Chapter 1

JOHN STEINBECK'S ROOTS

Draft

Donald G. Kohrs
Copyright © 2021

A NEW EYE OPENING IN THE WEST

Finding a place to call home was an important part of Steinbeck’s American myth, with immigrants in search of a place to live, coupled with continuous movement West to a land depicted as the new Eden. In 1932, Steinbeck expressed that his writings were to offer a new eye in which to envision the west as he etched following lines in his journal.

            “The story has grown since I started it. From a novel about people, it has become a novel about the world. And you must never tell it. Let it be found out. The new eye is being opened here in the west - the new seeing. It is probable no one will know it for two hundred years. It will be confused, analyzed, analogized, criticized, and none of our fine critics will know what is happening.” — John Steinbeck in a 1932 journal. [1] 

When Steinbeck jotted this paragraph in his journal, it had been two years since he had befriended Ed Ricketts, a former Chicagoan whose favorite poet was Walt Whitman. Recognizing their friendship allows one to consider if Steinbeck may have been immersed in Whitman, and his poem, Facing west, from California's shores, when he scribbled those lines in his journal.

Facing west, from California's shores,

Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of

maternity, the land of migrations, look afar,

Look off the shores of my Western Sea—the circle

almost circled;

For, starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales

of Kashmere,

From Asia—from the north—from the God, the sage,

and the hero,

From the south—from the flowery peninsulas, and the

spice islands;

Long having wander'd since—round the earth having

wander'd,

Now I face home again—very pleas'd and joyous;

(But where is what I started for, so long ago?

And why is it yet unfound?)[2] 

And one may wonder what Walt Whitman was implying with the words “seeking what is yet unfound?” Was he suggesting Anglo-Protestant America’s unending search for the Garden of Eden, a myth presented to New England Puritans who were the first immigrants to arrive under the pretense of creating a model society, pure of sin, by a chosen people, in a promised land?

RE - VISIONING OF THE PROTESTANT AMERICAN MYTH

John Steinbeck found his vocation in re-visioning of the Protestant American myth; a lore that to this day recognizes a monotheistic God who sanctified a specific part of a continent –North America - as a promised land. Remnants of this myth became an underlying theme that resonates through many of Steinbeck’s works. To consider why Steinbeck may have taken up re-visioning the American myth, it is helpful to understand the myth itself and its origin.

A paragraph written by Steinbeck scholar Louis Owens provides an introduction to the American myth: From the first writings of the colonial founders, America was the New Canaan or New Jerusalem, and the colonists, such as William Bradford’s pilgrims of Plymouth, were the chosen people who consciously compared themselves to the Israelites. Their leaders were repeatedly likened to Moses, for they too, had fled from persecution and religious bondage to England and Europe, for the new promise of a place called America…Out of this acutely biblical consciousness arose what has come to be called the American myth, a kind of national consciousness with which Steinbeck was fascinated throughout his life.^[3] 

Hence, from the earliest beginning of this nation, before the Declaration of Independence, this idea that America was a special place, and one element that made it special was that its citizens had a unique relationship with God. Prophesied to the early Puritan colonies of New England by John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in his 1630 sermon A Model of Christian Charity, that as a people, the Protestant immigrants of Northern Europe were to be God’s chosen, and that God has a unique destiny for America and these people.

At the core of this belief was the idea Winthrop proposed in his sermon-that God had chosen America to be a Christian City upon a Hill, to serve as a beacon to the world, as a nation whose governing values were guided by Protestant Christianity.

The following pages outline the establishing of the Protestant religion in California as it relates to the small townships of Monterey County. These communities were an integral part of John Steinbeck’s life and played an important role in his introduction to, and familiarity with, the American myth.
 

PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES SENT TO CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

The influence of the Anglo-Protestant religion had on shaping the social and moral fabric of central California during the turn of the twentieth century has seldom been recognized. On the other hand, the influence of the Anglo-Protestant religion had on shaping the novelist John Steinbeck has been studied in detail.[4] A review of the founding of Protestantism in California, with a primary emphasis on Monterey County, provides an opportunity to consider the context of the making of John Steinbeck a writer.

Efforts began in the 1850s when the ministers of New England’s Protestant churches directed - in great earnest - to the shores of California - large numbers of missionary clergy whose charge was to gather parishioners and build houses of worship. Protestant clergy recognized this effort as their opportunity to establish among the growing population of California, a second “City upon a Hill” equivalent to that of the New England colonies.

