A TIMELINE 

  
Prior to 1853: Records indicate few non-native residents north of Mt. St. Helena. 

1845:     Jacob P. Leese acquired title to the 21,200-acre Rancho Guenoc, originally granted to George Roch on August 8, 1845. He had two years earlier acquired the adjoining 8,242-acre Rancho Collayomi, now home to Middletown. Leese established a cattle operation similar to that of his brother-in-law Salvador Vallejo at Kelseyville. One of his succession of managers built a log cabin where Stone House now stands.

1852:    Capt. A. A. Ritchie and Paul S. Forbes purchased both ranchos from Leese. In accordance with the new U. S. Land Act, they filed claims on both ranchos. 

1853:    Robert Henry Sterling and Capt. R. Steele started building  the Stone House of locally quarried stone. Sterling had sent for his fiancée, Lydia Jane Wheaton, of Guilford, Conn. It is assumed the house was completed for her arrival. The couple married in Benicia May 19, 1854. She is said to be the first white woman to live in Coyote Valley.

1856:    A.A. Ritchie was thrown from his wagon and killed instantly in July 1856. His executors took control of the Rancho; those included Capt. Robert Waterman, uncle of Robert Sterling and business partner of Ritchie, and John H. Hamilton, Ritchie’s brother-in-law. The Sterlings moved to Napa. Hamilton resided for a time in Stone House. 

1857:   The official surveyor’s map conducted to validate the claims shows a small native rancheria across the trail from "Sterling's House." It also shows "Manlove's place" near McCreery Lake and in the southeast corner an unidentified "house," believed to be that of A.H. Butts.

1860:   The general store of Herrick and Getz, probably in the Stone House,  initiated the growth of the village of Guenoc, at the approximate location of today’s Hartmann Bridge over Putah Creek.  There are unconfirmed reports that Stone House was briefly used as a saloon and dance hall. The 1860 federal census tallied 131 residents in the Kayote precinct around Guenoc.

1861:   John Cobb, namesake of Cobb Mountain and Cobb Valley, was named manager of both the Guenoc and Callayomi ranchos, by the Ritchie estate. He lived in Stone House, presumably with his wife and six children.

1863:   The claim to Rancho Collayomi was approved in December 1863.

1865:   The claim to Rancho Guenoc was approved. Hamilton took over Stone House and brought his family here in 1865. In 1867, he was named postmaster of the Guenoc precinct and Stone House served as both post office and polling place.

1872:    John McGreer purchased Stone House and more than 900 surrounding acres.  Five of the McGreer’s ten children were by then adults and had left home; their youngest son, Hugh, died at Stone House in 1875 at the age of 16.

1885:    Charles Marsh Young, one of the founders of Middletown and owner of its Lake County House, traded that hotel to McGreer for Stone House. The property was known as “the Young place” well into the late 1940s.

1894:    Young had Stone House deconstructed and rebuilt, at the same site using the same stone plus additional stone of the same type, to replace the original hand-hewn 12x12” oak log foundation. The dimensions of the house were undoubtedly expanded and a wooden second story added. At some later time, a wood-frame expansion was added in the rear to house a kitchen and crude bathroom with cold water piped from a nearby spring.

1942:   The Frank Hartmann family, farmers and ranchers who owned a 720-acre property south of Hartmann Road, expanded their holdings with the purchase of the Young place. Stone House became a rental home.

1955:   Fire ravaged the upper story. The roof was replaced without the second floor.

1967:  Hartmann obtained a permit, after years of effort, to dam the creek alongside Stone House to create an irrigation pond.

1968:   Middletown teacher Mildred Pearson housed her collection of pioneer and Native American artifacts in Stone House as a museum.

1968:   Hartmann traded his holdings to U.S. Land Inc., a division of Boise-Cascade Home & Land Corp., for a 360,000-acre cattle ranch in Idaho. The proposed development of Hidden Valley Lake was announced and construction of the dam began, demanding the rerouting of Spruce Grove Road as portions were inundated. The land company also purchased properties separating but adjoining the Hartmann parcels. By Oct. 1969, Hidden Valley Lake was heralded as “well under way.”

1988:    Stone House had been used as a sales office, as offices for the cooperative water company, as the security office, as a makeshift recreation center for teens and eventually simply for storage. It had not been maintained and was seriously deteriorated. Concerned residents rallied to its restoration.

1990:   The Stone House Historical Society was formed as a nonprofit entity. Donations, fundraisers and volunteer labor have replaced the floor (with Douglas fir as in the original), the roof, cleared bats and termites, and funded miscellaneous upkeep. In recent years, the HVLA administration has contributed to its maintenance. 

The house has been furnished throughout with donated period items reminiscent of decades past, although few are as antique as Stone House itself. It has been occupied in the past decade only by our resident ghost, Camphor.
  HOME

 

A BIT ABOUT LAND GRANTS

Before the 1830s, coastal California had been inhabited by Mexican “Californios” — about 800 families solicited to follow the trail of Spanish missions northward from Santa Barbara and establish the farms and ranches that made California a major exporter of hides and tallow. Most settled south of Monterey, a few south between there and San Francisco Bay. 

Mexico wrested its independence from Spain in 1821, but the new government had few resources to devote to its far-flung colonies in California. Its Colonization Act of 1824 initiated land grants to citizens as well as to any foreigner who would embrace Catholicism and become a Mexican citizen. 

By mid-century a sizable number of Americans and Europeans had integrated into the culture, becoming Californios themselves, often by marriage. 

A new wave of immigrants grew with the first wagon train into California in 1841, and scores followed. In In synch with the “Manifest Destiny” credo that defined the boundaries of the United States to be rightfully bound on the "East by sunrise, West by sunset, North by the Arctic Expedition, and South as far as we darn please." Many became squatters, simply claiming the homestead they wanted.

To many new immigrants, the rights of the “foreigners” who had been here for generations were of no importance. They harvested crops, stole livestock, erected homes on Californio land, and otherwise acted violently against the landowners.

Long-time land owners began to lose their land at a disheartening pace.  Boundary disputes –- feuds, fights and lawsuits  – would crowd the courts and the jails for decades to come.

Legal settlement became the problem of U.S. courts in 1848 when Mexico ceded its California territory in the peace treaty that ended the Mexican-American War. California's affairs were run by the U.S. military.

California became a state in 1850, and petitioned the U.S. Land Act of 1851. This law required that all land titles acquired under Mexican law had to be approved, or "patented," by U.S. courts. The cases often dragged on for years.

The bill, intended to secure fair treatment to the holders of Mexican land grants, often worked in the reverse. Either side could appeal a court decision, making the process of protecting one’s land so expensive that only the wealthiest could afford the lengthy legal process. In some cases, the land fell into the hands of the claimants’ lawyers who acquired the land as payment for their fees.