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John Bidwell

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John Bidwell
Portrait by Mathew Brady c. 1860–1865
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from California's 3rd district
In office
March 4, 1865 – March 3, 1867
Preceded byConstituency established
Succeeded byJames Johnson
Member of the California Senate
from the Sacramento district
In office
December 17, 1849 – January 6, 1851
Preceded byConstituency established
Succeeded byAlonzo W. Adams
Alcalde of Mission San Luis Rey
In office
August 1846 – January 1847
Appointed byJohn C. Frémont
Personal details
Born(1819-08-05)August 5, 1819
Chautauqua County, New York, U.S.
DiedApril 4, 1900(1900-04-04) (aged 80)
Chico, California, U.S.
Resting placeChico Cemetery
Political partyDemocratic (Before 1861)
Republican (1861–1875)
Prohibition (after 1875)
Other political
affiliations		National Union (1861–1868)
People's Independent (1875)
Anti-Monopoly (1875)
Spouse
​
(m. 1868)​
ResidenceBidwell Mansion
Signature
Military service
Allegiance United States
California Republic
Rank Brigadier General
UnitCalifornia Battalion
Battles/wars

John Bidwell (August 5, 1819 – April 4, 1900), known in Spanish as Don Juan Bidwell,[1] was an American pioneer, politician, and soldier. Bidwell is known as the founder of the city of Chico, California.

Born in New York, he emigrated at the age of 22 to Alta California (then a part of Mexico) as part of the Bartleson–Bidwell Party, one of the first expeditions of American emigrants along the California Trail. In California, he became a Mexican citizen and a prominent landowner, receiving multiple rancho grants from the governors of Alta California. Following the U.S. Conquest of California, Bidwell went on to serve in the California Senate and then in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Early life

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Bidwell was born in 1819 in Chautauqua County, New York. His Bidwell ancestors immigrated to North America in the colonial era.[2] His family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1829, and then to Ashtabula County, Ohio, in 1831.[3] At age 17, he attended and shortly thereafter became principal of Kingsville Academy.[4]

Life in California

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Bidwell in 1850

In 1841, at the age of 22, Bidwell became one of the first emigrants on the California Trail.[5] John Sutter employed Bidwell as his business manager shortly after the younger man reached California. In October 1844, Bidwell went with Sutter to Monterey, where the two learned of an insurrection by leader José Castro and ex-governor Juan Bautista Alvarado.[6] In 1845, Bidwell and Sutter joined Governor Manuel Micheltorena and a group of Americans and Indians to fight the insurrectionists, pursuing them to Cahuenga.[6] Micheltorena, Sutter, and Bidwell were imprisoned, and the latter two were shortly thereafter released.[6]

Upon release, Bidwell headed north through Placerita Canyon, saw the mining operations, and was determined to search for gold on his way to Sutter's Fort, where he met James W. Marshall.[7] Shortly after Marshall's discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, Bidwell also discovered gold on the Feather River, establishing a productive claim at Bidwell Bar in advance of the California Gold Rush. Bidwell obtained the four square-league Rancho Los Ulpinos land grant after being naturalized as a Mexican citizen in 1844, and the two square-league Rancho Colus grant on the Sacramento River in 1845. He later sold the latter grant and bought Rancho Arroyo Chico on Chico Creek to establish a ranch and farm.

Fort Bidwell in 1877

Soon after the outbreak of the Mexican–American War, Bidwell met with the leaders of the Bear Flag Revolt and drafted their constitution.[6] He later attained the rank of major while fighting at Fort Stockton. In August 1846, he was appointed Alcalde of Mission San Luis Rey by John C. Frémont, where he served until the end of the war.[8] He was appointed brigadier general of the California Militia in 1863.[3] From 1863 to 1864, Bidwell and other local financiers built the Humboldt Wagon Road connecting Chico to the mining districts of Nevada.[9] Around this time, in 1865, General Bidwell backed a petition from settlers at Red Bluff, California to protect Red Bluff's trail to the Owyhee Mines of Idaho. The United States Army commissioned seven forts for this purpose. One site was near Fandango Pass at the base of the Warner Mountains, in the north end of Surprise Valley. On June 10, 1865, what was named Fort Bidwell was ordered to be built there.[10][11] The fort was built amid escalating fighting with the Snake Indians of eastern Oregon and southern Idaho.[12] It was a base for US Army operations in the Snake War, that lasted until 1868, and the later Modoc War. Although traffic dwindled on the Red Bluff route once the Central Pacific Railroad extended into Nevada in 1868, the Army staffed Fort Bidwell until 1890 to quell various uprisings and disturbances.[10] A Paiute reservation and small community maintain the name Fort Bidwell.

