In the last article I laid out the case that we have always been a bit crazy in areas where our children are concerned. A series of petitions written by parents to the county Superintendent of Common Schools, Mack Matthews, gave us insight into some of the early problems facing the growing population of Lake County in 1871. Parents wanted their children to have access to public schools. The government wanted to give them that access, but only if there were more than 10 school-age children living in a given area. In more urban areas where dozens of children lived within blocks of the nearest school, this stipulation didn’t matter all that much.
But Lake County was no urban center.
In 1870, the population of the entire county only reached a little less than 3,000. According to the Superintendent’s report to the state for the school year of 1870-1871, 22 public schools served the entire school-age population in Lake County, which amounted to about 925 children between the ages of five and 15. With only 17 children of this age group living in the entire area, the Cinnabar School District in southeastern Lake County was the smallest in the county. The district itself was centered on the mining communities of Knoxville and Manhattan (near where the Homestake Mining Company would renew mining in the 1980s). Although the smallest district in the county at the time, the Cinnabar School District became a massive thorn in the Superintendent’s side.
If we get a little crazy in areas concerning our children, imagine how insane we get when we throw politics into the mix. This is exactly what seems to have sparked a series of angry letters to Mack Matthews in the summer of 1871.
Before I get into the specifics of the argument, I should probably explain a bit of the history of the area. After the discovery of quicksilver (mercury) in 1862, the Knoxville Mine began operation under the ownership of the X.L.C.R. Mining Company. The Company leased operation of the mine to Mr. Knox and Mr. Osborn — the former possibly giving his name to the town that grew up around the mine. Knox and Osborn operated the Knoxville Mine for several years, but by 1867 most of the X.L.C.R. stock had been purchased by investors from San Francisco and the company was reorganized as the Redington Quicksilver Mining Company. Although they retained their stocks in the company, Mr. Knox and Mr. Osborn moved nearby to begin their own mine — this one called the Manhattan Mine. For several years the two mines worked together, with the Manhattan Mine using the furnace at the Knoxville Mine to reduce its ore.
With two mines so close together, each working the same lode, it is no wonder that conflict arose. What is surprising is that it was not money, but education that sparked the fire.
Rather than flying fists, though, this fight consisted of heated petitions over the issue of dividing the district. The first petition to the Superintendent came from 14 heads of families at the Knoxville Mine. According to the petitioners, there were 135-190 men working for the Redington Quicksilver Mining Company at the Knoxville Mine. Since, they argued, school “should be kept open where it will benefit the largest number of children” they asked that “the county Superintendent set us off into a separate and distinct school district.” This new district, they proposed, should be named The Quicksilver School District.
Clearly someone from Manhattan got wind of the plan to ask for the division of their school district because the same day the first petition arrived on the desk of Superintendent Mack Matthews, a second petition arrived too—this one from parents living in the Manhattan Mine who urged him NOT to divide the district.
And this is where the story gets interesting.
According to this second petition, the only reason why so many people signed the petition asking for division in the first place was because someone had been spreading rumors. Rumor had it that the newly elected School Trustees of the Cinnabar School District intended to close their school and ship the students to the Morgan Valley schoolhouse, which was eight miles distant from Manhattan and 10 miles from Knoxville. This latest petition clarified things by stating unequivocally that the trustees had NO intention of doing such a thing. They then explained to the Superintendent their side of the story. New school trustees had been elected just a few months earlier, with candidates from the Manhattan side beating out those on the Knoxville side.
That was a problem for some parents in Knoxville.
You see, school trustees held a huge amount of power in early schools. These officials (two to three per district) were elected by voters in the district to oversee finances, the hiring of teachers and the improvement of the schoolhouse. In these early years they even had a say in what was taught.
This last point appears to have been the key motivation for at least one of the petitioners who asked for a division. In a separate letter to the County Clerk, a Mr. Franklin Mahon asked the Clerk to encourage the Board of Supervisors to act on the petition to divide the district. He explained that “Manhattan wishes to run our school down here and wishing my boys to grow up Democrats if possible…we pray division.”
Clearly Mr. Mahon was worried what his boys would be taught in a school run by Republican trustees from the Manhattan Mine.
If there was any doubt that the desire to divide the district was anything other than a power play on the part of Knoxville parents and former school trustees who had lost the election, a letter from Mr. Knox put the matter to rest. As one of the owners of the Manhattan Mine, Mr. Knox wrote the County Clerk explaining that “the whole object of the move is to legislate two of the newly elected directors [trustees] out of office.” Divide the district between Knoxville and Manhattan and the Knoxville district could elect Knoxville trustees.
That, at least, was Mr. Knox’s assessment of the conflict. Apparently that was also Superintendent Matthews’ conclusion because the Cinnabar School District was not divided that year. In 1872 when the boundary lines between Lake and Napa County were redrawn, both Knoxville and Manhattan mines became part of Napa County — and the fighting parents, Napa’s problem.
Tony Pierucci is curator of Lake County Museums
