The Gerken Family of Big Oak Flat

by Karen Davis
Herman Henry Gerken was born in Germany on October 28, 1864. He came to America in 1879 and became a naturalized citizen in 1885. He and his wife Elizabeth Bridget Long were married in Tuolumne County on February 4, 1892. Elizabeth was the daughter of John and Catherine (Harney) Long of Chinese Camp. The couple made their home and raised their family of nine children in the Big Oak Flat/Groveland area where Herman supported his family by working as a gold miner, blacksmith and local "Garrote" teamster. Following the death of his wife on January 4, 1916, Herman moved to Richmond California and went to work for Standard Oil. He later returned "to the hill" for his retirement years and died here July 23, 1933. Both Herman and Elizabeth as well as many of their children are buried in Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery.

Their first daughter, Florence Alice (Flossie), was born in 1894 and married a local man Willard Albert James in the mid-late 1910s. As a young boy of 17, Willard had served on the team which was formed in Groveland in 1909 to survey the territory around Lake Eleanor and the Hetch Hetchy Valley. He was a private in the U.S. Army during WWI and worked as a driller in the oil fields of Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas early in their marriage. Willard and Florence returned Big Oak Flat with their four young children and he was probably best remembered as the constable during the 1930s and 1940s. Willard died in 1970 and Florence in 1972.

The Gerken’s second child, Mary Ellen (Mayme), was born in 1897 and married her first husband Josiah (Si) Goldsworthy in 1915. According to his obituary in the Mariposa Gazette, Si died of pneumonia within a few months of their marriage and about one week after Mayme’s mother died of the same illness. Mayme and her second husband John McCORMICK made their home in Oakland in 1930 where John drove a truck for a bottling company. Mayme is described as "a little bit of a thing" who was kind to everyone. She was exceptionally neat and clean and wouldn’t go out of the house without fixing her hair and putting on her apron. Mary Ellen’s third husband was Robert Lee and she lived in Auburn before her death in 1983.

The next two children of Herman and Elizabeth Gerken were Alfred Joseph (who was born in 1898) and Herman Cecil (who was born in 1901). Alfred was 68 when he died in 1966 and Herman only 46 when he died in 1947. It is believed that both men remained bachelors.

The Gerken’s third daughter, Isabel Anne, was born in 1903 and had four children by her husband Willis Tanner. They made their home in Sacramento before her death in Marin County in 1997.

Genevieve Cecilia was the fourth Gerken daughter and she was born in 1906. She married John Thornton and had four children. She was living in the Bay area when she died in 1955.
John Merritt, the Gerken’s third son, was born in 1908. He and his wife Esther were living in Oakland in 1930 where he worked as a ‘housesmith’ for a sheet metal company. Their only child was a son. John died in Walnut Creek in 1991.

The youngest son, Raymond Arnold, was born in 1909. He and his wife Margaret Virginia Cushing had four children and made their home in San Francisco where they raised four children.

The last of the Gerken’s children, Uvelora Elizabeth, was born in 1914. According to family lore, some gypsies were traveling through the area when she was an unnamed newborn. They suggested that should she be named Uvelora she would never want for anything, she'd be a "golden child". Uvelora was only about 1 ½ years old when her mother died and about five when her father moved the younger children to the bay area.. Uvelora eventually married and had two children by her first husband Mr. Herrick and three children by her second husband George Javedas. She lived in Oakland in the 1970s and died in Sacramento County in 1987.

Some of the detailed information on this family was provided by Gerken descendants Mary Alice Capson and Virginia O’Reilly.

The Elwells - a Pioneer Family

by Karen Davis, Groveland Genealogy Chat Group

Charles H. Elwell, a sailor born in Massachusetts in 1818 married Rosa Ann Cory in San Francisco before moving into the Groveland area in the late 1850s. “Rose” was born in Vermont in 1829 and her father, James Cory of Massachusetts, lived with she and Charles for several years before his death in 1885.

Charles was a pioneer miner of the Groveland area for several years before establishing a wayside stop where teamsters could purchase a hot meal. This stopover, located at what was commonly called Colfax Springs, became a toll station of the Yosemite Turnpike Road Company and when the Big Oak Flat-Yosemite Turnpike Road was completed (about 1874) he enlarged his holdings and built the Eagle Hotel.