On February 5, 1856, Bidwell was one of several passengers traveling down the Sacramento River on the steamboat Belle when the ship's boiler exploded, killing several people instantly.[13] Bidwell was sitting by the stove reading a newspaper when the explosion sent a piece of shrapnel the size of a quarter directly into his skull. Bidwell survived, but spent the rest of his life with a visible hole in his head.[14]

Political career

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Bidwell was selected as a delegate to the 1849 California Constitutional Convention, but did not attend because of mining business. Later that year, he was elected to the California State Senate, serving a single one-year term.[15] He ran for State Senate again in 1855, but lost to incumbent Know Nothing John B. McGee by just 187 votes.[16] He supervised conducting the federal census of California in 1850 and 1860, under national direction by Joseph C. G. Kennedy. Bidwell was a delegate to the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston. He was the only West Coast delegate opposed to secession.[17] He left the party soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, and in 1864 was a delegate to the National Union National Convention. That year, he was also elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican, serving from 1865 to 1867. Rather than seek re-election, he chose to run for Governor of California in 1867,[17] but due to his anti-monopoly stance lost the Union Party nomination to railroad lobbyist[18] George Congdon Gorham by a vote of 167 to 132.[19]

An early political caricature poster mocking California Republicans' support of a local option for alcohol, c. 1870s

In 1875, Bidwell ran for Governor of California on the Anti-Monopoly Party ticket.[3] As a strong advocate of the temperance movement, he presided over the state convention of the Prohibition Party in 1888 and was their nominee for governor in 1890.[3] In the 1892 presidential election, Bidwell was the nominee of the Prohibition Party.[3] The ticket of Bidwell and James B. Cranfill of Texas finished fourth nationwide, receiving 271,058 votes, or 2.3%. It was the largest total vote and highest percentage of the vote received by any Prohibition Party national ticket. Their strongest result was in Minnesota, where they received over five percent of the vote.

John Bidwell's autobiography, Echoes of the Past, was published in 1900. That same year, on April 4, Bidwell died of natural causes at the age of 80.

Personal life

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Annie and John Bidwell, 1895

In 1868 Bidwell was about 49 when he married Annie Kennedy, whom he had courted for years. She was 20 years younger and a daughter of Joseph C. G. Kennedy. Her father was socially prominent, a high-ranking Washington official who supervised the U.S. Census Bureau. Bidwell had met him while working on the California census. The senior Kennedy was active in the U.S. Whig party. Annie Kennedy was deeply religious, joining the Presbyterian Church, and committed to a number of moral and social causes. She was very active in the suffrage and prohibition movements.[3]

The couple married April 16, 1868 in Washington, D.C., with President Andrew Johnson and future president Ulysses S. Grant among the guests. After he returned with her to Chico, the Bidwells used their mansion extensively for entertainment of friends and official guests. Among them were President Rutherford B. Hayes, General William T. Sherman, Susan B. Anthony, Frances Willard, Governor Leland Stanford, John Muir, Joseph Dalton Hooker, and Asa Gray.

Legacy

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The Bidwell Family Papers are held at the Bancroft Library.

