Ainsworth - Gentry Affair was a violent episode of civil disorder that occured between September 18th and 20th, 1859 in antebellum San Bernardino, California. Local histories written decades after the affair, regarded it as an episode of violence in California, provoked by the slavery issue that led to the American Civil War. The contemporary reports of this affair and of earlier events, described in the Los Angeles Star and a report on the affair in the Daily Alta California say nothing of this. They do suggest a personal quarrel and a suspicion and hatred of Mormonism, aggravated by the events of the Utah War and especially that of the Mountain Meadows Massacre that had recently occurred, all may have played a part. Other events in in San Bernardino County reported in the Los Angeles Star, show a county political dispute may also have been part of the origins of the affair. The personal quarrel at the root of the event was confused by the misidentification of the identity of Doctor Gentry, one of the two parties involved, by the authors in later histories of the event.
The events of the Ainsworth - Gentry Affair were a consequence of the unraveling of the 1851 Mormon purchase of the Rancho San Bernardino and their establishment of San Bernardino and, in 1853, of the County of San Bernardino. That was brought on as a result of the 1857 Utah War, particularly by the Mountain Meadows Massacre. That incident and its consequences ruined the good reputation the Mormon colony had earned over the previous six years they had been in Southern California. [1]
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When the Mormon colonists of San Bernardino took the decision to return to Utah, the returning Mormon elected County officials resigned their offices, or simply abandoned them. The remaining County Supervisors named officers to replace them, on a temporary basis until new elections could be held.
<ref>
tag is missing the closing </ref>
(see the
help page).In early 1857, Dr. Frank Gentry had led the twenty-six man Monte Company, with the fifty one man strong Californio company under Andres Pico in pursuit of the Flores Daniel Gang. Bethel Coopwood who led a detachment of the Monte men, together with Tomas Avila Sanchez and some of the Californios, took the lead in assaulting, under fire, up the slope of Flores Peak, the steep mountain where Flores and his men had taken refuge. They drove Flores and some of the gang off the mountain and captured the the rest. Dr. Gentry's detachment later captured Juan Flores and another of the gang as they fled on foot the next day. However Flores and his companion freed themselves that night, stole horses and escaped from Gentry's posse. Flores days later was captured in Simi Pass by a detachment of Los Angeles militiamen under James P. Thompson (soon to be Sheriff of Los Angeles County 1858-59) and U. S. Army soldiers from Fort Tejon. [6]: 2, col.1-3
After the San Bernardino Mormon exodus in late 1857, like many in El Monte, Dr. Gentry had moved to San Bernardino, acquiring real estate at bargain prices and formed a partnership, Barton & Gentry, with Dr. Barton, another El Monte associate from the South, who had been appointed the city's postmaster. Together they built an adobe building at C and 4th Streets, that housed a pharmacy, a doctors office and the post office in the town in 1858. Also in 1858, Barton was elected school superintendent for the county of San Bernardino. [7]
A year later Dr. Frank Gentry was on the Democrat Party ticket in San Bernardino County, for Coroner (those candidates in italics above), against opposition candidate Dr. Cunningham. Dr. Cunningham was the incumbent coroner Dr. Charles Peter Cunningham, San Bernardino City Councilman in 1856, who would be listed in the 1860 census as Chas P Cunningham, a 67 year old farmer from Vermont, living with his family in the San Salvador Township of San Bernardino County. [8]; City Councilman 1856, [9] Coroner 1858, [10] Physician [11] Additionally Bethel Coopwood ran for District Attorney as an independent in opposition to the Democrat S. R. Campbell. [12]
The reason for this change in political alignment between Coopwood and Gentry may be in part to be found in the June 18, 1859 edition of the Los Angeles Star. Dr. F. Gentry, incumbent County Clerk J. M. Greenwade and S. R. Campbell, the District Attorney candidate on this Democratic Party ticket, were named in a Grand Jury investigation of the account books of San Bernardino County and the determination of the incompetency of its Board of Supervisors including the mishandling and misappropriation of county funds. Greenwade, while serving as County Clerk, was accused of receiving an illegally drawn warrant. Gentry's company, Barton & Gentry, accused of double charging the county for oil and turpentine, furnished for the jail, one being paid with an illegal warrant. [13] Both Gentry and Greenwade lost their races to the Independents, while Coopwood narrowly lost to Campbell by only 21 votes, shortly before the Affair occurred.
