Santa Cruz, June 5, 1882

William B. Langley, Esq., 
St. Joseph County Pioneer Society

Dear Sir:

    I am in receipt of an invitation to be present at a meeting of the pioneers of your county.  Nothing, dear Sir, would give me more pleasure than to meet you, and the few remaining pioneers of Centreville and its vicinity.  I often live over in my pleasant home on the banks of the Pacific, some of the hardships that I endured in the early settlement of that country. I well remember that while driving a small drove of hogs to Nottawa, in 1832, of shaking with the ague, burning with intense thirst, and eating snow from the time I left the old Chicago road near the crossing of Hog Creek, till I arrived at Roswell Shellhouse on Nottawa Prairie. And there I well remember of wallowing in the snow two feet deep with an ox team, for thirty-six hours, with the thermometer at about 40 degrees below zero, while attempting to go from Nottawa to Ronde Prairie in the same winter. These were my first experiences in St. Joseph county. I well remember while under the command of the intrepid Capt. Engle, of fighting bloodless battles with an invisible Black Hawk.

[signed]  Adna A.  Hecox

"The first divorce case was Catharine Hecox vs. Adney A. Hecox, in 1834."

 
Methodist Pioneer

The coming celebration of the Methodist Church Centennial in California to be held in San Francisco on April 25 in the Scottish Rite Auditorium recalls the story of the first Methodist pioneer settler in the state. This was Adna A. Hecox, with his wife, Margaret, and their four children, Sarah, Catharine, Ellen and baby boy [Adna H.]. By the turn of good fortune old copies of the May and July Overland Monthly Magazine of 1892 came into John W. Winkley's possession, which contain the account of the crossing of the plains by the Hecox family and other members of their company in the summer of 1846. The story was dictated to a writer for the magazine [Marie Valhasky] by Margaret Hecox then an aged woman, but whose faculties were alert and dependable. Adna A. Hecox was a farmer and a local preacher of the Methodist Church, living near Galena, Illinois. His health was poor, and he was advised by his doctor to seek a warmer climate. About that time a pamphlet of John Bidwell fell into his hands telling the glories of California, and Hecox decided to go to this new country. In March, 1846, they left Illinois and soon joined with other settlers for the trek across the plains by way of the Platte River, Fort Laramie, Fort Hall, Humboldt River, Truckee River, and over the Sierra Mountains into the Sacramento Valley. It was a long, tiresome and perilous journey, but all the family came safely through and on October 1 camped on the barren, dusty plain of the valley near Sutter fort. The bleakness of the scene caused Mrs. Hecox to weep broken-heartedly over their prospects in the new country.

Early Sermons

On top of all this, she said, a Captain Swift came from the fort seeking to enlist all of the able bodied men for the American Army under Colonel Fremont. Captain Swift saw the little children of the Hecox family playing with their dolls, and was greatly moved by the sight. He told Mr. Hecox to go to the fort and obtain all the provisions necessary to feed his family. In a few weeks the Hecox family moved on to the Santa Clara Valley, where they camped in an old barracks of the Mission at Santa Clara during the fall and winter. This old adobe building was 100 feet long by 20 feet with an earth floor. Here during the hostilities the American families huddled together in sickness and poverty. Mr. Hecox was ill much of the time and Mrs. Hecox would put on his overcoat, shoulder his rifle and stand guard when his turn came. As he was able, Mr. Hecox would gather the settlers together for Sunday services and conduct the funerals. These were evidently among the first Protestant religious services held in California, and with the exception of a sermon by Samuel Brannan, the Mormon elder, Adna Hecox preached the first Protestant sermon in the state. In January the war came to an end, and on February 20, the Hecox family moved to Soquel near Santa Cruz, where Mr. Hecox laid out a homestead and built a sawmill. In his home he opened a church and invited neighbors in to religious services. When gold was discovered at Coloma, he moved his family to Santa Cruz and went to the mines, where his gold-mining proved a failure, but his commercial ventures reaped a small fortune. Soon he was back in Santa Cruz where he helped to organize the Methodist church as one of its preaching elders. Here Adna and Margaret Hecox spent the rest of heir lives as highly honored citizens of the community . To Mr. Hecox also goes the honor of organizing the first temperance society in California.

