San Simeon Creek - Page 2

Dear Sister,

I received your letter a few days ago and should have written you a letter myself, but I really have not time.  We are busy nearly night and day.  I thought by this time I should have had some Money to send you but I have not yet.  I can't tell how soon I will have [it] to send but I think in the course of a Month or so.  Perhaps it is as well that I can't send it to you now, for we are all cluttered up yet in our house and you could not take any comfort now if you were here. [Harrison] Dart is going to build a house as soon as we get our crop secured, which will take 3 or 4 weeks yet.  -  What we get this year, is at the cost of eternal vigilance. - It is which and tother between us and the cattle.  But I have not time to write any more now.
                                                    Yours affectionately,
                                                       E.A. Clark

But in addition to the farming, EA was making use of his wife's family connections to bring in some extra income—through the federal government.  He wrote to E.B. Washburn, a congressman at the time, asking for work.  Here's the answer he received. [It's on the letterhead of the] Presidential Campaign of 1860 Republican Executive Congressional Committee.

We are all very much engrossed in the elections just now.  Our folks feel entirely certain of Lincoln's election.  All that the opposition hope for is to throw the election into the house.

There is an attempted fusion of the broken fragments of the opposition factions, but it will affect nothing.  

You may have seen I am voted for the fifth time.  That will close my public career.  Ten years in congress is long enough.  My duty is now to my family.

C. C. Washburn

Brother C.C.W. was not a candidate for reelection. [He became a civil war general, later an explorer who named Old Faithful geyser, a state governor , and founder of the company that become General Mills. ] He may be a candidate for the U.S. Senate. We dare hope nothing from your state. [California voted Democratic in this period].  I see that my brother Charles is doing his best.     

I sent you yesterday a bundle of different kinds of speeches, and I hope they may reach you before the election.
  

I shall always be very glad to hear from you.  Give my kindest regards to Cousin Lydia and believe me very truly your friend, E.B. Washburne, [of] ILL.


Dear Sir,
    Since my arrival here I have conferred with my brother E.B.W. in regard to your appointment as collector of Monterey and he is not only willing but anxious to cooperate with us in getting you this office.  I think we shall be able to effect it without much difficulty.  You had better send on your papers as soon as possible if you have not done so already.
                                         Yours truly, C.C. Washburn

[Family tradition says that he did get the job as customs collector, but At San Simeon harbor, not at Monterey.]

Now another perspective on 1860, not that of men in Washington DC, but of a frontier mother.    Here's a Letter from Lovina to her step-daughter, written at San Simeon on June 2nd, 1860.

Dear Daughter,

We received your very welcome letter several weeks ago. I should have answered it before this time, but my health has been very poor this spring, and when I have had to write I have not often felt able to do so.  I have also put off writing for another reason.  I was hoping your Father would get time to write some to you in this letter, but he is so very busy putting in his spring crops that he thinks he will wait until the next time. 

Arthur is quite well, you would probably like to know who he looks like.  He is five years old, quite small of his age, has black eyes and rather dark complexion. Your father says he is the very picture of his Grandfather Dart.

Mary Elenor Dart

Little Mary Elenor, as we call her, is nearly eight Months old.  She is a very lively, playful baby, a good deal larger than Arthur was at her age.  

This is a very new county where we are living now.  There are no artists near us, but we intend to have all of our daguerreotypes taken the first opportunity and then we will send you a copy of them.

We have been living where we are now nearly two years.  There were but a few American families in the county when we came here, but it is settling up very fast.  We live within three miles of the Pacific Ocean, right among the hills.  The mountains are on one side of us, the ocean on the other. The scenery is very different here from what you have been accustomed to, living as you have always lived since your recollection on or near those large prairies which you have in Illinois

The climate is very different from what it is where you are.  We have a good deal of rain here during the winter, but no snow except on the tops of the mountains and there it remains but a short time.

Skipping ahead six months now,  Lovina again writes to her daughter
                                                                

San Simeon, Jan. 13, 1861
Dear Daughter,

I have very poor health most of the time, my two little children to take care of and my housework to do, with only the help of a little girl, a niece of mine who lives with us,  [: Olive Clark?  With her chronic ill health, Lovina needed live-in help, and in writing the previous year to his other sister E.A. had mentioned how short on space his family was in their cabin. ] and I am very apt to neglect doing things which are not absolutely necessary to be done.  But do not cherish the idea for one moment that you are forgotten by us because you do not hear from us as often as you should.  We are all enjoying
good health at the present time.  Your father has had a hard time this past summer and fall in taking care of and securing his crop.  This is a stock raising county and we are surrounded by persons owning hundreds of herd of cattle.  We had a poor fence owing to the scarcity of timber, and your father had to sleep out nearly every night for six weeks, which nearly used him up, besides losing a great deal of our crop, but he is splitting rails now and making preparation to have a good fence, and I am in hopes he will have easier times the coming season than he has had for the two years past.  I was very glad to hear that you was taking music lessons.  I am extremely fond of both vocal and instrumental music.  I hope you will take great pains to improve in both singing and playing.  I brought a Melodeon to California but sold it when we left San Jose. [A melodeon was a small reed organ.] Your father in former days cared but very little about music, but as he grows older he seems to have more taste for it, and now he appears to like it very much.

If you have any opportunity I wish you would send me some flower seeds.  I don't see many of the old fashioned flowers I used to see in the States.

Lovina's sister Sarah Mariah moved from San Jose to San Simeon, almost certainly in 1860. It appears that she gave up a teaching position in order to teach at the San Simeon school, replacing E.A., while he took a position teaching at the Mission School here in San Luis Obispo. We have a letter written in 1861 in which a former student of hers brings her up to date on what has been happening at the school since she left.

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