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THOSE DARING Stage DRIVERS

By Kathi Bristow
Intern, Interpretation and Instruction Division
California State Parks, 2008
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Jehu, the title bestowed upon stagecoach drivers, was taken from a Biblical quote in the Old Testament, Kings 9:20, "…and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously."  (1)

Stage drivers were revered. The Reverend Henry W. Bellows, president of the U.s.a. Sanitary Commission, declared on a trip to California in 1864, "I think I should exist compelled to nominate the stage-drivers, every bit being on the whole the most lofty, big-headed, reserved and superior class of being on the coast—that class that has inspired me with the most terror and reverence." (2)  They were the road warriors of their day.

Many dressed in the drivers' "compatible" of the day, a long linen duster—a lite overcoat to assistance fend off grit, pelting, and air current; long gauntlet gloves; a wide-brimmed, low-crowned felt "broad-awake" hat; and tall leather boots. Each also carried a whip. Among the bevy of drivers employed by the phase companies were some who would get legendary during their lifetime and beyond.

Stage driver Henry James "Hank" Monk.
Courtesy of the California History Room,
California State Library, Sacramento, California

Henry James "Hank" Monk

One of the most famous Jehus was Henry James Monk, who drove the phase from Genoa, Nevada to Placerville, California. Unlike names have been attributed to him, such as "Knight of the Lash," or the "King of Coachmen." About people knew him equally "Hank." He would bulldoze stages at breakneck speeds along the winding Sierra mountain roads.

Hank became famous for the ride he gave Horace Greeley, a announcer for the New York Daily Tribune, over the Sierra Nevada mountains, from Virginia Urban center, to Placerville. Greeley had complained to his commuter, Hank, that the trip was going likewise slowly and he needed to reach Placerville, where he had a lecture engagement. It seems the constant grumblings from Greeley caused the driver to speed up and drive his team furiously. Hank yelled to Greeley, "Keep your seat, Horace; I'll get you lot there on fourth dimension!" Stories nigh the trip were written and retold in many mining towns. Even Marking Twain and Artemus West used the story to embellish their own lectures.

 Henry James Monk was born in Waddington, New York and at twenty-three years of the age crossed the Isthmus of Panama to arrive in California in 1852. (3)  He was employed by James Birch on the Auburn stage line until 1857, when he became a driver along the Genoa and Placerville route, through Glenbrook, Carson City, Strawberry, and Sportsman Hall, (a stage stop yet in business organization equally a restaurant in Cedar Grove virtually Placerville). Afterwards, he became associated with the Pioneer Phase Company, run past Louis McLane, along a route from the Sacramento Valley to Genoa. (four)

 According to the San Jose Pioneer newspaper dated March 1, 1883, Hank died of pneumonia on February 28, 1883 at Carson Urban center, Nevada. The paper wrote, "It is said that strangers visiting Carson City would no more retrieve of departing without having seen Hank Monk than a visitor to Rome would omit to take a await at St. Peter's." (five)  He was buried in Nevada and upon his tombstone was inscribed, "Sacred to the retentiveness of Hank Monk, the whitest, biggest-hearted and best-known stage commuter in the West." (half-dozen)

The famous whip George Monroe.
Courtesy of the California History Room,
California Country Library, Sacramento, California.

George Monroe

Considered one of the about skilled whips during his lifetime, a mulatto named George Monroe, sometimes called "Alfred," gained renown driving stages for United States presidents. He held the reins when President Ulysses Due south. Grant visited Yosemite in 1879 and once more during the visits of Presidents James A. Garfield and Rutherford B. Hayes. He also drove for General William T. Sherman. (7)  Monroe never gave his reins to any rider except for U. S. Grant. He too provided transportation for eminent artists, including Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt—both well known for their striking mural paintings of Yosemite.

