By Jessica Gorman
If you’ve been a reader of this column for a while, you’ll recognize the name Emily Garrison (yes, again) but I’ve never written specifically about her siblings. I’ve told how the museum came into possession of Emily’s diploma from the Minden Female College, the shocking discovery of the letter written to her father in 1831, and how it led to the realization that she was my cousin. Of the items donated to the museum that belonged to Emily was a letter from her brother, Samuel, dated August 1879.
Samuel James Garrison was born 1 October 1838 in Alabama to William C. and Melvina Garrison. By 1843, William had died and Melvina had likely returned to Tennessee to be near her family. That year, a group of relatives including Melvina and her children, left Tennessee and arrived in Marshall, Texas in February 1844. There, Melvina remarried to Rial A. Lancaster on 4 December 1845. After their marriage, the Lancaster household, including the Garrison children, moved to what was, at the time, Bossier Parish. Their home was near the St. Matthew Church on Highway 80.
By 1860, R.A. Lancaster had moved the family to Minden where he served several terms as mayor. Some time before, Samuel Garrison had struck out for California and was recorded on the census in Tuolomne, California. He began a career in the newspaper business. It’s unclear if it was his first newspaper, but in 1861 he and Harvey Whicher began publication of The Stanislaus Index. The newspaper survived catastrophic flooding that hit the area but ceased publication the following year. Samuel Garrison moved southeast to Visalia in Tulare County.
In 1862, he and L.P. Hall began publication of the Equal Rights Expositor. This, of course, was during the Civil War. The Expositor was labeled a “secession paper” and was scathing in its criticism of President Lincoln. The Trinity Journal described it as “the rankest of the rank” and it was a major player in the tensions between Unionists and Secessionists in Visalia.
In January 1863, L.P. Hall and Samuel Garrison were arrested for treason and imprisoned at Camp Babbitt, a nearby Union Army camp. After their release, it seems that they must have doubled-down in their writing and continued to do so even as they felt the threat to their livelihood and even their lives. In March, the printing office was destroyed by a mob that reportedly included U.S. troops.
Samuel J. Garrison moved on to Fresno County, where he founded the first newspaper in the county, The Fresno Times, in 1865 and served as district judge for the area until December 1869. He married Martha Ellis 7 October 1866. The couple had four daughters, Alabama Evans, Georgia Long, Virginia Ellis, and Myrtle.
The Garrison family moved north to Downieville where S.J. Garrison was editor of the Downieville Democrat. In 1871, they moved again and the following year he started the Merced People. Six years later, he’s in Bakersfield working in the office of the Courier-Californian when he disappeared. At least in the newspapers I have access to, the story ran a year later.
“INFORMATION WANTED – Samuel J. Garrison, an old Californian and well-known printer, left Bakersfield, Kern County, in October or November 1877, to go to Glenville, in the same county, where his family was stopping temporarily, but has never been heard from since. Any information concerning his whereabouts communicated to his wife, Mrs. Mattie Garrison, Kings River Post office, will be thankfully received.”
Another year later, there was still no word. It was feared that he may have been killed. The Courier-Californian reported “a Mexican horse thief who was on his death-bed in a Los Angeles hospital, stated that he and another man met a stranger going over the grade between Havilah and Kernville, and killed him for his money. That they rolled the body down the grade and then went down and buried it.”
For at least two years, Samuel J. Garrison’s whereabouts were a mystery to his friends and family in California. But guess what? Our museum holds at least part of the answer to the mystery, written in his own words.
In August 1879, S.J. Garrison was in Minden. He wrote to his sister Emily, living in Arkansas, and we have the letter written on the letterhead of J.Y. Webb of Minden, Dealer in General Merchandise. Personally, I find this letter difficult to read, whether from my tendency toward empathy or because he was my relative.
“My Dear Sister, After long effort and much suffering I reached the old home last Monday, in a condition of utter desolation. For many years it had been my wish to visit the old home of childhood; and so, in April last, when I had saved up money enough to cross the continent, I made the effort, supposing that when my means were exhausted, I could get work at my trades sufficient, at least, to enable me to get from Memphis to Minden. In this, however, I was mistaken. Nowhere could I get work, at anything I had the strength to do, and so weak had I become from want of sufficient food, that when I attempted to work on a great sugar plantation near New Orleans, I fell an easy victim to the fever. In short, since my venture to this country it has been a continued and desperate struggle for life against death by starvation. To be brief, no escaped convict could have been subjected to greater indignation or privations than have fallen to my lot since I set foot on the soil of my native South – a land and people for which and whom I sacrificed in California every material and wordly advantage. But for devotion to the South I could have been a rich man today. But enough of this;”
He goes on to say that he planned to spend a week in Minden with their stepbrother, Julius Lancaster, and then go to Bossier Parish. From there, he was bound for the cotton fields of Red River in hopes of making enough money for clothes and to pay for a trip to see Emily. From there, he planned to return to Mexico where he had spent time the previous year. He also clearly states that he had left home, and his family, two years before, for which he seems to express shame.
If he made it back to Mexico, he didn’t stay long. The 1880 U.S. Census records his residence as Marshall, Texas and his occupation as printer. In June of 1887, he falls on a sidewalk in San Francisco and breaks both thighs. A policeman finds him and jails him for drunkenness. This is probably the time period when he and his wife divorced, but I still need to locate a record. In the 1890s, he was in San Antonio and still in the newspaper business. He did return to California again before his death in September 1913.
Not only does Samuel J. Garrison’s letter help solve the mystery of where he was for two years, it also gives us insight into who he was and what he experienced. I often caution people about making assumptions about people of the past. We can’t pretend to know their thoughts and feelings. We tend to stereotype based on what we think we know, but unless we have it in their own words, we have no idea. None. Samuel Garrison had been a Democrat and published newspapers in defense of the Confederacy even to the point of being jailed and his printing office destroyed. When we read his letter, we find a man who strongly believed in loyalty to the land of his childhood, the South. When he returns home, he feels bitterness and betrayal and that the personal price he paid had been too high. By 1895, his writings had turned against the Democratic Party, of which he had once been a member, and directly questioned their claims of equality citing a Texas law requiring separate railroad coaches for blacks and whites.
Not to be overlooked, this letter is just one example of the treasures our museum holds, the answer to an 1870s mystery in California. We’re not just exhibits or cool photographs. We hold stories of people’s lives and little clues to bigger stories. Many times, these clues aren’t apparent and it takes work to realize their significance, but they are there if we just take the time to look. More importantly, it’s crucial that we ensure that this museum endures and that these precious resources are protected and preserved and available to whoever may be searching for those clues to a bigger story.
(Jessica Gorman is Executive Director of the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum, Webster Parish Historian, President of the Minden Cemetery Association, and an avid genealogist.)