San Sebastian Avenue
Three hours ago I discussed my last post with an old Leprechaun friend. and sometime foe, about my last post and the Bullhead City Police Report. We discussed the idea Drew Taylor Rosamond Benton, was tortured to get information from her. She survived this torture, and lied to the police saying she was not attacked by someone. She expected to live. But, two hour later she dies in the hospital of a heart attack. The report says she pulled tubes out of her – and walked out of the hospital? This is not clear. I wondered if Drew owned a safe deposit, and inside was her mother’s lost manuscript that she was trying to get to, before her mortal enemy did.
While sitting on the post, tinkling like a woman because my prostate was out of whack, this word popped in my mind…..McGuffin! The Maltese Falcon………The Mariposa Mine!
BINGO!
I am now looking at the possibility one of Drew’s kin died, and left her a deed and map to the Mariposa Mine which I claimed in August of 2015. I filled out a form claiming the gold mine that belonged to John and Jessie Benton Fremont. Jessie and Drew look alike. There is a street named after Jessie.
On this day, I John Gregory Presco, claim all of the land that was Mariposa County, when John and Jessie made residence there – until it can be settled in a court of law, who owned what, then, and who owns what – now!
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I Claim The Mariposa Land Grant
Posted on August 22, 2015 by Royal Rosamond Press
As a relative of John and Jessie Fremont, I lay claim to the Rancho Las Mariposa. I have contacted attorney Eileen McKenzie who specializes in Spanish Land Grants.
http://www.eileenmckenziefowler.com/
In 2005 I took a train to Sonoma to see my newborn grandson, Tyler Hunt. He had been abandoned by his father. Heather Hanson and I took Tyler to Vallejo’s home which is a museum. Juan Bautista Alvarado used to live here. Juan used to own Rancho Las Mariposa. I informed my daughter our family history exceeded that of Vallejo. I could tell she did not get it. She is not well read and shuns history. The next day we drove to Colma and I entered the lost tomb of our Stuttmeister and Janke ancestors who were Prussian Forty-Eighters who helped Fremont found the Republican Party.
http://www.sonomaparks.org/pub/place/4
My niece, Drew Benton, is the daughter of Garth Benton, and Christine Rosamond (Presco) Benton. Garth is the cousin of the famous artist, Thomas Hart Benton, the grandson of Senator Thomas Hart Benton, whose daughter, Jessie Benton, married John Fremont.
It is not gold I am after – but I will take any ore that is rightfully mine. What I would like to do with any land due me, is fulfill my grandfather’s dream. Royal Rosamond was a author and poet who discussed with his good friend, Otto Rayburn, the founding of a Poet’s Colony on forty acres Royal owned in Arkansas. To make this Dream come true, I have founded ‘The Royal Rosamond Academy of Art and Poetry’. I will try to make RRAAP an accredited college so my students can qualify for a Student Loans.
If any gold is found, I will name my mine ‘The Tyler Mine’ after my grandson.
John (Jon) Gregory Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press & Royal Rosamond Academy of Art and Poetry
Copyright 2015
Rancho Las Mariposas was a 44,387-acre (179.63 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Mariposa County, California given in 1844 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Juan Bautista Alvarado.[1] The grant takes its name from Mariposa Creek, which was named for the butterflies (“mariposas” in Spanish) in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The grant was near Yosemite on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain, and encompasses present day Mariposa and the former towns of Agua Fria and Ridleys Ferry.[2][3]
History[edit]
Juan B. Alvarado, a former Mexican governor of California, was awarded the grant in 1844. The ten square league grant was described as being located generally on the Mariposa Creek between the San Joaquin River, Chowchilla River, and Merced River and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This is much bigger area than ten square leagues, and the intent was that Alvarado would select the particular ten square leagues within these boundaries – what has been called a “floating grant”. Alvarado never complied with the usual requirements for a grant due to the presence of hostile Indians.[4]
After playing his part in the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846, John C. Frémont, soldier, explorer, and (later) presidential candidate, decided to settle down in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1847 he sent $3,000 to the U.S. consul to the Territory of California, Thomas O. Larkin, to buy a ranch near Mission San José. Despite clear instructions, for some reason, Larkin purchased Rancho Las Mariposas in the southern Sierra Nevada foothills from Juan B. Alvarado. To Frémont this was worthless land, over one hundred miles from the nearest settlement, had no farms or ranch lands, and was inhabited by hostile Indians. Frémont demanded the ranch near the Mission San Jose or his money back. Larkin did not act, and from 1847 to 1848 Frémont was in Washington defending himself at a court-martial.[5] When Frémont returned to California, he learned of the gold discovery at Coloma. Shortly thereafter, Frémont discovered gold in the Mariposa region. Frémont’s unwanted tract of land turned out to be the richest rancho in California.[6] Before Frémont could legally establish his grant boundaries, thousands of miners arrived on the scene. Few of the miners acknowledged Frémont’s claim and a legal battle began that would take until 1856 to settle and 1859 to finalize.
