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MEMOIRS OF MY GREAT-GREAT GRANDMOTHER,
ELEANOR HOWARD (THOMAS) BRITTAIN KNOWLTON
November 1834 – August 1908

Husband is shot in attempted robbery. Attackers arrested and convicted. Another daughter is born. Over the mountains again to Nevada. They hire a “Chinaman” to help in the kitchen. The girls get measles.

I tried to get to sleep but could not and I did not want to get up again and have the old lady tell me to go to bed again. At about daybreak I heard someone come in and ask where Mrs. Brittain’s room was and the old lady answered him and he then asked, “How is she and the little girl.” Then I got up and asked who is there and the man replied, “Dr. Hinnman.” I said I am all right and so is Helene and if you want your bill paid I will pay it as soon as I am dressed. He said never mind the bill, but something on I want to see you.

I then asked him if he knew anything of Mr. Brittain and if he was killed. He said, “No, he is not dead, but he was shot last night and he is at the Mountain House about two miles from here. I dressed his wound and he was laughing and talking when I left him.” I said “I will dress and go to him at once,” but the doctor said that my husband would be home before I could get dressed. “Some of his brother Masons are with him and he will be all right.”

It was one o’clock in the afternoon before they brought him home on a spring mattress. The first thing I noticed was that his hair was nearly white, and I exclaimed, “Oh, he is gray.” My husband never said a word but cried. I could not utter another word. It was the night August 3rd that he was shot. He found when he got to Morris’ farm that the oxen were too small and he came back to Holdridge’s hotel between Sacramento and Placerville. The hotel at that time was called Deer Creek House. It was noon when he got there. Holdridge was an old friend and he insisted my husband have dinner with him. There were several men in the room playing cards. My husband and Holdridge chatted about his trip to get the wheel oxen and he told Holdridge if he heard of any one who had two to sell to send them to him, that he had the money in his pocket to pay for them.

There was to be a ball at the Mountain House that night and they wanted Mr. Brittain to stay over and he did stay until it opened but then told the boys he would go on to El Dorado the little town where I was stopping. It was about two-and-a-half miles away, and when he had gone within three quarters of a mile from El Dorado a man with a black cloth over his face barred his way and told him to halt. Mr. Brittain spurred his horse, whirled and jumped a log in the middle of the road just as the 2nd robber shot him through the thigh. The bullet did not pass the hard wood of the old Spanish saddle which was what saved the horse. The girth broke but he stayed on the horse and rode back to the Mountain House with the blood filling his boot. He called twice before Tuck Holdridge the landlord’s son recognized his voice and said, “There is Dave and he is in distress.”

Mr. Brittain saw where he was and told Holdridge that he had spoiled a good carpet but had the money to pay for it still. After talking with him the landlord decided that the men who were playing cards in the room while they ate their dinner had overheard their talk and knew that my husband had a large sum of money on him and that they had waylaid him on the road. He had thirteen hundred on him but the robbers did not get it.

The moon was shining when my husband was held up and shot and two miners who had a cabin near the road could see the faces of the robbers and could recognize the stuttering voice of one of them, so when those robbers were caught these two men who were the COPELAND BROTHERS testified to both the voices and the faces of the men.

The robbers went on that night to Dutch Flat where they robbed some Chinamen and the officers were immediately put on their track and they were captured within three days. Judge Jim Johnson and Gillchrist were our lawyers. The thieves got ten years apiece but the one who stuttered and was called Stuttering Bob got impudent and told the judge that he could live for ten years and still get Old Brittain and the judge gave him four years more.

It was the first of October when Sheriff Merritt was taking them to San Quentin and he had the stage drive up to my door for me to see them so that if I ever should see them again I would know them. He pulled off one man’s hat and showed me a scar which ran from the left eyebrow to the hair on his head disfiguring him so much that you would never forget him. The other was known by his stuttering. They would not give their last names. One was known as Salty. In thirteen days after I saw these men I gave birth to a nice baby girl which I named Merritt Lee after the sheriff and Robert E. Lee, who was a cousin of my mother’s.

