Alright, new day, with crossed fingers, new typing using, I think, Kevin
Mac's plan.
Hoping your Thanksgiving today is in full swing with family food and
friends, I offer the following diversion which was dubbed by my granddaughter
with "Funny. People don't change despite modern technology and everything."
In researching people and places in 1861 Nevada Territory, I ran across a
journal by sketch artist Joseph Lamson of Maine, and obtained photocopies
from Lamson's journal at CalHistSoc. Lamson writes of
hiking north along the east shore of Lake Tahoe in May, 1861. He spent time
exploring Cave Rock, then hiked north until he came to a "house," an
occupied log cabin, where he spent the night.
He writes of "small squirrels" (chipmunks) scampering in through the
chinking of the house, and the daughter of the unnamed "lady of the house"
chasing them off. He names his host as "Mr. Walker," and writes of a visitor,
"Mr. Patterson", also being there. Lamson mentions Shakespeare rock and the
meadow, where "Walker is planting grain, locking down the location.
It is clear he is at Glenbrook Bay, then called Walton's Landing, where
four men (Capt. A.W. Pray, Rufus Walton, George Warren and Nelson E. Murdock)
had formed a sawmill company. Capt. Pray lived in Virginia City. Walton
owned the Clear Creek toll road which ran from there to a point just north of
Carson Valley.He collected toll where he lived, half-way along that road,
near "Mr. Jones" sawmill. Warren and Murdock lived at the site. Numerous
records identify Nelson Eliphalet Murdock as a "millwright."
Lamson's journal begs the question: "Mr. Walker and Mr. Patterson"? No
records have been found of a man named Walker at the lake in 1861, and there
was only one cabin/house at Walton's Landing on the November 1861 General
Land Office original survey. But Lamson was specific about the occupants'
names.
In the September, 1861 letter by Sam Clemens, he writes that a few days
earlier he and John Kinney had
arrived at the "lower camp" at the Lake, then they . . .set out for the
only house on this side of the Lake, three miles from there, down the shore"
on a stormy afternoon in September. In Roughing It he writes it had been "a
three mile pull" to reach the "Brigade" camp on first arrival. It becomes
clear from the "three miles" that they considered the brigade camp to be
their "lower camp" and they were now back at the point of beginning. Sam does
not name or directly mention people there.
In the 1861 letter Sam specifies "lower camp" three miles "down the shore",
and "this side of the lake."
Four of his roommates at Mrs. Murphy's (Capt. John Nye, William Wagner,
Johannes Slott, and James Coulter) were partners in a Tahoe timber claim. From
a description of the claim by Will Wagner in early September, 1861, and
the 1862 claim survey and plat filed by the Ormsby County Surveyor, we know
their "John Nye & Co." camp was three miles north of the Warren/Murdock
cabin. All of which suggests Clemens' "lower camp" was at the Brigade Claim of
Roughing It.
A few weeks later, in November 1861, General Land Office surveyor Butler
Ives wrote in his original survey of the Glenbrook area, that the house was
that of "Messrs. Warren and Murdock.: (The dracftsman did not include the
names on the plat of Ives survey.) Ives also wrote that the house was near a
"Sawmill, just built". (In Roughing It, Twain carefully specifies "a
sawmill and some workmen", not a working sawmill.) In December 1861, George
Warren and Nelson Eliphalet Murdock filed a claimon the land under both the
house and sawmill. In it they state they have lived there since May, 1860.
So, OK, who is this "Walker" fellow that Lamson tells us lived there in
May, 1861? I mentioned my quandary to a historian who retires from Law
Enforcement. He asked about Lamson, then the occupants--two men, a woman and a
girl, and then promptly said "Murdockdidn't want folks back home to find him",
adding that Murdock was neither the first nor the only man to use the Gold
Rush to skip out on his family.
A Murdock family genealogist inNew York state confirmed that Nelson
Eliphalet Murdock, born 1810, was a millwright from New York who left his wife
and three children in the East in 1852 for California--and was never heard
from again (the term is "Grass Widow").
Whether Lamson knew the true names of his host or not is unknown. It's
possible he was covering for Murdock and equally possible they game Lamson
aliases. Same goes for Sam Clemens.
Robert E. (Bob) Stewart
All documents mentioned above, excepting the Lamson Journal, are in the
online package at
https://futureboy.us/twain/2014Versin6Total.pdf.
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