Using the vague description of the original Alvarado grant, Frémont “floated” his ten square league rancho from the original claim to cover mineral lands including properties already in the possession of miners. Rancho Las Mariposas took shape along a wide vein that stretched from Mariposa Creek to the Merced River. When the boundaries were surveyed, the grant included Mariposa, Bear Valley and the Pine Tree and Josephine mine complex. The Pine Tree Mine was discovered in 1849, and it was consolidated with the Josephine Mine in 1859. The ore from the Pine Tree and Josephine mines was crushed at the Benton mill. Frémont also owned and operated the Oso House hotel in Bear Valley. He and his wife Jessie Benton Frémont made their home in Bear Valley until 1859, when they bought a home in San Francisco.[4]
With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho Las Mariposas was filed with the U.S. Board of Land Commissioners in 1852,[7] who confirmed his title, according to the survey, which he, himself, had made. On appeal to the U. S. District Court, the decision of the Board was reversed and Frémont’s lawyers immediately appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In December 1854, the U. S. Supreme Court remanded his case back to the District Court,[8] declaring the claim valid and ordering an official survey, and the grant was patented to John C. Frémont in 1856.[9]
Frémont never worked the mines himself but preferred to lease the mines to different entities. Frémont hired Palmer, Cook & Co., San Francisco bankers, to organize the Mariposa Mining Co. in 1850.[10]
In 1857, Frémont leased the Mount Ophir section of his grant to Biddle Boggs. However, the Merced Mining Co. occupied the property and operated a gold mine. Merced Mining Co. maintained that the official survey had been made in a clandestine manner and that Frémont had no title to the minerals, as his grant was for grazing and agricultural purposes only. Lengthy litigations in the face of hostile public sentiment piled up court costs and lawyer fees. In 1858, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Merced Mining Co. A rehearing was granted and in 1859 the California Supreme Court reversed itself, and ruled in favor of Biddle Boggs and Frémont.[11][12] The other claimants lost many valuable holdings. In the summer of 1858 a group of armed men seized the Pine Tree Mine, but after five days of armed confrontation with Frémont’s men, they were ordered out by the governor.[10]
After the dissolution of Halleck, Peachy & Billings, Trenor W. Park worked on Frémont’s legal and financial problems. In January 1863, Fremont, then a Major-General in the Union Army, sold Rancho Las Mariposas with its mines and infrastructure to Morris Ketchum, a New York City banker, who formed a public corporation, the Mariposa Company, and sold stock. In 1863, Frederick Law Olmsted, noted New York landscape architect, came to Mariposa as superintendent for the Mariposa Company. Olmsted was not a mining expert. Investments were made in stamp mills, tunnels, shafts, and the other infrastructure related to the mining towns. By 1865, the Mariposa Company was bankrupt, Olmsted returned to New York, and mines were sold at a sheriff’s sale.[10]
The town was founded as a mining camp on the banks of a seasonal stream known as Aqua Fria.[3] This original town site was located about 6.0 miles (9.7 km) to the west of present day Mariposa.[3] After a flood during the winter of 1849/50, and fires, the town was moved to the location of today’s Mariposa, although mainly due to better terrain and the presence of Mariposa creek, a large producer of placer gold. The gold in small Aqua Fria creek was soon removed, and lacked water most of the year. So the populace moved on to the new boomtown. The large Mariposa mine soon opened, with a 40 foot waterwheel crushing gold ore. This provided a stable source of employment, and Mariposa soon became the supply hub for hundreds of outlying mining districts. Placer gold, that which is found in creekbeds and alluvial deposits, was soon extinguished, and the era of hard rock, deep mining began. In 1851 the “new” town of Mariposa became the county seat, which reached nearly to Los Angeles. By 1854 Mariposa had a grand courthouse which is still in operation. Some refer to the lumber being cut from an area to the east of town known as “logtown” but no maps or certifiable sources can attest to the existence of Logtown. Most likely the lumber for the courthouse was milled in Midpines, where there was an unusual abundance of sugar pine trees.
