Table of Contents
THE SANCHEZ FILE, Chapter Four
Sanchez, the Gambler
It was not only through the sale of cattle and horses
that made Sanchez wealthy. Mexican miners, en route home, stopped by the
Sanchez ranch. They were welcomed by Jose Maria, given a good meal, and
glasses full of aquardiente, the potent Mexican brandy.
Diego Soto remembered the stories told him by his mother
and father.
The miners would come to the Sanchez house and
eat and rest. They would come from the mines with their belts full of gold.
They were on their way home to Mexico. Sanchez would run a Monte game and
invite the miners to play. 'Bet as much as you like', Sanchez would tell
them. 'I pay'.
Sanchez would skin them. Then the miners would turn around
and go back to the mines again. Then next time they came to the Sanchez
house they wouldn't play anymore. This time they were going home to Mexico.
Monte was a popular California card game.
Sanchez with his thriving trade in beef cattle and his
gambling with the Mexican miners was amassing large quantities of gold
dust and gold coins with no place to bank his wealth. He had to hide it
on his rancho.
Soto remembered what happened:
Sanchez used to keep his gold in a water jar.
A Mrs. German used to go over to the Sanchez ranch and help run the Monte
games. It was she who would rake in the gold and put it in the jar. Mrs.
German told me when the jar was full of gold Sanchez had some of his Indians
take the jar of gold and bury it southeast from the house. They went southeast
from the house and buried the money. Sanchez told the Indians he would
kill them if they told where they had buried it.
The Sanchez home was a large two story adobe between the
Pajaro and San Benito Rivers. There is no trace of it today. A trailer
park marks the approximate site.
The Monterey House
When Sanchez traveled to Monterey he would stay at an
adobe house he had bought from James Stokes in 1843. The house consisted
of a parlor, two rooms, adobe walls, wooden floors, and a shingled roof.
The kitchen was attached in the rear. The house was described as in good
condition. In the document of transfer the justice of the peace followed
Mexican law in transferring the property.
I personally went with my assistants and the
said Sanchez to said house where I found the grantor, and before him, with
his knowledge and permission and of various witnesses, after again reading
the said instrument delivered unto the grantee quietly and peaceably said
house, room after room, in each of which
the said Sanchez settled himself, felt of the walls,
doors and floors: opened and closed the doors, scattered handfuls of dirt
(soil) in the backyard, and made other demonstrations in proof of the legal
and judicial possession which was accomplished without the least opposition
from any of the parties.
Teodoro Gonzales
Justice of the Peace
Although many of Monterey's adobes were demolished over the
years, the Sanchez adobe was saved. It is part of Monterey's city hall
at Pacific and Madison streets.
The New York Volunteers
Monterey
October 9, 1848
On one of his trips to Monterey in 1848 Sanchez may have
noticed there were more American soldiers wandering around town than ever
before. They were members of Colonel John Stevenson's New York Volunteers.
Stephenson had proposed the regiment to President James
K. Polk to fight in the Mexican War. Polk had a plan and Stevenson’s regiment
would fit in perfectly with it. But there was a catch; the future soldiers
had to agree that the government was not obligated to return them to their
home state if their place of discharge had become a United States territory.
This was the President's plan; he knew California would
become a United States possession, either through war or purchase from
Mexico and the soldiers would be the first California settlers.
Polk hoped his plan would remain secret, but just as today,
it was leaked and the 841 Volunteers soon learned they were destined to
be the first California residents.
None of the men objected to being discharged in California;
they were young and adventurous and glad to leave New York. Bancroft said,
"that delectable troop, the regiment of New York Volunteers, was made up
to a great extent of the riffraff of the eastern cities."
A few did have skills that would be useful in the new
territory, and one was an aspiring writer who would remember his brief
stay in California. He was William Redmond Ryan, a member of 'D'
Company. In his book published in London, Ryan described the feelings of
his company as they left New York harbor October 26, 1846 aboard the vessel,
Susan Drew.
There were few amongst us who cared much as to
the chances of our revisiting the scenes we were then quitting, for we
were, for the most part, thoroughly sick of the life of large cities.
Every man in the regiment was well aware that they were
no ordinary volunteers and in spite of the government's efforts to mask
the expedition's true goals they knew they were less the volunteer soldier,
than armed immigrants destined to colonize California.
THE VOLUNTEERS IN MONTEREY
After a voyage around Cape Horn the regiment anchored
in Monterey Bay on April 4, 1847 and to the men's surprise they did not
go immediately ashore. Standing at the railing was one of the company's
sergeants, William Roach, about to embark on a bizarre life no one could
have contemplated.
