An Essay submitted to the California Pioneers of Santa Clara County, San Jose, California by Roger E. Rosenberg describing the life and times of James Frazier Reed, San Jose citizen from arrival in 1846 until his death in 1874.

Introduction

James F. Reed led a long and useful life.  Though born in Ireland, most of his seventy-four years were spent in America.  Arriving as a young immigrant boy with his mother, he went on to establish himself as a successful businessman.  He was also one of the many courageous pioneers who crossed the country in the 1840’s.  In April 1846 he left from Springfield, Illinois en route to California.  Although the organizer of the expedition, it does not bear his name; instead, it has come down through history to us as the Donner Party.

Yet James F. Reed already had accomplished a great deal with his life before 1846, and he would achieve even more in the years to follow as he settled in San Jose, California.  He helped make two cities the capitals of their states: Springfield, Illinois and San Jose, California, respectively.  He served with Abraham Lincoln in the Black Hawk War, and later as a First Lieutenant during the Battle of Santa Clara in January 1847 (with Captain Charles Weber’s Company of United States Rangers).

Though he faced serious personal and financial setbacks during his lifetime, he emerged as a successful businessman and much-respected benefactor of San Jose.  Integrity, honor, and conviction are words often misapplied or over-used these days, but they are qualities that James Reed possessed in abundance.  The fatherless boy from Ireland made his mark in the world at last, and this is the story of how he did it.

II

Reed was not without his faults.  During the Donner Party expedition across the country, he apparently struck some of the other members of the party as haughty and arrogant in his manner.  Having more wealth and comfort than others, it has been suggested that at times he was over-bearing.  Reference also has been made to his temper and depth of emotional passion: “warm in his friendships, bitter in his hate” as Frederic Hall put it in his History of San Jose.

His military rank of “lieutenant” in California was self-awarded, more than earned; and his participation in Weber’s Company put him in league with men who did not behave entirely honorably during California’s phase of the Mexican-American War.

This charge might bear more weight were it not obvious that he was acting on his commitment to round up more men to form search-and-rescue parties for the stranded Donner Party members.  Yet at least one writer—Dorothy Regnery—has gone so far as to question the amount of time it took Reed to detach himself from Weber’s Rangers and begin the return trip via San Francisco.

More fundamentally, some writers have criticized him for his leadership of the Donner Party, suggesting that the delay in reaching the Sierra Nevadas was largely his fault–this, because some of the wagons attempted a short-cut to California.  They did so because of Reed, even though he was acting on the recommendation of an earlier pioneer, Mr. Hastings, whom Reed trusted.

The “short-cut” into the Salt Lake Basin was supposed to link them to the California Trail and save them 400 miles over the Oregon Trail.  It did not; it left them at the mercy of desert heat and thirst and turned the journey into a life-threatening disaster.  Lost to most brief histories, however, is the fact that a letter sent back to Reed—warning him of the peril—was deliberately not delivered to him by men with a vested economic interest in pushing the new trail to emigrants.

There is also the grave matter of the fight in which Reed killed another man.  Although generally conceded to have been self-dense, it still raises the question: what kind of man was this?  Behaving in an imperious manner, committing the wagon train to a disastrous “short cut” (80 days in the desert instead of the estimated 40), killing a man with a knife, and facing banishment in the vast reaches of the mountains and forced to proceed alone and on foot: what kind of man was this James F. Reed?

This essay hopes to answer that question by showing another side of the man: more complex, compassionate, and caring than any over-simplified caricature of him would lead us to believe.  He was an ordinary human being who at times found himself caught up in the most extraordinary of circumstances.  He had a keen intellect and good judgment, and those qualities served him well through many a severe crisis that might have been the undoing of a lesser man.

His was not a story-book personality, gussied up and glossed over by smooth literary inventions; his character was formed by the adversity and harsh reality of daily living which, in his case, involved an agonizingly slow wagon train trek westward, a débâcle in the mountains, a Herculean rescue effort, and, at long last, a new life in San Jose, California.

The French have a saying that great men have personalities strongly marked by contradictory traits, and I think we will do well to remember this adage in dealing with the life of James Frazier Reed.

 

San Jose: From Mexican to American Rule

To appreciate better the character of James Reed, it is prudent to offer a brief picture of California at the time of his arrival, still under the sovereignty of Mexico.

The story of Father Serra and the Missions is well-known and need not be recounted in detail here; it suffices to say that in 1769 Father Serra arrived in Alta California, charged with the task of founding a string of Missions to help strengthen Spain’s control of the land through actual occupancy.  Starting in San Diego, twenty-one missions were established, including ones in San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Jose.

