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| Gravestone & San Francisco Call obituary photo |
PLOT
48, LOT 154
Robert
Eccleston (1830-1911), was part of the party credited with discovering Yosemite
which he chronicled in a well-known diary.
Eccleston
was born on March 4, 1830 in New York City and traveled west during the Gold
Rush. He originally settled in an area of the California now known as Butte,
Sutter and Place counties and took up mining. He eventually raised cattle in
Forbestown in Butte County. While there he married 18-year-old Emily Josephine
Young, who had crossed the plains five years earlier.
Eccleston
is credited with being one of the founders of Yosemite. He was part of a band
of Indian fighters known as the Mariposa Battalion that stumbled into the
valley on March 25, 1851* while chasing Indians. The trip into the Valley was
so arduous that few tried it again over the next decade despite its amazing
natural wonders.
He
penned numerous diaries about his experiences and they were compiled into a
book entitled “The Mariposa Indian Wars, 1850-1851, The Diaries of Robert
Eccleston: The California Gold Rush, Yosemite, and the High Sierra.” They
remain one of the best accounts of the early settlements of the period and
include illustrations.
Eccleston
served with Major James D. Savage under the command of Captain Joseph
Kirkpatrick. He tells of Major Savage's remarkable family of twenty-six Indian
wives and how he became known as the “Blonde King of the Mariposa’s.”
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| Robert Eccleston |
His
diary recounts their first encounters with Native Americans (who he called
“savages”), the customs of the local tribes, local political issues, legal
actions to secure property and his wonder at first setting eyes on the
spectacular Yosemite valley.
In
1867, Eccleston returned to New York, before heading back west to Arizona
around 1870, where for three years he was agent for the Pimo Indians. He was
considered one of the founders of Tombstone, Arizona, which in 1881 would become
famous for Wyatt Earp and the "Gunfight at the OK Corral." Eccleston was still in Tombstone at the time and probably knew Earp and his brothers, as the town had only 100 people. In 1885, Eccleston and
moved to Oregon, where he lived until 1900, when he settled in Oakland for the
remainder of his life.
His
four sons served as pallbearers at his funeral.
* Some accounts list the date as March 27, 1851
[Sources: San Francisco Call, Sacramento Daily Union, Oakland Tribune, Eccleston Diaries, Wikipedia]
