GREAT EXPECTATIONS - Chapter One

I want to share with you a story of the way in which privilege and wealth are subject to the cruel whims of perception, and a Cinderella adventure of royalty in disguise.  Our story begins in 1742 when 32 year old Don Miguel Nemecio Silva de Peralta de la Corboda set foot in the city of Guadalajara, New Spain. He was on a secret mission, and carried papers identifying him as the “vistador del rey”, a visitor from the King, marking him as a wealthy and accomplished man, with powerful friends. He wore the gold collar of a Knight of the Golden Fleece, a title which placed him above the law, as he could only be arrested on a warrant signed by six other Knights, and there were only fifty of those in all of Spain. He was also a member of the order of Montesa, warrior Knights who served under Cistercian beneficence. Eventually he would become the “Baron of the Dry Area”, in Spanish the “arida zona,” but that would carry only those privileges he could make of them.

Two years later, pleased with Don Miguel's performance of his mission, Philip V of Spain promoted him and gave him an enormous grant of about 1,328,000 acres of land, leaving it up to Augustin de Ahumada, the Viceroy of New Spain, to pick the exact spot. It took Don Miguel ten years of searching for the best location. Finally on January 3, 1758, the Viceroy designated the grant as lying north of the Mission of San Xavier del Bac, on the Santa Cruz River, eastward from the confluence of the Salt and Gila Rivers. In May of that year Don Miguel, accompanied by a priest and two military officers traveled to the desert site and consecrated the grant on a barren hill he named the “Inicial”, or first, monument. Here Miguel scratched his mark upon a large rock, and laid claim to his new world empire.

Don Miguel Peralta immediately took physical possession of his land, establishing a base camp around the Pueblo ruins of Casa Grande. But the local Apache Indians did not recognize the claims of a far off Spanish monarch,  and their constant raiding forced Don Miguel to return south of the Gila River, to the Mexican state of Sonora. Here he bought land and settled here. And his retreat was not without its benefits. In 1770 he married the lovely Sofia Ave Maria Sanchez Bonilla de Amaya y Garcia de Orosco. He settled his new bride in Guadalajara. In 1776 Charles III reaffirmed Don Miguel's grant to the north, even though the vassal still dare not take physical possession of the land. And in 1781 Don Miguel and Sofia had a son, Jesus Miguel Silva de Peralta.

Jesus Peralta showed little interest in his arid inheritance, and built his life in and around Guadalajara, accustomed to wealth and privilege.  He did not settle down until he he was forty, marrying a local girl, Dona Juana Laura Ibarra, in 1822. In February of 1824 his father, Don Miguel Peralta, died at the fantastic age of 114 years, and Jesus Miguel inherited the family estates in and around Guadalajara, as well as a ranch in Sonora. There was also the still unoccupied desert grant to the north, but Don Jesus Miguel made no effort to claim that land or even show an interest in it. And after mortgaging and then losing his Guadalajara properties,  Jesus took Dona and retreated to the ranch in Sonora. There they  produced their only child, a girl named Sophia.

Sophia Peralta grew to be a pretty girl, but the eligible bachelors were few and far between. And the bride's family was by now, not considered the best, even in the limited social world of the empty desert lands south of the Gila River. Dona Sophia Peralta did not find a husband until she was 28. And only after the vows were exchanged in 1860 did it became apparent the union had been a gamble for both sides of the aisle. Don Jesus Peralta had thought he had matched his daughter to a wealthy man. But Sophia's new husband, Jose Ramon Carmen Maso, was in reality a professional gambler, and periodically down on his luck. And only after the wedding did Jose Maso discover his new wife's family estate was heavily mortgaged. This was why, in 1862, Jose Ramon planned a trip to Spain,  in hopes of collecting some old gambling debts. H took with him his entire family, and his in-laws. Dona Sophia was forced to travel with him, even though she was pregnant.

