Wagons, Gold and Conflict

John G. Wilder

Description

Alfred Davenport—parents gone, elder siblings married with families—followed a dream to see Oregon in May 1844. Visiting California in 1846, Davenport dropped into the conflict between settlers and the Mexican government. Joining California settlers, Davenport fought in the Bear Flag Revolt and with John Charles Fremont’s California Mounted Battalion. Year 1849 found Alfred caught up in California’s gold rush. His mining career ended with Davenport resigning as manager of Fremont’s famous Pine Tree Mine to join General Fremont in Missouri as a cavalry captain in the Body Guard. Year 1862 found Captain Davenport serving as a special messenger carrying orders from General Fremont to field generals in western Virginia. The army’s Quartermaster Department assigned Davenport as supervisor of military hospital construction in the Civil War’s Mississippi valleys and for duty in the customhouse in Union-occupied New Orleans. Postwar, Davenport became a land speculator in a newly opened land in Kansas.

Sujets

• 19th Century
• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• Adventure (Guyana)
• Biography
• Adventure
• Autobiography
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 30 janvier 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669806158
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

WAGONS, GOLD AND CONFLICT
Captain Alfred Davenport’s Adventures in the Trans Mississippi West
John G. Wilder


 
Copyright © 2022 by John G. Wilder.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2022900308
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-0617-2

Softcover
978-1-6698-0616-5

eBook
978-1-6698-0615-8
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 01/25/2023
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
835507

CONTENTS
Preface
Part IEarly Years
Chapter 1 Summer 1830
Chapter 2 Young Alfred Travels in New York
Chapter 3 New York’s Erie Canal
Chapter 4 Arrival in Ohio
Chapter 5 Ohio, 1830–1843
Chapter 6 A Wet Beginning
Chapter 7 Sandhills and Sagebrush
Chapter 8 Platte, Sweetwater, and the Snake
Chapter 9 Oregon, 1844
Chapter 10 Sandwich Islands and the Hudson’s Bay Company
Part IICalifornia, 1846–1847
Chapter 11 Arrival in California
Chapter 12 The Surprise
Chapter 13 Osos
Chapter 14 The Californian Republic
Chapter 15 The California Battalion
Chapter 16 Fremont Takes the Battalion South
Chapter 17 San Juan Bautista to Santa Barbara
Chapter 18 Kearny Arrives in California
Chapter 19 Alfred Leaves the Battalion
Chapter 20 Alfred Returns East, 1847
Part IIIGold Rush, 1849–1861
Chapter 21 Alfred Joins the ’49ers
Chapter 22 Sacramento
Chapter 23 Hangtown
Chapter 24 San Francisco, Autumn 1849
Chapter 25 Gold Fields, 1850
Chapter 26 Northern Mines, 1851–1852
Chapter 27 Northern Mother Lode in 1853
Chapter 28 Nevada City, 1854–1855
Chapter 29 Southern Mines, 1856–1857
Chapter 308: A Request from Fremont
Chapter 31 Mariposas
Part IVCivil War
Chapter 32 Missouri, 1861
Chapter 33 The Mountain Department, Western Virginia
Chapter 34 Mountain Department: Early 1862 Shenandoah Valley
Chapter 35 Shenandoah Valley, May–June 1862
Chapter 36 Cross Keys and Port Republic
Part VQuartermaster Department
Chapter 37 Alfred’s New Assignment
Chapter 38 Alfred Visits Western Hospitals
Chapter 39 A Brief Trip East
Chapter 40 Mississippi River
Chapter 41 New Orleans
Chapter 42 Military Detective and a New Assignment, 1865–1866
Chapter 43 Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama
Chapter 44 Winding Down
Part VIArmy Warrant
Chapter 45 Kansas
Chapter 46 Eureka, Kansas, 1868–1875
Chapter 47 Kansas, 1876–1879
Chapter 48 Alfred Returns to California
Chapter 49 Alfred in Kansas and Ohio, 1880–1886
 
Special Thanks
Sources
Bibliography
Chapter Notes

ILLUSTRATIONS
Map and Profile of the Erie Canal
Lockport, New York, Canal Town Scene
Map: Ohio’s Canals, Circleville, and Ohio Courthouse
Map: Oregon Trail, 1843
Emigrants on the Great American Desert, Nebraska, and Fort Laramie, Wyoming
Arriving at an Evening Camp on the Oregon Trail
Hudson’s Bay Company Trading Post
Map: Bay of San Pablo and San Francisco Bay
Map: The Conquest of California, June 1846–January 1847
Map: Northern California Gold Mining Locations
Benton Dam, Merced River, and Murderer’s Bar
Map: Civil War Campaigns in Missouri, 1861
Fremont’s Body Guard Led by Major Zagonyi, Springfield, Missouri
Map: Fremont’s Route in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia Spring, 1862
Pontoon Bridge on the March
Naval Combat off Fort Wright, Mississippi River, May 6, 1862; Timber-Clad Gunboat
U.S. Navy Hospital Ship and Hospital Tree at Fair Oaks
Map: Site of Chickasaw Bayou Battle, Civil War Mississippi River Campaign, 1863
Map: Fort Pickens, Florida, Pensacola Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico
Texas-Kansas Cattle Trails
Portraits: John Charles Fremont, Fitz Henry Warren, Jerome C. Davis