Puritan missionaries arrived to California filled with aspirations of laying down a Protestant beachhead as ministers of various denominations organized congregations in the small townships that were settling the central coast of California. The impetus to establish these townships was not a result of the discovery of gold, but the opportunity to harvest food from the land.

CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE

Long before the extensive irrigation dependent agriculture production of the over four hundred varieties of crops grown today, California’s farming involved the ranching of cattle and sheep, and the intensive cultivation of grains, fruits and nuts.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth century, rancheros established by Spanish and Mexican land grants put into production grazing lands for livestock. Through the decades, ranchers experienced the California climate, which vacillates from modest to heavy winters rains punctuated with extended periods of drought. The ranchers quickly learned these periods of limited rainfall often resulted in the starvation of a sizable portion of their herds. Beyond the ranching of livestock, the variable climate presented a challenge to the cultivation of cereal and orchard crops.

Outside of the few fields of cereal planted at the Spanish missions, little grain had ever been grown in California. In 1850, Californians began to recognize the extended capacity of the land for grain production. As a result, grain farming intensified in the second half of the nineteenth century. By 1890, fields of wheat and barley stretched through Butte, Monterey, Santa Clara, San Luis Obispo, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Stanislaus and Yolo counties. As with the livestock industry, the success of an annual grain production depended upon the amount of rainfall a particular region received. The planting of grains throughout the much of the state was followed by the construction of mill warehouses to store the grain and flour mills to process the harvest. In the first decade of the twentieth century, grain warehouses and flour mills dotted the towns of Chico, Fresno, Hollister, Los Angeles, King City, Paso Robles, Salinas, Templeton, Stockton and Vallejo.

 

Small threshing machine owned by J.L. Douglas, Castroville, California

 

Beyond the farming of grains, settlers planted fruit orchards (apples, apricots, cherries, lemons, olives, oranges, pears, peaches, prunes and plums), grape vineyards and nut trees (almond, pecans, pistachio and walnut). Like the cattle and grain industry, the success of the orchard industry was directly tied to the amount of precipitation any particular region received. Irrigation of fruit orchards began as a necessity in Southern California. The practice of irrigating was less so for the orchards of the Northern part of the state, which held a preferable soil and received more rainfall.

John Steinbeck’s paternal ancestors, the Steinbeck family of Hollister, were associated with several of these agricultural endeavors. His grandfather, John Adolf Steinbeck, who arrived to this small frontier town in 1872, established a small dairy ranch, and fruit orchards on his seventy-acre property near the San Benito River.

Each of the Steinbeck boys were employed managers of the milling businesses associated with the grain (wheat and barley) agriculture, which were the dominant crops in California from 1850-1920. Charles M. Steinbeck served as manager of the Southern Pacific Milling Company’s grain warehouse in Templeton, Herbert E. Steinbeck was manager of Central Milling Company in Hollister; John Ernst Steinbeck would serve as manager of Sperry Flour Mill in King City, Paso Robles and Salinas; and Wilhelm P. Steinbeck, manager at the Victor Mill of Hollister and the Sperry Mill of Stockton. Henry Steinbeck was manager of the Southern Pacific Milling Company’s grain warehouses, first in San Ardo, then Santa Margarita and San Luis Obispo. These sons became prominent members of the communities where the milling company businesses were positioned.

John Steinbeck’s maternal ancestors, the Hamilton family of Salinas, were associated with several of California’s agricultural endeavors. Sam Hamilton appears to have farmed grain in the Santa Clara Valley, his bother Robert Hamilton raised sheep nearby. Several children of Samuel Hamilton’s were tenant farmers of grain near King City. An inventor, Sam Hamilton applied for patents he’d invented that improved grain threshing machines. Hamilton owned and leased his threshing machines to grain farmers in the Salinas Valley during harvest season. The Hamilton family later homesteaded adjourning parcels of land near King City, whereupon Sam and eldest son, Tom ventured into farming wheat and raise cattle. George Hamilton would serve as manager of Sperry Flour Mill in Paso Robles for many years. Years later, George and his elder brother Will purchased farming land near King City raising livestock and irrigating their property for the growing of wheat. Will Hamilton, co-owner of the Hamilton – Gause El Camino Automotive Garage in King City sold, not only automobiles, but Case 25 and Fordson tractors to the farmers of the Salinas Valley.

