This presence and the circumstances brought back the trying Death Valley struggles, when this woman and her companions, and the poor children, so nearly starved they could not stand alone, were only prevented from sitting down to die in sheer despair by the encouraging words of Rogers and myself who had passed over the road, and used every way to sustain their courage.
She died the following day; with Mr. Bennett, I followed her remains to Oak Hill cemetery, where she was buried near the foot of the hill, and a board marked in large letters, "S.B." (Sarah Bennett) placed to mark the mound. The grave cannot now be found, and no records being then kept it is probably lost.
I went home with Mr. Bennett to his home near Watsonville, and spent several days, meeting several of our old Death Valley party, and Mr. D.J. Dilley, Mrs. Bennett's father. Mrs. Bennett left surviving her a young babe.
I returned to Moore's Flat, and soon sold out my store, taking up the business of purchasing gold dust direct from the miners, which I followed for about two years, and in the fall of 1859 sold out the business to Marks & Powers. I looked about through Napa and Sonoma Counties, and finally came to San Jose, where I purchased the farm I now own, near Hillsdale, of Bodley & McCabe, for which I paid $4,000.
In the fall of the same year my old friend W.M. Stockton of Los Angeles Co. persuaded me to come down and pay him a visit. His wife had died and he felt very lonely. I had been there but a few days when my old friend A. Bennett and his children also came to Stockton's. The children had grown so much I hardly knew them, but I was glad indeed to meet them.
I found Mr. Bennett to be a poor man. He had been persuaded to go to Utah, being told that a fortune awaited his coming there, or could be accumulated in a short time. He gave away the little babe left by his wife to Mrs. Scott, of Scott's Valley, in Santa Cruz Co. and sold his farm near the mouth of the Salinas River. With what money he had accumulated he loaded two 4 mule teams with dry goods, put his four children into his wagon, and went to Cedar City, Utah.
He gave a thrilling account of passing through Mountain Meadows, where he saw, here and there little groups of skeletons of the unhappy victims of the great massacre at that place of men, women and children, by J.D. Lee, and his Mormon followers and told me the terrible story, which I here omit.
Smarting under the terrible taxation of one tenth of everything, Bennett grew poorer and poorer and at last resolved that he must go away, but his wife could not leave her own people, and so he set off with his children, somewhat afraid he might be shot down, but he reached Los Angeles Co. in safety. One daughter married a lawyer in San Bernardino, and died a few years afterwards. The other married a Capt. Johnson of Wilmington, and Bennett and two sons went to Idaho.
A few years ago in passing from San Jose to the Coast, my wife and I spent Sunday at Scott's Valley. Mrs. Scott invited us to visit them in the evening at the house when all would be at home. Mrs. Scott was the lady to whom Bennett gave his girl baby when he started away for Utah, and I felt very anxious to see her now she was grown up. Mrs. Scott introduced us, and I sat and looked at the little woman quite a long time, but could not see that she resembled either father or mother. My mind ran back over the terrible road we came and I pictured to myself the woman as she then appeared.
I studied over our early trials, crossing the plains over the deserts and our trying scenes out of Death Valley and turned all over in my mind for some time and finally all came to me like a flash and I could clearly see that the little lady was a true picture of her mother; I now began to ask questions about her folks, she said her father lived near Belmont, Nevada, and her grand-father died at the Monte, Los Angeles county Cal.. Our visit now became very interesting and we kept a late hour.