Rich Uncle, Elected Nephew

As we follow the immigrant trails of the earliest Canadian settlers in the riverside valley locale eventually known as Lodi, California, we begin to see connections between these families. Just yesterday, not only did we realize that John Hutchins of Ontario, Canada, arrived along with his entire family, but that his oldest sister had married another of Lodi's early landowners, Ezekiel Lawrence. It was these two men, along with some others, who apparently secured Lodi's downtown site as stop along the way for a new Central Pacific Railroad route in 1869. If nothing else, John Hutchins was rich in land and ingenuity.

After their 1857 marriage and move to San Joaquin County, John's sister Mary Hutchins and her husband, Ezekiel Lawrence, had three children: William, George, and Nettie. The middle child, George, became focus of one of the many biographical sketches in George Tinkham's History of San Joaquin County. From that resource, we learn that George was born on his parents' property in Elkhorn Township—eventually to become the city of Lodi—and attended "district schools" until his enrollment in Saint Mary's College. After receiving a bachelor of science, George Lawrence returned to his hometown to study law. He soon was elected Justice of the Peace of Elkhorn Township, the same place where his parents had settled, back in 1857.

By the time citizens of Elkhorn Township were ready to entertain the possibility of incorporating the city of Lodi, it was 1906. The vote passed, by a margin of two to one, and immediately after the official date of incorporation on December 6, the new city's board of trustees elected George Lawrence as their first mayor.

By the time George Lawrence was elected to the first of his two terms as mayor, both his dad and his uncle—the two neighboring landholders who had been so instrumental in the formation of what would eventually become the city of Lodi—were gone. His dad, Ezekiel Lawrence, passed in 1899, as did his uncle, John Hutchins.

It will take a lot more reading between the lines to learn what roles, if any, were played by these two brothers-in-law in the political success of Lodi's first mayor, George Lawrence, but that is all the same as the original quest which introduced me to this research project in the first place: just who the city had in mind when they named one of their major streets after someone named Hutchins.

Of a Feather

One discovery, in researching the five men credited by local history as having a hand in the formation of the city of Lodi, California, was how many of them had Canadian roots. This could merely be a curious coincidence, or it might be a detail worth pursuing. Since the pursuit of family history is not simply the study of individuals—as if they were independent, individual actors throughout their lifetime—but an observation of the collective actions taken by people who were closely associated with each other, it makes sense to handle this study of Lodi's founders in the same way.

Cluster genealogy—that study of the micro-history of families in relationship to their social and other connections—may serve our purposes at this juncture in my research project. Sometimes called the "FAN Club," this cluster, people taken in the aggregate, may provide hints generated by the whole group, whereas studying each person as an individual might fail to reveal broader connections.

One of the principles of the "FAN Club" is that people, moving from their home to settle in new territory, seldom make such long journeys alone. While I've been wandering in research circles, trying to determine just how the California city of Lodi actually was established, I've run across enough clues to tell me that not just one of the original settlers in this new state came from Canada. There apparently were several more.

Now, considering that Canada is a large country—and that even saying something like, "They both came from Ontario" seldom tells us much—it might seem like a fool's errand to determine just where in that immense dominion the exact town might have been, if even one location. But I'm game to trace these Canadian immigrants to see whether their paths coincided on their way from Canada to California.

For one thing, migration patterns seemed similar. Wherever these settlers started in Canada, their goal was to arrive in California as soon as possible after the news flash about the discovery of gold in the northern foothills. Young men being young men, the pattern included a marriage to another Canadian, usually in El Dorado County, likely at the county seat of Placerville—or, as it was known in that era, Hangtown. The finale to this pattern was obtaining a large tract of government land somewhere in the new state of California—for some coincidental reason, specifically in a place called San Joaquin County.

I've been focusing, in the past week, on the men named in an old history of the county as being key in establishing the downtown area which eventually became the city of Lodi. My original focus was on a man whose surname has somehow—through recognition of this man, himself, or others—become the name of a major street and cultural center in the city. However, as I branched out to the other four men listed as city fathers, I began realizing some of them, too, claimed to have come to this isolated valley in California from an undisclosed place in Canada.

The question is: which place in Canada? Or should we say, places?

To start this exploration, let's take a deeper look at the paths taken by the families of John Hutchins and Ezekiel Lawrence, tomorrow.

