In my last posting,
brothers Dolores and Guadalupe Coronado had been involved in a shooting during
a saloon brawl in Napa’s Spanish town on March 14, 1868. Later the jury found the shooting by Dolores
was justified and he was released; Guadalupe was charged with assault and
battery, but was also released.
Whether they wanted to get
out of town or were chased out of town after the shooting and trial, the
Coronado brothers made a 140 mile trip south, probably by horseback, to the
small town of Snelling on the Merced River in Merced County, California, just
west of Yosemite. By horse it took them
a minimum of 7 days to make the trip. What
was the reason they traveled to an area far away from their extended family – and
why Snelling?
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| The 140-mile trip from Napa to Snelling |
But regardless of the
reason, they ended up on the 172-acre farm of a Dr. Joshua Griffith in April
1868. The April 25, 1868 Napa County
Recorder[1]
printed the following story:
The
Mariposa Gazette gives the following particulars of the killing of the
Mexicans, Dolores and Guadalupe Coronado, who, it will be remembered were
implicated in the late shooting affray in Spanishtown: “Two Mexicans were killed at Doctor Griffith's
ranch on the Merced River, just below Snelling, one day last week. The circumstances, so far as we can ascertain,
are as follows: The two
men drank wine in Griffith's house until pretty boozy, and then commenced to
abuse the Doctor; high words passed; one of the Mexicans threatened to shoot
the Doctor, and he replied: ‘You had not better draw your six-shooter on me,
for I have one that shoots pretty hard.’ The Mexican drew and the Doctor fired upon
him, shooting him through the heart. The
other Mexican said: ‘Now, you've killed my brother. I'm going to kill you.’ The Doctor, being a dead shot, brought him
down. He lived for a short time. Doctor Griffith had a hearing at Snelling and
was acquitted.”
Frontier
justice? Dr. Griffith, 63, was a
prominent early pioneer in Merced County – he was a medical doctor and farmer
and the shooting took place in his farm home.
He was the only witness to the shooting and it may have occurred exactly
as described. After all, the Coronado
brothers had just the previous month been involved in a shooting in Napa. We can guess that the first Coronado brother to
threaten Dr. Griffith was Dolores.
Joshua Griffith
would live to be 94 years old. He was
born in Pennsylvania in 1800, lived in Ohio, studied medicine in West Virginia,
took a wagon train to Santa Fe, NM, then lived in El Paso, TX. He settled in Sonora, Mexico, met Francisca
Arias, a native of Mexico, and married her in 1844. In 1848 he moved his family to the Merced
area where he was engaged in ranching and mining and started his medical
practice.[2]
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| Joshua & Francesca Griffith |
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| Dolores Coronado |
Back to the
question as to why the Coronado brothers were shot in the home of someone who
lived on a farm in an out-of-the-way place 140 miles from Napa. All indications from Coronado family records
and oral history are that the Coronado family came from Sonora, Mexico. Could Griffith and/or his wife, Francesca,
have known the extended Coronado family in Sonora? If they did, it would have made sense for
Dolores and Guadalupe to make the long trip to see someone they knew or their
family knew. Maybe this is why they were
there. But what a tragic ending to the
visit.
Meanwhile, what
was happening to my great-grandfather, Loretto and his family, and his brother,
Rafael, back in Napa? See my next
posting.
[1] Napa
County Recorder, Napa, California, 25 April 1868, 3:1, accessed by microfilm at
the Napa County Library, Napa, Califonria.
[2]
Obituary, Death of Dr. Griffith, in the Merced Express, Merced, California,
Friday, 22 February 1895, page 3, accessed at http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.northam.usa.states.california.counties.merced/844/mb.ashx
