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Can You Imagine…
…leaving your native Scotland to come to the United States in 1852 at the age of
14 to settle in Iowa only to cross the plains to California two years
later?...Carrying horses to Fort Lane, Oregon for the cavalry while employed by
the U.S. Government and then managing to settle in New Hope (no Thornton) by the
time you were 17 years old? No, it’s not a script out of a romantic Hollywood
Western. Our very own Arthur Thornton did just this!
Did you know…
…that by the time Arthur Thornton was 38, he had a general dry goods store under
the name of A. Borland? As if this was not enough, he engaged in farming and
blacksmithing. A little excitement in his life? You bet! It seems that Arthur
was embroiled in a lawsuit with John Thompson over some swampy land in Union
Township. However, I do not know the outcome of the suit. Maybe someone out
there has the inside scoop. In between all of this, Arthur Thornton married Emma
Graves in 1878. Their five girls must have also kept them both plenty
busy.
Piecing together the information about Alexander Borland, Arthur’s partner,
also took on an interesting twist. It seems that Borland and Thornton were born
in the same town – Ayshire, Scotland. Borland was older than his partner by four
years. Thornton came to California in 1852. It seems that Borland came directly
to California in 1853. I am only guessing, but it would seem that these two
fellows pre-arranged their partnership across a continent and an ocean. Like
Thornton, Borland also successfully farmed some 80 acres in New Hope. So, what
did the town of Thornton look like in the latter part of the 1800s?
An illustration of the town as it appeared in 1879 appeared in the
Illustrated History of San Joaquin County. It depicted the 15 room hotel next to
the Thornton and Borland general store. It seems that this hostelry became known
as a place where a poor transient could get a hot meal and a bed for the night.
Jessie, one of Arthur’s Thornton’s five daughters, made the hotel her home and
lived there during the early 1960s.
I bet some of you out there remember stopping at the Thornton Tavern after
work just to wet your whistle and to say hello to Jessie who operated the place
while your supper got cold and so did your wife! Ah ha! I knew it! You remember
dancing on the spacious rebuilt porch in front of the house! Care to share some
of those memories? I promise to keep your names anonymous!
So, what else happened in and around Thornton in those early days? Well,
let’s take a short ride north of Thornton where we would soon reach a major
crossing of the Mokelumne River called Benson’s Ferry. Over there is the
blacksmith’s shop and to the right of it is the Gayetty House Saloon that was
originally built for John A. Benson. Would you believe that the Saloon was
saved from the destruction of the great flood of 1862 because it was tied to a
tree! Yep! There’s more.
Benson’s Ferry, now a California State Historical Landmark, changed ownership
from Edward Stokes and A.M. Woods to John A. Benson in 1850, just a year after
its beginning. Mr. Benson operated it for nine years until he was murdered by
one of his employees in 1876. It was then that Edward Gayetty took ownership of
the well-known ferry. A year later, Edward married the youngest Benson daughter. Today, the Gayetty House Saloon stands on uneasy soil on a crumbling foundation
on a Mokelumne River levee.
There are others who figured prominently in the early settlement of New Hope
Colony. Remember the story of George Housken and how he built his house from the
debris from the great flood of 1862? I wonder if Housken met Thornton in Oregon? Housken owned and captained the schooner Reliance and engaged in trade along the
Sacramento River and the lumber trade in Oregon from approximately 1860 to 1873. Did the two meet when young Thornton was delivering cavalry horses to Oregon’s
Fort Lane? Did Housken tell Thornton about New Hope? For every piece of
information there are so many questions that remain unanswered. Do you know?
There was also George Barber, great grandfather of the present George Barber. Great grandfather George was the justice of the peace in New Hope in the 1880s
and 1890s and held some pretty interesting court sessions at Arthur Thornton’s
place. But, that’s next week’s story.
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