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Updated: June 18, 2025
The Bells of the Past throw their spells over the mossy church at once triumph, tomb, and monument of Padre Junipero. Scattered over the coast of California, the padres now sleep in the Lethe of death. Fathers Kino, Salvatierra, Ugarte, and sainted Serra left their beautiful works of mercy from San Diego to Sonoma.
The luxuriant grass is now brown and crisp. The hills surrounding this beautiful valley or plain are gentle, sloping, highly picturesque, and covered to their tops with wild oats. Reaching Sonoma, we procured lodgings in a large and half-finished adobe house, erected by Don Salvador Valléjo, but now occupied by Mr. Griffith, an American emigrant, originally from North Carolina.
This was the Santa Rosa Tribe, and I followed its track along the old railroad right of way across the salt marshes to Sonoma Valley. Here, at the old brickyard at Glen Ellen, I came upon the camp. There were eighteen souls all told. Two were old men, one of whom was Jones, a banker.
He afterward sold the mules, wagon, etc., for me, and on the whole I think I cleared, by those two months' work, about six thousand dollars. I then returned to headquarters at Sonoma, in time to attend my fellow aide-de-camp Gibbs through a long and dangerous sickness, during which he was on board a store-ship, guarded by Captain George Johnson, who now resides in San Francisco.
They cleared the crest of the hill, and he watched the joy mount in her face as she gazed on the sweet, fresh land. He pointed out the group of heavily wooded knolls across the rolling stretches of ripe grain. "They're ours," he said. "And they're only a sample of the ranch. Wait till you see the big canon. There are 'coons down there, and back here on the Sonoma there are mink.
Having good reason to feel certain that Fremont would stand back of them if they began the fight, a company of Americans attacked one of Castro's officers, who, with a few men, was taking a band of horses to Monterey. Securing the horses, but letting the men who had them in charge get away, they hurried them to Fremont's camp, where they left them while they went on to Sonoma.
Boggs and his delegation from Sonoma were mostly all 1846 arrivals. James W. Marshall, the man who discovered gold at Coloma, about 45 miles northeast from Sacramento, on January 19th, 1848, was with the Sacramento delegation. He was then 67 years old, hale and hearty. Mr. Murphy, a survivor of the Donner party, was with the Marysville delegation.
He then gave me an order to go to Sonoma to carry out the instructions already given to Brackett. I took one soldier with me, Private Barnes, with four horses, two of which we rode, and the other two we drove ahead. The first day we reached Gilroy's and camped by a stream near three or four adobe-huts known as Gilroy's ranch.
The kilns were visible among the trees, when he glanced to the left and caught sight of a cluster of wooded knolls half a mile away, perched on the rolling slopes of Sonoma Mountain. The mountain, itself wooded, towered behind. The trees on the knolls seemed to beckon to him. The dry, early-summer air, shot through with sunshine, was wine to him. Unconsciously he drank it in deep breaths.
His next communication contained a thrilling surprise which cleared the lurking mystery of his former letter, and expressed such joyous appreciation of his regained privileges that I once more quote his own words, from the letter yellowed by age, which lies before me. SONOMA, March 25, 1861
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