Their timing was very bad .The Great Flood of 1862 (which began in December of  1861) was devastating the western coast of North America from Oregon to Mexico. Directly in the family's path,  the mountain road into San Diego was washed away in dozens of places, and the little town of Aqua Mansa, at the headwaters of the San Gabriel River, was destroyed. Only the alarm raised by the bell at the Mission of San Salvador de Jurupa prevented the loss of life there. And it was at the Mission, in February, that the flooding forced the party to pause,  and where Dona Sophia went into premature labor and gave birth to twins, a boy and girl. The newborns were weak, as was Dona Sophia, so while the women stayed on, Jose Ramon and Don Miguel Peralta continued over the mountains to San Diego, where they caught ship, first for San Francisco, and then for Spain.

The newborn boy soon died, followed by his mother Sophia. And the infant girl was not expected to live. And as there was little food in the region, both grandmothers then abandoned the sickly child and returned to Sonora. But the child did not die. She lived, cared for by a wet nurse hired by Mr. John A. Treadway, who was a friend of the gambler Jose Ramon. But Treadway died shortly thereafter on a business trip, and both Jose Ramon and Don Miguel died while in Spain. And the grandmothers also passed away on  their way back to Sonora. The abandoned child was raised by locals out of their loyalty to the departed Mr. Treadway.  But everything about her family was forgotten, except her first name. Sophia was raised by local villagers until she was eight, when she was entrusted to a local businessman, John Snowball, who employed her first as servant and then as a cook in his roadhouse along the route between San Diego and Arizona.

Then, in 1877 a chance encounter on a train changed the orphan's girl's hard life. A well dressed gentleman with large whiskered sideburns approached the 17 year old and inquired about her background. The girl nervously admitted she was an orphan, and did not know her family name or history. The stranger suggested she might be the missing daughter of a wealthy family. She had never before heard the name he suggested: Peralta. The girl was uncertain whether to believe his story or not, but she wanted to believe it was possible.

But it was not. The entire story I have just shared with you, save for the storm of 1862, from the streets of Guadalajara, to the battered remains of a mission in the California desert, every word and document supporting it was based upon was the invention of the fevered imagination of one of the most determined and resourceful con men in American history. His name was James Addison Reavis (above). And at one time he came very close to owning most of the state of Arizona.  And what follows is the tale of how he almost did that, and how it all fell apart. 

- 30 -

BY DIVINE RIGHT

I started out thinking nobody could be a worse villain than that royal toady, John Bampton, Minister of Parliament and Justice of the Peace. He descended on the little Essex village of Brentwood at the end of May 1381 to collect over due taxes and delivered neither justice nor peace. Within 48 hours Bampton's ministrations had set off a riot, gotten six of his own clerks and several loyal citizens beheaded by a mob and barely escaped himself, tail between his legs, back to London. Who could be a bigger villain than that?

The immediate answer was the arrogant royal toady Sir Simon de Burley. On Monday, 3 June, 1381, two sergeants dispatched by the villein de Burley entered the Thameside  village of Gravesend, to arrest escaped Peasant Robert Belling.  Belling must have been more than a mere peasant because he offered to buy his own freedom. But Sir de Burely demanded his rights of lordship, and had Belling thrown into the dungeon of Rochester Castle. Three days later a mob showed up outside Rochester Castle and the warden thought it better to free Belling rather than have his tiny garrison murdered. Was this rebellion really caused by the villain Sir Simon de Burley?

Between the Black Death, which had killed over half of all English peasants during 1348-49, and the Hundred Years War with France (they were right in the middle of it) , the long suffering and few remaining peasants of England were, by 1381, fed up with having to feed , clothe and supply weapons and soldiers for their arrogant masters in the nobility  In early June 60,000 peasants from Essex in the northeast, and 40,000 from Kent in the southeast, were marching on London, determined to have their complaints heard by the King himself.

The English nobility were shocked and stunned. Because of the war in France and the never ending Scottish threat, there were few soldiers left in England. And those that were, were not trustworthy, as the warden of Rochester Castle had shown. 

