3. California, for Health and Wealth!

Go back to reading about A.A.’s horrific Civil War experience.

A.A. Sulcer, circa 1870

In the wake of his Civil War experience, a young battlefield surgeon was mustered out of the army in Danville, the central Illinois town where had come of age. A.A. Sulcer was a doctor in practice, with no diploma to prove it. He travelled up to the young city of Chicago to spend 6 months at Rush Medical College, the closest thing to a medical school in the Midwest. If he had been looking for an escape from a world of arbitrary tragedy and death, however, he didn’t find it there: a severe outbreak of cholera in Chicago killed off many at the college including its founder.

Rush Medical College Before the War

He returned to Danville to set up his practice, perhaps to be near his sister Hannah Sulcer Timmons and her family. His mother Catherine and sister Sarah moved over from Indiana as well, to run a boarding house in nearby Catlin. Of his three older brothers William, Noah, and Keziah, we don’t know if they survived the war, stayed in Indiana, or re-located as well.

Danville, around 1869

He also developed a romance with a young woman from a local Quaker family, named Mary Jane Durham. She was a recent graduate of Earlham College in Indiana, an institution founded by the Friends (as the Quakers were commonly known). Within a year of their wedding, they were doting on a daughter, Katie, and he had become a pillar of the community in the new village of Ridge Farm: master of the Masonic Lodge, town board member and “sound republican” – the party of Lincoln, and Harmon, his late commander.

A country doctor in Vermillion County had to treat a huge range of problems, many of them ultimately fatal. Dropsy, dysentery, typhoid fever, rheumatic fever, childbirth, stillbirth, “summer complaint” (from spoiled milk) and “consumption” (tuberculosis) were common, as were accidents involving horses, and trains. The most pervasive illness of the pioneer was a debilitating fever or “ague”. A.A. dealt with them as best he could, though sanitary conditions and medicine were still primitive and often ineffective, with no antibiotics or even antiseptics.

Real tragedy directly struck the Sulcer family when Katie was 3. Somehow she took ill, perhaps from typhoid, and did not recover. Her father was not able to save her and it affected him deeply. He missed her desperately, as in a verse he wrote in his pain:

We are a lonely band since the morn the angel came,
And carried our little Katie to her bright and happy home.
Her loving mother’s heart is aching with despair,
Since little Kate has left her for her heavenly home so fair.
Her father sits and thinks of Katie, of her happy smiling face,
As he knows that at the fireside, there is a vacant chair.
Her many loving friends feel her absence sore
For we know that here on earth, she ne’r will greet us more.

A.A. Sulcer

He struggled to make sense of it – all his medical experience and training was to no avail, as on the battlefield, again here within the walls of his home. Looking back later, he had begun a long process of questioning “not only in my own skill and that of my confreres, but in the claims of the therapeutic agents at our command”.

Only the spiritual world offered hope. This wasn’t simply Christian rhetoric; in his despair A.A. was searching for an explanation and a path forward as a healer. Although it did not happen overnight, his transformation from medical doctor to philosopher and churchman seems to have begun with the death of Katie.

The next year he and Mary Jane had another child, a boy they named William after A.A’s grandfather, the veteran of the Revolution. Everyone knew him by his middle name, Cullen. My grandfather Henry was born 6 years later.

By now A.A. had become an authority on surgery and even wrote a book about field practices in the Civil War. He corresponded with army medical authorities about nervous depression among veterans, and new ways to treat it. Time passed by, and somehow the family struggled on in the shadow of Katie’s death.

In the Midwest, the pioneer era was over. The great cities of Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis were growing at an incredible pace, but the countryside was not yielding as many new opportunities as the cities. At the same time, outbreaks of disease and lack of effective treatments were creating a great impetus among the growing middle and upper class to seek out healthier climates. Many entrepreneurs were turning their eyes westward, particularly to California, and the key to this was the railroads.

The Citrus Fair, Marketing California to the Midwest

By the 1870’s, the California gold rush was over and speculators were busy trying to create a land rush to take its place. The transcontinental rail link became operational in 1869, but in the aftermath of the mining boom, growth was slow. The railroads needed to step up demand to pay for their expansion, especially as they were now competing nationally, and took the initiative to try to create a second boom, a kind of “health rush”. For example, the Southern Pacific Railroad commissioned a respected writer to publish “California: for Health, Pleasure and Residence, A Book for Travelers and Settlers”, extolling the scenery, climate, and fruit industry. Chapter subtitles include: “The Agricultural Wealth of California”; “A January Day in Los Angeles”; “Semi-Tropical Fruits in Southern California”; “A Golden Valley”; “Southern California for Consumptives”; and “Tables of Temperature in Switzerland, Georgia, and San Bernardino”. This book proved to be influential in creating a second national obsession with California.

California, Cornucopia to the World

The railroads also put up huge tracts of railway land for cheap investment, and staged massive promotional events all over the country. Banners hung on trains carried the slogan: “Oranges for Health… California for Wealth”. Posters emphasized the available farmland, climate, and a chance to start over “without cyclones or blizzards”. Perhaps I had the same idea when I myself moved from snowy Chicago to California.

The financial opportunities in 1880’s Southern California were real. The Tibbets family of Riverside, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, introduced Bahia oranges from Brazil, perfectly suited to the climate. By 1882, there was a huge citrus industry in California and over half of the orange trees were in Riverside; refrigerated train cars made it possible to sell the fruit anywhere. Soon hugely profitable cooperatives were formed, including what is now known as Sunkist. Some of the settlers had in fact come for their health, some for profit, but within ten years Riverside was to become, per capita, the wealthiest city in the United States.

Acheson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad during the Fare War

Around 1885, A.A. and Mary Jane made the decision to go, possibly influenced by a major promotional “citrus fair” held in Chicago. Bidding farewell to their families, they boarded a westbound train, probably on the new line (the Acheson Topeka and Santa Fe immortalized in popular song) that had started a fare war bringing the price of a ticket to California down to $15 and under – an incredible price even then. They settled in Riverside and A.A. opened a medical practice. One can imagine the hopes of the family, along with so many others, to have a fresh start in a new climate, and leave some of their worst memories behind.

Go on to read about the new life of the Sulcers as pioneers of Riverside, California and the return of an old foe.

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