Enos Davenport Barton. (I mention this only because there is inevitably a Barton involved in every story.) There, Lizzie became pregnant with Raymond.
In 1885, however, they were making a new life in the tiny railroad town of Traver, home of today’s Bravo Farms Vintage Cheese Factory. There George’s father became the grocer and George the postmaster.
Does Lizzie’s married future seem rosy to you? Perhaps, then, it is worth remembering that Lizzie was a Gilkey… and sometimes love doesn’t last until death does us part.
This is Part Eight 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 Seven HERE.
Thus far in our story, we have had ghosts, corrupt coroners, lynchings, murder, and rape—and Gilkey women apparently living lives of adventure, maternal love, and marital harmony. After the last two posts, you might be lulled into thinking we are done with murder and mayhem.
We are not done, however, with Gilkey men.
It is, indeed, time for us to turn to Lizzie’s cousin Frank.
Frank was six when the family traveled west to the gold fields and farm lands of Tuolumne County. Unlike the rest of the family, his parents stayed in the county when the others moved down to the Pajaro area in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties.
In 1876, at the age of twenty-three, Frank was a remarkably slim man of 5’ 8 ½”. He had a ruddy complexion, hazel eyes, and black hair. Frank labored on a ranch and may have radiated the jaunty air of a cowboy. Romance entered the story in the form of the seventeen or eighteen year old Mary Louise Schell. She married Frank on 20 June 1877 and gave birth to a healthy son somewhat less than nine months later.
In 1880, the family acquired 320 acres just three or four miles east of Sonora. Four months later, Louisa gave birth to another little boy. Life was looking good. They had a ranch and a growing family. And only a mile or so down the road Frank’s good friend, the German immigrant “Old Bill” Bergel, served liquor in his farmstead home.
Then, death paid Old Bill a visit.
Frank was the one to discover the body. It was about lunch time on 16 December 1881. He and his friend John Buckman dropped by Old Bill’s for a drink. Soon after, Mr. Wheeler and his son drove up in their wagon. Old Bill wasn’t in the house, so Frank stepped behind the bar and started serving drinks. At some point, Frank decided to go find his friend. He went out back to a field where he had seen Bill working a few days earlier. He climbed on top of a wall to see better and was about to call out for Old Bill when he saw the corpse below.
Old Bill’s hands were tied behind his back. A sheet was tied tightly around his neck. He had been shot through the ear and his throat was cut. Frank rode to Sonora and called the coroner.
The sheriff, coroner, detective, and lawyer on the case had financial incentive to find a culprit, if not the actual culprit. Old BIll’s family and county had offered $1000 for conviction, and the men wanted the award.
The gun used to shoot Old Bill wasn’t Frank’s and Frank had alibis, but it didn’t look good for him. He admitted to jokingly discussing robbing Old Bill with Tip Ackerman and Tobe Richards. To make matters worse, he was seen visiting Tip after the murder. Tip later testified that Frank was the murderer and had threatened him to remain silent. To make matters even worse, Tobe was told he’d be hanged if he didn’t admit his guilt. Tobe confessed.
Frank continued to assert his innocence, however, and his case went to trial. Frank was given a life sentence and sent to San Quentin. Oddly, enough, Frank was allowed to take his gun to prison. He was also allowed to wield a straight razor. As anyone familiar with the Barber of Seville knows, such razors can be used to inflict the same sort of throat wound poor Old Bill suffered. Frank became the prison’s head barber.
As the years passed, Frank continued to assert his innocence. Frank’s now impoverished wife maintained her devotion to him for a time, but eventually they divorced and she remarried. The story would have perhaps ended here, were it not for a principled district attorney.
The plot shift came in 1903, when another murder was committed and a substantial award offered. The detective who had worked on Frank’s case discussed the matter with the district attorney, James Booker. The detective said that all they needed to do was “trump up circumstantial evidence” as they had in Frank’s case. Booker, shocked, asked the detective if Frank was innocent. The detective responded affirmatively The admission was enough to win Frank’s pardon.
Upon release, Frank joined one of his sons in the picturesque mining town of Bodie, California. And, yes, he brought both his gun and his straight razor with him.
