| Notes |
- Robert Stedman had a long and active career in both New England and California. According to his son Byron, who recorded much of the biographical data which follows, Robert began working as a paper maker, millwright, and carpenter, serving an apprenticeship of seven years.
As can be seen from the list of children, the first four were born 1833-1841, considerably earlier that Robert's departure for the West, in 1849. Also it will be notices that Robert and Elvira apparently moved about rather frequently, as Lawrence was born in 1833 in Otis; Julia Ann in 1836 in Blandford; Stephen in 1838 in New Marlborough; and Robert, Jr. in 1841 in Lee (or South Lee). Byron, the fifth child, was born in 1851 in Lee after his father's return from the first gold rush trip. All of these locations are within a comparatively small area in southwestern Massachusetts.
In addition to the trades mentioned above, Robert, before going tot he gold diggings, furnished teams for drawing charcoal from Otis and other nearby places to Lenox Furnace (now Lenoxdale). He had three teams, two of which were driven by his sons Stephen and Lawrence. His son Robert was too young to drive, so he brought water for the horses. On the road to the charcoal pits, Lawrence and Stephen would start at two o'clock in the morning, sleeping in their wagons as the teams followed each other.
Robert determined to seek his fortune in California and went by steamer, via Panama, in 1849. On this trip he was in the company with several other men from the vicinity of Lee and Stockbridge.
Arriving on the Pacific Coat, Robert operated placer diggings at Marysville on the American River. He was not especially successful and came home via Panama about the latter part of 1850. He is recorded in 1850 Federal Census in Lee, Massachusetts, on 19 August 1850 with his family and his parents.
He then built and operated the El Dorado Hotel, at Lenox Furnace (Lenoxdale). Here he boarded the glass blowers from the Lenox Glass Works.
Byron Stedman was born on November 13, 1851. This was after his father's return from the first trip to California, but evidently before the completion of the El Dorado Hotel. Byron stated that he was born "on Bradley Street" and "by the brook". Bradley Street in Lee was so called because various families of that name lived along the road. It is between Lee and Lenoxdale on Stedman's Brook and in the general locality of the monument marking the site of the early schoolhouse. Presumably, when the El Dorado was completed, Robert and Elvira went there to live.
Robert returned to California about 1854, taking his sixteen-year-old son Stephen with him. They went via Panama, and, during the voyage while crossing the Gulf of Georgia, they ran into a storm. Stephen was washed overboard. They searched all night for him and found him at daybreak with both arms locked around the roots of a tree trunk that had been washed into the sea.
Stephen had on his father's outer coat as he was cold and when in the water he discarded the coat and other clothing, as he was an expert swimmer. His father had important papers and family pictures in the pocket of the coat that were lost. When he was found, he was unconscious but had his arms locked about the tree roots in such a way that they had become locked. Bertha can remember hearing her father tell of the beautifully colored birds (parrots and parakeets) talking and chattering on the trees when they came over the Isthmus of Panama by mule back.
(There is a long interesting account of travel to California via Panama in 1853 that was published in the New York Herald Tribune on Saturday, June 19, 1937. A clipping of the article is included in the Berkshire Athenaeum manuscript but it was too fragile to copy.)
A summary is that the method of travel across the Isthmus of Panama in those days was sketchy at best. The French government was engaged in trying to build a canal from the Atlantic side to the Pacific side of Panama. They had built a crude railroad part way that Robert and Stephen took as far as it went. They then resorted to mule back riding or on foot. It was a wild jungle, and Stephen was intrigued by the chatter of monkeys, parrots, and the black natives dressed only in a breechcloth.
Sailing vessels plied between San Francisco and Panama to connect with passengers brought down by ship on the Atlantic side. This saved months that would have been spent coming around Cape Horn. Traveling by ship was slow in those days as they were at all times at the mercy of the wind. Speed, if the wind was favorable, and lack of it sometimes added weeks enroute.
They landed in San Francisco on 5 January 1855 and went immediately to the gold fields at Marysville. Again they were not especially successful.
Then came the excitement of the Frazer River gold discovery in British Columbia. Robert and his son were in a party of eighty who started overland, by foot, to reach the new diggings from Marysville. Only twenty of them survived the journey, the others perished from Indian attacks and hardships on the way. Neither father nor son was injured, but Stephen killed one Indian.
