John Marsh

John Marsh was one of those Yankee chameleons who made the years before California statehood so interesting for historians -- and so profitable for himself. His adherents and critics have staked many a claim: that he was the first to compile a Sioux dictionary; that he was the first Harvard man in the Far West; that his glowing letters about California brought the first wagon train of settlers here long before the Gold Rush; and that he was, if only for a year, the first Yankee-trained physician in Los Angeles. Marsh inspired a 1930 biography by George D. Lyman and piqued the interest of modern historian Kathleen Mero, who works for the John Marsh Historic Trust in Contra Costa County in Northern California. “He was an educated man from a blueblood family, the last person you’d expect to be dealing with all the rough and tumble [of] ... the frontier,” Mero said in an interview. “He was hungry for the wilderness, never satisfied, always kept going west.” Some Contra Costa County residents want to turn Marsh’s mansion into a history center or the centerpiece of a proposed state park dedicated to California pioneers. The 3,600-acre site, owned by the state, is all that remains of his 50,000-acre holdings. Born in Danvers, Mass., in 1799, Marsh earned a degree from Harvard in general education and worked as a teacher. For a while, he was an assistant Indian agent for the Winnebago near the Illinois-Wisconsin border, Mero says. In 1826, Marguerite Deconteaux, a woman of French Canadian and Sioux descent, bore him a son. Charles had two webbed toes, a genetic characteristic in the Marsh family. Around that time, Marsh got to know Abraham Lincoln in New Salem, Ill. The future president carved a pocketknife for Marsh’s son, Mero says. Sometime between 1828 and 1832, Marsh informally studied medicine for two years under an Army physician in Wisconsin. But after Deconteaux died in 1831, a heartbroken Marsh left the area, Mero says. In his biography, “John Marsh, Pioneer,” Lyman had attributed the move to bad debts and accusations of gun-running. Marsh dropped off his 6-year-old son with a friend and moved to Independence, Mo., according to Lyman and Mero. He opened a general store and made several friends before continuing west. On Feb. 4, 1836, Marsh arrived in Los Angeles and proclaimed himself a doctor, Lyman wrote. He presented Mexican officials with his Harvard diploma and showed them his saddlebags filled with medical and agricultural books. His credentials earned him a license to practice medicine, as well as a supply of quinine and brandy for “fevers, ague and chills.” But after a year, Lyman writes, Marsh tired of his office smelling like a stockyard. He sold his hides for $500 in gold to the captain of the first trading vessel he found anchored in the harbor. “Danger meant isolation and, hence, solitude, and he knew no fear,” Lyman wrote. In late 1837, Marsh bought a chunk of land that he named Rancho Los Meganos, a coined word meaning “Sand Dunes.” It would eventually include 50,000 acres in what is now Contra Costa County and the northern San Joaquin Valley. At the foot of Mount Diablo, a tribe of Bolgones Indians helped him build a small adobe that would be his home and the area’s first hospital. He increased his fees, charging one housewife 50 head of cattle for tending her child. The outraged woman -- who was also Marsh’s laundress -- deducted 25 head for washing two of his shirts, Lyman wrote. Marsh, who stood 6-foot-2 and weighed more than 200 pounds, wrote hefty letters to friends in Missouri, praising California’s climate and landscape and giving them directions to his rancho. Many of his letters were published in Missouri newspapers. Encouraged by the letters, more than 30 Missourians set out for California. Several were Marsh’s friends. They signed with Capt. John Bartleson’s expedition, joining the first wagon train to cross the Sierra. After nearly six months, on Nov. 4, 1841, they reached Marsh’s