To
Sheila Maher Wilder

PREFACE
In late spring 1843, Alfred Davenport arrived in Saint Louis, finding he had missed the last wagon train for Oregon. In 1844, he traveled with frontiersman James Clyman, joining Nathaniel Ford’s wagon train departing from Westport, Missouri, for Oregon City. Alfred quickly adapted to life on the trail. His hunting provided meat for food-short westbound emigrants. Tall and quick witted, Davenport faced confrontation head-on, using his head and strength to handle obstacles. When thrown into situations he could not control, Davenport chose the best methods to survive immediate dangers. He faced record floods in Kansas and Nebraska, near starvation on western deserts, and hostile Indians in the Columbia River basin.
Soon after Alfred arrived in California in May 1846, the Mexican government demanded removal of all Americans. Alfred eagerly joined a ragtag group of settlers who captured the Mexican Army’s northern garrison in Sonoma in an action known as California’s Bear Flag Revolt. He joined California’s volunteer battalion of mounted riflemen created by explorer John Charles Fremont, whose efforts ended with Mexico’s expulsion from California. Davenport returned East with Fremont in 1847, racing back to California in 1849 to join the gold rush. Alfred shared with us the hard life of searching for gold in California’s Sierra Mountains, the growth pains of Sacramento and San Francisco, and the turbulent life in California during this era. In 1858, Fremont selected Davenport to supervise the construction of a dam on the Merced River to provide power for gold mining operations before choosing him to manage his famous Pine Tree Mine.
When the Civil War began in 1861, Davenport joined the U.S. Army in Missouri as a captain in Fremont’s special cavalry, the Body Guard. In 1862, Captain Davenport served as a special messenger on Fremont’s staff in Virginia’s Mountain Department, participating in the Shenandoah Valley campaign. In 1863, assigned to the Army Quartermaster Department, Alfred visited military hospitals in the war’s western theater in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys, where he reported on hospital development and construction for the Quartermaster Department’s Washington headquarters. While visiting Memphis, Tennessee, he visited wounded soldiers from Ohio’s 114 th Infantry Regiment (recruited at Camp Circleville, Ohio), assisting disabled soldiers writing letters to their families. Later, the Quartermaster Department assigned Captain Davenport to the customhouse in occupied New Orleans, where he discovered that the Union’s occupational government was plagued by corruption. He resigned from customhouse duties to supervise the construction of a military hospital in the Greenville area of New Orleans, built for men serving in the army’s colored cavalry.
He ended his military service with quartermaster posts in Pensacola, Florida, and Mobile, Alabama. Davenport moved to Kansas, discovering new railhead towns serving Texas cattle drovers and an influx of emigrants clamoring for newly opened Indian lands. He became a real estate investor.
The nineteenth century produced scores of unrecognized men and women like Capt. Alfred Davenport whose strong set of values, hard work, and personal contributions, though largely unrecognized, created the country we enjoy to this day.

PART I
Early Years

CHAPTER 1
Summer 1830
Led by Samuel, head of the Davenport family, Alfred quickly boarded a sleek sailing ship bound to New York City from Liverpool, England. The morning was August 16. Racing to catch an ebb tide, the captain hoped to clear Mersey River before the tide turned; however, light air was slowing the ship’s departure. Soon tides would work against the forward progress of the ship. The captain hailed a launch needed to pull his vessel to the open sea, much to the thrill of young Alfred. Puffing and spouting black soot and dust, a steam launch approached the bow where a man threw a line to a waiting crew member who secured the launch’s line to the ship. Slack in the line was taken up. Alfred, fascinated by the whole process, was excited to see his towed ship moving faster when pulled by the launch than under sail power. Quickly, they moved past the mouth of the Mersey, leaving behind the English countryside.
The packet was now in open water, causing the launch to slow; lines were cast off, and the great sailing ship was underway, moving by the power of the wind. A ship’s bell rang, telling the Davenports that dinner was served in the galley. They quickly went below. His mother, father; elder siblings, George and Anne; and younger sister, Harriet, enjoyed their first meal aboard ship.
Alfred, a typical ten-year-old, was casting aside the comforts of childhood. His head was full of questions, probing and scrutinizing his world. He still accepted instruction from his parents and teachers, but advice and suggestions from an elder sister and his elder brothers were often jettisoned or rejected. Taller than his contemporaries, he had light brown hair, blue eyes, and a large frame with strong shoulders and arms and agile hands. School was an enjoyment for Alfred. H