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

It is now the 13th of June and we are on the trail going up Cow Mountain. I have a fine saddle horse and my little girl rides behind me. I have a breast strap and what they call briching to keep the saddle from slipping or turning and a strap goes over the horns oof my saddle and around me and Merritt to keep her from slipping off.

The trail was so steep and it was so narrow we had to take it Indian file. We arrived in Gravely Valley, well, it might be called that it was a solid bed of gravel. I suppose it had once been the bed of Eal River. We crossed the river before we got to the Valley. It was late in the afternoon when we got there and to our surprise we found an old Pennsylvania Dutchman living in a log cabin and had lots of vegetables and watermelons. He had lived in the mountain for years, went for his health. He had lived all through the mountains finally stopped here. He had a horse to plant his garden with his harness he made of some kind of bark. He was glad to have us camp near his cabin. He had a nice spring of fresh water. He helped to fix us a camp, went out and killed a deer, would catch fish out of Eal River, they were fine sammon and trout.

He said Merritt was the first little white girl he had seen to talk with for years. Mr. Britten seems to be doing very well he enjoys the fresh fish and venison. Our hunter does not prove to be a very good shot. But Mr. Dowl our Dutchman keeps plenty fresh venison in camp and is drying some for us to take home with us. He has learned me to dress the deer skins and I smoke them and am going to make gloves and other articles of clothing of them such as pants and vests. It is now the last day of August and we will have to get ready to go back to the Lake. I am glad on account of my two little girls Bruns and Helene [Note from Ian: Helene was my great-grandmother]. We have had no news of them since we left and it is the first time they have been away from me. But really I hate to leave Mr. Dowl, he will be so lonely and he has been so kind to us. Invites us to come next spring.

Well, we are ready to start, want to get to Upper Lake, get our teams and get started on our circuit south. We have arrived at Upper Lake, found my dear little girls well and delighted to see us and I have resolved to take them where ever I go. Teams are all right – will rest after few days then to Lakeport, stay a day or two there as we have to do a little trading. Well, we are through our business in Lakeport and won’t spend any more time in Lake County.

It is now the first of Sep 1866. We will have about a month’s travel before we reach our winter destination. I cannot tell much more of the route than I have told in our previous trip. We are now in Yolo Co. at Dr. G W Wolf’s, an old friend who crossed the plains the year 1857 with us. Well, Mr. Brittain and the Dr will spend a few days very pleasantly and we are all tired enough to enjoy the stop. Mrs. Wolf is a nice lady. This is my first acquaintance with her. The Dr had been here before and left his wife here and went back to Missouri to bring back a drove of cattle. Now we leave here for Woodland. Will stop there just long enough to go to see our little son’s grave who was laid to rest there in the year 1858. His name is William T. Brittain. We have made arrangements to have him taken up and reburied. Since he was buried, there has been a drive way so close to his grave the tomb was in danger of being broken.

Now we are in Sacramento. Will shop here and Mr. Brittain will take some medical treatment for his lame side. Only a short time as we are going to travel the foothill route through some of the old mining towns. I have no desire to go this route but the men think it will be nice. I have been through Amadore County, El Dorado, Placer, Yuba and Colusa when the mines were worked by white men, now there are a great many Chinamen working them.

We were traveling on the American River. It was late in the afternoon and camping places where we could get anything to eat or feed for our horses were more scarce. Finally we came to a place where there were lots of Chinamen working on the mines taking out gold they had sluice boxes and everything to get the gold out of the river bed. They had quite a camp where they did their cooking eating and sleeping which had a high brush fence round it, a kind of gateway to go inside the brush fence and a very large dog tied at the entrance. So we concluded to camp.