 Monroe was employed in 1866 by A. H. Washburn and Company (later known equally the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Visitor). His employer, Henry Washburn, used wagons congenital by Henderson & Son in Stockton, California. (viii)  A few of the wagons Monroe drove can be seen today in the Yosemite National Park at the Pioneer Yosemite History Center. Washburn remarked that George was, "the greatest of all." Monroe earned the title "Knight of the Sierras." His daily stage road took visitors forth the Wawona Road, from Mariposa into the Yosemite Valley.

Monroe was not a very tall or large man, simply was strong and considered i of the nigh skilled of reins men. He was a placidity with an easy way. He wore long white gauntlet gloves and ever dressed neatly. Born a slave in Georgia in 1844, he came to the Mariposa area when he was eleven. His father, who worked as a barber in the mining camps of California, purchased his freedom. Monroe drove stages for over twenty years without injury to passengers, horses, or to the vehicles. (9)  Unfortunately he died as a result of injuries sustained in a wagon crash on November xv, 1886. Monroe was non the driver that day, but a passenger.

Clark "Onetime Chieftain" or "Quondam Foss" Foss

A boisterous and colorful driver, Clark Foss, ran the stage through Napa Valley during the 1860s and took many sightseers to the famed geysers in the Calistoga and the Geyserville area. He donned a large pearl-greyness Stetson and could drive his team along the perilous trail to the geysers at great speed. Foss was a large, cheerful human, standing 6 feet 2 inches and weighing near 250 pounds. He had long sideburns and wavy hair. He carried the nickname, "Old Chieftain" or "Sometime Foss." Born in Maine about 1819, he moved to California in the 1850s. He later named a settlement after himself at the southeastern stop of Knights Valley in Sonoma County—Fossville. Here he built a phase station, mail service office and barn for horses, and established a hotel where many notable guests stayed, including Ulysses S. Grant and William Randolph Hearst. (10)

The route "Sometime Foss" collection over the Hogs Back mountain road near Healdsburg to the geysers reportedly took him fourteen minutes, forth a road that had "not less than thirty-5 turns and at one place … a depression of some 1,900 feet." (11)  Unfortunately, Foss is also remembered for beingness ane of the near reckless drivers. He suffered sorrow, broken bones, and humiliation when a lady passenger was killed and seven others badly injured in the late 1870s due to his negligence. The stage went off the road into a ravine on the way from Pine Flat to Fossville. Foss reportedly never got over the upshot and presently afterward in 1881, stopped driving the stage. (12)  Clark Foss' son, Charlie, would take over the phase route. He began driving at age twelve and continued until the leap of 1906.

He as well was a daredevil whip around Healdsburg.

A postcard of the Calistoga and
Geyser Phase on Foss Road, in 1905.

Writer and illustrator J. Ross Browne
holds tight every bit Charley Parkhurst drives the stage.

Charley Parkhurst

Perhaps one of the most interesting, most adept whips was tobacco-chewin' Charley Parkhurst, known throughout California. Parkhurst collection many stage company routes, including Sacramento to Placerville, Stockton to Mariposa, Oakland to San Jose, and from San Juan Bautista to Santa Cruz. Acknowledged as i of the best Jehus in the stage business, it was something of a different nature that after added to the notoriety of Charley, often called, "I-eyed Charley" or "Cockeyed Charley."

Described equally a "stout, compact figure, lord's day browned skin and beardless confront with bluish-gray eyes," the driver became a familiar figure around the Santa Cruz area and on the mount roads until 1868.  Parkhurst wore one patch over the left center, (the effect of an injury caused by a kick from a equus caballus), and had a throaty gruff voice. Suffering from cancer of the mouth, the whip blew a horn when approaching bends along the roads to warn other travelers.  (14)

Parkhurst drove a squad for nearly thirty years, enduring the rough, winding roads and occasional agree ups by robbers. On ane occasion, a brigand called "Sugarfoot"—so named because of his habit of stomping his burlap-wrapped foot—ordered Charley to give up the potent box. Parkhurst obeyed, simply was adamant to settle the score. As luck would have information technology, Sugarfoot stopped the stage again on the same route. This time Charley shot and mortally wounded him. Sugarfoot managed to crawl to a cabin where he later on died.  (xv)

