Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913: Containing the Reminiscences of Harris NewmarkNewmark, Harris
History
Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913: Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark
Newmark, Harris
California, Southern; Los Angeles (Calif.)
George Carson, a New Yorker who came here in 1852, and after whom
Carson Station is named, was one of the first to engage in the sheep
industry. Soon after he arrived, he went into the livery business, to
which he gave attention even when in partnership successively with
Sanford, Dean and Hicks in the hardware business, on Commercial
Street. On July 30th, 1857, Carson married Doña Victoria, a daughter
of Manuel Dominguez; but it was not until 1864 that, having sold out
his two business interests (the livery to George Butler and the
hardware to his partner), he moved to the ranch of his father-in-law,
where he continued to live, assisting Dominguez with the management of
his great property. Some years later, Carson bought four or five
hundred acres of land adjoining the Dominguez acres and turned his
attention to sheep. Later still, he became interested in the
development of thoroughbred cattle and horses, but continued to help
his father-in-law in the directing of his ranch. When rain favored the
land, Carson, in common with his neighbors, amassed wealth; but during
dry years he suffered disappointment and loss, and on one occasion was
forced to take his flocks, then consisting of ten thousand sheep, to
the mountains, where he lost all but a thousand head. It cost him ten
thousand dollars to save the latter, which amount far exceeded their
value. In this movement of stock, he took with him, as his lieutenant,
a young Mexican named Martin Cruz whom he had brought up on the
_rancho_. Carson was one of my cronies, while I was still young and
single; and we remained warm friends until he died.
Almost indescribable excitement followed the substantiated reports,
received in the fall of 1857, that a train of emigrants from Missouri
and Arkansas, on their way to California, had been set upon by
Indians, near Mountain Meadow, Utah, on September 7th, and that
thirty-six members of the party had been brutally killed. Particularly
were the Gentiles of the Southwest stirred up when it was learned that
the assault had been planned and carried through by one Lee, a Mormon,
whose act sprang rather from the frenzy of a madman than from the
deliberation of a well-balanced mind. The attitude of Brigham Young
toward the United States Government, at that time, and his alleged
threat to "turn the Indians loose" upon the whites, added color to the
assertion that Young's followers were guilty of the massacre; but
fuller investigation has absolved the Mormons, I believe, as a
society, from any complicity in the awful affair. Some years later the
two Oatman girls were rescued from the Indians (by whom they had been
tattooed), and for a while they stayed at Ira Thompson's, where I saw
them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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