Book Review: Quite Contrary (2014), part 2

Harry Love in 1865

In part one of the eventful life of Mary Bennett Love, she was just Mary Bennett. Part two concerns her second marriage - to the legendary bounty hunter Harry Love. Everyone in northern California knew of Harry Love, first and only Captain of the California Rangers, who claimed (disputed) to have killed the notorious bandito Joaquin Murrieta.

By 1854, at the age of 44, Love's career in law enforcement was over, and he began to look for other opportunities. It's unclear where and how he met the 50-year-old widow Bennett (Vardamon died in 1849), or whether they ever married, but by 1857 they were entering into contracts as husband and wife.

By that time, the couple had moved from Mary's house in Santa Clara to the sawmill property in the San Lorenzo Valley. What had been known as the "Bennett mill" became the "Love mill". We have no record of any further contacts with Isaac Graham (d. 1863), even though they lived only a few miles apart.

Love's efforts at milling and farming suffered a series of misfortunes, beginning with the winter floods of 1861-62, which washed the mill away. Those same floods destroyed the first Santa Cruz Powder Works and flooded downtown Santa Cruz. In later years, several fires destroyed Harry's buildings and crops.

Harry Love's last chance to find a place In Santa Cruz County passed when he unsuccessfully ran for Justice of the Peace in 1867. That same year, he moved back to Santa Clara and confronted Mary. The relationship between Mary and Harry seems to have been stormy at best. Mary moved back to Santa Clara in 1858, and sued for divorce in 1866. Thereafter, she felt threatened enough to hire a man to protect her from Harry. Harry died in 1868 after a shootout at Mary's house, and Mary died the same year of natural causes.

During the 1840s-50s, the population of Santa Cruz County rapidly swelled with new arrivals from the wagon trains and gold fields. Vardamon Bennett and his family came by way of the Oregon and California Trails. Isaac Graham came as a trapper, following southern trails. Harry Love came first by sea, returning later from Texas.

Many of these pioneers were bound to encounter each other before settling here. In Quite Contrary, several other names of future County residents appear. John Daubenbis crossed the plains in the same wagon train as the Bennetts, in 1846. The Adna Hecox family shared a miserable first California winter with the Bennetts at Santa Clara mission, 1846-47.

Note: Vardamon Bennett never lived in Santa Cruz County, although several of his children did. Vardamon and Mary's family should not be confused with the unrelated Eben Bennett, a "limeburner" in Felton in the 1860s.