Suits me to a "T"

Trying to reconcile conflicting reports about the start of the city of Lodi, California, has come down to two initials: that of Allen C. Ayers or Allen T. Ayers. Of course, since the names are so similar, it could have been a typo in George Tinkham's 1923 History of San Joaquin County that started the whole pursuit. Considering that the Tinkham volume amounts to 1,640 pages, one could cut the guy some slack on one silly initial. But just in case, I felt obligated to check out the references to the Allen C. Ayers who supposedly was involved in some key real estate transactions that eventually benefited the establishment of downtown Lodi.

We already learned yesterday that the similarly-named Allen T. Ayers had a middle initial representing the name Trimble. Attempting to find further information on his contemporary, the man supposedly named Allen C. Ayers, led nowhere. There are no census records for the county in either 1860 or 1870 showing the existence of a man by that name anywhere near the Elkhorn Township which eventually formed the city of Lodi. More to the point, every Allen Ayers listed in California's Great Register for San Joaquin County spelled out clearly the full name of Allen Trimble Ayers. No Allen C. to be found.

Considering that the four names mentioned in the land issue that persuaded a railroad company to build its line through the downtown area included not only Allen Ayers but that of another man—John U. Magley—who happened to live in A. T. Ayers' own household through two decades of census enumerations, it seems far fetched to assume that the Ayers name represented in the Tinkham volume was anyone other than Allen Trimble Ayers.

But what about any mention of the fourth man to be included in that railroad deal? Could anything be said for Ezekiel Lawrence, the name we've yet to examine, to connect him with John Hutchins, whose own biography prompted me to call this whole history into question?

Of course there can. Though once again, there is no biographical entry bearing the name of Ezekiel Lawrence, there were a few mentioned of the name tucked away in those thousand pages of history that can assist us.

The earliest mention of Ezekiel Lawrence was when, in 1858, he provided some of his land, just south of the Mokelumne River, for a schoolhouse. The 1860 census confirms his location in Elkhorn Township, along with his wife Mary and two year old son William. By 1870, the census confirms the Lawrence family's continued residence there, with the addition of son George and daughter Nettie.

Similar to the story of fellow Lodian John Hutchins, Ezekiel Lawrence was from Canada—the province of Ontario, if we can believe his son George's report in his own passport application, many years later. Like the story of Allen Trimble Ayers, Ezekiel Lawrence must have come through El Dorado County, as well—the well-traveled route to Gold Country leading to "Hangtown," now known as Placerville, where Ezekiel and his wife Mary were married in 1857.

Despite his 1858 provision of land for the Lodi schoolhouse, Ezekiel Lawrence did not show up in the Great Register until 1867. The reason? The minute he officially became a United States citizen, the naturalized Ezekiel Lawrence immediately registered to vote on May 18, 1867 in Stockton, county seat of San Joaquin County.

The only other mention I could find of Ezekiel Lawrence was that of the roster of officers for a fraternal organization's lodge in Lodi. Though finding only a listing of his name as the treasurer for the Lodi lodge of the Odd Fellows may be disappointingly sparse, considering all that surely could have been said about the man, reading the rest of the list can provide some insight.

Now that we already know the name of the foursome whose influence was instrumental in setting the economic growth of their future city—Ayers, Magley, Wardrobe, and Lawrence—this list provides some perspective on relationships. Along with treasurer Lawrence, the I.O.O.F. lodge had, for their financial secretary, Allen T. Ayers. And listed among the lodge's charter members, according to the Tinkham history, was John Hutchins.

This, finally, provides the only context linking the four names together in their bid to persuade the railroad's consideration of a route through Lodi. In the meantime, we've explored the few details we could glean about four early leaders in the expansion of the city now known as Lodi.

Still, we can't simply be satisfied with this exploration into the friends and neighbors whose land tied them together at the start of the downtown Lodi area. We need to stay the course on our original objective. Researching these four men mentioned in the Tinkham history of Lodi is solely for the purpose of examining another claim: that there was a fifth man who, with "four associates," presented that offer of land to the Central Pacific. That other man was John Hutchins.

Above: Excerpt from the Map of the County of San Joaquin, dated 1895, as currently found at the United States Library of Congress, shows the property of Ezekiel "Lawrance" just south of the meandering path of the Mokelumne River; courtesy Library of Congress Geography and Map Division; in the public domain.