During the 1770’s, more and more expeditions were sent out from Mexico, by sea and land, to find suitable land for pasture, farming, and settling.  One such area, rich in good farmland, turned out to be San Jose.  The first Spanish-speaking settlers[1] brought many domesticated animals with them, and then set about bringing the land under cultivation.  They were charged with the task of growing food for the military personnel at the Presidio and the churchmen at Mission Dolores in San Francisco.[2]

Largely by coincidence, then, at the same time as the American War of Independence was raging among the thirteen colonies of the Atlantic seaboard, San Jose was being founded as the first civil settlement in California.  Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, while one year later, in November 1777, San Jose was founded.  As America grew in the East, the new town of San Jose—and all of California, in point of fact—would remain part of Spain’s Colonial Empire until Mexico finally won its independence in 1821.

For over forty years San Jose was part of Spain and for the next quarter-century it remained part of Mexico.  Altogether the town of San Jose had been in existence for nearly seventy years (1777-1846) before the James Reed family arrived.  Hence, the Reeds, and the other families like them who came in the 1840’s and 1850’s, cannot be thought of as the original founders of the town.  Yet many of them left a strong mark upon the San Jose of their own day and greatly influenced San Jose’s future.  They brought with them courage and determination, a knowledge of industry and commerce, as well as a willingness to work hard and contribute generously to their adopted town’s growth.  It is important to note, however, that the Reeds came to a “Pueblo” that was already well-established.

Nevertheless, the Reeds are still truly pioneers in another sense in light of their earlier travels and ordeals, especially what they endured on the overland trail to California, which took them many months to complete.  In short, San Jose has had many pioneers and pioneering days were by no means over in the 1840’s (before the Gold Rush of 1848-49, which would change dramatically the character of the emigrant California population once more).

It was simply a new breed of American pioneer that began appearing in San Jose at this time.  Yet, to deepen one’s sense of the historical context, it is necessary to remember that settling in San Jose for the Reeds meant living under Mexican rule, at least at first.  Of course, the Reed family came in at the very tail-end of this period, for even as they arrived the Mexican-American War was underway and soon to change the destiny of California, Texas, and the Southwest forever.

The outcome of the War[3] redefined political boundaries and allegiances, which in turn strongly impacted both the old and new residents of San Jose.  The change-over from Mexican to American rule necessarily involved a patriotic readjustment on the part of California’s small but growing population.  Yet at the same time, much of what San Jose’s first Spanish-speaking families had established—including an agricultural tradition and joyous fiesta celebrations—readily carried over into subsequent periods of San Jose’s development and expansion.

Hard-working, productive, and civic-minded citizens would determine the real future of San Jose.  In this context and at this point in San Jose’s early history, James F. Reed emerges as one of the town’s most distinguished citizens.  It is to look at the specific nature of his contributions that we will next turn.

James F. Reed, Pioneer

Among the American pioneer families arriving in San Jose in 1846-47 was one named Reed.  The father, James Reed, had come a long way from the land of his birth.  Born in Ireland in 1800, he died in San Jose in 1874.  After emigrating to America with his widowed mother, he lived in Virginia and Illinois before deciding to make the difficult pioneer journey to California, where he spent the remainder of his life.  He lived nearly thirty years in San Jose, from 1846-1874.  As Frederic Hall wrote in his biographical sketch:

“James F. Reed was born in Ireland on the fourteenth day of November, 1800, and came to the United States with his widowed mother when a very small child.  After he arrived at a sufficient age to be of some service to himself, his mother sent him to the state of Virginia, to live with a relative of hers, when he was placed as a clerk in the store of that relative, and there remained until about the age of twenty-five.  He then removed to the lead mine district of Illinois, where he engaged in the business of mining until the year 1831, when he changed his abode to Springfield, in the same State.”[4]

James Reed also served in the Black Hawk War (1832) and was a private in the same company as Abraham Lincoln.  Early in life, while still in Illinois, Reed proved successful in several businesses, most notably mining and railroading.  He undoubtedly would have become an even wealthier man “had not the state of Illinois repudiated the payment of railroad contracts: that is, she passed laws, compelling contractors to compromise on her own terms, whereby Mr. Reed became a loser of many thousand dollars.”[5]

Eventually, like many another man, he dreamed of going to the land called California.  His wife’s poor health contributed to this decision: “Mr. James Frazier Reed was impelled to take this trip by the condition of his wife’s health, which at that time was so precarious that a change of scene and climate was imperative.”[6]  He set his organizing skills to the task at hand.  As we shall describe later in more detail, the journey ended in disaster in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range.  “Mr. Reed arrived in California with but scanty means; what little he had to spare was invested in land.  He was engaged in the service of his country in 1846-47, and commanded a company on the right of the artillery, in the battle at Santa Clara, January 2d. 1847.”[7]

