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c h a p t e r s i x Favorite Son Jerome C. Davis owned one of the finest ranches in the Sacramento Valley in 1860. To this day, the data recorded by the federal census taker that June jump out from the page. The prize-winning stock farm consisted of 7,000 acres of land with a cash value of $70,000. Davis’s machinery and implements were worth almost $5,000. He owned 169 horses, 9 mules, 550 milk cows, 934 other cattle, 898 sheep, and 114 hogs, for a total value in livestock of $29,087 (not including another $3,120 in the value of animals slaughtered). During the year ending June 1, 1860, he raised 2,000 bushels of wheat, 10,000 pounds of wool, 200 bushels of barley, and 300 tons of hay, while producing 520 pounds of butter and 1,500 pounds of cheese. The value of his orchard products totaled $2,500. He also owned and operated a flouring mill in which he invested $10,000. It ground 20,000 bushels of wheat and corn valued at $18,000 and employed five hands, each of whom earned a salary of $50 a month. The mill, located on the ranch, was powered by steam and turned out 4,445 barrels of fine and superfine flour valued at almost $25,000. Even the census taker, who visited 144 farms in Putah Township alone that month, must have been impressed. Davis’s peers certainly were; they elected him president of the California State Agricultural Society for the year 1861.1 Just two months after the census taker had departed, however, it appeared that Davis might lose everything. Throughout most of the 1850s, the dubious status of Rancho Laguna de Santos Callé cast a shadow on his many accomplishments. The darkest day came on September 18, 1860, when Judge Ogden Ho¤man of the U.S. District Court upheld the California Land Commission’s earlier decision not to confirm the grant. “It is impossible to contemplate without disgust the series of perjuries which compose the record,” wrote Ho¤man, conveying the substance and tone of his eighteen-page opinion in one sentence. Ho¤man showed no mercy to the claimants, dismissing out of hand their argument that they had purchased the land in good faith and paid taxes on it for several years. It appeared certain that landholders on Rancho Laguna de Santos Callé would now face the consequences stipulated in the California Land Act of 1851: “All lands, the claims to which have been rejected . . . shall be deemed, held, and considered as part of the public domain of the United States.” That was precisely what happened to the claims made on Rancho Ulpinos in Solano County, a grant that Ho¤man had rejected two years earlier for many of the same reasons.2 Davis was not about to give up, however. Angry and determined, he took his cause to anyone who would listen, including lawyers, top-level oªcials in the U.S. General Land Oªce, and members of the U.S. Congress. It took almost a decade, but on January 7, 1869, he received his patent from President Andrew Johnson. Along the way, his e¤orts helped persuade Congress to adopt legislation in 1866 that permitted buyers of defective or fraudulent claims to retain possession of their land. Davis never reaped the benefits, however. By the time he received his patent, he neither owned nor operated his ranch but was merely acting on behalf of the California Pacific Railroad. The more headway Davis made in the halls of Congress toward settling his claim, the more his problems on the ranch mounted. Such was the irony of fate for Putah Creek’s favorite son. Ho¤man’s decision a¤ected all the Laguna de Santos Callé claimants—everyone , that is, who had purchased land either directly from the grantees (Marcos Vaca and Victor Prudon) or their assignees. Davis and his father, Isaac Davis, Champion I. Hutchinson, Charles Greene, Simon Lettner, Isaac S. Chiles, Drury Melone, William Keithley, Richard Hext, and George W. Pierce all stood to lose their land and improvements. No one seemed particularly worried, however. Pierce actually purchased his 383 acres of the grant eleven days after the district court decision, so sure was he that these matters would eventually be resolved. It was simply inconceivable to Pierce and his neighbors that the federal government , law or no...

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