Every day, commuter traffic races down Monterey Road through the
village of San Martin as people hurry to work or home. Most drivers
never notice a modest bronze plaque on the northwest corner where
San Martin Avenue intersects Monterey Road.
Every day, commuter traffic races down Monterey Road through the village of San Martin as people hurry to work or home. Most drivers never notice a modest bronze plaque on the northwest corner where San Martin Avenue intersects Monterey Road.
As California Registered Point of Historic Interest No. SCL-054, the marker describes the community of San Martin’s history. It reads: “Martin Murphy, a native of Ireland, and his large family came to California in 1844 and settled on the San Francisco de Las Llegas Grant, which was later patented to Daniel Murphy, one of his sons. As a devout Roman Catholic, Martin Murphy followed the Spanish custom and named his settlement in honor of his patron saint, St. Martin of Tours.
“The Murphy-Stevens-Townsend wagon train left Council Bluff, Iowa, in May 1844. The trail they made opened the emigrant trail for the Donner Party two years later and became the route of the transcontinental railroad through the Sierra Mountains.”
From this description, you’d think the trip had been a pretty mundane affair. But a historical documentary produced this year by public television KTEH takes a deeper look. Called “Forgotten Journey: The Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Saga,” it describes the epic journey of the men, women and children who opened the Promised Land of California up for the American settlement. I watched a video of the documentary the other night and was amazed by their dramatic story of human survival, courage and perseverance. This little known group of settlers faced unknown dangers and hardships in making a new life for themselves.
Martin Murphy brought his family from County Wexford in Ireland to live in Quebec in the 1820s. In the 1840s, the illiterate farmer moved again to Missouri where he stayed a few years. An itinerant Jesuit priest told him about California where the land was fertile and bountiful and the Mexican government supported the Catholic religion. At that time, many American settlers were heading west to Oregon. But California’s paradise demanded a heartier adventurer to face the rugged Sierras, and up to that point, all had refused the call to adventure. Murphy decided to take on the challenge of being the first settler to pass over that dangerous mountain range on wagon. He hired a fur trapper named Elisha Stephens to guide his family on their wagon train. Joining them was a doctor named John Townsend and his wife Elizabeth Townsend, along with Elizabeth’s brother Moses Schallenberger.
The group left Council Bluff with little knowledge of what lay before them. Unlike the Hollywood image of riding comfortably in their wagon, all the members of the party walked, keeping pace with the oxen. They hiked up to 15 miles a day, every day, for months.
They faced the hardships of the Rocky Mountains as well as the Great American Desert in what is now Utah. At one point, called the Forty-mile Desert (a distance modern people can drive in half an hour), they faced three desperate days without water for their oxen. They barely made it across. Throughout the journey, two of the women on the trip were pregnant and gave birth. The fortitude of this hearty group seems incredible to our modern view, but a historian interviewed for the KTEH documentary said these pioneers did not look at themselves as doing anything out of the ordinary.
The Sierras were coming into winter snows when they arrived there in late November. No one knew the best way across these uncharted mountains, and the heavily-laden wagons made their journey much harder.
The wagons had to be lifted vertically up steep ledges using ropes and the strength of men and oxen.
Martin Murphy and several of his family members were the first whites to see Lake Tahoe, and it must have been an astonishing sight to witness the intense blue waters of this high mountain sea. Moses Schallenberger spent several months alone in a cabin he built near what is now the town of Truckee. He stayed there to guard their belongings that the group had decided to wait for spring to bring over the mountains.
When they finally reached Sutter’s Fort in what is now Sacramento, they found California was a land preparing for war with Americans. The Californios were suspicious of these settlers who had just arrived, wondering if they were part of some larger invasion.
All members of that first wagon train party to come to California settled in Santa Clara County. Martin Murphy and his son Daniel Murphy’s immense ranch covered the South Valley area around Morgan Hill and San Martin. Martin Murphy, Jr. settled in what is now Sunnyvale and became a vastly wealthy farmer. (His ghost supposedly now haunts a Toys-R-Us store in Sunnyvale.)
Crusty old Elisha Stephens established a vineyard and farm in what’s now Cupertino. He later left the area to die a pauper in what is now Bakersfield. Before leaving, he complained about all the immigrants coming into the Santa Clara Valley and how the area was “too durn civilized.” Stevens Creek County Park and Boulevard are named (and misspelled) after him.
John Townsend served as the first licensed physician to practice in California. He died with Elizabeth treating patients during a cholera epidemic in San Jose in 1850. Moses Schallenberger started a farm on the outskirts of San Jose. His home was located on what is now the San Jose Mercury News headquarters on Schallenberger Road.
Certainly the primary reason few people today know the story of the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy journey is because it was over shadowed by the horrors of the Donner Party fiasco that took place two years later. Members of the Donner Party were poorly organized and fought among themselves, leading to desperate acts of cannibalism when they faced the harsh Sierra winters. Their struggles scared other settlers from attempting to cross those mountains for several years until the Siren call of gold enticed them starting in 1849.
The small historic marker in San Martin can not begin to tell the epic story of the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy wagon train. I highly recommend taking a view of the KTEH documentary. (The video is available at the Morgan Hill Public Library.) It puts into perspective our South Valley’s link to the small band of intrepid pioneers who helped open California’s doors to American settlement.