Gladys Tilden comes forward today in response to Dr. Rockwell D. Hunt's recent quotes from letters written by the late Charles M. Goethe, and says: "With all due credit to Jedediah Smith for 'toting' his Bible through California during his excursions of the 1820s, the man most generally credited by all church and local historians with pioneering the Methodist church in California was my great-grandfather, the Rev. Adna A. Hecox. The Rev. Hecox came overland in the memorable year of 1846 with his family and his Illinois farmer-neighbor, Joseph Aram. The Aram and Hecox families were the first to arrive that year. Rev. Hecox preached his first sermon in California at the Santa Clara Mission the first Sunday in November, and the services for the 30 or more families huddled and dying in Mission buildings were continued throughout that tragic rain and snow-swept winter. The Rev. William Roberts, assigned to the Oregon Conference of the Methodist church, stopped at San Francisco in April, 1847, where he preached and formed a small 'class' and Sunday school before proceeding in May to Monterey. Here he met the Rev. Hecox and, by then, Captain Aram. By a letter in June he formally instructed the Rev. Hecox (who had returned to Santa Cruz County) to continue his church work in the area. In January 1848 a 'class' was formed in Santa Cruz, and in May another 'class' established in San Jose, including the original families who had been led by the Rev. Hecox at Santa Clara the year before. Others active with the Rev. Hecox in those ante-ora years were the Rev. James G.T. Dunleavey (1846) and the Rev. Elihu Anthony (1847).

Douglas Tilden

"After signing a temperance pledge for the Rev. Hecox in 1847," Miss Tilden adds, "the Rev. Dunleavey 'slipped from the paths of righteousness,' turning up early in 1850 as the first resident and saloonkeeper of Rough and Ready. The Rev. Anthony resigned to attend to his many flourishing businesses in Santa Cruz, But the Rev. Hecox, as a community leader and elected alcalde of Santa Cruz (1849-50) retained an active interest in the Santa Cruz church and its Sunday School which had been kept alive by wives and mothers while the men were absent in the gold mines. No redwoods commemorate these modest endeavors. On the contrary, the Rev. Hecox and a newcomer, the Rev. Silas Bennett, contributed seven acres of eventually valuable land and helped construct the first primitive Methodist church in Santa Cruz which (with its successor built in 1863) stood opposite the Mission plaza for 40 years and in its earliest years served as the community's only church and pre-public school. The oldest daughter, Sarah [Hecox], who rode her own pony across the plains in 1846 with the Rev. Hecox, married O.K. Stampley. They lived in Oakland for a few years in the 1890s. His second daughter, Maria [Hecox] , aged five in 1846 and later a writer (Maria Valhasky)*, painter and eventually the 'last survivor of '46,' married (first) Dr. W.P. Tilden, friend and physician of Gen. John Bidwell of Butte Countay. Two sons were born on Bidwell's rancho Chico in 1858 and 1860, the second son being Douglas Tilden the sculptor who lost his hearing in a scarlet fever epidemic at Stockton in 1864. Douglas Tilden in 1896 married Elizabeth, adopted daughter of Leander Goss Cole, Oakland capitalist and developer of Temescal. Five years after his marriage, on completion of his Donahue Fountain (also called the 'Mechanic Monument') and its unveling on San Francisco's Market St., he moved his studio from the old Art Gallery at Woodward's Gardens to Oakland.

