THE SANCHEZ FILE, EPILOGUE
Virginia Crane was Encarnacion's oldest daughter by Crane, born in 1858 atWith the death of Roach in 1866, you would think that Malpaso had ended its hold on those close to Encarnación Ortega. This was not the case.
Her Attorney, David S. Terry
Bancroft wrote of him:
Perhaps no man in Cal. has had more written about him than Terry, whose fame cannot with it all, be considered a happy one.
Terry's success in winning the Sánchez case led to his becoming chief justice of the California Supreme Court. Then he stabbed a man in an altercation with the San Francisco Vigilance Committee and he was arrested. Fortunately the man survived or Terry would have been hung by the committee.
On September 13, 1859, he killed U.S. Senator David C. Broderick in a duel at Lake Merced, San Francisco.
In the 1880s he represented Sarah Althea Hill in a notorious law suit against Senator William Sharon of Nevada. Hill claimed Sharon had married her with a secret contract.
She lost the case and married the much older Terry. When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field ruled against her on final appeal she and Terry vowed vengeance.
By chance the trio were on the same train en route to San Francisco in August of 1889. During a breakfast stop at a station restaurant in Lathrop, Terry walked up to Field and slapped him. The justice's bodyguard shot Terry dead. Sarah became deranged and spent the last forty-five years of her life at the Stockton State Hospital for the Insane and died there in 1936.
Her daughter, Vicenta Sanchez Willson
Encarnacion’s eldest daughter and the first to marry had been Vicenta. Although her husband, Dan Willson, had fought the legal battle that succeeded in winning her inheritance for her their marriage of twelve years ended in 1866. Vicenta, twenty-six, had been married when she was fourteen and had her first child at fifteen.
On July 9, 1866, Willson made a poignant entry in his diary.
“Dave Hilderbrand went away and took my wife with him.”Vicenta and Dan were divorced, but Willson did not remain lonely for long. He married two more times and died on April 14, 1906. He is buried in Gilroy.
Her son, Gregorio Sanchez
Encarnacion’s only son killed two men on separate occasions during brawls in San Juan. He was never convicted, but his fortune was depleted through legal fees and his dissolute life.
In 1888 his wife, Margaret Breen, divorced him on the same charges Encarnación had used against his father, José María Sánchez thirty-six years earlier; beating her during drunken rages.
Gregorio died a poor man in 1905 at the age of sixty. He was buried in the San Juan Bautista Cemetery in a grave that has never been found.
Her daughter, Refugia Sanchez McKnight.
Her husband, Thomas J. McKnight, divorced her in 1870. He was given custody of their children.
Her daughter, Virginia Crane, the child bride
"Would to God I had married an Irish or any other kind of girl and
lived happy, instead of marrying such a Mongrel mixture as you are."This was written by husband, Eugene Munch, in a letter to Virginia.
the Rancho Lomerias Muertas. She grew up among three of her mother's
children by Sanchez and Fidella, the one daughter by Sanford. All were older
than she. A few months before Crane died fifteen year old Fidella had married
James S. Breen, leaving Virginia with only her sister, Lilly, who was two years
younger.
On February 13, 1871, at the
age of thirteen, she married a man by the
name of Eugene Munch. Little
is known of him. He and Virginia spent their
honeymoon in Europe.
The marriage began to fail before
the year was up, Virginia was pregnant,
but ten years would pass before
she filed for divorce. In her complaint she
charged Munch with beating her
and causing her great mental distress.
Virginia would have two more
failed marriages, before daughter, Molly Munch,
had her committed to the
Agnews State Asylum in 1935, where she died one
month later.
Appendix A: Complete Inventory of the Sanchez Estate