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adopted country of Mexico in a military capacity. That happened in February 1845, when the governor needed military assistance against a revolt. He appointed John Sutter “Captain of Sacramento troops” and gave him a land grant of 33 leagues, which superseded his previous one.
    With his businesses going well, Sutter finally sent for his wife and children. They joined him from Europe. Everything was looking up. His control of the frontier trade through his fort was unrivaled. His agricultural and cattle interests were extensive. He had plans for a new sawmill to help supply the lumber needs of settlers. There was no reason to assume anything would change that. With his businesses flourishing, Sutter was now poised to become the multimillionaire he had always wanted to be.
    A long way from the plains of Lambertsville, New Jersey, where he’d grown up, a middle-aged James Marshall, thirty-three years old, rode his horse through thesoaring Sierra Nevadas. In one way or another, he had been traveling for the past decade.
    Marshall had drifted west after his parents died in the 1830s. He settled in Missouri on a nice piece of property on the banks of the Missouri River. There he began farming. He was just about to make a go of it when he caught malaria. His treatment was exactly the same as it had been for General Washington’s troops in 1775: massive doses of quinine. It worked. Marshall’s fever abated, but the Missouri doctors told him he needed a drier, more hospitable climate if he were survive even six more months. Marshall took that as a mandate to do what most people did in 1840s when times were bad: continue to go west. There was still a mythic quality to the West.
    To be sure, Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery had been there first, back in the early part of the century. Since that time, the West had not been fully settled by white men. In 1844, when Marshall took the Oregon Trail west, it had been only one year since the first wagon train had departed Missouri for Oregon.
    Watching Marshall’s wagon train depart was preacher Robert James of Clay County, who stayed behind.
    There was his family to consider, which now consisted of his wife, Zerelda, and their young son, Franklin. That plus his hemp crop and his slaves made him a fairly contented man by Southern standards, for while Missouri was a border state, Clay County was controlled by slave-holding families. No, it would take a lot more than simply settling in a new land for Robert James to leave his family, his home, and his God.
    And so, while pioneers flowed west, and his family was firmly ensconced at their farm and his slaves in the field, James left home and hearth on a spiritual journey back to his Kentucky roots to decide what to do about his future.
    While Robert James was visiting Kentucky, James Marshall arrived in Oregon in 1845 and for some reason didn’t like the place. Taking to horse again, Marshall wound up in July of that year mounting a rise just south of Port Sacramento. Looking down, there in the middle of no place was a huge adobe fort set in a perfect rectangle. It was ideally situated on a hilltop, with a view of the Sacramento River harbor. Marshall rode his horse up to the fort and faced the giant gates. They were open, and the first thing that hit Marshall was the activity. He saw the shops that Sutter had set up all around the interior perimeter, and the open areas. The place was full of people, a veritable shopping plaza.
    James Marshall was a very clever man, but he did not know that he was the only wheelwright in all of northern California. Combining the talents of both a carpenter and a blacksmith, Marshall specialized in producing wheels for carriages, stagecoaches, whatever was needed to keep people and freight going. It was a very important talent to have in an outpost of civilization where such skills were heavily valued.
    Realizing this, Sutter hired him immediately. Plying his trade in the