The Old Cole Farm

"The Oakland studio of Douglas Tilden, friend of Joaquin Miller and Jack London, and of nationally famous sculptors such as Lorado Taft and Frederick MacMonnies who visted him here, was in the commodious carriage-house on the Cole farm-estate at 1545 Webster St., an estate which originally occupied the entire block from 22nd to 21st Streets (including the present Joseph Magnin store) and from Webster to Franklin Streets. 'Flora,' the Cole family cow, and their carriage horses, were pastured in the 'cow lot' at 22nd St. until well after the turn of the century. After the 1906 earthquake, entrance to the studio was changed to the rear or Franklin St. side. It was here (now a parking lot at 21st and Franklin Streets) that Douglas Tilden created many of the sculptures now standing in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and elsewhere, including the heroic monument to Junipero Serra in Golden Gate Park. Despite his long residence and activity in Oakland, the only examples of his work in Oakland at this time are the 12 bronze reliefs on the McElroy fountain in Lakeside Park, unfortunately now submerged in an overzealous planting of trees and shrubs, as well as a 'Keep Out, for Bowlers Only' sign. In 1916 a Little Theater group, full of ambition but short of cash, used the Tilden studio for a short period, publicizing it as 'The Barn.' It was torn down, together with the Cole 'mansion,' in 1923 when Hobart (now 21st St.) was opened from Webster St. to Broadway.

"The Rev. Mr. Hecox, after operating a country store for many years in partnership with Elihu Anthony, and holding a succession of county offices, received an appointment (family tradition says from Abraham Lincoln) as keeper of the proposed new lighthouse at Santa Cruz. It was opened in 1868 and remained in charge of the Rev. Mr. Hecox, and later of his daugher, Laura Hecox, for 40 years. Mrs. W.P. Tilden married (second) Capt. Albert Brown,and it was as Mrs. Tilden-Brown that she shared with Isabella Breen McMahon, last survivor of the Donner Party, the honor of a dedication of 'The Pathfinders' by the late historian, Dr. Robert Glass Cleland. And it was as Mrs. Tilden-Brown that she died in nearby Lafayette in 1934 at the age of 93. Her son, Douglas Tilden, died at his Berkeley studio the following year," Miss Tilden concludes. She said all the information given here is based on letters, diaries, published and unpublished papers in her possession. "I hope you find it of interest. It may serve to supplement the interesting material by my friend, Mrs. Adrienne Orchison, which you published a few months ago." she said.

*Maria Valhasky is the author of her mother Margaret M. Hecox's account of crossing the plains in 1846.

Gladys Tilden was the daughter of Douglas Tilden and Elizabeth Cole.

Caption above three photographs:  WHERE SABOTEUR HURLED STREAMLINER INTO CANYON

Caption below photographs:

Top, a general view of the wreck of the crack streamliner, City of San Francisco, which took 20 lives and injured 111 persons. The picture was taken from the hills above the wreck. In the center, end up in the air, is the Pullman, Chinatown; crumpled up in the river is the almost demolished diner, and next to it is the derailed club car. Parts of the wrecked bridge show, resting in the waters of Humboldt river. Almost around the curve, at top, left, is the three-car power unit of the streamliner which got across the bridge safely on the way westward. Below, right, Thelma Risvedt, stewardess, who, though seriously lacerated and bruised, worked frantically for two terrible hours to save the lives of those badly injured in the wreck. She was the only trained nurse on the entire train. [Below, left,] Ed Hecox, 65, veteran Southern Pacific engineer and native of Santa Cruz, who walked a mile through rugged Nevada county near Carlin to phone the word that train had crashed.

Ed Hecox, 65, engineer of the streamliner, City of San Francisco, which was wrecked in Nevada with a loss of 20 lives, was born in Santa Cruz. He was the son of Oscar Hecox, a printer.

At the age of 14 he was the driver of a six-horse stage coach between Los Alamos and Lompoc, Nev. At the age of 24 he was a Southern Pacific fireman.

He has been the pilot of the streamliner ever since it was put into service three years ago, and is called on for the road's special speed tests and demonstration runs.

A.W. Oney, Soquel, is his half brother.

[Note: Profile photograph of Ed Hecox looks remarkably like Jessie Ross Pedrick.]

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