There was plenty of feed for the horses. While the hired man was taking care of the horses my husband said, “Ellen, the children as well as the rest of us are hungry, you go up to the Chiney Camp and buy some rice and anything you can for supper.” I thought it looked rather dangerous but I know it would be late before the men could go and I thought I could get something from the Chinamen better than the men so I went. The dog did considerable barking which brought out a Chinaman and guarded me in. They were all seated at a long table I could not make them understand what I wanted they would not give me anything but fixt a place at the table and told me to eat they had lots of rice, they all had their bowls and chop sticks, and they had a large dish of some kind of greens and some kind of meat.

It was a pinkish color and looked to be very tend cut up in small pieces. I just made up my mind it was rats or young pups. They helped me to some of everything bountifully and what could I do but eat I was afraid not to and in the center of the table there was a large demijohn which contained chiney brandy which they gave me some. I only taked it after I got through eating. I made them understand what I wanted. They gave me cooked rice and a chinaman went down to our camp and we told him we wanted rice to cook ourselves so we got what we wanted. I was quite provoked to think they would not eat the rice which was cooked as I had eaten something of everything they had although I thought the meat was rats or young pups. I had been told they ate them. Well, after we all had supper we got our beds fixed and went to bed, soon were all asleep. Generally we slept very soundly. In the early part of the night we were aroused from our sleep by the firing of guns, and the Chinaman hollering, shoot robbers. The men began to get their guns ready to defend ourselves and an old Chinaman told us they would not hurt us, that white men robed their sluice box. They soon became quieted but we did not do much more sleeping that night, was up early, and got started on our journey south.

Well, it is the first of October and we are at a little village on Kings River, will stop here a few days and then go on to Visalia and get our outfit for the mountains. We now leave Visalia for Mr. Field in Bacon’s Cattle Ranch which is about 25 miles from Visalia he has a nice log house on it with an old fashioned chimney and fire place and a cook stove which we can have the use of and his son will stop with us we can have all the milk we want and fresh beef and we will leave our trunks and clothing, all but what we want for winter and mountain wear at Bacon’s house.

Well, I must tell you, as we are traveling to this place in the mountains we pass a nice farm in the valley. Mr. Brittain told me I had better go in and see if we could get potatoes and dried fruit for the winter. I went in the landlord was very inquisitive asked all kinds of questions and I asked him his name. He said Bill Grubbs. I went back to the wagon to tell the men we could have dried grapes and sweet potatoes. Bill went to the wagon while the hired man was getting the things. Grubbs said “I have seen you somewhere and if you are not Uncle Jim Thomas’ daughter I am poleaxed. I told him I was Lawyer James Thomas’ daughter and he said, ”You lived in McMinn County, Tennessee.” I said yes.

“Well,” he said, “I will tell you where I saw you last in Tennessee. It was at a quilting at your Uncle John Fitzgerald’s on Sweetwater Creek at Sweetwater. I was one of the judges to tell who was the best quilter and you was said to be the best. I then told the crowd I was going to set you on the mantle peace for a doll you were so small and nicely draped. You had got the prize and need not quilt any more.” He then had us get out of the wagons and stay all night and gave us all the potatoes, dried grapes and tomatoes we wanted and he invited us to come back and spend some time at his house on our return to the valley.

Next morning we expected to reach our winter house. We came to a place called Cottonwood Springs. It was a nice place to camp and a man by the name of Tom Fowler was living there. He was a very well-off man and said he was getting his buiness in shape and was going back south and join the Confederate Army. I told him my father was Major Thomas in General Price’s army. I told him when I came to California and where I started from. “Well, I may happen to be with Price, if so I will try to see your father.” Well, I bid him good-bye next morning and told him to look out for Father.

It is strange to say but after the war was over I got a letter from Father saying he had seen Tom Fowler of California, telling him of seeing me, and he had also heard once before from a friend of mine which was all the news he had of me during the war.

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

They start for Southern California after visiting the Big Trees. They meet a first cousin of Eleanor’s husband, Mr. Brittain, and celebrate her birthday on November 8, then start out for Visalia. They enjoy biscuits made with bear oil. They stay in the Sierra mountains with a family that has cattle, and enjoy plenty of milk, butter, and eggs for a while. As 1866 begins, they trek back to Lake County, where they spend the summer. People are generous and friendly along the way. A Mason was a man who could be trusted.