John C. Frémont had a Spanish land grant that gave him ownership of most of the Mariposa mining district, but the possibility of securing his property was nearly impossible due to the huge influx of gold seekers, and little or no enforcement from the few law keepers available. In book #1 of Mariposa county records, originally filed in Aqua Fria, on Page 2, there is a claim known as the Spencer quartz mine and adjacent millsite. This claim was just hundreds of feet from Fremonts grant line, and its owners were Lafayette H. Bunnell, and Champlain Spencer, who became rather wealthy from the placer gold in Whitlock and Sherlocks creek. They later erected a 40′ waterwheel and steam mill, along with several arrastras. Mr. Bunnell later published a memoir of his time in Midpines and entry to Yosemite valley, which is still in print today – “The Discovery of the Yosemite”. Mr. Spencer has never been acknowledged as having named Half Dome, a prominent feature in Yosemite valley. These educated gentlemen and adventurers eventually sold “Spencers Mill” to a French and English conglomerate for a tidy sum. All is quiet now on Spencers mill, but much evidence of a series of mills and the arrastras remain.[3]
Alvarado was born in Monterey, Alta California, to Jose Francisco Alvarado and María Josefa Vallejo. His grandfather Juan Bautista Alvarado accompanied Gaspar de Portolà as an enlisted man in the Spanish Army in 1769. His father died a few months after his birth and his mother remarried three years later, leaving Juan Bautista in the care of his grandparents, the Vallejo family. He and Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo grew up together in the Vallejo household. They were both taught by William Edward Petty Hartnell, an English merchant living in Monterey.
On June 14, 1846, a group of foreign settlers staged the Bear Flag Revolt, capturing the town of Sonoma and General Mariano Vallejo. On July 7, Commodore John D. Sloat occupied Monterey, declaring to the citizenry that the Mexican–American War had begun. Pico, Castro, and Alvarado set aside their differences to focus on the American threat, but by the end of August, Pico and Castro would flee to Mexico, and Alvarado would be captured. Following his release, Alvarado would spend the remainder of the war on his estate in Monterey.
| Eileen McKenzie Fowler is a licensed Texas attorney whose principal law offices are located in La Porte, Harris County, Texas. A Licensed attorney for more than 18 years, Eileen is a member in good standing with the Texas State Bar, and president and past president of many civic and charitable organizations.Eileen is an attorney practicing exclusively in research and recovery of mineral rights for heirs of Spanish and Mexican land grants and ‘los porciones’ in South Texas.She has spent the last seventeen years of her life fighting for the rights of heirs and family members of Spanish and Mexican land grants and ‘los porciones’. She has her own unique way of seeking justice for people whose ancestors’ land was taken from them by outright theft, fraud, and/or political chicanery.Her reputation of fighting for the underdog, constantly seeking justice for the many injustices committed against the Hispanic recipients of Spanish or Mexican land grants, as well as the portions of land bordering the Rio Grande River (los porciones), which were mapped out by government-employed surveyors following the Mexican/American war. |
http://www.eileenmckenziefowler.com/
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Battle of Pine Tree Mine
Today in Mariposa County, John Fremont is revered as a hero to some, great explorer, and founder, but in the eyes of many of the early gold miners who settled the region in the 1850’s, Fremont was their worst nightmare, a land grabber and claim jumper who was bent on having the wealth of the Sierra Nevada foothills to himself and to himself only.
On July 9, 1858, a group of approximately 100 rightfully angry miners gathered together. They eventually named themselves the Hornitos League, and came up with a plan to attack and take over a well known gold mine owned by Fremont, the Pine Tree Mine. The ideal target, the entrance into the mine, was known as the Black Drift Tunnel. The Pine Tree Mine was only one of countless mines located along a gold bearing quartz vein some thought to be the mother lode. Although the Pine Tree Mine was first opened by a large company called the Merced Mining Co., many of the region’s hard rock mines, and hundreds of placer claims, were operated by independent miners and small scale prospectors.
