Pre-1850s
Native American Nations
Sources:
- Indian Myths of South Central California, by A.L. Kroeber, 1907 (University of California Berkeley Press.).
- California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity, edited by T.L. Jones and K.A. Klar, 2007. (Alta Mira Press).
- Handbook of the Indians of California, by A.L. Kroeber, 1925 (Dover Publications).
- Short History of California Indians by Raymond Jeff, 2021
Audio File of Tache Yokuts Song
Source: Tulare County Library
Euroamerican Exploration
(1870s visitor to Stockton)
Drawn by the Delta’s plenty, the Spanish established missions and pueblos in the late 1500s. French-speaking trappers from the Hudson’s Bay Company also settled in the area that would become Stockton in the early 1800s, founding what is still known as French Camp. The new Mexican government took control of California in 1822 and began to distribute lands to private owners. The Delta at the time was wild and lawless, and “border ruffians escaping from San Francisco to the mining camps made murder, robbery, and banditry a common occurrence.”
Sources:
- “The Rise of Stockton” by R.C. Wood, in the San Joaquin Historian, March 1973
- “History: A Look into Stockton’s Past” by the City of Stockton, 2016
Stockton with houses, streets, Native canoes
View of El Dorado Street and Levee Street in Stockton in the 1850s.
Source: Library of Congress, HABS CAL,39-STOCK,29—2.
Rough and Ready Biographies
Charles Weber
(An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County, California, 1890, Pages 441-444 (Lewis Publishing Company))
He was a German immigrant in 1836, a soldier with Sam Houston in Texas, a California gold prospector, a naturalized Mexican citizen, a store owner, and a real estate speculator: Captain Charles Weber is also widely recognized as the founder of Stockton. He passed through the area on his way to Gold Rush territory in 1842, and after establishing a profitable mining company, he returned and established a store in 1847. His success relied partly on his partnership with local Yokuts tribal members. The settlement was known as Sloughtown, Mudburg, or Tuleburg (evidence of the wet surroundings) but Weber renamed it after Commodore Robert F. Stockton in an attempt to win favor for the new town among the Washington DC elite. Weber died in 1881, having realized his vision of making Stockton into a prosperous, if rough-around-the-edges, community.
Sources:
- The Youth of Charles M. Weber, Founder of Stockton, by Ilka Stoffregen Hartmann, 1979 (University of the Pacific).
- Captain Charles M. Weber: Pioneer of the San Joaquin and Founder of Stockton, California, by George P. Hammond and Dale L. Morgan, 1966 (Friends of the Bancroft Library)
- “The Rise of Stockton” by R.C. Wood, in the San Joaquin Historian, March 1973
Charles Weber house built 1847
Captain Charles M. Weber’s house in Stockton.
Source: Library of Congress, HABS CA-1641
Charles Weber’s Portrait
Charles Weber in 1890 in Stockton.
Source: University of California Berkeley, Bancroft Library, California Faces Collection.