And worse, the King, chosen to rule by divine right , was the 14 year old Plantagenet blue blood Richard II, a tall and gangly youth with a “white, rounded and feminine” face. He was a smart lad, but had a nasty stammer, and his noble “handlers” were not sure he could lead them out of this crises, whoever was to blame for starting it..

The nobility's first nomination for the responsible villain was the “mad priest of Kent” the heretical Father John Ball. He had often challenged the very foundations of feudalism, asking , “When Adam dug and Eve spun, where was then a gentleman?”  Ball dared to argue “all men by nature were created alike.” It was not God who chose Kings, said Ball, but “naughty men.” 

Sir Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England, had locked up Ball in Rochester Castle (above).  As the Kent rebels moved west, they looted the Archbishop's properties in Canterbury, blaming him for the taxes piled upon them.  But this was also where a third villain joined the rebellion, who would give his name to the entire revolt: Wat Tyler. And once having reached Rochester, he freed both Berling and Father Ball.

Here was the nobility's real villain, then, and a proper villain too, being a free resident from a village. It was said Tyler was a member of the roof tiler's guild, or a blacksmith. It was said he had served in the King's army in France. And it was said a tax collector tried to strip his 13 year old daughter, to prove she was old enough to pay the 1 shilling poll tax, the third such tax in four years, laid on every person over 14. years of age. It was also said that Tyler then beat the tax collector's s brains out. 

Whatever the truth,  it is fact that on 7 June, 1381, Tyler was elected to lead the rebels up the Old Kent Road to London. And from that day the Peasant's Revolt became Wat Tyler's rebellion. Four days later, 11 June, 1381, the crowd reached the high ground at Blackheath, 3 miles southeast of London.

This “bleak site”, named for its dark soil, was a tradition camping spot, and young King Richard II's advisers had anticipated the rebels would pause there. They loaded their royal charge onto a barge, and with four barges of soldiers as escort, set out down the Thames to overawe the “rebels” and order them to disperse. Seeing 40,000 angry peasants armed with longbows and axes, the courtiers panicked. The King did not get off the boat (above),  and the royal forces did not stop rowing until they were all locked safely behind the walls of the Tower of London. 

Caught on the outside, the Lord Mayor William Walworth ordered the gate houses at both ends of the 900 foot long London Bridge, the only crossing over the Thames River, to be closed and its drawbridge raised. This should keep the peasants on the south bank.

On Wednesday, 12 June, 1381, when Wat Tyler and his 40,000 member “mob” approached London Bridge, Walter Sybyle, a fishmonger and city alderman, ordered the gates at both ends lifted and the drawbridge lowered. Pausing only to post their own men in the gatehouses, peasants streamed past the west door of St. Magnus-the-Matyr Cathedral and invaded the capital. 

Fleet and Newgate Prisons were raided and the prisoners were freed. Legal offices were ransacked, lawyers and clerks were butchered, and thousands of contracts, property records and mortgages were burned. The mobs also ransacked the homes of recent Flemish immigrants, and many were killed. And the Savoy Palace (above),  the ostentatious home of the arrogant and incompetent general John of Gaunt, was captured. “What could not be smashed or burned was thrown into the river. Jewelry was pulverized with hammers...” But a disciplined core of Tyler's force marched directly to Aldergate, in the eastern city wall. There the man entrusted with command by Mayor Walworth, Thomas Farington, threw that gate open as well.

Tyler's force advance a mile outside the city walls and camped in the open fields at Mile End. And there, on the following day, Thursday, 13 June, 1381, they were met by the larger force of peasants from Essex. A hundred thousand rebels, equal to London's population, had now occupied the capital, trapped the King and his ministers in the Tower, and accepted Wat Tyler as their sole leader..

The situation was unstable. Tyler must find food and water for his massive “army”. And so must the King's much smaller force in the tower. And with the daily markets disrupted, Mayor William Walworth must do the same for the city. The King's party panicked first, and asked for a meeting the next day, Friday 14 June 1381, at the rebel encampment at Mile End, to hear what Wat Tyler wanted.