Doctor Alonzo Ainsworth, who would have the conflict with Doctor Gentry that triggered the Affair, formerly from New York, was a recent arrival in San Bernardino. His name does not appear in the lists of doctors in the county in 1857 or 1859. [14] [15] Interestingly neither does Dr. Barton or Dr. Gentry appear in the entry.
By 1859, some of the Mormons that had left in the Exodus had returned from Utah to rejoin those that had remained in the county in 1857, and Dr. Ainsworth had married Elisa E. Wixom the daughter of Nathan Wixom who came back to San Bernardino in 1858. Ainsworth and his wife were living in town near his wife's family and the Kinman livery stable on 3rd Street between C and D Streets in June 1860. [16] [17] This location was not far from Gentry & Barton's Drug Store. Both Barton & Gentry and Ainsworth were new businesses in direct competition with each other in a market that had lost two thousand of its three thousand patients in the last two years, only some being replaced by new landowners and families from El Monte and elsewhere, like the See family, and a some returning Mormons from Utah like the Wixoms. Yet the county had lost only one of its six doctors and acquired four more including Ainsworth, Barton and Gentry.
A contemporary source, the Los Angeles Star, reported only the persons suffering wounds in the affair of Tuesday, September 20th in its issue of Saturday, September 24, 1859:
A further editorial in the September 24th issue added more details saying that, "... a disagreement arises between two citizens, leading to a personal conflict, in which neither party is injured; thereupon the friends of each take sides, and the affair is made to bear the proportions of a contest, in which the existence of the entire community is at stake." It went on to say: "To keep up the excitement, aid is invoked from a distant locality, and we regret to find men in this county lending themselves to prolong the excitement, and exhibiting a willingness to imbrue their hands in the blood of their neighbors." [10]
The editorial did not name the two persons who were the originators of the quarrel nor the reason for it but said:
Nor did the editorial name the "distant locality" in Los Angeles County that became involved in the affair, "... exhibiting a willingness to imbrue their hands in the blood of their neighbors." However the news article on the shooting of the 20th gave an indication, naming one of the casualties wounded as "Frank Green of El Monte," a township in Los Angeles County, as one of the casualties. Frank Green would later appear in the 1860 census as a resident of El Monte.
The Star editorial finished with:
Nothing further appeared in the Los Angeles Star about who was involved in the affair or the reasons for the quarrel. It is not difficult to understand the reticence of the editor to criticize or name either party in the incident, when the populations of El Monte and San Bernardino were the primary buyers of advertisements and subscribers to his paper.
Interestingly, the the Terry - Brodrick duel, between leaders of the pro-slavery and free soil factions of the Democrat Party in California, had just occurred and Broderick died on the 16th, the day before the affair in San Bernardino began. The news of this duel, David C. Broderick's death and funeral and Terry's arrest all appeared in the Los Angeles Star a week later, with the news of the affair in San Bernardino.
The Los Angeles correspondent of the Daily Alta California visited San Bernardino soon after the event and reported what had happened:
The article of the Los Angeles correspondent of the Daily Alta California reported the names of the instigators Dr. Gentry and Dr. Ensworth [Ainsworth] that had a "difficulty" that nearly got Gentry "...shot dead, the ball cutting part of the flesh from his forehead." He noted that the "...friends of Gentry raised a cry of Mormonism, and sent for reinforcements of guns and men to the Monte." Monte was the town in Los Angeles County that had sent men to intervene, and Dr. Gentry's ability to easily summon such a force in such a short time indicated his strong connections with that town. It was the clue to his identity as a leading political figure in El Monte from the mid 1850's, who was attempting to advance still further in San Bernardino.
The Daily Alta reporter also indicated that the affair lasted for 3 days when he described the shootout at its climax on the 20th of Septiember: "The second day after, a man named Frank Green and Bethel Coopwood met on the street, when they commenced firing at each other." The Lieutenant Darius D. Clarke, commanding a company of United States soldiers, to whom the citizens applied for for assistance was the commander of Camp Prentice, an army camp located near Lytle Creek, now the site of the modern San Bernardino Valley College. [19] [20]
Benjamin F. Coopwood, brother of Bethel Coopwood, and one of the participants in the Affair wrote in a communication to the Southern Vinyard:
In the aftermath of the Affair in the following month of October, the name of F. Gentry appears in the Los Angeles Star in a list of arrivals of guests at the Bella Union Hotel in Los Angeles. In the month following the Affair, Frank Gentry seems to have lived elsewhere than San Bernardino, often in the Bella Union Hotel according to its register published each week in the Los Angeles Star. On October 15th, he registers first as being from the Monte. [22] Next on October 21st, from San Bernadino, and lastly from Cucamongo. [23] This last Bella Union register has Gentry there from sometime during the week ending the 21st of October. According to the schedule of the steamship SENATOR, Gentry probably left San Pedro for San Diego then to San Francisco on that ship on or about the 23rd of October, 1859. [24]
He is never mentioned again in California newspapers, except for in the Los Angeles Star, which were court notices of debt he owed, that date from September to December 1860.
