Archibald Alexander Ritchie and Paul S. Forbes filed a claim for
both the Guenoc grant and the adjoining, much smaller, 8200-acre
Rancho Collayomi on which Middletown is now located, in 1852, under new land title laws established with California’s
statehood. It was approved in December 1853, and Ritchie sent
Robert Sterling, nephew of a business partner, to manage the sprawling property. We know nothing of Forbes, but Ritchie's
life in San Francisco, Benicia and Suisun drew lots of attention.
Ritchie was born in New Castle, Delaware, on Jan. 28, 1806. His
well-established parents expected him to join the navy when he reached maturity, but at age 13 he ran away and
hopped a ship bound for China. It must have been “a calling”; five years later he was in command of the good ship
Treaty, owned by Philadelphia’s Marine Insurance Company. In 1831, he married a Philadelphia girl, Martha Hamilton, and when their first child, Eliza, was born the following year he was
bringing a shipload of tea and silk from China.
Ritchie became resident agent in Canton, China, in 1838, for Philadelphia shippers and importers Platt &
Sons whose ships carried hides, tallow and otter skins from
California to China and returned highly desirable goods back to
the new state. His family joined him there and at least four of
the Ritchies' seven children were born there. In 1847, Ritchie returned his family to Philadelphia and found himself drawn to California by the gold rush.
Older than most gold seekers, he quickly became active in San Francisco's commercial world, and was one of the first members of the vigilantes committee in
1851, whose members he described as "the richest, most
influential, orderly and respectable citizens."
In 1850, he had bought the massive Suisun land grant from General Vallejo for $50,000,
and promptly sold part of it to Capt. Robert Henry Waterman, who
had also long been involved in the China trade. Waterman's nephew,
Robert Sterling, would be involved with Ritchie thereafter and
Waterman was named executor of Ritchie's estate.
At that same
time, he purchased a prime lot in Benicia and was involved in getting that burgeoning town named state capitol. He implored his wife to bring their children to live in the impressive home he'd had built there. About the time they arrived, in 1854, the home burned; it was reported to be an act of arson by infuriated "squatters" Ritchie had run off the Suisun property.
The Ritchies commissioned the finest home in San Francisco's new South Park development, which was completed shortly before Ritchie's death in 1856. Until 1873, Martha Ritchie lived there after her husband's death and was praised for her "elegance and refinement" in San Francisco's first social register in 1879.
On
July 9, 1856, nearing Napa from Sonoma, Ritchie was thrown from
his buggy and died instantly. The San Francisco Herald, then the
city's leading newspaper, noted the death of a "long
prominent merchant of San Francisco and a gentleman owning large
interests in several portions of the state." He was buried in
Yerba Buena Cemetery, now the site of San Francisco's civic center
from which all bodies were moved to Laurel Hill.
Ritchie's family and friends were broadly included in his entrepreneurship. His
brother-in-law, John M. Hamilton, in particular was active in many
of his ventures and remained a resident of Middletown until his
death
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A.A. Ritchie, California Pioneer,
by Dr. Albert Shumate. Society of California Pioneers, 1991.
http://www.solanoarticles.com/history/index.php/weblog/more/capt_ritchie_battles_for_his_land_holdings/ |
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