Charles died in 1896 and his wife Rose in 1910. Both are buried in Section 3 of the Divide Cemetery (as is her father James Cory).

Census reports indicate that the children of Charles and Rose include: Charles (born about 1857), Francis J. (born about 1859), Lewis C. (born June 1860), Eugene M. (born September, 1862 ), Frank and Edmund (born about 1863), John (born about 1865) and Rosa May (born April 1869). What is known about these children follows.

• Lewis C. Elwell eventually took over operation of the Eagle Hotel. He also worked as a toll keeper at the Groveland-Crocker Station Toll station before moving to La Grange in the early 1900s.
• Eugene M. Elwell married and had at least one son before dying in 1908. He and a baby boy are buried near his parents in the Divide Cemetery.
• Rosa May Elwell married Walter Joseph Coyle and raised several children in the Groveland area. She’s buried in the Mariposa Cemetery.
• Edna Margaret Coyle, the daughter of Rosa and Walter Coyle, was born in March 1889. She married Henry L. Argall and four of their children were born in Groveland between 1910 and 1920. Henry L. Argall, who was born in New Jersey in 1857 died in 1944. Edna died in 1963 and both of them are buried in the Mariposa Cemetery. Henry L. Argall had two sons from a prior marriage when he married Edna Coyle. His son Elgin Miranda Argall died here in 1940 and it is believed that his other son John William Henry Argall moved out of the area prior to 1920.

Please contact the Groveland Yosemite Gateway Museum (962-4408) if you have additional information on the Elwell (or any other pioneer) family. We look forward to hearing from you.

Mathew Coyle, c. 1838-1867

Of the many pioneers in the Groveland-Big Oak Flat community, Mathew Coyle is one of my favorites. He was not a particularly early settler. He never lived on The Hill[1]. He died early, before his 30th birthday. He is not even buried on The Hill. But his widow, children and grandchildren lived in Groveland and made lasting contributions to the community. More important, Mathew Coyle is an excellent case study in problems created by source errors.

The key piece of evidence in Mathew Coyle’s story comes from his brother Hugh, a miner and tombstone carver of Columbia, Tuolumne County. Hugh’s maker mark is proudly carried on Mathew’s tombstone at St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Cemetery in Columbia. It proclaims:

Mathew Coyle
Native of West Meuth (sic), Ireland
died January 22, 1865 (sic)
H Coyle

Hugh Coyle carved many tombstones. Mary-Ellen Jones, former archivist at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, California told some of Hugh Coyle’s story in a presentation made to the Contra Costa Genealogical Society in October, 1996.[2] Her remarks were published in the “Diablo Descendants Newsletter,” November 1996, Vol. 11, No. 11, pp. 89, 91. Ms. Jones described Hugh Coyle as “highly skilled but erratic”. His stone of choice, she said, was marble from the local Columbia quarries. In 1865 he opened his own yard in Columbia, using his own designs. When mining in Columbia petered out and the population moved elsewhere, Hugh Coyle moved with them. In 1875, Ms. Jones continued, Hugh Coyle moved to Sonora and founded the Sonora Marble Works. “He was a strange worker, producing some very good works, and some with jagged edges.”

Family tradition says that Mathew Coyle came to America from Ireland and settled on Staten Island, Richmond Co., New York; that he married Margaret Lenan[3], and that he was part of the last train leaving New York for The West before the outbreak of the Civil War. Mary-Ellen Jones says that Hugh Coyle arrived in Columbia in 1861. Since the Civil War broke out April 12-13, 1861, it is likely that the Coyle brothers Mathew and Hugh traveled overland to California together.

Tuolumne County land records[4] show that Mathew Coyle staked a claim on Moccasin Creek including 880 feet of creek frontage. His claim was immediately south of John Hughes’ claim. We know from other records and witnesses[5] that the John Hughes home was near the present-day junction of Hwy 120 and Hwy 49 in Moccasin and included the land where in the 1950’s the State of California Fish Hatchery was built. The hatchery is immediately north of Hetch Hetchy’s Moccasin Reservoir. This suggests that the Mathew Coyle claim is now under the Moccasin Reservoir.