From September of 1860 there appears in the Los Angeles Star for three months, an advertisement that features the name of F. Gentry. [25] The notice shows that he had incurred the debt of $614.14 at 3% per month on the 21st day of September, 1859, the day following the shootout in San Bernardino. It shows that as of August 1860 he had not paid it. They also show that by September 1, 1860 he was known to be living in Antoine Township, Arkansas. The 1860 Census shows him there as of June of that year living in a house next to that of his brother and his wife having $1600 of real estate and $350 in personal property. [26]
It would remain for later accounts and histories of San Bernardino, written over two decades after the event and the American Civil War, (the earliest in 1883), to suggest reasons for the two doctors personal quarrel and bring to light more details of their actions and those of their supporters in the Affair.
The first history to mention details about the Ainsworth - Gentry Affair was History of San Bernardino County, California, written and published by Wallace W. Elliott & Co. of San Francisco in 1883. It claimed to be based on the account of "the survivors of the affair with whom we conversed." It also named Dr. Gentry as Thomas Gentry, an error that continued in future histories and other accounts.
Marcus Katz, a San Bernardino merchant, who had been appointed to replace the county treasurer in 1857, and subsequently was confirmed in the office in 1858, 1859. Katz, who lived in the city until his death, wrote this of the affair in his Memoirs in the 1890's:
The first history to name the incident and claim that, Dr. Ainsworth, was anti-slavery and the other Dr. Gentry pro-slavery was Ingersoll's Century Annals of San Bernadino County, 1904. It also went on to give details from an eye-witness of and participant in the Affair. It gave details on the incidents where violence erupted between the two doctors, gives details of the attack on the house of Coopwood and the number and actions of Ainsworth's defenders and was the first to mention the use of the cannon from the 1856 Fort Benson affair by the Green faction against the house of Coopwood:
Dr. Franklin Gentry was definitely pro-slavery, as demonstrated by his leadership of that faction in El Monte in 1856. The veiws of Dr. Ainsworth, are unknown, but are characterized as "union in sentiment". This was at a time before the division of the country by a civil war had occured, so it may only be that he was abolitionist in sentiments. Additionally, the fact that at least two of his known defenders, the Coopwood brothers, had been in the same pro-slavery group as Gentry and Bethel later fighting for the Confederacy, makes this seem an unlikely basis of the quarrel between the two of them, particularly when contemporary accounts say the call for help from Gentry to El Monte was for aid against "Mormonism".
Putting the contemporary accounts and later accounts of eyewitnesses together we find it began:
This is the origin of the violent outbreak. It occurred at least two days before the announcement of the outcome of the election on the 19th and the shootout on the 20th. [32]: 46
Election results were announced and recorded on this day, Gentry and Greenwade had lost as had Coopwood. But events escalated:
The two principals in the Affair were both long dead by the time the first history of the affair was written in 1883. Dr. Alonso Ainsworth had remained in the city, as a doctor, and was appointed the county phsyician from 1862 to 1863 during the great smallpox epidemic that decimated the Native American population of the county, and had died in 1865.
Dr. Franklin "Frank" Gentry had left California about a month after the affair, returning to Arkansas, where he was recorded in the June 1860 census living near his brother, in Antoine, Arkansas. During the American Civil War he served in the 19th Arkansas Infantry Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant, until he resigned in 1862, and died in 1864.
Doctor Franklin "Frank" Gentry was so forgotten in San Bernardino by 1883, that he was either misnamed Thomas Gentry by the survivors interviewed by Wallace W. Elliott, author of the 1883, History of San Bernardino County, California or by a mistake of the author himself. Elliott may not have had access to contemporary newpaper accounts in the Los Angeles Star that would have identified him correctly.