Frank Gilkey in his San Quentin barber’s garb. The San Francisco Call. 24 September 1903, p. 2
This is Part Nine 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 Eight HERE.
Edwin, however, might have blamed his troubles on his voracious sheep.
The “hoofed locusts,” as naturalist John Muir called them, needed to eat, and they weren’t picky about the location of their meals. They’d just as happily eat a farmer’s crops as consume all the vegetation in a mountain meadow.
The sheep, pig, and cattle ranchers had dominated the San Joaquin Valley in the 1860s. However, as the agriculturalists built ditches to divert the water flowing into Tulare Lake—once the largest lake west of the Mississippi—more land opened up for farming. Thus the “world’s food basket” was born. Within the valley’s confines, the conflict between the farmers and ranchers was inevitable.
Near the banks of Sand Creek, the regional conflict came to a barb-sharp focus on one indisputable fact. Edwin’s livestock had a tendency to get into the fields of Charles H. Wilson. Charles had little patience for this. Edwin had little patience for Charles. The situation escalated for years with the men occasionally coming to blows. Then morning dawned on 20 September 1882.
On that day, Charles went to the Gilkey home to confront Edwin. Words escalated into physical violence, which Edwin dominated as the larger man. One report indicates, however, that Edwin wasn’t just giving Charles a “lashing,” but was actually hitting Charles with a whip. When Charles begged for mercy, Edwin stopped and turned away. At that point, Charles shot him in the back.
Charles claimed self defense, but was found guilty of murder in the second degree and sentenced to 25 or 30 years in prison.
The sentencing didn’t change the fact that our Mineral King miner Ellen Gilkey was now a widow. It is likely that she moved in with Lizzie and George. Nevertheless, perhaps broken by stress and grief, she died before the spring of 1888.
Detail of Peter Yaple Baker’s 1876 Map of Tulare County, California. The map was published only a year before the Gilkeys acquired land in sections 3 and 10 where they were to graze their sheep. The mapmaker, P. Y. Baker, would eventually create the only known maps of the Mineral King Mining District, one of which included the Gilkeys’ Lady Alice.
Ludeke, John. 1980. “The No Fence Law of 1874: Victory for San Joaquin Valley Farmers, ” California History, 59(2):98-115. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Menafee, Eugene L. and Fred A. Dodge. 1913. History of Tulare and Kings counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present. Los Angeles: Historic Record Co. See pp. 46-9.
Preston, William L. 1981. Vanishing Landscapes. Berkeley: University of California Press. See pp. 90-5, 130-44.
The Daily Examiner (San Francisco). “Found Guilty of Murder.” 15 December 1882, p. 3.
The Daily Examiner (San Francisco). “Pleas for Mercy: Imprisoned Convicts Who Want their Liberty.” 18 July 1885, p. 3.
The Daily Examiner (San Francisco). “Prison Commission: More Applications from Convicts for Pardons.” 24 December 1885, p. 3.
This is Part Ten 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 Nine HERE.
What would you do about a bad marriage in the 1880s?
It wasn’t impossible to end one in California. The man or the woman simply needed to provide the documents and witnesses indicating that the other one was guilty of adultery, extreme physical or psychological cruelty, willful desertion or neglect, habitual drunkenness, conviction of a felony, or incurable insanity. And the court had to agree.
If the man was determined to be at fault, he was expected to provide alimony. If the woman was found at fault, she was expected to survive on her own.
Alas, the circumstances of Lizzie and George’s marriage and their separation remain a mystery. Lizzie and George divorced some time between 1886 and 1889, however, and George left. He didn’t just leave Lizzie and their three young children. He didn’t just leave his home or his postmaster job or the town of Traver or Tulare County. He left the state and took up residence in Washington, where he lodged with other men as a laborer and eventually took on a restaurant.
George’s departure from California suggests he may have been at fault, but of what we may never know. The records suggest we can at least rule out felony or incurable insanity as grounds for their divorce. All other options remain on the table.
Whatever the grounds for divorce, perhaps there were still grounds for attachment. Lizzie apparently stayed in touch with George and retained his surname. She never remarried.