In the late 1860s, Parkhurst stopped driving stages and opened a phase station and saloon between Santa Cruz and Watsonville, after selling information technology to move farther into the woods. "One-eyed Charley" worked as a lumberjack for a while, merely had to cease considering of rheumatism and cancer of the mouth. The famous stagecoach driver died on December 29, 1879 and was buried in the Pioneer Odd Fellows Cemetery in Watsonville, California. Charley Parkhurst had become known nationally and was praised and immortalized in an obituary by the Ohio Daily Star newspaper:

He was one of the most dexterous and famous of the California drivers, ranking with Foss, Hank Monk, and George Gordon, and it was an honour to be striven for to occupy the spare end of the driver's seat when the fearless Charley Parkhurst held the reins of a four or six in hand.  (16)

 To anybody'due south surprise, an article in the Daily Nevada Country Journal on Sunday, January 4, 1880, revealed that Charley was a woman! At the age of 50-5, she had even signed the Great Register in 1867 to vote in California, when women did not have the right to do and then. (17)  Her story slowly came out. Charley Parkhurst had been built-in in Lebanon, New Hampshire in 1812. Her given name was Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst and she had left an orphanage at a young age. Ebenezer Balch, the owner of a livery stable in Providence, Rhode Island, was in New Hampshire when he met young Charley in boy's clothes. He assumed she was a boy and took him back to Rhode Isle to raise as his own son.

Balch, who drove the stage in Rhode Isle, taught Parkhurst how to ride horses and drive carriage teams. When Charley grew older, she left to seek opportunities out West, sailing on the steamship, R.B. Forbes, from Boston to Panama. (eighteen)  In Panama she met John Morton, who owned a drayage business organisation in San Francisco and convinced Charley to come up to California for its opportunities. (19)

After Charley Parkhurst died, the coroner arrived to examine the body. He then discovered that he was a she. An autopsy adamant that she had been a female parent and, it was believed, the baby died at a young age.  (20)  Questions always will remain as to why Charley chose to live a life as a homo—no less a phase commuter!

Charley Webster

Stagecoach drivers were a cast of characters, some notable for their looks and some for their personalities, others became known for the certain habits they adopted. One such driver on the Weaverville to Shasta route felt impelled to point his presence by bravado a bugle. Charley Webster became well known for the bugle he would sound announcing his impending inflow with the mail.  Weaverville Postmaster Al Paulsen recalled, "As I remember, 'Bugle-bravado Charley' Webster handled the ribbons on the Weaverville end of the line." He went on to describe, "East of Weaverville there is a mesa. Every evening after reaching the mesa, Charley fabricated information technology a exercise to sound his bugle repeatedly, and that gave observe that the post was coming in."  (21)

General Phineas Banning
Courtesy of the Full general Phineas Banning Residence Museum

Gen. Phineas Banning

Phineas Banning became a famous whip and phase line owner in the Wilmington and Los Angeles areas. With his partner George Alexander, the ii operated Alexander & Banning equally a successful freight and stage line. Their passenger and freight wagons delivered cargo to aureate miners on the Kern River, to Yuma, Arizona, even to Salt Lake Urban center, Utah.

Banning'south stages traveled betwixt San Pedro and Wilmington, named for his birthplace, and later between Banning, California and Yuma, Arizona. (Banning was named later on Phineas Banning.) Some of his notable passengers included Governor James Throckmorton of Texas, and Governor R.C. McCormick of Arizona.

 Phineas Banning was born August 19, 1830 in Delaware, the ninth of xi children. At thirteen, he left abode to take his get-go job working every bit a clerk in his blood brother's Philadelphia law business firm. At the age of 21, he sailed to Panama and crossed the Isthmus, before settling in San Pedro, California.