Thomas Gentry was a real person formerly a resident of El Monte, but not a doctor, nor the person of political influence that Dr. Frank Gentry was. Thomas J. Gentry had married a widow of a husband murdered by bandits at El Monte in 1855. Thomas Gentry had subsequently abandoned her and their children in 1858 leaving them in financial distress and owing property taxes on her land, and had come to San Bernardino County about that time. His wife divorced him on the basis of desertion in 1860 but claimed to be a widow in the census that year. Thomas Gentry does not appear in the 1860 Census in San Bernardino.
Coopwoods older brother, a former Justice of the Peace in El Monte, Benjamin F. Coopwood, age 36, who also lived with his wife in San Bernardino had joined in aiding his younger brothers Bethel and David, using his house to shelter Ainsworth, and presumeably joined in defending it from the El Monte mob. All were recorded as still living in San Bernardino in the 1860 Census. Andrew and his wife left for Texas with his brothers in 1861 and remained there. Bethel and David Coopwood with their brother Benjamin Franklin Coopwood remained in San Bernardino after the affair, until the time of the Civil War. They all left San Bernardino for Texas. David Coopwood and his brother Benjamin Franklin Coopwood passed eastward through the warlike Apache in New Mexico Territory in 1861. They were falsely reported to have been killed in an Apache attack, both made it back to Texas. [37]
In Texas Bethel joined the Confederate Army, serving as a captain of a Spy Company during the Confederate campaign to establish Confederate Arizona. He was part of Sibley's attempt to capture the remainder of New Mexico in 1862, he and his Spy Company helped the survivors of the army to escape capture and return to Texas. After leaving the Confederate army in 1863, he was in Mexico in business with his brother David until David was killed by troops of Juan Cortina while the two were traveling down the Rio Grande on the steamboat "Belle" in 1865. [38] Bethel remained in Texas as a lawyer for the rest of his life.
Mat Walsh or Welch, was James Madison (Mat) Welch, formerly a non Mormon veteran of the Mormon Battalion and a resident of San Bernardino County from 1854. [39] He was listed as "Jas Welch" in the 1860 Census that shows he lived nearby James Greenwade, who at that time was running a tavern and hotel near the Butterfield Overland Mail station at Temescal. [40] Welch was accused and tried for horse theft along with a man named Harris in July 1861, only Welch was found guilty of petty theft and fined $250. [41] [42] [43] He and his family moved away from San Bernardino in 1878, but remained in Southern California working as a teamster, and died in a wagon accident near Nuevo, modern Ramona, were he was buried in 1894. [43]
Raymond "Taney" De La Montaque Woodward was the brother in law of Bethel Coopwood who had married his sister in 1859. He was listed as a constable in San Bernardino in the 1860 Census. [44] He remained in San Bernardino until his death on January 30, 1898 and would have been eye witnesses to be consulted in the 1883 history of the event. [45]
Of the identity of the remaining members of the Ainsworth faction nothing is known with certainty except that there were three others and that they were young men. However there are several likely candidates. Coopwood had another brother in law, Raymond's brother, William DeLa Monthena Woodward, a farmer, age 20. [46] Ainsworth had two brothers in law, Willard A. Wixom a blacksmith, age 22 and Nathan J. Wixom, a laborer, age 17. [47] [48] William Woodward and Willard Wixom lived until 1916 and Nathan Wixom until 1917 and would have been eye witnesses to be consulted in the 1883 or 1904 history of the event.
Francis (Frank) Green was shot and killed in Los Angeles on December 7, 1867. His killer was said to have been the son of a man he had killed in the past. Two men A. B. McDaniel and Francis Taylor were accused of the deed. McDaniel was held to answer. Charges against Taylor were dismissed. Disposition of McDaniel case are unknown. [49]
James Greenwade killed himself and a daughter and nearly the rest of his family with poison while he was drunk, at Cucamonga, in 1869. [50]: 86–87
The See brothers from Missouri, Joseph and John, had been with a wagon train passing down the Mormon Road to California with their sister and her family, very soon after the Mountain Meadows Massacre and saw the bodies of the newly slaughtered party. They took up land near San Bernardino when they arrived there in December 1857. Apparently motivated by what they had seen, the brothers must have joined Gentry's faction against "Mormonism" and stood by Gentry and Green to the end. However this must have made them unwelcome in the area thereafter. Soon after the Affair these two had sold their land along the Santa Ana River and leaving their sister there, moved to San Luis Obispo County becoming teamsters there by the time of the 1860 census and there they remained. See Canyon in that county bears the families name. [51] [52]
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Ainsworth - Gentry Affair was a violent episode of civil disorder that occured between September 18th and 20th, 1859 in antebellum San Bernardino, California. Local histories written decades after the affair, regarded it as an episode of violence in California, provoked by the slavery issue that led to the American Civil War. The contemporary reports of this affair and of earlier events, described in the Los Angeles Star and a report on the affair in the Daily Alta California say nothing of this. They do suggest a personal quarrel and a suspicion and hatred of Mormonism, aggravated by the events of the Utah War and especially that of the Mountain Meadows Massacre that had recently occurred, all may have played a part. Other events in in San Bernardino County reported in the Los Angeles Star, show a county political dispute may also have been part of the origins of the affair. The personal quarrel at the root of the event was confused by the misidentification of the identity of Doctor Gentry, one of the two parties involved, by the authors in later histories of the event.