Where did Lizzie and her children go after the divorce? In 1900, Lizzie and her children were lodging in Santa Cruz. Accordingly, it is quite possible that she had turned to her aunts, uncles, and cousins residing in nearby Pajaro. Yes, the Pajaro of prunes and lynching fame.
And now the story takes a very, very dark turn.
Lizzie’s signature after her divorce from a U.S. Consular Registration Certificate, Canada, 20 September 1913. Lizzie was joining her two sons in Canada. She planned to earn living mixing chemicals for cleaners.
Census records (Tulare County County, CA; Santa Cruz County, CA; Whatcom County, WA)
Voter registrations (Whatcom County, WA)
U.S. Consular Registration Certificate, Canada, 20 September 1913.
Amato, Paul R. and Shelley Irving. 2005. “Historical Trends in Divorce in the United States,” in Handbook of Divorce and Relationship Dissolution ed. Mark A. Fine and John H. Harvey. Abingdon: Routledge. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315820880.ch3, accessed 03 Oct 2020, Routledge Handbooks Online.
Griswald, R. L. 1982. Family and Divorce in California, 1850–1890. Albany: State University of New York Press.
This is Part Eleven 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 Ten HERE.
Here is where the story becomes difficult to write.
While our divorced Lizzie was raising her young children as a single mother, her female aunts and cousins were making lives of their own. Not all were having an easy time of it.
Despite the reputation Gilkey men had earned as violent sorts apt to rape, murder, or be murdered, Lizzie’s uncle John Wilson Gilkey enjoyed considerable support among the local political elite.
John was the youngest of the surviving Gilkey brothers. He initially dabbled as a blacksmith and a laborer, but in 1890 he was a 52-year-old negligent rancher who was “extraordinarily fond of liquor.” He was 5’9” with light skin, brown eyes, and auburn hair. He had a 49-year-old wife named Mary. They had two boys and five girls. Unfortunately, 14-year-old Lena was still at home.
In February of 1890, Mary returned to their cabin to find John raping Lena.
Mary and Lena were reportedly terror stricken. They hesitated to go to Monterey to file a complaint against John out of fear that he would kill them if they tried. They were also afraid of what John would do if they didn’t take action.
They devised a plan. Mary’s oldest son Cyrus asked John to pick up a paycheck for him. With John out of the way, Mary and Lena started walking the 20 miles to Monterey.
John returned home to find them missing. He mounted his horse and set out after them. Fortunately, Mary and Lena heard him coming and were able to take shelter in a house on the side of the road. After John passed, they set out again, now accompanied by friends.
John meanwhile rode into Monterey and reported that Mary “had a crazy spell on her and was making trouble for him.” He then started back home. Justice Michaelis had heard the story, however, and was concerned about the safety of Mary and Lena, who were still making their way to Monterey. He dispatched a rider who arrived on the scene just as John was rushing at Mary and Lena with an open clasp knife.
John was arrested, but unconcerned. As John’s wife, Mary was not allowed to testify against him. And what was a 14-year-old’s word against his? John and his lawyer were confident enough in the outcome that they didn’t even present a defense.
Their confidence wasn’t misplaced. Justice Michaelis released John and let him resume custody of his wife and daughter.
Imagine being Lena in such a situation. Imagine being Mary in such a situation. Over the following years, newspapers reported Mary’s mysterious injuries, including a serious concussion after being “thrown from her cart.”
John’s death in 1900 due to complications arising from his habitual inebriation must have come as a relief.
It is impossible to cast this tale in a positive light. It is difficult to write it without feeling an intense outrage. It is reasonable to assume, however, that the Gilkey women felt this outrage as well, and had been feeling it for decades. It is reasonable to assume that the Gilkey women had enough.
View of Alvarado Street, Monterey, ca. 1890. Public domain image courtesy of the University of Southern California Libraries and California Historical Society.
This is Part Twelve 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 Eleven HERE.
Not all Gilkey men were bad, and not all the bad ones were bad all the time. Yet, in the best of cases, living with a Gilkey male required equanimity and courage.
As any woman who has been raped or lived with a violent man can attest, recovery is hard. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. A society that discounts women and a legal system that fails to give women a voice, let alone an equal voice, compound the hardship. In such circumstances, just living could be considered a triumph—an act of defiance against violent men, a paternalistic society, and a capricious legal system.