October 1st (1865). We have now reached the Big Trees and will spend a day or two seeing them. The largest tree in the grove was discovered by the first emigrants who crossed the mountains by this route. It was such a curiosity that they bored holes in it to cut it down without damaging it. Now the stump is enclosed with lattice work, and the trunk is hewn smooth and used for a ballroom. The log is utilized as a ball alley. I was in the ballroom with my little girls. I climbed a ladder with 21 rungs to get on top of the log. It was so high above the ground that when I looked down, I felt lightheaded and had to ask my cousin Tom Graves to help me down because I was afraid I would fall. I had my name carved on the tree along with the other emigrants. The next tree was one that a six-horse stage would often drive through, and there are many others. This grove is in Calaveras County. There is another one in Mariposa County.

We are now headed for Southern California to spend the winter. We will have traveled quite a distance before reaching our winter quarters, and we are not in a hurry, so we will continue on, camping whenever night catches up with us.

We plan to camp at what is called the Union Post Office, but before we could set up camp, a young boy rode up on horseback. He was quite a talker and suggested we should go on to the creek to camp. His father lived over there (this is in Mariposa County) with a man named Brittain, who had many cattle, so we could get fresh beef and plenty of milk. We drove over and camped near their place.

His father’s name was Lane and was called Colonel. I think he was a Colonel in the Rebel (sic) war. They treated us well. That evening after supper was over I said “Now, I know this man Brittain is a relative of yours.” Mr. Brittain my husband said he did not want me hunting up his kin, but that boy brought Brittain and his father to our camp to spend a little while around the campfire. I thought, “Now’s the time to find the kinsman, so I did find him to be a first cousin of my husband’s so we staid there until the 8th of November 1865 which was my birthday. Our new cousin had a fine beef killed for my birthday and everything nice. The young man who [had] taken us there shot the beef. His name was Adolph Lane.

Well, in two or three days we started for Visalia. Had several days travel over some of the driest and unimproved country you ever traveled over. But after you crossed the San Joaquin County and got to the Kings River country there seemed to be more settlements, and the Visalia country was still better. We did not expect to stay in Visalia or in the Four Creek country. We were going into some of the foothills. We started from Visalia thinking we would go to the Yocut mountains.

We had a nice trip up to the Yokuts and game was plentyful. We camped the first night at a man’s by the name of Jesse Fine. He and his wife were very kind to us. He had just killed a few days before we got there a large grizzly bear [and] gave us some of it. His wife made some very nice biscuits which were shortened with bear oil. Well, we staid there several days. The weather was nice but as it was now the first of December 1865 we began to think about going back to Visalia where we could get a house for the winter. There was no house we could get in the mountains.

But I must tell you about the Fines. Mr. Fine was from Tennessee and his father and my father were old friends. He had a sister who was an old maid. I remembered her well. We children always called her Aunt Polly Fine. The Fines were nice people in Tennessee and I found this family to be equally as nice.

Now we are started for the Valley and I fear we have staid too long as it looks as how it will take us two days. We will have to camp out one night. There is no house on the way. Well, we have been on the road one day and a nice day, but this morning it looks like rain. Well, it is night again and we are going to camp, get supper as quick as we can and get Mr. Brittain and the little girls to the spring hack as it is raining some now. Although it bids fair to be a rain, I cannot help admitting our camp there is lovely, evergreen oaks and sycamores. There was a large log which had a fire built in it when we got there. There were two men there by the name of Street. They were brothers in the cattle business. They did all they could to keep the log burning but it just poured down rain most of the night. Well, I was glad when day came. My cousin Tom Graves, the two Mr Streets, and the rest got started and was also glad to have the Streets with us as they were acquainted with the country.