Reed’s life was thus long and eventful, and, at times, beset both by setbacks and controversy.  Although his name would not be readily recognized by most San Joseans today, he was once one of San Jose’s best known residents.  After his arrival in San Jose, he went prospecting, struck gold, and then returned home to buy land.  His period of “ups and downs”, of advance and setback, was coming to a close; he would remain successful and fairly prosperous for the duration of his life.[8]  He thus figures prominently in the land history of the city.  The Reed family itself “settled on 500 acres between First Street and Coyote Creek.”[9]

As Stephen Payne writes: “A large portion of downtown San Jose, south of the university, was originally land subdivided by Reed, who named the streets for family members.”[10]  Patricia Loomis continues the account in her book, which deals with street names in San Jose and the story behind them.  In describing the area around the Reed home, she writes: “Here ‘Signposts’ on all the east-west streets except one bear names of members of the Reed family—Reed, Margaret (his wife), Virginia and Martha (daughters), Keyes (Mrs. Sarah Keyes, his mother-in-law), Carrie, Patterson, and Lewis (grandchildren).”[11]

Reed fought hard to have San Jose declared the first capital of California: “He was one of nineteen men who signed to put up money for the first capital . . .”[12]  In point of fact, nearly half of the $34,000 raised came from Reed.  As Loomis observes: “He helped make Springfield the capital of Illinois and was to do the same for San Jose in the new state of California.

“It was lucky for San Jose Reed chose the little pueblo in which to make a home for his family.  He served in the town’s early government and put up much of the $34,000 to provide the first State Legislature with a capitol building in 1849.

“He was never reimbursed for his generosity, but was given a number of lots and squares as security.  In 1851 when the value of his property (including 115 lots, Washington Square, St. James Park and three other squares) had greatly increased, he deeded them back to the city for their 1849 value of only $1,549.”[13]

In short, Reed contributed a great deal of his time, money, and energy to the fledgling American town and yet, if his name is remembered at all, it is more commonly associated with the Donner Party’s tragic snowbound months in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.  And so let us travel back in time and visit that period of greatest crisis, to gain another sort of glimpse into the character and life of James F. Reed, pioneer.

Trapped in the Mountains

Even before his personal contributions to the growth of San Jose began, Reed was well-known as a member of the famous—many would say ill-fated—Donner Party.  Eighty-seven men, women, and children trekked bravely into the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the fall of 1846, but they did not manage to cross the summit before the first great winter storm hit in late October 1846, when the mountains soon became wrapped in a frozen silence.  Heavy snowfalls made walking through waist-deep drifts impossible, although they struggled on for as long as they had any strength left with which to try.  Bitterly cold temperatures, as well as lack of food and supplies, threatened to turn these mountains into a graveyard for each of them.

As it was, the mountains became the final resting place for nearly half of them.  That all of these California-bound pioneers did not perish is due in large measure to the exertions of James Reed, albeit through a set of most unusual circumstances.  Reed, after reaching California, made repeated efforts to rescue his wife, four children, and the other families who remained trapped in the bitter cold and deep snow.  They were caught in the middle of an unusually severe winter that was to make rescue efforts as equally difficult as any further travel by the entrapped and starving pioneers.

James Reed had been forced to go on ahead of the rest of the party, alone and on foot, through the mountains to California because in a bitter altercation with another man near the Humboldt River,[14] Reed had killed the man in self-defense.  The adult members of the Donner Party met and banished Red from traveling any farther with them: swift rudimentary justice.  Surprisingly, although forced to complete part of the journey alone and over unknown land, Reed made it, arriving at Sutter’s Fort on October 28, 1846.  He then began to organize relief-and-rescue parties, an effort much complicated by internal California politics and the Mexican-American War.

But I anticipate our story once again.  Let us return to a description of James Reed, as he might have been seen in late October of 1846: stumbling down out of the wintry Sierra Nevadas, half-frozen, days without food, and—utterly exhausted—making his way to Sutter’s Fort, there to recover and begin the task of trying to save the lives of any survivors in the lonely cabins around Donner Lake.  Was there hope for them?

Their hopes depended on James Reed, although at the time—during that long period of frozen captivity—they could not have even known if he had survived and made it safely out of the mountains after he left them.  Indeed, out of sheer desperation, another group from the snowbound Donner Party tried to finish crossing the mountains.