The events of the Ainsworth - Gentry Affair were a consequence of the unraveling of the 1851 Mormon purchase of the Rancho San Bernardino and their establishment of San Bernardino and, in 1853, of the County of San Bernardino. That was brought on as a result of the 1857 Utah War, particularly by the Mountain Meadows Massacre. That incident and its consequences ruined the good reputation the Mormon colony had earned over the previous six years they had been in Southern California. [1]
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When the Mormon colonists of San Bernardino took the decision to return to Utah, the returning Mormon elected County officials resigned their offices, or simply abandoned them. The remaining County Supervisors named officers to replace them, on a temporary basis until new elections could be held.
<ref>
tag is missing the closing </ref>
(see the
help page).In early 1857, Dr. Frank Gentry had led the twenty-six man Monte Company, with the fifty one man strong Californio company under Andres Pico in pursuit of the Flores Daniel Gang. Bethel Coopwood who led a detachment of the Monte men, together with Tomas Avila Sanchez and some of the Californios, took the lead in assaulting, under fire, up the slope of Flores Peak, the steep mountain where Flores and his men had taken refuge. They drove Flores and some of the gang off the mountain and captured the the rest. Dr. Gentry's detachment later captured Juan Flores and another of the gang as they fled on foot the next day. However Flores and his companion freed themselves that night, stole horses and escaped from Gentry's posse. Flores days later was captured in Simi Pass by a detachment of Los Angeles militiamen under James P. Thompson (soon to be Sheriff of Los Angeles County 1858-59) and U. S. Army soldiers from Fort Tejon. [6]: 2, col.1-3
After the San Bernardino Mormon exodus in late 1857, like many in El Monte, Dr. Gentry had moved to San Bernardino, acquiring real estate at bargain prices and formed a partnership, Barton & Gentry, with Dr. Barton, another El Monte associate from the South, who had been appointed the city's postmaster. Together they built an adobe building at C and 4th Streets, that housed a pharmacy, a doctors office and the post office in the town in 1858. Also in 1858, Barton was elected school superintendent for the county of San Bernardino. [7]
A year later Dr. Frank Gentry was on the Democrat Party ticket in San Bernardino County, for Coroner (those candidates in italics above), against opposition candidate Dr. Cunningham. Dr. Cunningham was the incumbent coroner Dr. Charles Peter Cunningham, San Bernardino City Councilman in 1856, who would be listed in the 1860 census as Chas P Cunningham, a 67 year old farmer from Vermont, living with his family in the San Salvador Township of San Bernardino County. [8]; City Councilman 1856, [9] Coroner 1858, [10] Physician [11] Additionally Bethel Coopwood ran for District Attorney as an independent in opposition to the Democrat S. R. Campbell. [12]
The reason for this change in political alignment between Coopwood and Gentry may be in part to be found in the June 18, 1859 edition of the Los Angeles Star. Dr. F. Gentry, incumbent County Clerk J. M. Greenwade and S. R. Campbell, the District Attorney candidate on this Democratic Party ticket, were named in a Grand Jury investigation of the account books of San Bernardino County and the determination of the incompetency of its Board of Supervisors including the mishandling and misappropriation of county funds. Greenwade, while serving as County Clerk, was accused of receiving an illegally drawn warrant. Gentry's company, Barton & Gentry, accused of double charging the county for oil and turpentine, furnished for the jail, one being paid with an illegal warrant. [13] Both Gentry and Greenwade lost their races to the Independents, while Coopwood narrowly lost to Campbell by only 21 votes, shortly before the Affair occurred.