They operated a mine in Caribou, British Columbia, in the summers. In winter they went down to Vancouver Island and made shingles by hand, also hunting deer for the market. They sold their shingles and venison in Victoria. After doing this for several years without getting ahead, they sold the claim to an English firm who went a little deeper and struck it rich.
It should be noted that after leaving Lenox Furnace about 1854 for his return to California, Robert Stedman put the El Dorado Hotel under the management of his son-in-law, Leroy S. Kellogg. The latter continued in charge for a few years, during which Robert's wife Elvira lived there. Afterwards she lived with her father until her death in 1858 (or 1860).
It was apparently sometime in the 1860s that Robert Stedman moved south from British Columbia to Marin County, California. Here in the redwoods, on White's Ranch, which was an old Spanish grant, seven miles square, he built his own cabin and lived alone until visited by his son Stephen in the summer of 1869. The community is known as Lagunitas, and in Robert's day was marked by the fact that the Pacific Powder Mills were just below his home.
Robert operated for himself, producing shingles, shakes and pickets for the neighboring ranchmen, who were all dairymen. The standard dimensions for shingles was 4" x 16"; shakes 6" x 36"; pickets 2" x 72".
In the fall of 1869 Robert found it necessary to rebuild his old cabin into a house, for Stephen returned from a quick trip to the East, bringing his bride Lucy Jane (Hall) Stedman. Also came Byron Stedman, now grown to young manhood. In converting the old cabin into a house for his augmented family, they used studs and shakes made from a single redwood tree, from which Robert, Stephen, anf Byron together cut 100,000 shingles by hand. The bark from this same tree built tow or three bridges. The tree was eight feet in diameter and Byron Stedman recalled that, in addition to the finished lumber, a number of cords of wood were cut from the top.
In reviewing the scene fifty years later, Byron Stedman - then living in Mechanicville, New York - recalled that in front of the Lagunitas home was the stump of another tree that Robert had previously cut down. A party from San Fransisco used this stump, nine feet across and about eight feet high, as a dancing floor for a quadrille. When, in 1919, Julia Ann Sturtevant, Robert's granddaughter, sent a photograph of this latter stump to Byron Stedman, the latter recognized it as practically unchanged.
The home at Lagunitas continued until 1874, with Robert living with his son Stephen and his wife and babies, together with Byron, who made it his headquarters when he was not busy with jobs on neighboring ranches. Then came word that Julia Ann (Stedman) Kellogg, daughter of Robert, was ill at South Lee, Massachusetts, and not expected to live.. So on January 7, 1874, Byron started from San Francisco for the East, where he remained. Stephen and family stayed in California, as did Robert until his accidental death in the spring of 1875.
One of the Marin County papers had this article in their March 20, 1875 edition. It showed that up until his death on April 19, 1875, Robert Stedman had been a hail and hearty old man.
"Nicasio, March 20, 1875
"Uncle Bob Steadman was the champion Irish jigger at Nicasio Monday night. Uncle Bobby's locks have waved some seventy odd summers, but he is still young in spirit and heels."
Both Robert and his son Stephen were wonderful jiggers. They were both said to be as light as a feather on their feet.
Death of Robert Stedman: (from Bertha Stedman Rothwell)
"Robert Stedman was driving with his son Stephen Stedman home to Lagunitas from a trip to San Rafael on April 19, 1875. While passing over the crest of White's Hill there was a Chinese rice sack lying in the road. As they neared it, the wind caught the sack and raised it in the air. The horse Stephen was driving was a very high-spirited animal and before he could control her, she shied and bolted over the steep embankment some fifty feet below, taking wagon and occupants with her. Grandfather's back was broken, and he told father that he was dying. Father wanted to go for help, and he asked him to remain with him as he was dying. He died in a few minutes in father's arms, this closing a long and colorful career.
"He was first buried in the cemetery in San Rafael. Years after, the town wishing for a high school, condemned the cemetery and father had his grandfather removed to Mt. Tampalias cemetery, three miles out of San Rafael. Stephen was also buried with his father in 1901, but later in Mrs. Stedman's life, when the trip was too hard for her to make, she bought a family plot in Cypress Lawn Cemetery, San Mateo County, and had both her husband few remaining bones and his father removed to Cypress lawn. My mother and the nephew killed in France are also buried in this plot. The headstone covering the family plot has the following names inscribed on it: Robert Stedman Sturtevant - Robert Stedman - Stephen Stedman - Lucy Jane Stedman."
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1809 - 1875 (66 years)