The Forlorn Hope, as this group of fifteen brave men and women became known, left in December of 1846 to break out of their icy winter entombment.  A month passed: nothing.  What did the remaining survivors around Truckee Lake (later, Donner Lake) feel and think?

No one was coming.  No Reed, no member of the Forlorn Hope returned.  Had they made it?  Or had they perished?  All the hopes of the survivors depended on rescue, or else all was lost.  Unbeknownst to those who waited for rescue, the snows had also been unusually heavy on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada range, much delaying—but not preventing—the final rescue.

As a consequence of the heavy snows that winter of 1846-47, the “rescue” would prove no simple affair to arrange.  For whoever made the attempt, it meant plunging into a deep, white blanket of snow, without roads or maps or certainty of direction.  The rescuers themselves would be risking their own lives in trying to get to the Donner Lake area at an elevation of some 7,000 feet.

In short, it was not at all clear if the rescuers would be able to penetrate the dense banks and walls of snow in order to complete such a mission: in fact, the first men could not.

Disappointed, defeated by ice, wind, cold, and snow, the first rescue parties were forced to turn back.  The mountains were impassable.  For one man, however, “giving up” was not an option.  For James Reed, to give up was unthinkable.  Perhaps because he had endured so much already, he had gained special insight into the limits of human endurance.  Perhaps it was because the lives of his own wife and children were at stake.  Impossible or not, he had to learn how to organize rescue teams in such a way that they could succeed.  His wife and his four children were still alive and waiting for his return; he would not give up!  He would rescue them—or die trying.

If the first attempts failed, there was only one answer: to try again!—racing against time, hoping for the best, fearing the worst, never knowing if he would ever see any of his family alive!

Desperate for men to help him but finding none due to the political turmoil, he headed south to San Francisco to try and raise enough men there for a successful rescue party.  He found it necessary during this time to become part of the American military action: “He was First Lieutenant of Captain Charles M. Weber’s Company of United States Rangers of the Pueblo of San Jose and helped to defeat the enemy in the Battle of Santa Clara, January 2, 1847, while he was enroute to procure relief for the Reed-Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.”[15]

Reed’s sojourn among Weber’s Rangers while engaged in organizing a relief-and-rescue party was more than expedient: it was absolutely necessary and ultimately proved to be the key to his success.  There, in San Francisco, he got the promise of the men he needed: “Commodore Hull consented to send relief to the starving immigrants, and men were paid four dollars a day to enlist in their behalf.  The Commodore sent an order by Mr. Reed to Mr. Yount at Napa for meat and flour; Mr. Yount had a presentiment of starving immigrants, and at the time the order reached him had Indians drying meat and grinding flour.”[16]

Commodore Hull’s actions in turn made possible the eventual rescue from the mountains of numerous survivors.  Along with seven members of the Forlorn Hope and Reed himself, forty-seven members of the Donner Party survived in all.  One suspects that any one of them by then gladly would have forgiven James Reed his earlier misdeed; in place of the life he took, he helped bring forth nearly forty souls from the frozen summit.  He himself endured a spell of snow blindness, yet still managed to lead the rescue of thirteen of the trapped party—including his wife Margaret and the two youngest of his children, 3-year-old Tommy and 8-year-old Patty.

“Each of the relief parties, especially that conducted by Mr. Reed endured sufferings equal to those experienced by the unfortunates in the winter camp.  History has no parallel to the heroism displayed by these people in their efforts to rescue suffering relatives and friends.”[17]

As part of the saga of the Donner Party tale, Reed’s own family—initially the family with the biggest and best-supplied wagons in the whole outfit—had by stages of bad luck and adversity fallen on ever harder times, even before the tragedy in the mountains struck and threatened to write their final epitaphs.  Ultimately, they lost nearly everything: all their animals and material possessions, becoming dependent on charity from others.  And now, by strange irony, Fortune smiled on them once more.  Reed’s was only one of two families that survived intact.

In that undulating series of successes and setbacks that marked his life, here—at perhaps the darkest hour—came a success more important to him than any of his commercial ventures: the triumphant rescue of his entire family, alive and intact!  Not a single Reed perished in the mountains.  All survived to reach California and went on to lead useful and productive lives.