Tyler wanted everything – the end to the slavery of serfdom, the right of peasants to buy the the land they worked, and to sell what they made and grew, the right to punish the royal advisers who had oppressed the people, and a general pardon for the peasant army. Grant these humble requests, said Tyler, and the peasant army would return to their villages. The King made a show of offering a few objections before agreeing to everything. It was the strategy Tyler expected, as he had no doubt Richard II meant to betray the promises. So Tyler had not waited for the King to betray his last promise.

While these “negotiations” were still going on,  400 rebels marched on The Tower. Again, the guards offered little more than token resistance. It was the first and last time the Tower of London fell to an invading force.

Chanting "Where is the traitor to the kingdom?” the rebels dragged their number one villain, the fat Archbishop of Canterbury, Sir Simon Sudbury,  and a dozen of other royal advisers, outside The Tower's Walls, to Tower Hill, where they were all beheaded. 

It took 8 blows to carve through Sudbury's thick neck, as his battered skull still shows (above).. When Richard II saw his adviser's head being paraded on a pike,  the King abandoned The Tower, and hurried instead to his apartments in Blackfriars, in south-west London.

That night, while the heads of the murdered royal advisers were bobbing atop the southern gatehouse of London Bridge, Mayor William Walworth came to the Richard with good news. First, a large part of the Peasant army had already started for home, trusting the King to fulfill his promises.  And second, the merchants of London had raised a militia of 5,000 armed men, whose loyalty could be trusted. In the morning, Saturday 15 June, 1381, Richard sent word he wanted to meet again with Tyler, to seal their agreement. But this time, he asked, the meeting be held at at Smithfields, where he felt safer.

For 800 years Smithfields, north west of the city walls, bordered by the Fleet River and shaded by elm trees, had been the open air livestock market for the city, and occasionally an execution place for rebels like Scotsman William Wallace. But being from out of town, Wat Tyler was probably unaware of this last purpose. Late that afternoon, Wat Tyler and a few followers crossed the Fleet River, leaving his peasant army on the eastern shore, and rode to meet the King and his 200 supporters..

Was Tyler drunk? Had he gone mad? Or did he sense, with the loss of most of his men, how this story was destined to end?  Richard II asked why the peasants had not all gone home. Tyler responded they were waiting for the promised laws to be signed by the King.  A valet named Ralph Standish then called Tyler a thief. At the insult the Kentish villain drew his only weapon, a knife.  The Mayor drew his sword. Tyler slashed out, but the Mayor was wearing armor, as was the King. Tyler was not. Whereupon Standish ran Tyler through with his sword. 

While the struggled continued the young King spurred his horse across the Fleet River, and addressed the rebels directly, calling them his friends. He invited them to follow guides to Clerkenwell Green, where they would be fed. Trusting their King, and not being able to see what was happening to Wat Tyler, the peasants followed.

It was a trap. The peasants arrived in Clerkenwell to find themselves hemmed in by run down apartment buildings and narrow streets, all escape routes guarded by the Mayor's militia.  As darkness approached, the King appeared, followed by Wat Taylor's head atop a spike.  It had been 9 days since Wat Taylor had been elected leader of the rebellion, and with his death the shrunken army of the poor lost heart.  The peasants fell to their knees and begged forgiveness. The King granted it, but withdrew his promises to end serfdom and grant freedoms. He also knighted Mayor Wentworth and Ralph Standish. He then ordered the peasants to be escorted back across London Bridge, and allowed to return home. And then he unleashed his anger..

John Ball, whose words would inspire Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, was executed at St. Albans. His final words were, addressed not to the the King who was there to witness his agony, but to his “fellow citizens”.  He advised them to “...stand firm while you may, and fear nothing for my punishment since I die in the cause of liberty.”  

He was then hung until almost dead, taken down and slowly drawn and quartered. Over the next five years around England some 5000 rebels would be hung for their uprising. The increasingly tyrannical Richard would sneered at his subjects, “Rustics you were and rustics you are still. You will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher” But there would not be another poll tax in England, until the 20^th century.

Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, would die four years later, in December of 1385. In his will he left his wife all the income from his rents, including those of the whore houses he owned on the south shore of the Thames, rebuilt after Way Tyler's rebels had burned them down. 