Banning became known as the father of the Port of Los Angeles and was elected to the California Country Senate from 1865 to1868. He helped ratify the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery. During the Ceremonious War, he ceded state to the Union Army to build a fort at Wilmington, the Pulsate Barracks. Appointed a Brigadier General of the First Brigade of the militia, he used the title of full general for the residual of his life.

Banning died on March eight, 1885 in Wilmington, California. His sons, Captain William and George Hugh Banning wrote a book dedicated in their father's laurels called, Six Horses, well-nigh the stagecoach era.

These are but a few of the stage drivers of California whose bravado and personalities have embellished the history books of the old West. The linkage from the West Coast to the Mississippi River in the e, fabricated possible by the Butterfield Overland Mail Company and other stagecoach lines, gave access to the distant and remote towns of California.

Some passengers along the routes accept reflected upon the discomfort they endured in their journals, but most would write near the thrill of their adventures on board a stage.

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(1)   Oscar Osburn Winthur, Via Western Express & Stagecoach, California: Stanford University Press, 1947.
(2)   "Coaching," Dogtown Territorial Quarterly, (no year listed), California, No.47, 13.
(3)   Death of Hank Monk, 1883. San Jose Pioneer, March ten, 1883, pg ii/2.
(four)   Peg Presba, The Legendary Hank Monk, 1995. Mountain Democrat, Placerville, California, April vi, 1995.
(5)   Obituary, "Death of Hank Monk," San Jose Pioneer, March 10, 1883.
(6)   Editorial of Horace Greeley's Reply, Oakland Tribune, Sunday, August 4, 1946, Vol. CXLV, No. 35.
(7)   Gary F.Kurutz, Knights of the Lash, The Stagecoach Stories of Major Benjamin C. Truman.
California: Book Club of California, 2005, 41-43.
(8)   Pioneer Yosemite History Heart Online, "Wagons and Stagecoaches,"
http: //www.yosemite.ca.usa/pioneer-yosemite-history-center/wagons.html
(ix)   California'southward Sesquicentennial Wagon Train Organization. "Reining a Squad Through Yosemite,"
California: California Sesquicentennial Board of Directors, California: California's Sesquicentennial Wagon Railroad train, Mariposa Lath of Directors, 1999, 129.
(10)  Hannah Clayburn, "Clark Foss: The Nigh Famous Stagecoach Driver in the World," 2003,
http:// www. ourhealdsburg.com/history/foss.htm
(xi)  Felix J.Koch, "Last of Noted Family of Phase Drivers." San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, September 29, 1906.
(12)  Clayburn, Ibid.
(13)  Kurutz, Ibid, P. 64.
(14)  Stephen Michael Payne, A Howling Wilderness: a History of the Summit Route Area of the Santa Cruz Mountains
1850-1906. California: Loma Prieta Publishing Company, 1978, http:// www. santacruzpl.org/history/trans/stagec1.shtml
(15)   Edgar J. Hinkel & William E. McCann, Oakland 1852-1938, Volume One. California: The Oakland Public Library,
http://  content.ancestry.com/Browse/BookView.aspx?dbid=26212&lid
(sixteen)  "Thirty Years in Disguise: A Noted Old California Stage Commuter Discovered, Afterward Death, is He is a Woman,"
The Daily Star, Marion, Ohio, February 7, 1880.
(17)  "Charley Parkhurst: The Stage Driver–A Woman Who Passed equally a Man for a Quarter of a Century",
Daily Nevada Country Journal, January 4, 1880.
(18)  California'southward Sesquicentennial Wagon Railroad train Ibid. P. 107-108.
(19)  Craig MacDonald, Cockeyed Charley Parkhurst: The West'due south Almost Unusual Phase Whip. Colorado: Filter Press, 1973, 22.
(20)  Kurutz, Ibid.
(21)  Editorial of Bugle-Blowing Charlie, Oakland Tribune, Lord's day, August four, 1946.

Source: http://parks.ca.gov/?page_id=25451

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