What kind of man was James Reed, then?  In the final analysis, no one can dare gainsay this truth:

“He assisted in rescuing 13 of the members, including three of his own family, and delivered them to Captain John A. Sutter, at Sutter’s Fort near Sacramento.  He and Mrs. Reed subscribed $500 of the sum of $780 raised in San Jose for the relief of the distressed immigrants and was a  member of the committee appointed by Josiah Belden, then Mayor of the city, to co-operate with the Mayor and Common Council in the relief work undertaken.”[18]

The one man banished from the Donner Party clearly played the pivotal role in the rescue of half of the trapped families.  The Donner Party would have been an even greater disaster had it not been for his willingness to use all of his physical strength and material resources to effect this rescue.

The great physical stamina he demonstrated and the new sufferings he endured in re-entering the mountains before the snows had melted in the high country make for a thrilling, courageous adventure tale in its own right.  The “banished one” was now a hero in the eyes of many.  For others who knew him, and perhaps in his own eyes as well, James Reed remained simply a family man: unpretentious, generous, and compassionate.  He did what he had to do—a modern-day adage which covers well both the modesty and arrogance, the mistakes and triumphs, the anger and the love, of his long and productive life.

Life in San Jose

Although one might think James Reed had experienced enough adventure and heartache for a lifetime, especially after his cross-country trek and the débâcle in the mountains, he was again soon on the move.  Not long after arriving in San Jose, Reed was off to the gold fields: “After the discovery of gold, he was among the numerous ones who tried their fortunes at gold hunting, at which he was successful.  He returned to San Jose with considerable means, part of which he invested in land.”[19]

It was the timely purchase of land with the precious metal which partly explains how such men, including Reed, positioned themselves to play such leading roles in the subsequent history of San Jose.  But wealth alone does not explain it all.  Others have gotten rich and squandered their fortunes.  Men have been consumed by greed, allowing an obsession with wealth ruin their better judgment.  Not these men—not James Reed.  To the contrary, he felt a keen sense of civic pride and social responsibility toward others and toward the “pueblo” of San Jose.  As Frederic Hall writes:

“He was a most generous man, possessing much public spirit: social and entertaining at his own house.  He is strong in his convictions, warm in his friendships, bitter in his hate; but honorable in apologizing if satisfied that he has been in the wrong.  In 1850, he had large offers made him for his real estate: but, believing in the growth of this city, refused to part with it.  He has been permitted to live nearly three quarters of a century, in fair health, and to see the city, for which he did so much, rising in wealth and prosperity, and assuming that rank and position which he long ago prophesied.  May he live long to witness its advancing growth.”[20]

Here, too, we must weigh Reed’s actions in order to better evaluate his character.  The story of the mountains is only part of the man; it is equally vital to ascertain how he conducted himself in San Jose during its transition from Mexican to American rule, and in the next quarter-century that followed.  There are numerous stories associated with his name; one of them is the great effort he made on behalf of San Jose becoming the first capital of the new state of California.  At first successful, then defeated, he nevertheless used his influence, intelligence, and a considerable amount of his own money to make San Jose the state’s capital[21]: “From first to last, he spent of his own means not much less than twenty thousand dollars in behalf of San Jose, hoping to make it the Capital.”[22]

Had it not been for the heavy rains that winter which turned the unpaved roads into a sea of mud for the delegates, he would have succeeded here, too!  “If one man in one lifetime can know many successes and failures”, then Reed was no exception to this maxim.  Once more, Reed was to lose out on a major prospect.  For the torrential rains and lack of adequate buildings in San Jose gave General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo the very opportunity he was seeking to establish the capital in Vallejo.

Offering a large amount of land, buildings, and a considerable sum of money, Vallejo made a determined effort to get the capital moved: “Seeing that the tide was turning against them, the San Joseans, through James F. Reed, offered four blocks of land and 160 lots, the lots to be sold to raise money for the building of the capitol.”[23]  But it was “too little, too late” and General Vallejo carried the day.  Reed’s efforts, including his trip to Monterey with Charles White and the seventeen thousand dollars he raised, went for naught.[24]

Nonetheless, San Jose’s brief glory as the state’s first capital under American rule was due to men like Reed and his friends.  Despite losing a large sum of money put up for that purpose, Reed continued to guide the development of San Jose by deeding back to the city part of his land acquisitions, including many measured lots and five squares: “Lieutenant Reed was a great benefactor of San Jose and he and his estimable wife gave in trust to the city, St. John’s Square, East Square, Santa Rosa Square, St. James Square and Washington Square,”[25] intended to be used as parks “forever” by the people of San Jose.  These parks we still enjoy today.

