tation, and he was unable to finance a sugar factory himself, but he induced the Clark interests to put one up on adjoining territory at Los Alamitos, thus obtaining a market for future beet crops.
It is hard now-a-days to visualize conditions in California during the fifties outside of San Francisco or the mining camps. The vast stretches of open valley and hill land were practically uninhabited, and were infested with wild beasts, and sometimes, wilder men. A very vivid impression of this may be obtained by anyone fortunate enough to read an account of “A Dangerous Journey From San Francisco to San Luis Obispo” given by J. Ross Browne in his book called Crusoe’s Island. We spent one of his nights in the old inn at San Juan, where the young Maine stockmen were so soon to settle.
The venture of bringing the sheep across the plains having proved good and a wide estate having been acquired the young men turned their thoughts to home-building, which is in a primary way, state building. Not content with the women the west at that time afforded, each in his turn, like Jacob of old, made a pilgrimage back to the land from which he came in search of a wife of his own people; but, unlike the old patriarch, it did not take long to find the bride willing to return to that far-off, glamorous California. Benjamin Flint’s wife was Caroline Getchell and Dr. Flint’s was Mary Mitchell, both girls from their home town of Anson. Father married Sarah Hathaway of Bloomfield, now a part of Skowhegan.
The way of it was this. Soon after his return to