Doctor Alonzo Ainsworth, who would have the conflict with Doctor Gentry that triggered the Affair, formerly from New York, was a recent arrival in San Bernardino. His name does not appear in the lists of doctors in the county in 1857 or 1859. [14] [15] Interestingly neither does Dr. Barton or Dr. Gentry appear in the entry.
By 1859, some of the Mormons that had left in the Exodus had returned from Utah to rejoin those that had remained in the county in 1857, and Dr. Ainsworth had married Elisa E. Wixom the daughter of Nathan Wixom who came back to San Bernardino in 1858. Ainsworth and his wife were living in town near his wife's family and the Kinman livery stable on 3rd Street between C and D Streets in June 1860. [16] [17] This location was not far from Gentry & Barton's Drug Store. Both Barton & Gentry and Ainsworth were new businesses in direct competition with each other in a market that had lost two thousand of its three thousand patients in the last two years, only some being replaced by new landowners and families from El Monte and elsewhere, like the See family, and a some returning Mormons from Utah like the Wixoms. Yet the county had lost only one of its six doctors and acquired four more including Ainsworth, Barton and Gentry.
A contemporary source, the Los Angeles Star, reported only the persons suffering wounds in the affair of Tuesday, September 20th in its issue of Saturday, September 24, 1859:
A further editorial in the September 24th issue added more details saying that, "... a disagreement arises between two citizens, leading to a personal conflict, in which neither party is injured; thereupon the friends of each take sides, and the affair is made to bear the proportions of a contest, in which the existence of the entire community is at stake." It went on to say: "To keep up the excitement, aid is invoked from a distant locality, and we regret to find men in this county lending themselves to prolong the excitement, and exhibiting a willingness to imbrue their hands in the blood of their neighbors." [10]
The editorial did not name the two persons who were the originators of the quarrel nor the reason for it but said:
Nor did the editorial name the "distant locality" in Los Angeles County that became involved in the affair, "... exhibiting a willingness to imbrue their hands in the blood of their neighbors." However the news article on the shooting of the 20th gave an indication, naming one of the casualties wounded as "Frank Green of El Monte," a township in Los Angeles County, as one of the casualties. Frank Green would later appear in the 1860 census as a resident of El Monte.
The Star editorial finished with:
Nothing further appeared in the Los Angeles Star about who was involved in the affair or the reasons for the quarrel. It is not difficult to understand the reticence of the editor to criticize or name either party in the incident, when the populations of El Monte and San Bernardino were the primary buyers of advertisements and subscribers to his paper.
Interestingly, the the Terry - Brodrick duel, between leaders of the pro-slavery and free soil factions of the Democrat Party in California, had just occurred and Broderick died on the 16th, the day before the affair in San Bernardino began. The news of this duel, David C. Broderick's death and funeral and Terry's arrest all appeared in the Los Angeles Star a week later, with the news of the affair in San Bernardino.
The Los Angeles correspondent of the Daily Alta California visited San Bernardino soon after the event and reported what had happened:
The article of the Los Angeles correspondent of the Daily Alta California reported the names of the instigators Dr. Gentry and Dr. Ensworth [Ainsworth] that had a "difficulty" that nearly got Gentry "...shot dead, the ball cutting part of the flesh from his forehead." He noted that the "...friends of Gentry raised a cry of Mormonism, and sent for reinforcements of guns and men to the Monte." Monte was the town in Los Angeles County that had sent men to intervene, and Dr. Gentry's ability to easily summon such a force in such a short time indicated his strong connections with that town. It was the clue to his identity as a leading political figure in El Monte from the mid 1850's, who was attempting to advance still further in San Bernardino.
The Daily Alta reporter also indicated that the affair lasted for 3 days when he described the shootout at its climax on the 20th of Septiember: "The second day after, a man named Frank Green and Bethel Coopwood met on the street, when they commenced firing at each other." The Lieutenant Darius D. Clarke, commanding a company of United States soldiers, to whom the citizens applied for for assistance was the commander of Camp Prentice, an army camp located near Lytle Creek, now the site of the modern San Bernardino Valley College. [19] [20]
Benjamin F. Coopwood, brother of Bethel Coopwood, and one of the participants in the Affair wrote in a communication to the Southern Vinyard:
In the aftermath of the Affair in the following month of October, the name of F. Gentry appears in the Los Angeles Star in a list of arrivals of guests at the Bella Union Hotel in Los Angeles. In the month following the Affair, Frank Gentry seems to have lived elsewhere than San Bernardino, often in the Bella Union Hotel according to its register published each week in the Los Angeles Star. On October 15th, he registers first as being from the Monte. [22] Next on October 21st, from San Bernadino, and lastly from Cucamongo. [23] This last Bella Union register has Gentry there from sometime during the week ending the 21st of October. According to the schedule of the steamship SENATOR, Gentry probably left San Pedro for San Diego then to San Francisco on that ship on or about the 23rd of October, 1859. [24]
He is never mentioned again in California newspapers, except for in the Los Angeles Star, which were court notices of debt he owed, that date from September to December 1860.