THE SALINAS VALLEY

In 1791, Father Fermin Lasuen reached the Salinas Valley to establish the thirteenth California mission, La Mision de Maria Santisima, Nuestra Senora de la Soledad. The site selected to build the Soledad mission was a dry and barren place. The land was soon irrigated by a series of channels that brought water from the nearby rivers. In the fields, crops of wheat, barley, beans, corn, and peas were grown. A twenty-acre vineyard provided grapes allowing for brandy and wine production. At the peak of prosperity some six thousand head of cattle and sixty-four hundred sheep grazed on mission lands. Three large floods from the Salinas River in 1824, 1828, and 1832 left the structures damaged beyond repair, after which the Soledad Mission was abandoned.

Sherlock Bristol, a pioneer preacher from the East, reached the Salinas Valley in the winter of 1868, after his arrival to California via the Isthmus of Panama, wrote the following description of the land.

Monday morning at break of day we left the [Soledad] Mission, and wending our way through the fog, across the Salinas River, we proceeded down the valley on the north side. As the fog lifted, an immense valley spread out before us, perhaps twenty miles wide and fifty long. It was covered with grass and flowers and occasional trees. Vast herds of semi-wild cattle and horses were gathered in clusters on the plains. Not being accustomed to see men in our costume and with such packs on their backs as we prospective miners carried, they set up a wild looing, and soon they came running toward us till not less than 5,000 horned bullocks and cows, on either side, gathered in solid phalanx and pawed the ground and tore it up with their horns.^[5] 

Steinbeck in East of Eden provided a similar description of the Valley:

The floor of the Salinas Valley was wide and flat. After a rainy winter, the valley was carpeted with spring flowers of all colors: bright blue and white, burning orange, red, and mustard yellow. In the shade of the oak trees, green plants grew and gave a good smell. In June the grasses on the hills turned gold and yellow and red.[6] 

In a short time, native grasses, wildflowers and free-ranging herds of Spanish cattle, gave way to fields of wheat and barley. These grains, which did not need irrigation, were the first lucrative crops grown from the nutrient rich soil deposit of the Salinas Valley’s ancient riverbed. The burgeoning fields of grain soon attracted the Southern Pacific Railroad, and the laying of rail track began.

LAYING DOWN THE RAILROAD TRACKS

During the last half of the nineteenth century, the building of railroads provided rural farm communities throughout America the ability to deliver their agricultural products to the large markets in urban areas. For Monterey County, the laying down of railroad tracks not only advanced the development of agriculture but spurred the construction of towns along the line.

In 1868, the Southern Pacific Railroad, with the use of Chinese immigrant labor, extended tracks south from San Francisco to San Jose, California. By March 1869, the Railroad was running trains to Gilroy, reaching Pajaro Junction in November 1871. Rail tracks next reached Salinas City in November 1872, extending south to Soledad by December 1872, the railroad terminus in the Salinas Valley for the thirteen years.[7] 

In 1886, the Southern Pacific Railroad expanded rail lines beyond Soledad into South Monterey County.The extension of tracks to Paso Robles and Templeton resulted in fields of grain were being planted further into South Salinas Valley.

As the Southern Pacific Railroad extended tracks into Monterey and San Luis Obispo County, the milling companies established grain warehouses and flour mills along the line. [8] Along with the milling operations, new towns arose and existing towns grew larger, as immigrants from around the world arrived to settle in California’s central coast.

In 1887, Sam Hamilton, an Irish immigrant and grandfather to John Steinbeck, began homesteading a family ranch in South Monterey County with hopes of participating in the Salinas Valley grain rush. As mentioned by John Steinbeck, East of Eden: There were numbers of these families and they got the good land of the valley and cleared the yellow mustard away and planted wheat. Such a man was Adam Trask. [9]

ARRIVAL OF IMMIGRANTS

Before the railroad, rural Monterey County received a slow stream of immigrants, seeking the promise of America. The first area to be settled were stretches along the shores of Monterey Bay which attracted immigrants knowledgeable in fishing. The early 1850s, a handful of Chinese immigrants found their way to the Monterey Peninsula and established a small fishing village. In 1855, several Portuguese shore whalers from the Azores Islands arrived and built whaling stations on Monterey Bay. During the last quarter of the 1800s, the township of Monterey experienced an influx of Portuguese and Sicilian fishermen. In the early 1890s, Japanese immigrants arrived and joined the fishing effort. By the turn of the century, boats owned by immigrants from China, Japan, Portugal, and Sicily were fishing the waters of Southern Monterey Bay.

