Cottonwood pioneer’s descendents mine for nuggets of family history

THE FOSTER HOTEL:
It was once the chief building in the village of Cottonwood from the early 1860s until fire destroyed it on April 11, 1885.

Descendants of one of Cottonwood’s earliest Gold Rush era pioneers will join forces Saturday, Aug. 23, to seek nuggets of family and mining local history in a year-long genealogical celebration.

The gathering is a brainchild of Paul E. Foster, currently residing in Sedona, Ariz.

He is the great-great-grandson of Jacob Foster, one of the founders of Cottonwood who is best known for constructing the Foster Hotel, a grand two-story structure that was the most prominent building for several decades as Cottonwood welcomed the Central Pacific Rail Road Company and grew from a tiny 40-acre homestead to become the southern gateway to Shasta County.

“I’m a fifth generation direct descendant of Jacob Foster, so I pulled the trigger on calling a Foster family reunion,” Paul Foster told the Valley Post in a telephone conversation and later in a more detailed email.

It is Paul Foster’s hope that the “wonderful gathering will kick off a year-long investigation of our family history, genealogical branches, locating lost family members and preparing documentation to present” to the Shasta Historical Society, Foster wrote.

In turn, the historical society invited Paul Foster to participate in its prestigious “Pioneer Plaque” program. He said he intends to sponsor his great-great-grandfather, Jacob Foster, Jacob’s wife Adeline, Jacob’s brother Johannis (John), and Jacob’s sister-in-law, John’s wife, Mary.

Foster hopes to complete the research and documentation in time to receive the Pioneer Plaques for all four family members by August 2009.

“The life and times of Jacob Foster reflect the Gold Rush era of pioneer mass migration to California,” writes Paul Foster, warming passionately to his most recent topic of interest.

In his initial historical foray, aided in large part by the Shasta County Historical Society and local historian Dottie Smith, Paul Foster has uncovered a murder mystery and quite a few sparkling nuggets of information.

For example: Paul Foster’s great-great-grandfather, Jacob Foster, was the son of Martin Foster. Jacob was born in Bavaria on the Rhine, Germany, on Aug. 25, 1828, nearly 180 years to the day of the family gathering that is planned for Anderson River Park.

Jacob Foster arrived in St. Louis from Germany in 1845 and became a merchant. He married Adeline Hastings, also of Bavaria, while in St. Louis. In 1849, Jacob and his brother Johannis — later known as John — came to California where two of their other traveling companions were killed by Indians in 1850. Jacob stopped for some time in the mining community of Hangtown, now known as Placerville, and then moved on to the bustling gold-mining outpost of Shasta Jacob and a brother, Johannis — later known as John — traveled to California in 1849, and after looking over Placerville and Shasta, Jacob returned to St. Louis to fetch his wife Adeline out west.

In 1859, Jacob and Adeline Foster returned to St. Louis and brought his wife Adeline out west. They settled on Cottonwood Creek, where Jacob had acquired about 500 acres of low land that he farmed. It is known that he once owned 100 hogs, 75 head of cattle and 25 horses.

Within two years of his arrival in Cottonwood, Jacob launched upon a construction project that would forever change the fate and fortunes of all those settlers who followed him, Paul Foster said.

“He built the Foster Hotel in Cottonwood about 1861 or 1862 and, for the next 20 years, it became a main stop on the California-Oregon trail.

“For the first 10 years, it was a stagecoach stop. Jacob later cut a deal with the railroad and the first Cottonwood train depot was built near the hotel,” Paul Foster recounts.

The Foster clan knows the approximate date of the hotel’s construction because Paul Foster was able to find an abstract, filed Jan. 18, 1861, at the U.S. Land Office in Marysville, that gave Jacob Foster the legal pre-emption rights to his farm land and the 40 acres upon which the original town of Cottonwood stands.

The later date is a best guess, Paul Foster allows, but it is based on first-hand recollections of a Mrs. Adeline Ludwig Gilman, who said she was born in the Foster Hotel at Cottonwood in 1863.

