The Bertatta Ranch complex -- on Coyote Creek south of Murphys -- is made up of the 15 acres encompassing the residence, barns, blacksmith shop, garage, and stone walls. The property remained in the Bertatta family from 1884 on until the last family members died in 1970. During the late 1880s, Bertatta was assessed for 15 acres with a house, barn, orchard, and fence bounded north by Matteson…

The lands taken up near Copperopolis by members of the Callahan family from the 1870s through the 1890s may have been occupied by others in the 1850s and 1860s, but no deeds were located. By 1870, Thomas Harris and Elvira Callahan and their family of six children were residing on their ranch in the northwesterly portion of the Flowers Ranch (southwestern quarter of Section 10, T1N, R12E). That…

Ansil Davis first registered to vote in Calaveras County in 1867, noting his age as 39, born in Maine, and working as a millman in Angels Camp (Great Register of Voters 1866-1887). Three years later he was working in a sawmill in Avery (U.S. Federal Census 1870), and by 1874 he was residing in Douglas Flat with another miner and raising poultry (Calaveras County Assessment Roll 1873-4). In 1880 he…

The ranch was known in the Douglas Flat area as the "Italian Ranch."

The exact date of the settlement of the Flanders family in the area of what is now Moran Road between Arnold and Avery is unknown, but as they traveled over the early emigrant road into Calaveras County in 1849, and left an account of their visit to the Big Trees, they would have undoubtedly passed by the land that they later homesteaded (Costello, ed. 1988:16).

The man who was to have the longest connection with the lands in the Flowers Ranch area was Nathan Monroe Flower (a.k.a. Flowers), a native of New York and early resident of Stanislaus County who came to California in 1852 (1). By 1860, however, the census enumerator listed Flower, age 39, as residing somewhere near the Flowers Ranch area. His occupation was listed as “merchant” with $1,000 in…

Probably the first to settle the lands now located in the Douglas Flat region was Isaac P. Hitchcock, a native of Pennsylvania and possibly a member of Heckendorn’s 1849 Pennsylvania Company. Certainly he was noted as working the Hitchcock Claim on the north side of Douglas Flat as early as 1850 (San Andreas Independent).

The Johnson Ranch, near Angels Camp on the old road to Murphys, is thought to have had at least three owners prior to the Johnsons’ tenancy. In 1857 a newspaper account mentioned the garden of the “Hockman and Reynolds Ranch” containing a general variety of trees, plants, and flowers, but most especially the “Longworth’s Variety” strawberry (San Andreas Independent, November 14, 1857). Sometime…

The first person to be assessed for the lands on Baker’s Flat was Joseph Lewis in 1858. That year, his assessment noted ownership of 320 acres, 300 enclosed under fence, located 2 miles south of the Log Cabin Ranch and 5 miles northwest of Scorpion Gulch, which included a residence, a barn, wagon, horses, cows, and hogs, and was valued at $1,000. The ranch was situated on the Salt Spring Valley–…

The land in the Burson area was settled long before the arrival of the railroad, on a parcel of land patented by John H. Peters on February 20, 1882 (Calaveras County Land Patent Maps). Peters, born in Michigan in 1837, was first noted in the U.S. Census in 1850, when he was residing with the Copernall family in Exeter, Monroe County, Michigan, and working as a 13-year old farm laborer. By 1870 he…

By 1853, William Richards, his wife Grace, son William Hosking Richards, and daughters Elizabeth and Grace, had settled on a five-ace parcel of land near Angles Camp, on the east side of Washington Flat Road and north of Angels Creek. The Richards were natives of Cornwall, England, who had immigrated to Grant County Wisconsin in 1844 (Great Register of Voters 1896-98), where both their daughters…

Angelo Sciaccaluga was born near Genoa, Italy, in 1840, emigrating to the United States in 1861 or 1862, as a ship stowaway. He first stayed in a settlement with other Italian immigrants, then came to California and worked as a miner. He was naturalized in 1871, and by 1872, purchased land from George Major (Major had acquired the Mull Ranch, east of Coyote Creek, in 1865, and another 320-acre…

Located near Copperopolis, in 1867 the Spicer family settled on land that provided the nucleus for the later expansion by Mary Ann Spicer and Nathan Flower into what would be known as the Flowers Ranch.

A brush fence, depicted on the 1870 GLO (northwestern quarter of the northwestern quarter of Section 9, T1N, R12E) was located upon the 40-acre ranch of John and Elizabeth Vickrey, who patented the land in 1884 and deeded it to Flower in 1889 (Deed Book 17:485). Vickrey was listed as a native of Illinois, a miner, and residing on the property with his wife, Emma, and children, Ida and Henry, in…

An issue of Las Calaveras (periodical of the Calaveras County Historical Society) was dedicated to the ranching Whittle family of Angels Camp.