Seven years after the death of Wat Tyler, the arrogant Sir Simon de Burley was impeached for treason by Parliament, and executed by beheading. 

And in the 22nd year of his reign, Richard II, King of England by divine right, would be betrayed by a cousin, and would die of starvation as a prisoner in February of 1400. His death was barely noted, and he was almost completely forgotten by both the nobles and peasants of his kingdom. So much for Divine Right.

- 30 -

A WOMAN SCORNED An Honor Killing Without Honor.

I don’t know if Solomon Porcius Sharp (above) could have been President. But a man who had the job, John Quincy Adams, described the Kentucky lawyer as, “The brainiest man that ever came over the Allegheny Mountains.” The 38 year old Sharp had already served two terms as a Congressman, four years as Attorney General for Kentucky, and was now starting his second term as a state legislator – so the boy was not lacking for ambition, brains or talent. He spent his last day on earth, Sunday, 5 November, 1825, conferring with political allies. Every indication was that come Monday morning, he would easily be elected Speaker of the Kentucky House. It even seemed possible his next stop would be the United States Senate, and then, possibly, the White House; except, an ex-girlfriend of his had other plans. 

Her name was Anna Cook, and in her youth she had been a real Southern Belle from the same region and culture that produced Mary Todd, Abraham Lincoln's wife, and Jefferson Davis, future President of the Confederacy. Anna was never described as a great beauty. But Anna was "a freethinker, reader of romantic fiction, and a libertine."  You could also say she had a passion for men and for gambling and for gambling on men.  Like all gamblers, the more Anna gambled the more she lost. Few suitable men of "good families" (i.e. wealthy,) wanted to be responsible for her debts.  In 1820, at the age of 35 and still single , Anna had gambled heavily on Solomon P. Sharp.  But when she became pregnant, Sharp refused to marry her. The lady was now officially socially ruined. She retreated to her late father's tobacco plantation outside of Bowling Green. After the child was still born, the lady had nothing left to lose. In May of 1820, determined to return the pain she had endured, Anna publicly charged Sharp with being the father.  His political allies responded by claiming the dead child had been born with black skin, and thus could not be the child of a white politician

In a slave state like Kentucky, in a bigoted misogynous nation such as America in 1820, in a land "of the fiddle and whiskey, sweat and prayer, pride and depravity"   it was a truly vicious attack.  With no living male relatives willing to challenge Sharp to a duel, (three of her  brothers had recently died) Anna had no way to respond.  In fact, her reputation was left in tatters no matter which side was believed.  And two hundred years later it is impossible to comprehend the depth of her social failure. But we are certain about what happened next. 

By 1824 Anna Cook was a spinster approaching forty, and her rose had withered.  A critic described her as short, with dark hair and eyes, a few missing teeth, stoop shouldered and  “in no way a handsome or desirable woman.” And yet inside Anna there still burned a passion, which had metamorphosed into a burning fierce hatred of her old boyfriend. And just at this opportune moment 22 year old Jereboam Beauchamp had sought her out and sought her hand in marriage. He had been a neighbor to her father's plantation, and had been a law student in Sharp’s office. And to hear him tell it, the hypocrisy of the vicious attack against Anna had awakened an almost religious hunger for justice in him...or so he said.  In response to his proposal, Ann agreed with one stipulation. She would marry Jereboam if he promised to murder Solomon Sharp. Thus, to call their marriage an affair of the heart seems somehow to have missed the point.  And as soon as it was convenient after the 1824 ceremony,  Jereboam traveled to Frankfort, looking to fulfill his promise to his new bride.

Of course there might have been another explanation for the timing of Jereboam’s (above) expedition to Frankfort, besides moral outrage. The week before, on 25 October, 1825,  a warrant for Jereboam’s arrest had been issued by the sheriff in Bowling Green.  It seems a single young woman named Ruth Reed was suing Jereboam for child support.  So the gallant defender of Anna's chaste womanhood might well have been the dead-beat dad of an illegitimate child himself.  Do you get the feeling that the public morality of neither of the times nor Mr. Beauchamp nor Ms. Cook nor Mr. Sharp, were quite what they claimed to be?  Sort of just like today, yes?