II

Reed went on to engage in many civic activities.  One must recall the political context to understand properly Reed’s role in San Jose: “The governance of the pueblo fell into the hands of Americans shortly after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo . . . The ayuntamiento (town council) continued to function from the end of the Mexican-American war in 1847 until the city was incorporated in March 1850 . . . One of the prime movers in the community was James Frazier Reed.  Reed was not only a wagonmaster, miner, farmer, and land speculator but a remarkable lobbyist as well.  It was Reed, in alliance with Charles White . . . who put into gear the machinations necessary to make San Jose the seat of the first state capitol.”[26]

Frederic Hall adds these details: “ . . . the people of San Jose held a meeting, at which Messrs. Charles White and James F. Reed were elected as a committee, to proceed to Monterey, and exert their influence with the members [of the State Convention] in order to have San Jose fixed in the Constitution as the permanent seat of the government. . .”[27]  And Peter Conmey, in “First Families of San Jose”, states directly: “The Reed family was one of the most prominent in the development of the city.  James F. Reed held public office before California was admitted to statehood . . .”[28]

Reed was also involved in various businesses and commercial enterprises; for example: “James F. Reed was the first American known to dry fruits commercially in California while he was in charge of the farm and gardens at Mission San Jose.”[29]  In addition, he was a founding member of the Masonic Lodge in San Jose, which was granted a charter by the Grand Lodge of Masons of California on July 11, 1850.

Even many years later, in 1932, when the San Jose Mercury News ran a series called “When San Jose Was Young”, Reed’s name could be found in a small news item.  The series featured a record of events of the same week 70 years ago: “The petition of James F. Reed . . . to open Almaden Street, was presented to the city council at its meeting of April 7 [1862].”[30]

As a businessman, Reed paid attention to practical details.  As a citizen, he concerned himself with projects for the betterment of the city.  While it is true that Reed kept a close eye on his wealth and his family’s financial well-being, this is no more than what one would expect from an individual with money and land to his name.  Rather, it is the generosity that accompanied his business dealings which clearly indicates a man with civic pride and a social conscience.

Both he and his wife were active socially as well.  As Eugene T. Sawyer notes in his book: “The Reed home was always the scene of social gatherings, and at one of their large dinner parties it is said that Mrs. Reed paid sixteen dollars apiece for turkeys, and bought all that were to be had.”[31]  Apparently we should not make light of this tradition of home entertainment, for a descendant of Reed’s confirms the merriment was extensive: “According to Reed’s great-grandson Frazier Reed of San Jose, ‘I remember my grandfather and my Aunt Patty telling about life in the pueblo and of the parties that went on for days and days’.”[32]

It is, of course, much harder to imagine a house that no longer exists than one that does, and, unfortunately, Reed’s family home had to give way before the expanding needs of the automobile and social progress: “The Reed home in San Jose stood at Third and Margaret street for many years.  A plaque put up on the site by the San Jose Historic Landmarks Commission was removed to make way for an on-ramp for the freeway which was opened in December, 1972.”[33]

Although the house is gone, his legacy lives on.  And if San Jose has grown and prospered as a city while retaining much of the vitality and integrity of its earliest traditions, men like Reed had much to do with shaping the city’s character and growth.  Reed’s later life is a proud part of San Jose’s history, and it is my purpose to help pass on his story to another generation.

Conclusion

The French adage comes to mind once more: that great men have personalities strongly marked by contradictory traits.  James Frazier Reed led a long and adventurous life, and we should not single out any one episode by which to assess him.  We cannot ignore the criticism aimed at him when it is suggested he had an arrogant personality marked by a fiery temperament, yet on the whole we see from the record of his life a man who was also kind, generous, and frequently motivated by civic conscience.  Nor can we completely dismiss allegations raised as to the competence of his wagon train leadership.  On balance, however, we see a hard-working, well-intentioned man who on occasion made mistakes, most notably as a result of depending on others who proved unreliable.  It is foolish to try and lay the entire blame of the Donner Party tragedy on Reed, when so many other factors and personages were involved.

Offset this dubious allegation with the tremendous effort he made in organizing the relief-and-rescue parties who saved forty-seven lives at the risk of their own, and we see the real James Reed: a man far more determined and courageous than a quick and convenient interpretation of events would lead us to believe.  Reed himself did not write of these events save once, and then he broke his silence only to counter another survivor’s published account that was too full of inaccuracies for him to countenance.  His own tone is calm and factual, and wherever he can clearly demonstrate falsehood or error, he drives the point home.

The mere fact that he never gave up his effort to organize relief parties, no matter what expense or physical exertion it entailed, speaks volumes as to the real character of the man.  That he was ultimately successful in rescuing his entire family, along with many others, should quiet those critics who think that somehow he could have done more sooner.