The Gilkey women did that and more. They were willfully, and even defiantly, alive.
Consider Lena. Despite being raped and raised by a violent man, she didn’t retract into a life of isolated misery. After her father’s death, she married a farm laborer. Together they raised a boy and three girls. To be sure, there was no “happily ever after” for them, and making ends meet was hard. But they had family. Her half blind uncle Joseph Gilkey took her and her siblings under his wing, along with their young families. Together, they ran a candy and ice-cream shop and took the children on trips back to Tuolumne County in search of gold.
And consider Lizzie and Lena’s seventeen-year-old cousin, Hazel Clapp. In 1911 when her stepfather struck her and her mother and threatened to rape her disabled sister, Hazel grabbed a gun and ran into her sister’s room to protect her. When the man came in, she pulled the trigger. She presumably didn’t mean to hit her stepfather, and she didn’t. Instead, the bullet pierced the door panel and fatally wounded her mother.
The stepfather, previously acquitted for raping Hazel, was sentenced to 180 days in jail. Hazel was investigated for murder by a coroner’s jury.
Initially inconsolable, Hazel contemplated death. The experts feared she would be insane if she survived. Yet, despite the trauma and the heartbreak, Hazel continued living. The coroner’s jury acquitted her, she eventually married a man she presumably loved, and she divorced him when she didn’t.
Our Ellen and Lizzie enacted a different sort of defiance. By staking their own mine claim in Mineral King, they even defied today’s leading mining historian, who wrote “American history has placed the exploitation of minerals firmly in the hands of males. […] As we look at the three major levels of miners—owners, managers, and laborers—there are virtually no women among them.”
It is impossible to overemphasize how astonishing their act was. By claiming mine ownership in a society that did not condone it, Ellen and Lizzie were asserting a new role for themselves and other women. By attaching their mine claim notice to their subtle stone monument, they asserted their equality with Edwin. By taking ownership, they assumed increased financial independence with the ability to sell ore and all or portions of their claim. And by filing their mine claim notice, they earned the right to vote in district elections 34years before they were legally allowed to vote in California, and 43 years before they could vote in federal elections.
By taking ownership of a mine as women, Ellen and Lizzie were defying a legal system that discriminates based on factors such as gender, ethnicity, economic status, connections, and political power.
Yet, until now, Ellen and Lizzie’s story was unheard. The story of all of Mineral King’s female mine claim owners has been completely edited out of our history. This important chapter in our collective past is absent in local, county, and state histories. Time doesn’t always heal, but it does effectively obscure aspects of our past that don’t suit society’s present narrative.
Yet, some tales have a way of finding their way back from obscurity.
Joseph preparing to take his deceased brother John’s family to Tuolumne County to seek gold. Image courtesy of Joseph’s ancestors.
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
A light in the storm over Ellen and Lizzie Gilkey’s mine claim in Mineral King 6/12/16
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.
Introduction: Powder Horn – The Gilkey Family Saga.
By Laile Di Silvestro. Published March 2025.
This begins a multi-part series by historical archaeologist Laile Di Silvestro. It starts 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 women struggled to thrive within power structures that favored unscrupulous men. It is a true story.
In the summer of 1877, a 43-year-old Irish immigrant named Ellen Gilkey and her teenage daughter Lizzie staked a mining claim on an exquisitely beautiful 20 acres in Mineral King. They were taking advantage of new federal regulations that inadvertently neglected to explicitly exclude women from ownership of mine claims. In doing so, the Gilkeys joined about three dozen Mineral King women who thwarted societal norms in a manner that wasn’t to be repeated elsewhere in the United States for two more decades.
The tale of Ellen and Lizzie Gilkey reflects the evolution of law and order in the western United States and the ways in which women negotiated power structures that favored unscrupulous men. It is a very disturbing tale. Indeed, I am tempted not to tell it. Perhaps that hesitation is sufficient argument that it should be told. Let’s begin with an artifact associated with death… and life.
[Photograph: An image of the remains of a wire within a small rock monument that once held a mine claim location notice. The wire disintegrated when the author attempted to measure it.]