The actor Howard Negley (1898–1983) played Bidwell in the 1953 episode, "The Lady with the Blue Silk Umbrella" on the syndicated television anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. In the story line, Helen Crosby (Kathleen Case) carries official California statehood papers in her umbrella to shield them from ruffians who want to destroy the documents. Rick Vallin played Lieutenant Bob Hastings.[20]

Fraternal allegiance

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Bidwell was a Freemason for a time but left the group. He said that allegiance to the fraternity "was pointless" in an October 17, 1867 letter to Annie Kennedy, whom he had been courting. His signature appears in the Book of By-Laws of the Chico-Leland Stanford Lodge No. 111 in Chico, California.[21]

[edit]
  • Bidwell in 1866
    Bidwell in 1866
  • Bidwell c. 1875
    Bidwell c. 1875
  • Bidwell c. 1880
    Bidwell c. 1880
  • Bidwell c. 1890
    Bidwell c. 1890
  • Seal of Chico, California
    Seal of Chico, California

See also

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Citations

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  1. ^ Jimeno's and Hartnell's Indexes of Land Concessions, from 1830 to 1846
  2. ^ Bidwell, Edwin M. (1884). "Genealogy to the Seventh Generation of the Bidwell Family in America".
  3. ^ a b c d e f "John Bidwell-Biography". Spartacus Education. 2006. Archived from the original on 2007-01-01. Retrieved 2006-12-11.
  4. ^ "Guide to the John Bidwell Papers". content.cdlib.org. Archived from the original on 2020-12-05. Retrieved 2017-02-27.
  5. ^ Michael J. Gillis and Michael F. Magliari, John Bidwell and California: The Life and Writings of a Pioneer, 1841-1900, ISBN 0-87062-332-X, p. 31–
  6. ^ a b c d Boyle, C. C. (1906). Addresses, Reminiscences, Etc. of General John Bidwell. p. 42.
  7. ^ Worden, Leon (October 2005). "California's REAL First Gold". COINage magazine. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
  8. ^ Chilcote, Olivia (2019). ""Time Out of Mind": The San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians and the Historical Origins of a Struggle for Federal Recognition". California History. 96 (4): 41. Retrieved 22 October 2024.
  9. ^ Leicester, Marti; Nopel, David (2012). The Humboldt Wagon Road. Images of America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-7385-7643-5.
  10. ^ a b Pease, Robert W. (1965). Modoc County; University of California Publications in Geography, Volume 17. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 75–78, 97.
  11. ^ War Department, United States; John Sheldon Moody; Calvin Duvall Cowles; Frederick Caryton Ainsworth; Robert N. Scott; Henry Martyn Lazelle; George Breckenridge Davis; Leslie J. Perry; Joseph William Kirkley (1897). The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Vol. L. Washington: Government Printing Office. pp. 593–594, 1125, 1214–1215.
  12. ^ Durham, David L. (1998). California's Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State. Clovis, Calif.: Word Dancer Press. p. 378. ISBN 1-884995-14-4.
  13. ^ Burnett, Marie (December 2018). "Belle" (PDF). California State Lands Commission. Retrieved 21 October 2024.
  14. ^ Leek, Nancy (7 January 2019). "Like a Hole in the Head". Goldfields Books. Retrieved 21 October 2024.
  15. ^ "John Bidwell". JoinCalifornia. Retrieved 22 October 2024.
  16. ^ "Senatorial—Butte and Plumas". Sacramento Daily Union. Sacramento. 26 September 1855. Retrieved 22 October 2024.
  17. ^ a b Hunt, Rockwell (1917). "JOHN BIDWELL: A PRINCE AMONG PIONEERS". Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California. 10 (3). Retrieved 21 October 2024.
  18. ^ Denning, Robert; Rogers, J. Henry (2008). "A Fragile Machine: California Senator John Conness". California History. 85 (4): 48. Retrieved 21 October 2024.
  19. ^ "THE SACRAMENTO CONVENTION–NOMINATION OF GEORGE GORHAM". The Daily Alta California. San Francisco. 13 June 1867. Retrieved 21 October 2024.
  20. ^ "The Lady with the Blue Silk Umbrella on Death Valley Days". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved July 3, 2019.
  21. ^ Michael J. Gillis and Michael F. Magliari, John Bidwell and California: The Life and Writings of a Pioneer, 1841-1900, ISBN 0-87062-332-X, p. 223-224
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California Senate
New constituency Member of the California Senate
from the Sacramento district
1849–1851 		Succeeded by
U.S. House of Representatives
New constituency Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from California's 3rd congressional district
1865–1867 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Chair of the House Agriculture Committee
1865–1867 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by Prohibition nominee for President of the United States
1892 		Succeeded by
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