Those critics were not there; they do not know the hardships involved in attempting to climb into the Sierra Nevada mountains in the middle of one of the worst winters ever and which saw at least eight major snowstorms lasting days at a time.  When life hung in the balance in the snowy reaches of the high Sierras at over 7,000 feet in elevation—where one drift was measured at 30 feet deep—he still managed to get there in time to save his wife, four children, and many others!  To ask more of the man from the comfort of our own homes all these years later is simply not to face honestly the tremendous obstacles and incredibly harsh winter conditions of his own day and time.

Yet it is not merely the James F. Reed of the Donner Party that this essay seeks to present to the reader, but rather the James F. Reed who was a successful businessman in Illinois before departing for California and the James F. Reed who settled in San Jose and contributed so much to the development of our city.  Even the story of how he helped to make San Jose the state’s first capital is but a small part of a much longer and distinguished record of civic endeavor on behalf of the once small Mexican pueblo, still in its infancy but beginning to grow to maturity as a bi-cultural American city.  He has been described by many as a great benefactor of San Jose, to which opinion this author readily agrees.  Whatever other shortcomings of temperament or judgment he might have occasionally shown during his long life, the general high tone of its moral purpose, along with his many personal successes and civic contributions, cannot be denied.

Dear reader, take a walk in St. James Park when you are done here, and remember well the name of a San Jose pioneer who eschewed greater wealth in order to bequeath it, along with four other squares, to the people of San Jose to enjoy as parks forever.  It is but one small contribution of James F. Reed to San Jose, yet one that can stand as representative of his life and his many other acts of generosity as well.  Remember the name James Frazier Reed with pride for he was truly one of San Jose’s most energetic, dedicated, and courageous pioneers arriving in the tumultuous decade of the 1840’s.  He steered a straight course with a steady hand and never wavered in his devotion to his family, friends, and the larger community.

We would do well to admire and encourage others who would emulate one such as he, for history is not likely to produce others like him any time soon.  That generation may be nearly forgotten, but their good deeds and legacy live on after them, to our own benefit and the betterment of our city, San Jose.  James F. Reed was but one of many who helped San Jose to grow and prosper during the second half of one century, showing the way—far down the road—for its preeminence in the electronic Computer Age at the close of the next.

And yet, no matter how much our Technology grows, the individual contributions of men and women from an earlier time, who contributed so richly to our city’s development, will never lessen in significance.  For their character has become part of our city’s character, and of all who live here.  Part of San Jose’s reputation for honest, responsible, and caring city government—which values both civic cooperation and popular participation—derives from those early pioneers.

I believe this is the true legacy of James F. Reed, who gave so much of his time and energy to his beloved San Jose.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arbuckle, Clyde (former San Jose City Historian)

Santa Clara County Ranchos (San Jose: Rosicrucian Press, 1968, 1973).  Cartography and illustrations by Ralph Rambo.

Beilharz, Edwin A.  San Jose, California’s First City (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Continental Heritage Press, 1980).

Cooper, Katherine Wakeman.  “Patty Reed”, Overland Monthly, Vol. LXVIII, No. 6, June 1917, pp. 517-520.

De Grazia, Ettore.  The Rose and the Robe: The Travels of Fray Junipero Serra in California (Palm Desert, California: Best-West Publications, 1968).  The Story of Father Serra in California, 1769-1794.

Hall, Frederic.  The History of San Jose and Surroundings with Biographical Sketches of Early Settlers (San Francisco: Bancroft and Company, 1871).

Johnson, Kristin, ed.  Unfortunate Emigrants: Narratives of the Donner Party (Logan, Utah: University Press, 1996).  See especially pages 184-200.

Loomis, Patricia.  Signposts (San Jose: San Jose Historical Museum Association, 1982).

Murphy, Virginia Reed.  “Across the Plains in the Donner Party (1846)”, The Century, July 1891 Vol. 42, n.s. 20, pp. 409-426.

Payne, Stephen M.  Santa Clara Harvest: Harvest of Change (U.S.A.: Windsor Publications, 1987).

Pierce, Marjorie.  San Jose and Its Cathedral (Santa Cruz: Western Tanager Press, 1990).

Rambo, Ralph.  Adventure Valley: Stories of Santa Clara Valley Pioneers (San Jose: Rosicrucian Press, 1970).

__________        Pioneer Blue Book of the Old Santa Clara Valley (San Jose: Rosicrucian Press, 1973).  See p. 28 especially.

Regnery, Dorothy.  The Battle of Santa Clara: January 2, 1847 (San Jose, California: Smith and McKay, 1978).

Sawyer, Eugene T.  History of Santa Clara County, California (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1922).

