For The Madera Tribune “Captain” Russell Perry Mace, Madera’s first resident. The United States was celebrating its one hundredth birthday. Custer had just made his last stand, and Ulysses S. Grant was in the last year of his presidency. The year was 1876 — a watershed not only in the history of America but in that of the San Joaquin Valley as well, for that was the year Madera, California, was founded. The appearance of civilization between the Chowchilla and Kings Rivers ha

For The Madera Tribune Clarence Pickett, shown here, was the second Madera lawman to fall in the line of duty. It has become an embedded piece of Madera’s past that Clarence Pickett was Madera’s first lawman to fall in the line of duty. The young officer was gunned down on Nov. 10, 1923 while attempting to arrest a drunk driver. A second look at the record, however, casts doubt on the claim that Pickett was the first to fall, as the following story illustrates. It was one o’c

For The Madera Tribune Matilda Gilmore Brown, shown here on the left in this 1957 photograph, was the daughter of John Gilmore and Jennie Cunningham Gilmore Mace. Madera pioneers Craig Cunningham and Mrs. George Goucher are shown with her celebrating Old Timer’s Day. Elizabeth Evans held the hand of her 4-year-old son, Charles, as she watched her husband march off to war with his friend Russel Perry Mace. John Evans had joined company A of the 11th Regiment of Louisiana Volun

For The Madera Tribune Alfredo and Caterina Farnesi. The woman left her little Italian village in the province of Lucca and walked along the dusty road with a cart full of flowers to sell. Suddenly she stopped and thought, “I don’t want to live this kind of life anymore; I want to go to America.” The year was 1921, and the young women was 22 year-old Caterina Tocchini. Caterina’s decision to go to America was perhaps made easier by the fact that her sister, Costanza, had immi

For The Madera Tribune This historic courthouse was torn down and replaced with a modern facility in 1953. Before that year was out, there had been three major breakouts at Madera’s new jail. In 1898, Madera did away with its old, wooden jail and replaced it with a brick and granite building. For years this stately structure, with its imposing tower, stood on 6th Street in all of its aesthetic glory. Then in 1937, a granite addition was added to the rear of the jail, and that

For The Madera Tribune Sheriff Samson Westfall. When Samson Westfall ran against John Jones in 1910, and jerked the sheriff’s badge away from the two-term lawman, he thought the job would be a breeze. After all, he had served once before as sheriff of Madera County, from 1895 to 1899, and things had gone along smoothly then. He had reckoned, however, without Thomas Cook, who had been a thorn in the side of Westfall’s predecessor for months. According to police records, Cook w

For The Madera Tribune Arcola School in 1926. “I always look back upon the days I spent in Arcola School as among the happiest and most profitable of my life, and I always feel a sense of reverence for the Arcola School of old, whenever I pass the present one” — Dr. Dow Ransom, 1938. With these words, one of Madera’s most highly respected physicians paid homage to the first school he attended upon arriving here as a 12-year-old lad in 1892, and in doing so, he helped keep an

For The Madera Tribune The Indian scare of 1870 reached as far as Fresno Flats. The Battle of Fallen Timbers, Little Big Horn, the Sand Creek Massacre, Wounded Knee, the Mariposa Indian War — all of these are well known encounters between Native Americans and Europeans, as the American frontier moved inexorably west. While these and countless other battles have been recorded, the Indian uprising of Madera County has for the most part escaped the scrutiny of historians. Nestle