For additional corroboration, Paul Foster is relying upon family lore that includes evidence that Jacob’s brother, John, became proprietor of the Foster Hotel in 1863 after moving from Shasta that same year.

Sadly, the hotel no longer stands.

It was sold to Peter Reifenrath in 1883, and fire destroyed it on April 11, 1885.

According to an account published April 15, 1885, in the Shasta Courier, “the fire occurred about 11 p.m. as Wake Ball and several friends were returning from a debating society meeting at Hooker Creek and saw the flames from a distance. They whipped up their horses, but by the time they arrived in town, the hotel was in ruins.”

The hotel’s new owner, Peter Reifenrath, died April 25, 1885, just 14 days after the fire.

The property was then sold to Alfred J. Logan sometime prior to Dec. 30, 1887, when the sale was recorded in the Shasta County records.

In its day, however, the Foster Hotel, was the chief building in the village of Cottonwood for several decades. It was a two-story wooden structure with a wide and inviting veranda that was kept cool by some large shade trees. Inside, it held a first-class bar and billiard room, a spacious and well-kept barn and livery stable, according to an account in Elliott and Moore’s “History of Tehama County,” published in 1880.

A copy of that book was found in the old Kraft Library collection in Red Bluff.

The Foster Hotel stood on the northwest corner of Block D in the original town of Cottonwood, covered much more frontage than the KP Hall that stands in its place. It faced Front Street. The hotel’s barn and livery stable occupied Lots 5 and 6 of the same block.

The Foster Hotel contained a large ballroom that took up all of the space on the second floor of the west wing, as well as part of the east wing. There was a great airy parlor, the bar, a huge dining room, kitchen and some sleeping apartments on the ground floor, according to personal correspondence of Mrs. Kiena Ludwig Butterway, who lived in the hotel as a single woman in 1873.

As one might expect of the grandest structure in town, the hotel was fitted throughout with the best furniture, linens, china and silverware available at that time, Mrs. Butterway wrote a friend.

Many gala affairs were held at the Foster Hotel. Its grand balls drew patrons from Tehama, Red Bluff, Anderson, Redding, Shingletown and Weaverville.

Splendid suppers were served with the best wines for the ladies, and the barroom served strong drinks for the male customers only.

The hotel not only saw the birth of Mrs. Adeline Ludwig Gilman in 1863, it was also witness to the wedding of Liena Ludwig and George H. Butterway in 1875. Church services were held in the same hall as were political meetings and other town affairs.

Jacob Foster was also, along with other notables including Adam Schuman and William K. Lean, one of the first trustees for the Oak Knoll School house built on the north half of High Street.The schoolhouse was constructed on what was then an out-of-the-way spot among the chaparral and oaks. There was not another building within sight of the school. Today, that one-room schoolhouse would occupy the middle of a street directly north of the big oak tree at the northwest corner of the Baptist Church.

During the time that Jacob Foster owned and operated the Foster Hotel, the Central Pacific Rail Road Company sent a railroad surveying crew into the area during the summer of 1871. Their route brought them up over the divide and down the Hooker Creek valley where they were stopped short deciding which side of Cottonwood Creek to travel. Jacob Foster owned the land on the north side of the creek while J.A. Brown owned the land on the south.

On May 17, 1872, Jacob Foster wisely deeded the railroad company a 100-foot strip of land with the stretching diagonally across the southeast quarter of Section 11. Brown deeded a strip the same width to the railroad company across the other half of the section. Foster, however, had built into his offer a provision that the railroad company build a stationhouse on the north side of the creek instead of at the Buckeye siding, about a mile-and-a-half south of the creek, according to an abstract of the property transaction.

It was thus that Cottonwood became a town on the north side of the creek, and the Buckeye siding became a flag station and a siding on the south side of the creek instead of visa versa. In its March 2, 1872, issue, a writer in the Shasta Courier opined, “The building of the railroad through the country will cause small villages to spring up along the line, possibly at Cottonwood, Clear Creek, Cannon Bottom and Middle Creek.