During this period the Mexican and Spanish land grants of Monterey County were divided and sold to a handful early settlers. Having gained large tracts of prime agricultural fields in the Salinas Valley, these pioneers became prominent land barons. (Gonzales, Castro, David Jacks, and Charles King)

By the mid-1860s, Chinese immigrants had become the primary field workers of the grain fields that stretched down the Salinas Valley. The prominence of Chinese fieldworkers during the last quarter of the 1800’s resulted in Salinas City hosting the second largest Chinatown in the California, reported as slightly smaller than San Francisco.

With the Southern Pacific railroad extending tracks further into Monterey County, a steady stream of European immigrants arrived to the region. Beginning in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Danish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Scandinavian, Swiss and Swedish immigrants arrived in Salinas Valley. As tenant farmers leasing tracts of land from the large landholders, these immigrants established grain farms and dairy operations throughout the valley.

Technological advances in irrigation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century allowed the Salinas Valley’s extensive agriculture of grains and livestock to transform to the industrial scale intensive agriculture of fruits and vegetables (sugar beets, strawberries, lettuce, and artichokes). This transition to intensive agriculture required larger, low-paid exploitable labor force provided by various migrant groups, beginning with the Chinese, followed by the Japanese, Hindus, Mexicans and Filipinos.

Thus, besides those newcomers who had emigrated from Northern Europe to rural Monterey County, were those who traveled from Asia. In the 1890s, Japanese immigrants arrived to work Claus Spreckels’ sugar beet fields, replacing the Chinese labor force that had faded with the implementation of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1882. During the World War I, Hindus from India arrived to work the intensive agricultural fields of the Salinas Valley.

In early 1920s, Mexicans immigrants arrived in greater numbers, in response to U. S. Congress having waived immigration requirements for agricultural workers from Mexico in the Immigration Act of 1917. Besides Mexicans, during the late 1920s, Filipinos arrived to work the fields of Salinas Valley, supplementing the Japanese and Hindu labor force that had diminished because of the Immigration Act of 1924.

These immigrants, regardless of race, color, national or ethnic origin, came to this country hoping to participate in the American dream. Unfortunately, the ease at which some immigrants were able take part in this dream was limited by their race, color, nationality and ethnicity.

POPULATION GROWTH IN SALINAS CITY AND MONTEREY COUNTY

During the late 1800s and early 1900s Salinas was a sparsely inhabited part of California. In 1870 Federal Census recorded 599 residents living in Salinas; Steinbeck’s grandfather, Sam Hamilton and his family, counted among them. A decade later, in 1880, the number of residents in the community had more than tripled as the census recorded a population of 1,854. The city grew slowly during the last decades of the nineteenth century, reaching 3,304 residents in 1900. Salinas City’s growth continued at a slow pace as the Federal Census recorded a population of 3,736 in 1910. The slow rate of growth continued during the next decade as the Federal Census recorded a population of 4,308 in 1920. This rate of growth increased during the next decade as the population of Salinas City more than doubled by 1930 with the Federal Census recording 10,263 residents of the community.

The population of Monterey County tracked the pace of growth in Salinas City. The 1870 Federal Census recorded 9,876 resident living in Monterey County. Two decades later, in 1890 the number of residents in the county had doubled as the census recorded a population of 18,637. The county grew slowly during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. Thirty years passed before the population had gained an additional 10,000 residents as the Federal Census recorded a county wide population of 27,980 in 1920. During the next decade, Monterey County’s population gained quickly as the population almost doubled in the Federal Census count for 1930 totaled 53,705.           

ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANT CHURCHES

Starting in the late 1860s, with the arrival of Northern European immigrants, congregations of various Protestant denominations (Baptist, Congregationalist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Unitarian) sprang up with the establishing of townships of Salinas Valley. The Methodist Episcopal Church of Salinas was first to be established in 1867, followed by the Salinas United Presbyterian Congregation in 1869. Four years later, Reverend George McCormick arrived to assume the ministry of the congregation at Salinas United Presbyterian, a position he held for the next fifty-three years. In 1873, the Baptist Church of Salinas and Methodist Episcopal Church of North Salinas were formed.[10]

A letter from a resident of Salinas City that appeared in the newspaper, Russian River on December 2, 1875 stated “The United Presbyterian Church is nearly completed and will form one of six places of worship in this city. Surely we ought to be a moral people, yet sin shows itself in an occasional row in those places where nine-tenths of the trouble always begins.” At the time of this publication, the community of Salinas boasted a population less than one thousand residents.

Presbyterians in the United States came primarily from Scottish and Scotch-Irish ancestry. The Hamilton family were among the earliest Scotch-Irish immigrants to settle in the Salinas Valley, becoming members of the Presbyterian Church, which remains standing in Salinas at 327 Pajaro Street.