It is night and we arrive safe at last at a man’s place by the name of Ruben Turner. We had camped here before we went to Fine’s place. He received us welcomely into his house. We staid several days there, and then we went into a house for the winter.
Well, it is now after Christmas and the weather is fine and we are thinking some of taking a drive up in the foothills. There is an old man who lived up there by the name of Collier, said he would board us for a while and we were getting afraid we would get the chills, as most of the old settlers were chilling. Well, we are now at Collier’s. The old man has cattle. We have plenty of milk, butter and eggs and once in a while his son-in-law would kill a mutton. His name was Blain, he owned lots of sheep. I do not know what these mountains were but think they were the Sierras.

We are now going back to the valley. It is after the time we expected to be up here. It is now 1866. We will now begin to get ready to leave the Visalia County because when the Four Creeks begin to rise in the spring it will make us too late in getting north, and it is bad getting over the King’s River.

It is now the first of April and we are started on our trip north. I think Lake County will be where we will spend most of the summer. If it gets to warm we will go on to Mendocino and Humbolt counties. We are now making good time on our trip. We are almost to Stockton and will go from there to Sacramento, stay there a few days and see some good doctors and get some medical advice on whether it will be beneficial to Mr. Brittain to stop in Lake County at some of those springs.

Now we leave Sacramento and go through Yolo County, stopping where we find a nice place, and in the mountains, taking time to see our old friends and relatives and a good scope of country after leaving Sacramento Valley. We went up Cache Creek and found a rough road, the only place where any one lived was the Knoxville quicksilver mines. The next place was a small town which was called Lower Lake, which was near Clear Lake. The next was Kelseyville in what was called Big Valley. It was a nice rich valley lying on Clear Lake. We camped there a few days then we moved on to Lakeport. Found it a pretty little town on the lake shore. Really the county was beautiful but was poorly improved. The people were very generous. We staid there a while, rested our horses and ourselves, then we went on towards the mountains. Going through a very nice country, there was a little town called Upper Lake. The reason they named it that was it was the head of the lake. This lake is about 30 miles long and 12 miles wide and a beautiful body of clean water. There is lots of fish in it. Ducks are plenty on the lake. The Indians catch the fish and dry them for food for the winter.

There is in Big Valley a creek called Kelsey Creek which abounds with fish which come out of Clear Lake in the spring. I have seen them so think you could not drive over the creek without driving over them. Really it ought to have been named Fish Creek. The fish were quite large. We are camped now at Upper Lake, will stay here a few days before going into the mountains. I have a bad cold but the children and their father are well. They are all anxious to go on to the mountains where they can kill bear and lions.

It is now the first of June. Mr. Vernal Thompson will go with us to where we have to leave our wagons and take our carriage horses and wagons back to his place and pasture the horses and take care of wagons. He is a Mason and will do right. We now have our pack horses and saddle horses and everything ready to start. We leave the two oldest girls at Upper Lake at school with an old gentleman and his wife by the name of Willson. They have children and married in Missouri. They are nice people and the girls are tired traveling and want to stay put. I don’t think we will stay long up there. We are going to a place which is called Gravely Vally on the Eal River. They say there is fine mineral water there.

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

News spead that Eleanor was attacked and choked unconscious by someone Mr. Brittain had sent to prison. A man was arrested, and was found with a watch engraved with the name of a judge’s wife, along with a butcher knife and saw. The prisoner is moved before a planned jail break. A son born in January 1864 lives only a few days. Eleanor receives a “fine bull dog” as a gift. Mr. Brittain’s business partner tries to swindle her on taxes and steal part of their land. A storm brings several feet of snow while she in en route by stage coach to Virgina City to collect some money. Eleanor describes herself as “only a little under five feet,” and the snow was up to her arm pits.

