Last month, Mary Lou and I visited Merced, California. This was a visit too long delayed. I have no current recollection of my paternal grandmother Genevieve, who died when I was just six years old. I do recognize her from a family photograph. My father sometimes talked about his Aunt Mercedes and his Uncle Walton out in California, but until both mom and dad had passed and we took their ashes out for burial in the Huffman family cemetery plot in Cypress Lawn, near San Francisco six years ago, I had no idea that my great grandfather, Charles Henry Huffman, was a really important figure in early California history.
Charles Henry Huffman, like all the Huffman’s, went by his middle name, Henry. Born in Germany in 1829, he came to the United States with his family at age three. After surviving a typhoid epidemic in their home on an island in the Mississippi River in Louisiana, and after the death of his mother and his father’s succumbing to deep depression, Henry left home at the age of twelve and got a job working as a cabin boy on a steamer that sailed on the Mississippi River from New Orleans. This is when he first saw dykes and learned how water could be channeled and what could be done with it.
By age nineteen, Henry had become a second officer on a full-rigged sailing ship that sailed between New York and various European ports. With news of gold being discovered in California, Henry sailed around Cape Horn to the gold fields. Starting out with almost nothing in the way of financial resources and virtually no formal education, he started and grew a highly successful business carrying and selling goods to miners on a large Conestoga wagon built to his own specifications, pulled by teams of mules. He later was a successful wheat farmer and merchant, and, in his capacity as an agent for the planned Central Pacific Railroad, bought land that became the City of Merced. He literally “birthed” the city.
If that weren’t enough of a legacy, Henry envisioned and built a reservoir and twenty seven miles of tunnel that irrigated much of the San Joachim Valley...one of the most fruitful valleys in the world. He started his own bank, built a large mansion on 3,500 acres of land on Bear Creek, just outside the city limits, and was one of the early pioneers of Merced and the Central Valley. This was a time when fortunes could quickly be lost, and Henry and family lost lots and moved to San Francisco.
The Huffman mansion burned to the ground in 1933. No one knows how the fire started, but at the time it was occupied by only a caretaker. Ironically, the city’s volunteer fire department refused to fight the fire, as it was just outside the city limits and they were worried about their insurance not covering their intervention. So, the mansion built by the man who founded Merced and brought water to the whole area, burned down while fire trucks with lots of water watched. Today, a bed and breakfast sits on the site of the main mansion house. All that remains of the original mansion is the fence and some palm trees.
Henry’s brother in law, Robert McHenry, built a mansion almost identical to Henry’s up the road in Modesto. We were able to tour this magnificent home and grounds during our visit. I will never forget it. It was almost like an American version of Downton Abbey.
Henry also commissioned and donated to the city a magnificent fountain, which he named after his wife Laura. Today the Laura Fountain is in disrepair, with no water evident except for rain water in the basin. For many years, Merced was known as the “Fountain City.” Providentially, our visit coincided with a public meeting at City Hall, at which city officials and interested groups of citizens resolved to develop and seek funding for a project to bring the fountain back to life by the city’s sesquicentennial in 2022. My cousin Joanne and I were able to represent the Huffman family and we offered enthusiastic support. Joanne’s husband, Dwight Wigley, who builds beautiful homes including his own ranch house, offered to assist with technical support.
What did I learn from this experience? I am so sorry that it took me 75 plus years to learn the full story of Henry Huffman. When I see his photo, I see myself (minus the beard). It is a movie worth making, how a German immigrant with no formal education overcame many formidable obstacles to learn about water, to bring it to the Central Valley of California, found a city, and become what author Colleen Stanley Bare called a “Pioneer Genius.” I served five years in Germany with the US Air Force, and speak rudimentary German, and have wonderful German friends, but never really knew that a major part of my DNA is German! I thank God for men like Henry, who helped make our country really special. May we never exclude prospective immigrants just because they are poor and uneducated.
This post is already too long, but I will later add enough photos to give you a glimpse of what we saw. Colleen’s book, “Pioneer Genius: Charles Henry Huffman” can be purchased from the bookstore of the Merced County Historical Society. By the way, Henry wasn’t the only one of my ancestors to run away from home at at early age. My grandfather, Matt C. Bristol Senior, who was married to Henry’s daughter Genevieve, left home as a young boy in rural Wiltshire, England, stowed away on a ship sailing to America, was caught and kept on as a cabin boy, lied about his age to join the US Army, was a cavalry officer on the frontier, fought in both the Spanish American War and World War I, and retired as a Colonel and Deputy Governor of the US Soldiers Home in Washington, DC. I am both humbled and proud at the accomplishments of my British and German ancestors.
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