Excerpt

It has long been argued, beginning with Frederick Jackson Turners Frontier Thesis, that virgin land out west served as a kind of safety valve for the ordinary American. Whenever things got tough--socially, politically, and/or economically, you could go-west for a fresh start. This was even the contemporary, common-wisdom in the 1800s. But, it didnt work that way. The rich did not go-west, ordinarily, because they were making-it in the east. And, the poor did not go-west, either, because they couldnt afford it. Boom times for migrations, surprisingly in the light of the common wisdom, were when times were good, economically. Farmers who were doing well saw opportunity to do even better in the rich soils farther west.

New Englanders, who a generation before had settled the interior of New York and Ohio, were pressing forward into the smaller prairies . . . . Come all ye Yankee farmers who wish to change your lot, the song said; to Michigania, or Wisconsin, or across the Mississippi into land vacated by Black Hawks redskins--to Minnesota and Ioway. Yankee-pioneers from New England and New York swelled the stream of migration; our Cowell and Beckwith families were in the swim.

We dont know if Henry Cowell and Stephen Beckwith were in tandem on their westward migrations but, considering their timing, places they settled, and their final destination, the families did travel together--at least in the historical sense. Cowell and Beckwith, as we pick-up their family stories in the 1820s, lived in central, up-state, New York; Cowell was in Tioga County and Beckwith in Madison County--only two counties apart. Both families moved to Erie County, Pennsylvania in the 1830s and, by 1840, to Trumbull County, Ohio (just across the Pennsylvania border) before migrating to Wisconsin in the late forties. There, in Wisconsin, the families connected, with the marriage of two of their children.

The Cowells and Beckwiths lived (and died), farmed, and raised their children in Grant County, Wisconsin for about twenty years. Both mothers died there. Several of their children and grandchildren were buried in Ellensboro township, too. The men, Henry and Stephen, and their remaining families, had one more adventure ahead of them; they made another trek out-west in their late sixties. New opportunities were beckoning from the San Joaquin Valley of California.

We often wonder why we live in the middle of Californias Great Central Valley, enduring the blistering heat in the summers and the thick, tule fog in the winters. The answer is simple: cause our family is here. In the case of those descended from the Beckwiths and Cowells, it is because our forbearers were the pioneers of the rich agricultural heritage of the San Joaquin Valley. They, and many others, came to this desolate place and made something out of it by using dry-farming methods, first, and then by bringing irrigation techniques to their farms.

The timing of the Beckwiths arrival in Stanislaus county, coinciding with the railroads and the founding of Modesto, was fortuitous. Stephen and his son Charles began to prosper as wheat farmers. The hot, dry climate of the interior valleys was ideally suited for wheat cultivation, to quote an article from the San Francisco Examiner. Lands yielded sixty to seventy bushels per acre; dry summers contributed to even ripening and made it possible for farmers to store their produce in open fields without fear of spoilage.

The wheat bonanza didnt last long--maybe a dozen years. Farmers in the area began looking for ways to produce other crops. But the lack of water hampered their efforts. Joshua Cowell and a few others began looking at the possibility of irrigating their lands. Irrigation has made the Great Central Valley, and especially the upper San Joaquin Valley, one of the premier agricultural regions in the world. A lot of the credit goes to pioneers like Stephen Beckwith, Henry Cowell and their sons and daughters.

Astonishingly, wealth in America has been difficult to sustain from one generation to the next. Mitigating factors include high inheritance taxes, on large estates, the big families people used to have, necessitating a wide distribution of property upon the patriarchs/matriarchs death, and the inevitable squabbles among and diverse interests of the inheritors. The Beckwith ranch, established by Stephen Beckwith in 1870 with an initial purchase of a quarter-section (160 acres) of land in northwest Stanislaus County and expanded by his son Charles, by 1906, to three-quarter sections (480 acres), had slipped-away from the family, over the years, until Erma Beckwith and her husband Jaritt Helterbrand, in 1935 and 1936, reconstructed the ranch in its current form of 60 acres.

Jaritt Helterbrand raised pigs and had a small herd of dairy cows; he grew field crops on his land, too: alfalfa, milo-corn for the cows, and I always remember the black-eyed peas that he grew as a cash crop, says daughter Marge. In 1940, when Marge married a neighbor boy, Lloyd Beck, they accepted Jaritts offer of a job and place to live on the ranch. Lloyd began as a farm hand for his father-in-law but, in May 1943, Jaritt died and he became (effectively) the proprietor of the Beckwith ranch. Lloyd and Marge raised their family and lived their lives on the family homestead.

In the 1980s, Wayne, their youngest son, convinced the Becks to let him build a new house on the property for his family. And, finally, in the early nineties, Wayne and his wife Kim bought the ranch from Lloyd and Marge--with the stipulation that his parents remain in the main house as long as they live. While the rationale for the sale remains a private matter, it is hoped that it was, at least to some degree, to keep ownership of the Beckwith Ranch in the family. This land, acquired before the birth of Modesto, is a precious legacy--and, hopefully, its stewards appreciate that.