We know, again from family tradition, that Margaret (Lenan) Coyle followed Mathew to California after the birth of their 2nd child, Mary Ann[6], in October 1861. They likely arrived in 1862. Sons Walter, Charles and Thomas were born in 1863, 1864 and 1865. All three sons appear in the St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Parish Baptismal Register, showing they were born “at Moccasin Creek”. [7]

Enter the conflict. Based on that tombstone inscription in Columbia, Mathew Coyle died in January, 1865. Thomas was born 7 months after his father’s presumed death. Who, then, was the father of Catherine Agnes Coyle, born in December, 1866? One family researcher accepted the tombstone date and suggested that the youngest of the Coyle children, Catherine Agnes, was illegitimate. She was, after all, born in December 1866, nearly 2 years after Mathew’s reported death. Other family members insisted that Kitty was Mathew’s child, despite what brother Hugh carved on Mathew’s tombstone.

The obituary file at the Tuolumne Co. Genealogical Society in Sonora, California contains an entry for Mathew Coyle. It is a death announcement, not a full obituary: “Matthew Coyle of Moccasin Creek, formerly of Staton (sic) Island, died on Tuesday the 22nd.” The clipping does not show a publication date.

The deposition of Mathew Coyle supporting his possessory interest claim on those 160 acres on Moccasin Creek is dated March, 1865 – nearly two months after his alleged death. In June, 1865 Mathew and several partners sold a mining claim near Stevens’ Bar on the Tuolumne River to George Culbertson of Moccasin. Could these land transfers have been made posthumously?
On August 27, 1866 Mathew Coyle became a citizen of the United States of America. Witnesses were John Hughes and Hugh Coyle. Mathew registered to vote on the same day. He said he was 28 years old.

Eventually, we remembered to look at a perpetual calendar. Therein lay our answer. January 22 fell on a Tuesday in 1867. Hugh Coyle got it wrong – on his own brother’s tombstone. Kitty was a legitimate child of Mathew, Margaret did not “fall into sin” between widowhood and remarriage. Those family members who insisted – without offering additional documentary proof – that the 1865 date was wrong are justified.

We all learned a good lesson: accept nothing at face value. Keep looking for additional information that supports or challenges your assumptions. Look sideways at siblings and neighbors. Keep an open mind. The ‘other guy’ just may be more right that you are!

[1] Locals refer to anything above Priest Grade as “on the hill”.
[2] .[2] Her remarks were published in the “Diablo Descendants Newsletter,” November 1996, Vol. 11, No. 11, pp. 89, 91 and reprinted with Ms. Jones’ permission at Peggy and Pat Perazo’s website, “Stone Quarries and Beyond”, http://quarriesandbeyond.org/states/ca/ca_stone_carvers/maryellen_jones_tombstone_stonecarver_art_1996.html
[3] Spelling variations of Margaret’s surname include Lennan and McLennon.
[4] Tuolumne Co. Pre-emptive Claims, Book 1, Vol. 8, pg. 378
[5] Linda (Cummings) Leyden is Postmaster at the Moccasin Post Office. Her father, grandfather, and other family members have worked on the City of San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy Project based at Moccasin since work began in 1915. Linda says that when she was a child her family lived in City housing on the site of the old Hughes house on Hwy 49 just south of its junction with Hwy 120. She was told about the location of the Hughes home by Hughes family members who remembered the property and were still living in Moccasin in the 1960’s.
[6] The Coyle family says that Mathew and Margaret’s eldest child, another daughter, died in New York before 1862. Tuolumne Co. marriage records and Coyle family tradition report that Mary Ann Coyle married John James Sheehan, son of Timothy and Hannah Sheehan, in November 1881 at Big Oak Flat. They were hotel keepers in Groveland until his death in August, 1895. Mary Ann remarried
[7] St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, Baptismal Records, extracted by Kate Pruente for the Tuolumne County Genealogical Society. Digital copy held in the Groveland Yosemite Gateway Museum History Resource Center.