I waited on Mr. Brittain up to the birth of my baby but his leg did not seem to heal properly. The doctor thought the leg should be amputated but my husband refused. Said he would go to San Francisco soon and see Dr. Toland.

The winter passed. Our teams were laid off until spring. My brother and Mr. Thomas Whitlock took care of the business and the stock the best that they could but we suffered many losses and our expenses were heavy until the spring of 1861. We are now going over the mountains again to my beautiful new home in Nevada. Mr. Brittain can walk on crutches and thinks he will drive in his buggy although he has to be helped in and out of it. I still have my red roans which I will have to drive in a two-seated hack with my children and a lady and her daughter who are going with me. I anticipate a fine time driving over the Sierras and especially up and down those grades. It was the first time my passenger had ever been across the mountains and she was a little timid but we put the children in the bed of the hack and started down Kingsbury’s Grade, which was not so steep as the next one and Mrs. Woodruff got a little over her scare.

We started down Van Sickle’s which is the steepest of the three and I was going at a good speed. A gentleman passed me going up and called out, “Madam, don’t you know that if your brake falls off you all would be dashed to pieces?” I could not stop but called back I’ve got good break and know how to use it. Mr. Brittain was left behind but I had no time to think of him and anyway I knew he would drive down all right. Well, I landed at the foot of that grade, passengers and all safe but really I was not all anxious to have another down grade ride.

Everyone who saw me driving that day or heard of it afterwards said I was equal to Hank Monk who was the great stage driver of those times. Of course I could do nothing else but let my horses go after we once started down the grade, but I might not have driven so fast at first had I realized it. About ten miles farther on was Carson City and my new home.

Well, here we are in our own home for the first time in two years and I am hoping to have a few pleasures, but I am beginning to realize that my mother was right when she told me, “Daughter, I fear you are born to see trouble.” She told me this when I had gone to her with my childish troubles. But I have a lovely home and a beautiful garden and not much work to do except when the teamsters are home.

The teamsters came home every two weeks and I always had then stay at our house as it would only be for a few days. Mr. Brittain made arrangements for them to have a free bath at Fargo’s bath house and I always had their clean clothes back for them. In this way we were able to keep the same teamsters all the year round while others in the same business were having to hire new men all the time.

Mr. Brittain would not hire a man who would visit the saloons and play cards. He gave them good wages and helped the men save the money. We had all good steady men. I did my own work until the winter of 1862 then the men were going to board with [us] until spring and my husband hired a Chinaman to help me. I did not want him for I had always had a girl to help take care of my three girls and I did not want to let her go, so he told me to keep both of them. I found the Chinaman a good cook and as long as I kept the girl and the children out of the kitchen everything went well but he did not want to take orders from any one but me.

One day Mr. Brittain brought in a bright yellow beet which he wanted cooked whole to see if it would retain its color. Mr. Brittain went down town after instructing the Chinaman and when he came back John Chinaman had cut the beet and was cooking it with meat, and of course it had lost its color. My husband gave the Chinaman a good going over with the result that he packed all of his things and left.

I was thus left to finish the dinner for the family, the hired men at the house, two herdsmen and Mr. Mason and three other men all unexpected. One of the teamsters who was cook on the road said that he would help me and when everything was about ready my husband hobbled in with the Chinaman who stayed with us for months after that. My husband told John Chinaman that he would either come back or have a cane broken over his head.

Mr. Brittain was very sick that winter, confined to his bed for three weeks and during his sickness my three little girls took the measles. The girl who had been with me for so long had to give orders to the Chinaman and he ordered her out of the kitchen. I told her to go back and make him give her the sage tea and he threw it in her face. I went to the kitchen and settled the fight and then washed the girl’s dress where the tea had stained it. The dress would not be called extra fine now but in those days it cost us seventy-five dollars. We had to let the girl go as the work was too heavy for her and besides, she could not get along with the Chinaman, why I do not know. We got another girl and he got along all right with her.

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