1. John Bidwell, known in Spanish as Don Juan Bidwell, was an American pioneer, politician, and soldier.
29 Facts About John Bidwell
1. 2.
John Bidwell was born in 1819 in Chautauqua County, New York.
3.
John Bidwell's family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1829, and then to Ashtabula County, Ohio, in 1831.
4.
In 1841, at the age of 22, John Bidwell became one of the first emigrants on the California Trail.
5.
In October 1844, John Bidwell went with Sutter to Monterey, where the two learned of an insurrection by leader Jose Castro and ex-governor Juan Bautista Alvarado.
6.
Micheltorena, Sutter, and John Bidwell were imprisoned, and the latter two were shortly thereafter released.
7.
Shortly after Marshall's discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, John Bidwell discovered gold on the Feather River, establishing a productive claim at John Bidwell Bar in advance of the California Gold Rush.
8.
John Bidwell obtained the four square-league Rancho Los Ulpinos land grant after being naturalized as a Mexican citizen in 1844, and the two square-league Rancho Colus grant on the Sacramento River in 1845.
9.
John Bidwell later sold the latter grant and bought Rancho Arroyo Chico on Chico Creek to establish a ranch and farm.
10.
John Bidwell later attained the rank of major while fighting at Fort Stockton.
11.
John Bidwell was appointed brigadier general of the California Militia in 1863.
12.
Around this time, in 1865, General John Bidwell backed a petition from settlers at Red Bluff, California to protect Red Bluff's trail to the Owyhee Mines of Idaho.
13.
On June 10,1865, what was named Fort John Bidwell was ordered to be built there.
14.
On February 5,1856, John Bidwell was one of several passengers traveling down the Sacramento River on the steamboat Belle when the ship's boiler exploded, killing several people instantly.
15.
John Bidwell was sitting by the stove reading a newspaper when the explosion sent a piece of shrapnel the size of a quarter directly into his skull.
16.
John Bidwell survived, but spent the rest of his life with a visible hole in his head.
17.
John Bidwell was selected as a delegate to the 1849 California Constitutional Convention, but did not attend because of mining business.
18.
John Bidwell ran for State Senate again in 1855, but lost to incumbent Know Nothing John B McGee by just 187 votes.
19.
John Bidwell was a delegate to the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston.
20.
John Bidwell was the only West Coast delegate opposed to secession.
21.
John Bidwell left the party soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, and in 1864 was a delegate to the National Union National Convention.
22.
In 1875, John Bidwell ran for Governor of California on the Anti-Monopoly Party ticket.
23.
In 1868 John Bidwell was about 49 when he married Annie Kennedy, whom he had courted for years.
24.
John Bidwell's father was socially prominent, a high-ranking Washington official who supervised the US Census Bureau.
25.
John Bidwell had met him while working on the California census.
26.
John Bidwell was very active in the suffrage and prohibition movements.
27.
John Bidwell was a Freemason for a time but left the group.
28.
John Bidwell said that allegiance to the fraternity "was pointless" in an October 17,1867, letter to Annie Kennedy, whom he had been courting.
29.
John Bidwell's signature appears in the Book of By-Laws of the Chico-Leland Stanford Lodge No 111 in Chico, California.