Ryan made an entry in his diary:
We remained on board several days, in consequence
of no preparation having been made for our reception here as it was expected
we would land in San Francisco. However we disembarked at last and were
received by a motley crowd, broken up into groups, evidently sharing in
the excitement of the hour.
The portly Californian under his ample brimmed sombrero
and gay serapa, the dark skinned and half clad Indian, and the Yankee,
in his close European costume, imparted an irresistible charm of novelty
to the scene.
One night the soldiers heard music coming from a cantina
and they went inside. Ryan was soon selected by a beautiful senorita for
a dance. They whirled around the room. Ryan dancing in a daze, entranced
by his partners dark, flashing eyes. Neither of them understood each others
language, but the dance spoke for them.
For a moment his eyes left those of the girl and he glanced
around the room, the writer in him storing the scene in his mind. Suddenly
his partner smashed an egg over his head, laughing at the expression on
his face. It was not the usual contents that dripped down his face, but
perfume. In the California dance known as the Cascarone, the eggshell, the contents of an egg are emptied and then filled with perfume and bits
of colored paper. Ryan unfortunately gave no other details of his first
night in Monterey.
Except for a skirmish in Baja California, the men of the
New York Volunteers, saw little action in the Mexican War, most of the
battles being fought in Mexico itself. The men of Company D arrived back
in Monterey from Baja on the USS Ohio and were discharged at the
Presidio of Monterey in October of 1848. One of the regular army officers
at the post was a young lieutenant, William Tecumseh Sherman, still thirteen
years away from fame as a general in the Civil War.
The Volunteers were discharged just as the 1848 gold rush
fever began to sweep across the United States. The ex-soldiers were in
the right place at the right time and most of them headed for the gold
fields.
Just before they left there was an ominous event. The
body of one of the soldiers was found at the bottom of a well with a deep
gash in his head. A portent of what would await one of the soldiers who
looked down the well that day.
The New York volunteers had little luck in gold mining
and most of Company D returned to Monterey. After California was admitted
to the Union in 1850 they turned to something they knew they would have
better luck with... politics.
The Election
There were only 1,872 people in all of Monterey County
with 500 in the town of Monterey and only a 100 or so in San Juan. The
soldiers had no problem getting one of their own elected as the first sheriff
of Monterey County. He was 30 year old Sergeant William Roach, who had
just returned from a stint as a miner in Yuba County. Roach appointed a
friend of his from Company D, Aaron Lyons, as his deputy.
Within a year there was a claim that Roach was corrupt.
On July 8, 1851, the San Francisco Vigilance Committee heard a lengthy
confession from a notorious criminal, James Stuart, whom they had captured
a few days earlier. Stuart gave the committee information on the robbery
of the Monterey Custom House on December 8, 1850. Some $14,000 had been
taken from the collector, Dr. Andrew Randall.
Stuart was not charged in the crime but four of his friends
were and Stuart decided to help them. He went to Monterey and testified
the men had nothing to do with the robbery. Stuart also told the Vigilance
Committee, "Sheriff Roach received a gold watch and $700 in cash for packing
the jury and other services."
After Stuart's confession had been printed in the San
Francisco Herald, Roach's cronies in Monterey wrote the newspaper and indignantly
protested the charges of corruption against the sheriff and expressed the
utmost confidence in his honesty.
A man who would play a major role in the Sanchez probate
three years later, Josiah Merritt, acted as counsel for the defendants.
Merritt was a 46 year old lawyer from New York and one of the oldest of
the major figures in this story. Roach and the others were in their early
thirties. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and friends of Stuart
managed to break down the jail door and release their buddies.
The custom house affair was typical of law and order in
Monterey. In a three year period there had been sixty-three murders without
one judicial execution. Not counted is one murderer in Roach's custody
who was found strangled in his jail cell.
The victim of the custom house robbery, Dr. Randall, was
in San Diego but wrote a friend that he would have something to say to
the Vigilance Committee when he returned. In the letter he said, "I don't
believe there is so corrupt a clique extant in any civilized country as
exist in Monterey of which officers of the County are concerned."
Dr. Randall was later murdered in San Francisco.
Three days after he confessed Stuart was marched to the
end of the Market street wharf in San Francisco where he was hung from
a scaffolding on July 11, 1851. No charges of bribery were ever brought
against Roach in the Custom House case and he remained as sheriff.
Roach bought a house in Monterey next door to the one
Sanchez owned and they became acquainted. Sanchez loaned out money secured
by real estate and Sheriff Roach was involved in the legal transactions
receiving minor fees for his services.
Roach's greatest role with the Sanchez family was handed
to him by fate.
Chapter Five