The night of September 1863 I was suddenly awakened by the rough hand of a man coming over my face. I called to Jim Preston to come to me that someone was in my room. The man said, “Hush, or I will kill you, your husband sent me to states prison.” I told him he’d better leave for I would yell as long as I had breath, and this time I called, “come here, boys”. The man then choked me until I was senseless and I knew no more until my little girl Helene ran to the neighbors and told them what had happened. The young man Preston had hidden in the closet, and the eldest girl under the bed. She said she thought I was dead. Mr. and Mrs. Wattenburger, Judge Motts and his wife, and Mrs. Arbuckle came to see what had happened to me and were there when I came to.

The next morning I looked a fright. Mr. John Fisk came to see me and I told what had happened and asked him to put a notice in the paper merely saying that there had been a robbery at Mrs. Brittain’s as I did not want the man to know that I would recognize him if ever I saw him again. The news soon spread over the town and so many began to call that the doctor said that I must be taken some place where I could be quiet so Mr. Thomas Bedford took me to his home and Mrs. Arbuckle and Mrs. Wattenburger stayed at my house. They said afterward that more than fifty people called to inquire, I presume some of them from curiosity.

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

Ellen symathizes with the south in the Civil War, but states her opposition to slavery. She aids several southerners going home to assist as the Civil War continues, but they are killed in Utah. Gold coins are sewn into buckskin jackets. A friend is wanted for shooting a Paiute indian, and she helps him flee to California. She challenges the governor of the Nevada Territory for berating all southerners, and later refuses his apology.

It is now the spring of 1863. The children and I are well and soon my brother Samuel Thomas will take the teams over the mountains. Mr. Brittain is going to San Francisco to have his leg treated again as it pains him all the time. He will stay at Dr. Toland’s for a while then he intends to go to Sacramento for awhile and superintend the loading of his wagons and start them off to Carson and Virginia Cities.

I will be alone again for some time but I will have Miss Melissa True stay with me and she and the two older girls will go to school. My youngest daughter will not be three years old until October 13th so I will have plenty of time to work in my garden which I love and the doctor says that garden work will help me a lot. I have a gardener do the heavy work. Gardening pays in Nevada. The men have made one trip over the mountains and will go back again in a few days. We have a three hundred acre ranch on Carson River stocked with work horses and cattle. We keep a man there always to care for the stock.

A few days after Mr. Brittain had left a friend of ours, Samuel Snow and another southerner, came to the house and asked me if I had a saddle horse or two to spare and when I asked him what he wanted with the horses he hesitated a moment and then said, “You are a southern woman and do doubt you are in sympathy with our friends there the same as we are. I have gotten a company of men to go back with me to help them out and I have not enough horses to take them there.”

I said, “Yes, all my dear relatives are there and I do sympathize with them though I do not believe in slavery. You go to our ranch and take any horse or as many as you want.” I then bade him goodbye and wished him luck as I knew that he would try to do what he could to help as all his relatives were in Tennessee. They got back as far as Utah near Salt Lake where they were robbed and killed, and that was the last I ever heard of him or his company.

Well, when Mr. Brittain got back and the hired man told him that his best saddle horse and some other horse had been taken and he said he would not mind so much about the rest but he did mind about his saddle horse and that he would find the man or men who took him and make it hot for him.

I asked him when he told me about it, “What would you do with a woman who was accessory to the crime?” I then told him all about Mr. Snow calling and what he had told me about helping out in the south and that I had given him permission to go to the farm and take what stock he needed. Mr. Brittain said that I had done right. This was not the last time that I helped out men who were going to the aid of their southern friends and relatives and some that I helped got through all right.

Mr. Samuel Mason and Mr. Chisholm came to my house and stayed a week or two getting ready to go back to Arkansas. Mason had sixteen or twenty thousand dollars which he and Chisholm sewed up in buckskin jackets. I helped them fix them. The twenty dollar pieces were sewed checked off in squares so that they would not touch and rattle. We sewed in my clothes closet with a dim light so as not to be seen doing the work. Mason and his brother brought cattle across the plains with us in 1857 and as they had always trusted me with their secrets.