After his arrival to Monterey County in 1874, Reverend James Shannon McGowan founded St Paul's Episcopal Church in Salinas in 1875 and the St. James Episcopal Church in Monterey in 1878.[11]

In 1875, the Union Church of Castroville was built, and the facility made available for use by all Protestant denominations. As there was not a Protestant clergyman to take up residence in the church, Sunday sermons were conducted by one of three ministers from Salinas. Each Sunday, either Reverend George McCormick of the United Presbyterian Church, Reverend J.S. McGowan of the Episcopalian church or Reverend A.S. Gibbons of the Methodist Episcopal church, traveled to Castroville to provide religious services.[12] 

 Farther south in the Salinas Valley, Reverend McGowan helped to establish St. Luke's Episcopal Church of Jolon in 1885, St John’s Episcopal Church of San Miguel in 1885, and St. Mark's Episcopal Church of King City in 1887. St. Mark's Episcopal Church of King City held its first services in June 1888.[13] The church registry, dated March 10, 1889, notes John Ernst Steinbeck Sr. among the parishioners who donated to the construction of St. Mark’s Church.[14]

In 1883, nineteen miles south of Salinas, the Baptist congregation of Gonzales was organized, with construction of the church completed the following year.[15] In Chualar, thirteen miles south of Salinas, the first Danish Lutheran church on the Pacific Coast was completed in 1890, to serve the Scandinavian population. Besides Lutherans, Methodists of the community held services in the church every other week.^[16] 

In 1875, twenty miles southwest of Salinas City, the Pacific Grove Methodist Camp Retreat was established. For the first six years, the community held services at an outdoor podium sheltered under a grove of pine trees. In 1881, with the financial support of the Pacific Improvement Company, a Chautauqua Hall was built for the Methodist congregation. Five years later, in 1886, Pacific Grove’s Episcopal Church, St. Mary's-by-the-Sea, was founded by a handful of Episcopal women, and a small wooden red church constructed the following year. Next, Pacific Grove’s Mayflower Congregational Church was established in late November 1891, with the church building completed by June 1893.[17]In 1894, construction of Pacific Grove’s Methodist Episcopal Church and Assembly Hall was completed.[18]

To meet the cultural and social needs of the immigrants arriving from Japan, the Japanese Presbyterian Mission was founded on Sausal Street in Salinas by Reverend Kenkichi Inazawa in 1898. [19]

As had been the directive by ministers of New England’s Protestant churches in the 1850s, in just three decades a Protestant beachhead had been established, along the central coast, with religious congregations scattered among the rural townships of Monterey County.

Protestant ministers associated with these rural churches led their congregation toward morality and devotion. Members not only attended church services, but respected Sunday as a day set aside for rest and worship. One was expected to pray daily, either alone or with their families. Congregation members were to abstain from vice, especially the sinful acts of gambling and alcohol. Congregations were encouraged to organize to help the poor, support civic efforts, and recruit new members to the church.

ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANT MORALS

Having established a Protestant foothold along the shores of California, church parishioners next went about forming benevolent societies, temperance unions, civic organizations and literary circles. These progressive institutions, remaining loyal to the Christian values of the New England Protestants, further shaped the social and civic ethics along California’s central coast.[20]

Protestant ethics introduced during this period resonated throughout the townships of Monterey County well into the twentieth century. Through his own experiences growing up in the religious communities of Salinas and Pacific Grove, Steinbeck became familiar with the American myth and the moral philosophy of Protestant Christianity. Steinbeck’s exposure to the ideals of New England Protestantism resulted in there being a significant amount of religious morality woven into many of his literary works: To A God Unknown, Pastures of Heaven, Of Mice and Men, In Dubious Battle, Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.

In addition to intertwining the American myth into the plot of East of Eden, Steinbeck weaved a good portion of the family history of his maternal ancestors - the Hamilton’s - into his book. To prepare for his writing of the manuscript, Steinbeck recalled studying the local newspaper in depth:

            “Newspapers accurately recorded the lives of the people in the valley,” he said. “I will obtain additional information by reading the editorials which mirrored their thinking.” [21]  “I went through old Salinas (Calif.) newspapers. Wonderful things, those papers. Social notes, church notes, births, deaths…. No matter how much checking you do, somebody’s going to squawk about a mistake. And be right, too, likely.”^[22]

            The following pages extend our understanding of Steinbeck’s presentation of the Hamilton’s family history written into East of Eden, by connecting bits of the story written by the author with historical accounts supported with primary references.

REFERENCES