As mentioned previously, Santa Cruz County was created in 1850. Elections followed shortly thereafter, and the first County officers took up their duties in 1852. Then, as now, getting elected was a sign that a person had achieved a certain level of recognition and reputation in the minds of fellow citizens. So it’s interesting to look back at those names. Not surprisingly, they were all men who arrived here during the 1840’s (Californios need not apply). Many of the names are already familiar to readers of this blog: Joseph L. Majors, William Blackburn, Elihu Anthony, John Daubenbiss, John Hames, Eli Moore.
We met William Blackburn previously as a California Battalion veteran and potato farmer, but history remembers him mainly as Judge Blackburn. After his military service and prior to his farming career, Blackburn was appointed alcalde in 1847, during the California Territory period. The office of alcalde was a holdover from the Spanish-style government, and was a combination of administrator and judge. Blackburn became known as a dispenser of swift, decisive and sometimes Solomonic judgments. The alcalde’s offices and courtroom were in the juzgado, a 2 1/2-story adobe structure located where Holy Cross Elementary School stands today. Fans of old western movies will recognize the westernized version of the Spanish word: hoosegow (used to refer to a jail).
Santa Cruzans apparently liked Blackburn's judicial style, for they elected him as the first County judge in 1850. The first county-owned courthouse was a building built in 1849 by Thomas Fallon as a combination residence, hotel and saddlery shop. The new county bought it from Fallon in 1852 to be the first courthouse. (Chase, p.101-102). It stood at the northeast corner of the plaza, across School Street from the juzgado, where the 1/2 size Mission replica is today.
Another of the first Supervisors was a man not yet mentioned: Moses A. Meder. Meder’s story is an interesting one. A native of New Hampshire, he arrived in Yerba Buena (San Francisco) on the ship Brooklyn in 1846 as part of the first group of Mormon settlers in California. Instead of staying with the group, however, Meder struck out on his own, ending up in Santa Cruz in 1847. He worked at Isaac Graham’s Zayante Creek sawmill for a while, and then built a new mill for Graham nearby on the San Lorenzo River. He profited enough from these labors to buy some land from Bolcoff, adjoining Moore’s ranch. Today’s Meder Street runs through the area. Appropriately, one entrance to the Moore Creek Preserve is from the west end of Meder Street.
Meder was apparently a man of honesty and integrity. One story tells how the first County Treasurer, Joseph Majors, faced a dilemma because the new county had no bank or other safe place to keep county funds. Majors’ solution was to ask his friend Meder to keep the money in a trunk under his bed.
Another interesting part of Meder’s story is that, late in his life, he donated land for a Jewish cemetery, on the condition that his family be given a burial plot in it (Meder himself is not buried there, so perhaps the land gift was part of his will). According to Temple Beth El, Meder was not Jewish, so this act of generosity is curious. Meder’s earlier desertion of the Mormon settler party seems to indicate that he was not a strong Mormon, either, so his religious affiliation remains a mystery. One writer suggested that Meder split with the Brannan group over the teachings of Brigham Young. Young claimed to have had new revelations contrary to some of Joseph Smith's teachings. The best known today of Young's "new" ideas was polygamy.
(Update: the Mormon church now acknowledges that polygamy began with Smith, so the theory mentioned above regarding Meder's split with the Brannan group is apparently not true.)