From September of 1860 there appears in the Los Angeles Star for three months, an advertisement that features the name of F. Gentry. [25] The notice shows that he had incurred the debt of $614.14 at 3% per month on the 21st day of September, 1859, the day following the shootout in San Bernardino. It shows that as of August 1860 he had not paid it. They also show that by September 1, 1860 he was known to be living in Antoine Township, Arkansas. The 1860 Census shows him there as of June of that year living in a house next to that of his brother and his wife having $1600 of real estate and $350 in personal property. [26]
It would remain for later accounts and histories of San Bernardino, written over two decades after the event and the American Civil War, (the earliest in 1883), to suggest reasons for the two doctors personal quarrel and bring to light more details of their actions and those of their supporters in the Affair.
The first history to mention details about the Ainsworth - Gentry Affair was History of San Bernardino County, California, written and published by Wallace W. Elliott & Co. of San Francisco in 1883. It claimed to be based on the account of "the survivors of the affair with whom we conversed." It also named Dr. Gentry as Thomas Gentry, an error that continued in future histories and other accounts.
Marcus Katz, a San Bernardino merchant, who had been appointed to replace the county treasurer in 1857, and subsequently was confirmed in the office in 1858, 1859. Katz, who lived in the city until his death, wrote this of the affair in his Memoirs in the 1890's:
The first history to name the incident and claim that, Dr. Ainsworth, was anti-slavery and the other Dr. Gentry pro-slavery was Ingersoll's Century Annals of San Bernadino County, 1904. It also went on to give details from an eye-witness of and participant in the Affair. It gave details on the incidents where violence erupted between the two doctors, gives details of the attack on the house of Coopwood and the number and actions of Ainsworth's defenders and was the first to mention the use of the cannon from the 1856 Fort Benson affair by the Green faction against the house of Coopwood:
Dr. Franklin Gentry was definitely pro-slavery, as demonstrated by his leadership of that faction in El Monte in 1856. The veiws of Dr. Ainsworth, are unknown, but are characterized as "union in sentiment". This was at a time before the division of the country by a civil war had occured, so it may only be that he was abolitionist in sentiments. Additionally, the fact that at least two of his known defenders, the Coopwood brothers, had been in the same pro-slavery group as Gentry and Bethel later fighting for the Confederacy, makes this seem an unlikely basis of the quarrel between the two of them, particularly when contemporary accounts say the call for help from Gentry to El Monte was for aid against "Mormonism".
Putting the contemporary accounts and later accounts of eyewitnesses together we find it began:
This is the origin of the violent outbreak. It occurred at least two days before the announcement of the outcome of the election on the 19th and the shootout on the 20th. [32]: 46
Election results were announced and recorded on this day, Gentry and Greenwade had lost as had Coopwood. But events escalated:
The two principals in the Affair were both long dead by the time the first history of the affair was written in 1883. Dr. Alonso Ainsworth had remained in the city, as a doctor, and was appointed the county phsyician from 1862 to 1863 during the great smallpox epidemic that decimated the Native American population of the county, and had died in 1865.
Dr. Franklin "Frank" Gentry had left California about a month after the affair, returning to Arkansas, where he was recorded in the June 1860 census living near his brother, in Antoine, Arkansas. During the American Civil War he served in the 19th Arkansas Infantry Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant, until he resigned in 1862, and died in 1864.
Doctor Franklin "Frank" Gentry was so forgotten in San Bernardino by 1883, that he was either misnamed Thomas Gentry by the survivors interviewed by Wallace W. Elliott, author of the 1883, History of San Bernardino County, California or by a mistake of the author himself. Elliott may not have had access to contemporary newpaper accounts in the Los Angeles Star that would have identified him correctly.
