Calaveras
County
Biographies
JOHN STEEL
The pioneers of 1852 who are still
living in California are not numerous, and there is not one of them who is better known and more highly regarded by his fellow
citizens than John Steel, of San Andreas, Calaveras County, who is also one of
the many good citizens whom Germany has furnished to the United States. Mr. Steel comes of old “fatherland” families
and was born at Merzhausen, Germany, April 5, 1825, a
son of Justus and Mary (Waterman) Steel.
His father, who was a forest overseer, was a worthy citizen and a most
devoted member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and John Steel, of San Andreas,
and one of his sisters are the only ones of his eight children who survive. The daughter
is Mrs. Anna Wagner, a widow, and lives at Stockton. When Mr. Steel was three years old his good
father died, but his mother, who was most devoted to her children, lived to be
eighty years old.
John, who was the seventh in order
of birth, received a good education and learned the shoemaker’s trade. As was the custom with mechanics in Germany,
he soon set out on his travels as a joiner and in 1848 “brought up” at New
Orleans, Louisiana. From New Orleans he
went to St. Louis, where he was paid twelve dollars a week, which was then ten
dollars and fifty cents a week than he would have been paid for the same work
in Germany. In the spring of 1852 he and
five other young men bought a wagon and shipped it to Independence, Missouri,
and followed it to that point and went out in the country and bought four yoke
of oxen, which were to draw the wagon and their belongings to California. Not one of the five had had any experience
with oxen, and at first they had considerable difficulty in yoking, handling
and driving their eight-ox team, but the wagon rolled out of Independence on
its long western journey on the 8th of May. That year (1852) is memorable in history for
its epidemic of cholera, and the fatalities among California emigrants were
numerous and alarming. The young men met
many people who had abandoned the journey and were coming back to their old
homes, utterly heart-sick, and they saw many shallow graves by the wayside in
which emigrants, men, women and children, had been buried only to be dug up by
the wolves! Indians were numerous, but
made them no trouble. Immense herds of
buffalo were encountered from time to time.
From the Sink of the Humboldt westward Mr. Steel and some companions
made the journey on foot and arrived at “Hangtown” November 15, 1852, two weeks
before their team got there.
There was no water with which to
mine, and he could not work at his trade until the wagon came with his
shoemaker’s tools; but he went to chopping word for a brickyard and earned fair
wages until his tools arrived, when he opened a shop at “Hangtown.” He got ten dollars a pair for coarse boots,
two dollars and fifty cents for putting on half soles and fifty cents for each
patch; but as a sack of flour cost forty-nine dollars and other necessaries
were proportionally high it will be seen that it cost him a great deal to
live. Still, with characteristic German
thrift, he saved some money and became the owner of a mine on North Beaver
Creek, which yielded him eleven dollars a day for three years. Then in 1855 he came to Calaveras County and
bought a mine at Lattimer’s Gulch, which he worked at
a loss, two years and then abandoned.
Next he bought a hydraulic mine, had difficulty with the owners of the
water, and in 1861 sold it and came to San Andreas, where he again turned his
attention to shoemaking and to the management of a ranch six miles south of the
town, which he had taken up before it had been surveyed. He now owns two
thousand acres and has raised cattle and sheep extensively, but he has made and
mended shoes during all of the thirty-nine years of his residence there, doing
good and honest work and is still working for customers who came to him more than
three decades ago and has no idea of retiring from his bench.
In 1852 Mr. Steel was married at
“Hangtown” to Miss Josephine Hodecker, whom he had
known in St. Louis and who was the daughter of the late Philip Hodecker, and they have had four children: Mary, the eldest daughter, is the wife of
John C. Early of San Andreas. George Edward is married and is connected with
his father in his ranch enterprise.
William Walter has become prominent in connection with mining
interests. Andrew Lincoln, the youngest,
was born November 8, 1864, the day on which Mr. Lincoln was elected he second time
the President of the United States; for Mr. Steel is a Republican, staunch and enthusiastic. He has been an Odd Fellow for fifty years,
and is not only one of the oldest but also one of the most honored members of
the order in the state. He has been the treasurer
of his lodge so long that he cannot remember when he was first elected to the
office.
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
“A Volume of Memoirs and Genealogy of Representative Citizens of Northern
California”, Pages 550-552. Chicago Standard Genealogical Publishing Co. 1901.
© 2010
Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's Calaveras County Biographies