The Merced Mining Co., which grew to a fairly large consortium funded with foreign investments, had one very important thing in common with the lone prospectors working small claims in Mariposa County. All of their claims were located within the boundaries of Fremont’s Las Mariposas. Fremont believed that he alone had the right to mine the deposits located under his grant. Up to this point, however, he had been unable to keep the Merced Mining Co. and independent miners from prospecting on his land. He had opened the Black Drift Tunnel in order to compete in a race to take gold out of this rich deposit before someone else could do so first.
There is no way to know for certain who the men were who formed the Hornitos League. It is likely that some were employees of the Merced Mining Co., which had a practical interest in keeping Fremont from removing gold from a mine that he had claimed earlier. It was just as likely that other members were independent miners, whose dreams and livelihood were jeopardized by what they viewed as Fremont’s intentions to claim ownership of just about every strike in Mariposa County. In any case, the attack on the Black Drift Tunnel came to symbolize the miners support for the traditional mining law based on the principles of discovery and capture, as well as their opposition to Fremont and the threat he posed to that tradition.
On the night of the attack, The Hornitos League armed themselves heavily, that way they were ready for any potential strong opposition. They also had hopes of easily accessing the inside of the mine and then defend their position. Due to this, they made their move at a time when the Black Drift Tunnel would likely be deserted. When they arrived at the entrance they found, to their surprise, that a small group of Fremont’s employees, also well armed, were inside and were well aware of the incoming armed force. Inside of the mine was multiple miles of tunnels that could easily be defended from within. Faced with a very complicated resistance, the Hornitos men decided to lay a siege to the mine and starve out the defenders.
As soon as Fremont learned about the siege at the Black Drift Tunnel, he set out to defend the mine with another small group of his men. When he arrived, the siege was settled into an extremely tense stalemate with Fremont’s men in the mine, the Hornitos men at the entrance, more of Fremont’s men surrounding them, and even more Hornitos sympathizers blocking the roads out of the direct area. Tension increased even more so when the wife of one of Fremont’s miners boldly forced her way into the tunnel with food and ammunition. The Hornitos League did nothing to stop her. Tensions within the mine rose even higher when rumors spread that the Hornitos men had found a back way into the tunnel.
Everyone at the mine waited for the opposing side to kick off the fight, but no one did, causing the stalemate to carry on for several more days. “Fremont’s men were well fortified in their tunnels,” reported the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, “and if attacked by the party which has surrounded them, there will be a terrible slaughter.” Though tensions were high, the highly anticipated slaughter never occurred.
On July 12, a group of men, calling themselves a committee on behalf of the citizens of Mariposa County, sent written terms to Fremont. If Fremont would withdraw his forces and quit mining the shaft, they would also withdraw, placing the mine in the hands of two neutral individuals until the California Supreme Court could finally decide who owned the mineral rights in the area. Fremont, calling the demands a flagrant violation of common right, would hear nothing of it. “I hold this property by law, by occupation, and even by mining regulations,” he replied. “This demand you make upon me is contrary to all my sense of justice, and what is due to my own honor.”
Although the roads were blocked, young Englishman staying with the Fremont’s at that time managed to slip through the back country with a message to the governor. Time, along with rumors that the state militia was moving in the direction of Mariposa, weakened the Hornitos miners’ resolve. The siege quietly dissipated, leaving Fremont in control of the mine. The siege of the Black Drift Tunnel was an event tinged with impending violence. It was a minor episode in a much larger conflict over how the land and minerals of California would be distributed and exploited. Incredible wealth, wild dreams, hope, and individual livelihood were a large part of the mix.
The broader conflict was played out in a setting in which the stabilizing force of government was at best unsettled. In all, it provided an ideal recipe for violence. It is not surprising that violent outreaches over land and mineral rights did occur in the 1850’s and 1860’s in California. Given the circumstances, what may be more surprising is how relatively few incidents there were, and how quickly the violence dissipated. The siege at Black Drift Tunnel was more typical than not. Neither the siege nor the conflict that spawned it would be settled by force of arms, nor even by legislation. The conflict was ultimately settled by the judiciary system in courts of law and it was settled by judges playing fast and loose with formalities of law and principles of equity.
-The Battle of Pine Tree
Rosamond Press 
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