Thomas Gentry was a real person formerly a resident of El Monte, but not a doctor, nor the person of political influence that Dr. Frank Gentry was. Thomas J. Gentry had married a widow of a husband murdered by bandits at El Monte in 1855. Thomas Gentry had subsequently abandoned her and their children in 1858 leaving them in financial distress and owing property taxes on her land, and had come to San Bernardino County about that time. His wife divorced him on the basis of desertion in 1860 but claimed to be a widow in the census that year. Thomas Gentry does not appear in the 1860 Census in San Bernardino.
Coopwoods older brother, a former Justice of the Peace in El Monte, Benjamin F. Coopwood, age 36, who also lived with his wife in San Bernardino had joined in aiding his younger brothers Bethel and David, using his house to shelter Ainsworth, and presumeably joined in defending it from the El Monte mob. All were recorded as still living in San Bernardino in the 1860 Census. Andrew and his wife left for Texas with his brothers in 1861 and remained there. Bethel and David Coopwood with their brother Benjamin Franklin Coopwood remained in San Bernardino after the affair, until the time of the Civil War. They all left San Bernardino for Texas. David Coopwood and his brother Benjamin Franklin Coopwood passed eastward through the warlike Apache in New Mexico Territory in 1861. They were falsely reported to have been killed in an Apache attack, both made it back to Texas. [37]
In Texas Bethel joined the Confederate Army, serving as a captain of a Spy Company during the Confederate campaign to establish Confederate Arizona. He was part of Sibley's attempt to capture the remainder of New Mexico in 1862, he and his Spy Company helped the survivors of the army to escape capture and return to Texas. After leaving the Confederate army in 1863, he was in Mexico in business with his brother David until David was killed by troops of Juan Cortina while the two were traveling down the Rio Grande on the steamboat "Belle" in 1865. [38] Bethel remained in Texas as a lawyer for the rest of his life.
Mat Walsh or Welch, was James Madison (Mat) Welch, formerly a non Mormon veteran of the Mormon Battalion and a resident of San Bernardino County from 1854. [39] He was listed as "Jas Welch" in the 1860 Census that shows he lived nearby James Greenwade, who at that time was running a tavern and hotel near the Butterfield Overland Mail station at Temescal. [40] Welch was accused and tried for horse theft along with a man named Harris in July 1861, only Welch was found guilty of petty theft and fined $250. [41] [42] [43] He and his family moved away from San Bernardino in 1878, but remained in Southern California working as a teamster, and died in a wagon accident near Nuevo, modern Ramona, were he was buried in 1894. [43]
Raymond "Taney" De La Montaque Woodward was the brother in law of Bethel Coopwood who had married his sister in 1859. He was listed as a constable in San Bernardino in the 1860 Census. [44] He remained in San Bernardino until his death on January 30, 1898 and would have been eye witnesses to be consulted in the 1883 history of the event. [45]
Of the identity of the remaining members of the Ainsworth faction nothing is known with certainty except that there were three others and that they were young men. However there are several likely candidates. Coopwood had another brother in law, Raymond's brother, William DeLa Monthena Woodward, a farmer, age 20. [46] Ainsworth had two brothers in law, Willard A. Wixom a blacksmith, age 22 and Nathan J. Wixom, a laborer, age 17. [47] [48] William Woodward and Willard Wixom lived until 1916 and Nathan Wixom until 1917 and would have been eye witnesses to be consulted in the 1883 or 1904 history of the event.
Francis (Frank) Green was shot and killed in Los Angeles on December 7, 1867. His killer was said to have been the son of a man he had killed in the past. Two men A. B. McDaniel and Francis Taylor were accused of the deed. McDaniel was held to answer. Charges against Taylor were dismissed. Disposition of McDaniel case are unknown. [49]
James Greenwade killed himself and a daughter and nearly the rest of his family with poison while he was drunk, at Cucamonga, in 1869. [50]: 86–87
The See brothers from Missouri, Joseph and John, had been with a wagon train passing down the Mormon Road to California with their sister and her family, very soon after the Mountain Meadows Massacre and saw the bodies of the newly slaughtered party. They took up land near San Bernardino when they arrived there in December 1857. Apparently motivated by what they had seen, the brothers must have joined Gentry's faction against "Mormonism" and stood by Gentry and Green to the end. However this must have made them unwelcome in the area thereafter. Soon after the Affair these two had sold their land along the Santa Ana River and leaving their sister there, moved to San Luis Obispo County becoming teamsters there by the time of the 1860 census and there they remained. See Canyon in that county bears the families name. [51] [52]
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