Frankfort was a wooden town of just 1,500 souls when Jereboam arrived in November of 1825. It had been established at a ford across the Kentucky River, and was named for Stephen Frank, an early settler. The village became the state capital because local boosters contributed $3,000 in gold to the state treasury, and property for public buildings. It was not a generous act, as the boosters got rich selling house lots in the new burg. But thanks to their investment, Frankfurt was, in 1825, and remains to this day, one of the smallest state capitals in the Union. There were in 1825, a few brick structures in town, but fire was constantly updating the architecture of all the wooden buildings. Earlier in 1825 Frankfort had burned down its sixth state capital building, and the legislature was currently renting a Methodist Church for its use. 

Directly across Madison Street from this temporary cathedral of democracy was the rented abode of Solomon Sharp and his wife and their  3 children (above).

Jereboam waited in the shadows of the church until Sharp returned to his Madison street home, sometime after midnight on 6 November, 1825. Then, as the clock approached two in the morning, he knocked on a side door. When Sharp responded, Jereboam identified himself as “Covington.” As he opened the door, Solomon said he did not know any one by that name. Jereboam then cut the conversation short by thrusting a dagger into Solomon’s neck, severing his aorta. Solomon Sharp was dead shortly after he hit the floor. Jereboam then fled into the night. The first political assignation in American had just been committed.

There were, of course, elaborate conspiracy theories which sprang up around the assignation of Solomon Sharp, spurred on by the victim’s politics and the $4,000 reward offered.  But the police stuck to what they could prove, and four nights after the murder Jereboam was arrested in his home. The cops never found the murder weapon. And although Sharp’s widow eventually identified Jereboam’s voice as the one she heard call out “Covington”,  she had initially identified it as the voice of Patrick Darby, another of her husband’s many political enemies. But several witnesses testified that Jereboam had repeatedly threatened to kill Solomon, and after a 13 day long trial, the jury had no doubts. On 19 May, 1826, after just one hour of deliberations, they returned with a verdict of guilty.

In his jail cell Jereboam dropped all pretense of innocence and wrote out a lengthy confession (above), filled with all the drama and heroics he clearly wanted to believe. The court even delayed his execution so he could finish his diatribe. According to Jereboam, Solomon had repeatedly admitted his crime against Anna, and had begged for mercy.  Even if true (and considering his injuries, such a speech was physically not possible), how that justified the cold blooded murder of a father of 3 small children (above his grave the word "father" had even been carved in stone),  Jereboam did not attempt to explain.  And in the end it did not matter, because, as one commentator has pointed out,  the entire affair now “went from tragedy to romantic melodrama.”

While he awaited execution, Anna was allowed to share her husband’s cell each night, coming and going during the day.  Into his place of confinement she slipped in a bottle of laudanum, a potent mixture of 89% grain ethanol, 10% opium and 1% morphine. The lovers intended a joint suicide, but instead produced only a double regurgitation marathon.  The absurdity of that sickening episode was matched only by the ineptitude of the jailers, because, just two days later,  these pin-headed penitenciariests allowed Anna to carry a knife into the cell for yet another unregulated visit. Jereboam stabbed himself in the abdomen. Anna then grabbed the knife and stabbed herself in the stomach. If it was a race, she won. She died an hour later. Jereboam lived long enough that the jailers had to manhandle the wounded thespian up the thirteen steps of the scaffold, where he died, two hours after his wife.

They were buried together in the same grave, under a lengthy poem, composed by Jereboam (above), filled with noble words and maudlin sentiment. So the real cost of Anna Cook’s revenge and Solomon Sharp's ego was four lives; hers, the life of her still born child,  and the lives of two men she professed, at various times, to have loved. And I suspect she thought that was a fair trade. And that is the real tragedy in this so called "Kentucky  Tragedy".

- 30 -