Wills, Probate Court, Volume C, May 31, 1873 – July 24, 1875, Santa Clara County.  “The Last Will and Testament of James Frazier Reed”, p. 316-325.

Acknowledgements

Much of my research was accomplished at the California Room of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Main Library* and the Archives at the San Jose Historical Museum.

Warm thanks are in order for the dedicated staff of both places, and most especially to Archivist Leslie Masunaga of the San Jose Historical Museum Association for her generous help in providing relevant materials.  Without the aid of Ms. Masunaga, and others like her, this essay could not have been completed in a timely manner.

 

_________________________

*Note: the author means the “old library” on San Carlos Avenue, not the current one at Fourth and San Fernando, a fabulous partnership between the city and San Jose State University.  Of incidental noteworthiness, the university’s mailing address always includes “One Washington Square”: one of the squares bequeathed by James Frazier Reed!    

-R. Rosenberg on June 30, 2012

-San Jose, California

 

[1] Although the head of an expedition might be a Spanish explorer—born in Spain—most of the original settlers themselves were from small towns and villages in northern Mexico where Captain Juan Bautista de Anza had done much of his recruiting.

[2] Anyone who compares San Francisco’s cooler climate, foggy days, and chilly winds with San Jose’s long hot summers can readily understand why San Jose was better suited to growing crops than San Francisco.  As Mark Twain supposedly remarked, the coldest winter he ever spent was one summer in San Francisco!

[3] The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War, was signed in February 1848.

[4] Hall, Frederic, The History of San Jose (San Francisco: Bancroft and Company, 1871), p. 369.

[5] Ibid. p. 370.

[6] Cooper, Katherine Wakeman, “Patty Reed”, Overland Monthly, Vol. LXVIII, No. 6, June 1917, p. 517.

[7] Hall, History of San Jose, pp. 370-71.

[8] James F. Reed’s real estate holdings were valued at $30,000 at the time of his death.  See Wills, Probate Court, Vol. C, May 31, 1873-July 24, 1875, Santa Clara County, “The Last Will and Testament of James Frazier Reed”, p. 316-325.

[9] Loomis, Patricia, Signposts (San Jose: San Jose Historical Museum Association, 1982), p. 71.

[10] Payne, Stephen M., Santa Clara County: Harvest of Change (USA: Windsor Publications, 1987), p. 51.

[11] Loomis, Signposts, p. 71.  His wife’s mother, Mrs. Keyes, did not survive the trip to California: “Mrs. Keyes, who was 75 when the family left Illinois, died early on the trip and was buried along the trail in what is now Kansas.” (Loomis, p. 73).

[12] Pierce, Marjorie, San Jose and Its Cathedral (Santa Cruz: Western Tanager Press, 1990), p. 36-37.

[13] Loomis, Signposts, p. 72.

[14] Ibid, p. 71.

[15] Scrapbook D, California Room Shelf, Main Library, p. 25: “Memorial Services to be Held at Grave of Late J. F. Reed Memorial-Day.”

[16] Cooper, “Patty Reed”, Overland Monthly, p. 519.

[17] Sawyer, Eugene T., History of Santa Clara County, California (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1922), p. 46.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Hall, The History of San Jose, p. 371.

[20] Ibid., p. 371-72.

[21] See Hall, Frederic, History of San Jose, Appendix A, for the story of the court litigation by which Reed and others tried to regain payment for the monies they put up to help make San Jose the first capital of California; by a curious set of judicial standards and reasoning, their suit was defeated.

[22] Hall, History of San Jose, p. 371.

[23] Sawyer, History of Santa Clara County, California, p. 62.

[24] San Jose was no longer the capital, although stories of the “Legislature of the Thousand Drinks” would not soon be forgotten!

[25] Scrapbook, D, p. 25, “Benefactor of San Jose”.

[26] Beilharz, Edwin A., San Jose, California’s First City (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Continental Heritage Press, 1980), p. 68-69.

[27] Hall, History of San Jose, p. 202.

[28] Conmey, Peter T., “First Families of San Jose”.  Found in Scrapbook D, California Room, Main Library.  Mr. Conmey wrote as the Grand Historian for the Native Sons of the Golden West.

[29] Beilharz, San Jose, California’s First City, p. 93.

[30] “When San Jose Was Young”, San Jose Mercury News, April 11, 1932, p. 2: “Donner Survivor in Petition to Council”.

[31] Sawyer, History of Santa Clara County, California, p. 93.

[32] Pierce, San Jose and Its Cathedral, p. 37.

[33] Loomis, Signposts, p. 73.

FINIS