Index

The following excerpt was taken from the book "The Hobson Family Lineage -- Descendants of George and Elizabeth Hobson", 1994, Compiled by Jay W. Hobson from The Hobson Family Data Exchange.

UNCLE TAYLOR AND THE GRIZZLY

The late Uncle John Taylor of Santa Rosa, related to me that in 1850 he started alone on horseback into Mendocino County at a point near where the McCracken party was camped. Reaching the south end of Anderson Valley about dark, wondering where he would put up for the night as settlers cabins were as scarce as hens teeth. Seeing a haystack, he rode around it and saw a man milking a cow. He asked him if he might spend the night with him. "Wall, stranger, we are hard put for accommodations as we are only camping but you are welcome to what we have," said the man. "We lately come to these parts, living in a tent, started to build, only to have the foundation of a house with the floor in. You might spread your blankets on the floor and sleep there." "All right, said Uncle John, I can sleep anywhere; all I lack is the chance." The man told Taylor that a few months previously, he had brought a drove of hogs from Petaluma which slept near the camp. A grizzly bear in the nearby hills sometimes came at night and carried away a hog. Armed only with a small bore muzzle-loading rifle, the man was loathe to attack the monarch of the wilds single handed but intended to secure help in order to exterminate the bruin.

Taylor was peacefully sleeping on the floor of the embryo house. About one o'clock that night, suddenly he was awakened by a terrible commotion and squealing in the hog colony, hogs fleeing for their lives in every direction, two or three hogs in their insane efforts to escape blindly ran across the floor of the cabin right over Uncle John in his blankets. Arising in the moonlight as the last of the fleeing hogs disappeared into the nearby gulches, Taylor saw the old grizzly walking over the ridge on his hind feet carrying a large sized porker in his "arms."

How many of us in this hectic material age think, care or realize the hazard, privations and hardships endured by the sterling, substantial characters of our pioneer ancestors? Men that were men, women that were women, Spartan characters in every sense, honest, charitable, considerate, those who blazed the western trail, builders of an empire fitted for posterity. Let us honor their memory and appreciate their Herculean efforts.