Bidwell, John (1819–1900)

John Bidwell was born in Ripley, New York, the second child of Abram and Clarissa Griggs Bidwell, on August 5, 1819. Young Bidwell's family moved often; when he was 10, the family migrated first to Erie, Pennsylvania, later to Ashtabula County, Ohio, and at 15 to the western part of Ohio in the vicinity of Greenville. During his teen years, he found work at various jobs in the ubiquitous timber industry, such as hauling lumber and sawmill tender. After attending school back in Ashtabula County, he returned home to the western part of Ohio where, at the age of 18, Bidwell became the unusually young principal of the Kingsville Academy. His biographer, Rockwell D. Hunt, claimed that Bidwell, in his brief stint as a teacher, brought the “first modern teaching” to that region of Ohio. Though he exhibited a high degree of interest in education, both in learning and teaching, during his formative years, it was John Bidwell's journey west as one of the early American pioneers of California and the life he subsequently created there for which he is best known.

In the spring of 1939, Bidwell set out to move further west. He traveled 90 miles south to Cincinnati, mostly by wagon, and then to the new territorial capitol of the Iowa Territory, Burlington, via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. After a failed claim on a 160-acre plot near the Iowa River, he traveled south and west across Iowa and into Missouri. Upon arriving across the river from Fort Leavenworth, he laid claim to another 160-acre parcel, which he lost to a squatter while on a trip to St. Louis the following summer. Following these reverses, a series of events unfolded in 1840 that led Bidwell down the path to settling in California.

An encounter with a fur trader recently returned from California and letters from a recent settler to friends in Independence, Missouri, spark a keen interest in migrating further west. Bidwell met Antoine Robidoux, an experienced fur trader just returned from California via Santa Fe, in late 1840. According to Bidwell, Robidoux described California as “one of perennial spring and boundless fertility” while waxing poetically about the abundance of oranges, wild horses, and cattle. At about the same time as these discussions with Robidoux occurred, favorable letters from former Independence resident turned northern California emigrant Dr. John Marsh were published in the local Independence newspaper. This confluence of events led to the establishment of the Western Emigration Society, of which Bidwell was one of the original members, each of whom pledged to meet at Sapling Grove, Missouri, on May 9, 1841 for an overland trip to California via a route suggested by the letters of Dr. Marsh. Within one month, according to Bidwell, more than 500 people had pledged to journey west. He also wrote that letters from interested parties arrived regularly from all parts of Missouri and even included inquiries from as far away as Illinois, Kentucky, and Arkansas.

Bad press about California and the concerted effort of local merchants to keep residents from heading west almost ended the migration before it began. Thomas Farnham, a New York lawyer, published a letter in the New York papers about his time in Monterey on his way back to New York in April of 1840. Farnham witnessed the rough treatment of some Americans during what is known as the Graham Affair and reported in his letter the oppressiveness of the local Californians, warning that it was a dangerous place for Americans to travel. Farnham's letter gained local notoriety when reprinted in the local papers in Missouri. Membership in the Western Emigration Society dropped so precipitously that Bidwell described himself as the only one of the original 500 members who pledged to immigrate to California that actually followed through on the pledge to meet at Sapling Grove.

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