When the station house was finally built, John H, Foster, one of seven children born to Jacob and Adeline Foster, became the first train dispatcher. Born Aug. 30, 1856, while his parents still lived in Shasta, John H. Foster was one of seven children born to Jacob and Adeline Foster. Educated in Cottonwood at the school where his father was a trustee, John Foster took a course in telegraphy at Heald’s Business College at San Francisco and worked in the railroad business as a train dispatcher for 18 years.

John H. Foster, son of Jacob,. He was one of seven children born to Jacob and Adeline Foster, who married in St. Louis, Missouri, shortly after both arrived from their native Germany.

Family heirlooms handed down over the years include Jacob’s 1851 Navy Colt revolver, John H. Foster’s turn-of-the-19th-Century Masonic sword, and an 1891 leather-bound edition of Northern California history that contains John’s biographical sketch.

Sometime later than 1879, but prior to 1883, John Foster, son of pioneer Jacob Foster, joined forces with Charles J. Becker. and built a large, one-room, wood-frame store building on lots 15 and 16 of Block A in Cottonwood, a location where the Rose Store presently sits. The firm of Becker and Foster was organized in 1884 when they purchased the stock and goodwill of William Knowlton.

Becker and Foster were partners engaged in the business of selling general merchandise including grain, shakes and other building materials. That partnership lasted until 1894 when Foster moved to Siskiyou County.

That same year, Becker passed away, and the entire store stock was purchased by Fred Clemmer, who retailed it at cost. John Foster also invested in village property. He married Miss Philipina Rieser, a native daughter of the Golden West, who was born in Red Bluff. They had three children, Ellis J., Joseph A. and Carrie, all born in Cottonwood.

Jacob Foster deeded that property to the school district on May 17, 1886. On Aug. 27, 1889, Charles Becker, Adam Schuman and George H. Butterway, all trustees, contracted with M.W. Herron to build a brick school house in Cottonwood for $5,000.

A bit of mystery surrounds the untimely demise of Jacob Foster, who reportedly left Cottonwood by train in August of 1885 carrying $8,000 in cash with the intention of prospecting for stock ranges in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.

The Weekly Shasta Courier of Feb. 27, 1886, made first mention of the mystery when it prophetically stated, “Since that time, nothing has been heard of him and his family and many friends are feeling very uneasy and fear that he has been foully dealt with, as the localities through which he proposed to travel has (sic) a large number of robbers and cut-throats, collected from all climes, tribes and nations.”

By June 12, 1886, family concern had grown to the point that John A. Foster went looking for his father in Mexico. By July 10, 1886, the same newspaper reported that the search for Jacob Foster by his son “leaves little doubt but that he was murdered near El Paso,” a town in the newly minted state of Texas.

In 1909, Ellis Foster, grandson of Cottonwood pioneer Jacob Foster, entered into the butter manufacturing business in Cottonwood. He converted the basement of the former John Foster home on the east side of the railroad track, south of the depot, into a first class plant and began to make butter and ice cream. These products were soon known far and wide as being rated among the best. The plant was destroyed by fire on March 9, 1944. It was never restored.

The Foster dwelling, built in 1948 before the death of Ellis Foster, now occupies the spot.

Paul Foster, a fifth-generation descendant of Jacob Foster, contacted the Shasta County Historical Society in May with the intention of donating the family’s artifacts to the society or some other worthy museum.

To kick off a year-long investigation into the family’s history, Paul Foster and many other members of the extended Foster family will gather in the Scouts Hall at Anderson River Park this weekend for a reunion and family celebration.

Paul will participate in the Shasta Historical Society’s “Pioneer Plaque Program” and will sponsor both Jacob and Adeline Foster as well as Jacob’s brother, Johannis (John) and Mary Foster.

“Over the next year, we will be researching family records, hotel documents and a host of other avenues for unanswered questions in hopes of providing the historical society the most up-to-date family history we can put together.”

The Foster family reunion, which kicks off at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 23, will launch “the beginning of a great journey over the next year for those who wish to take part,” states Paul Foster.