One time when he had made a trip he brought me an old dirty white cotton sack and told me to take care of it. I told him I did not know what to do with it for I guessed there was money in it. He said, “Oh, throw it under your bed or in any old rubbish.” When Mr. Brittain came home he said that it was money in the sack and I would have to stay close to the house. I did not care to take charge of it and when after dinner Sam and Halk Mason and the rest of the men went to town and left me with the old sack I began to be very sorry that they trusted me with their secrets and valuables.

Then I consoled myself that no one knew that I had the sack and Mason and Chisholm were certainly the shabbiest looking cattle men that I ever saw. Mason was a cousin of my father’s and I told him if he ever happened to see father to tell him about my family. He said that he would and that he would tell him about me, too.

Halk Mason came to me one day after that and asked me if I could hide John Hale in my cellar that night or until he could get him off to California. I asked no questions but told him that I would do as he asked. John was like a brother to me. He had lived with us for a year and when he was not with us he was on the Walker River with Mason’s cattle. Our cellar always looked like a prison to me. It was made of blue stone cut in square locks and had small air windows and a door and a storage house over it. I began to wonder what John had done that he should be gotten to California and decided I’d better ask Mason.

Mason told me that while John was out with the cattle he ran into a lot of Piute Indians who were drinking and one of them asked John to drink with him. John refused and the Indian insisted, saying that if he did not drink he would kill him. John was on his horse and close to the river so in order to save his life he shot the Indian. He then rode back to camp and told what he had done and Mason said that he would have to get out of reach of the Piutes and the soldiers. The Paiutes would tell the soldiers and they would have to take him prisoner for having trouble with the Indians.

I felt then that I was doing right to hide John. He stayed that night in the cellar and some time in the early hours was taken out. I bid him goodbye and gave him a letter to my father although I really doubted if any letter would reach him I always gave anyone going south a letter for him. It was very hard to get news to my dear old father who was a major under General Price. John Hale did deliver the letter. He was that kind of a man. He was one of the men who helped me parch the coffee for the Vigilants the night they caught Lucky Bill Thornton and Edwards.

One time Governor Nye was running for office for the second time. His opponent was Blasedale, a hard man to beat. Nye was making speeches all over the country and when he was to speak in Carson City everybody turned out to hear him, women as well as men. I went to hear the great speech, too. The pavilion was crowded and as many more standing outside. I was sitting in front of the platform, Mrs. Pixley on one side and Mrs. Ormsby, wife of Major Ormsby, on the other side.

The Governor was in his glory berating the southerners, calling them all kinds of names. I thought surely some of the men will call him down. He went on to say that there was not a southern man in the war that was not worse than a horse thief. I could not stand that and got up to tell him what I thought. Mrs. Pixley said “Don’t say anything!” and Mrs. Ormsby tried to make me sit down, but I addressed the Governor.

I said, “Governor Nye, you know what you are saying is not so. My father is a Major in the southern war and I know that he would not stoop to do as mean a thing as I know you have done. You cannot deny what I am going to tell you. When the government sent you money to supply the poor starving Indians with food and get them blankets you gave them instead plug tobacco and hats to the men and hoop skirts to the poor squaws. I know this for a fact because they came to my house and tried to sell the tobacco, that it made them sick, and the squaws wanted to trade their hoops for something that would keep them warm. Captain Jim’s whole tribe marched through the town dressed in the garb that you had given them and carrying the tobacco and when anyone said anything to them they would say that Nye is no good.”

This talk of mine stopped the Governor’s speech for he could not deny the truth of it. Every southern man in the audience rose to his feet. The first man I recognized was Mr. Thomas Bedford from Kentucky. Later they all came to see me and said they would stand by me if any trouble came to me for what I had done. My husband was in California at the time, but when he came home, Nye came to him and told him that he owed me an apology but I did not accept it.

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