Tulah Born about 1855 in California. (Maiden Name Unknown) She was An Indian who married a black mane named James Irwin Born About 1839 in North Carolina. They lived in Yreka, CA.
Inmate: #11776 San Quentin Prison
Rec: 31 July 1885
Crime: Assault to Murder
Term: 7 years
Age: 30
She shot her lover wounding him
James & Tulah had the following children:
Castilla Irwin
James Henry Irwin
Calvin Irwin
Edward Irwin
Tulah dies between the 1880 census and the 1900 census as James is a widow, working as a bartender still in Yreka, CA.
In 1860 James is 11 years old living with a man named Edward Miller in Rockingham, NC.
I only found one other document.
Calvin Irwin was in San Quentin:
Really something that her son follows in her footsteps, I looked in the newspapers and didn't find his story. I made them a tree on Ancestry.
History Of Yreka, CA
In March 1851, Abraham Thompson, a mule train packer, discovered gold near Rocky Gulch while traveling along the Siskiyou Trail from southern Oregon. By April 1851, two thousand miners had arrived in "Thompson's Dry Diggings" to test their luck, and by June 1851, a gold rush "boomtown" of tents, shanties, and a few rough cabins had sprung up. Several name changes occurred until the little city was called Yreka. The name comes from the Shasta language /wáik'a/, for which Mount Shasta is named. The word means "north mountain" or "white mountain".
Mark Twain tells a different story:
Harte had arrived in California in the [eighteen-]fifties, twenty-three or twenty-four years old, and had wandered up into the surface diggings of the camp at Yreka, a place which had acquired its mysterious name — when in its first days it much needed a name — through an accident. There was a bakeshop with a canvas sign which had not yet been put up but had been painted and stretched to dry in such a way that the word BAKERY, all but the B, showed through and was reversed. A stranger read it wrong end first, YREKA, and supposed that that was the name of the camp. The campers were satisfied with it and adopted it.
Poet Joaquin Miller described Yreka during 1853–1854 as a bustling place with "... a tide of people up and down and across other streets, as strong as if a city on the East Coast". Incorporation proceedings were completed on April 21, 1857.
Lynchings
There have been two documented lynchings in the town of Yreka. The first took place on August 26, 1895, when four men – William Null, Garland Stemler, Luis Moreno, and Lawrence Johnson – awaiting trial for various charges of murder and robbery, were simultaneously hanged by a lynch mob from a railroad tie suspended from two adjacent trees.
The second lynching occurred about 40 years later on July 28, 1935. Clyde Johnson and Robert Miller Barr robbed a local business and its patrons in Castella, California. The pair then stole a car from a patron and drove north to Dunsmuir, California, where they planned to abandon the automobile and make a getaway by train. Soon after they abandoned the car north of Dunsmuir, the pair was stopped by California Highway Patrolman George “Molly” Malone and Dunsmuir titular Chief of Police, 38-year-old Frank R. "Jack" Daw. Johnson pulled out a Luger pistol and wounded both policemen. Malone recovered, but Daw died the next day. Clyde Johnson was caught a few hours later by a dragnet and was taken into custody. Barr, who was holding the $35 that they got from the robbery, panicked during the shootout and ran off into the woods, then escaped on a freight train. Jack Daw was a beloved figure in Dunsmuir. His title of Chief of Police was honorary, given to him because of his cool head and experience as a World War I veteran. The night of Daw's funeral a dozen cars from Dunsmuir, carrying approximately 50 masked men, drove north to Yreka to lynch Johnson. On August 3, 1935 at 1:30am, the vigilante mob reached the Yreka jail and lightly knocked on the door. Deputy Marin Lange, the only guard on duty at the jail, opened the door slightly and was quickly overtaken. He was driven nine miles east of Yreka where he was released, barefoot. The mob proceeded to search the jail, found Johnson, drove him away in one of the cars and hanged him from a pine tree. Barr was arrested over a year later, on September 4, 1936, in Los Angeles on a burglary charge. During his time on the lam, he got a part as an extra in the Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald film, Rose Marie, scenes of which were filmed near Lake Tahoe. He is credited in the film under his real name. ( From Wikipedia).
Maybe we will find out more someday.
Inmate: #11776 San Quentin Prison
Rec: 31 July 1885
Crime: Assault to Murder
Term: 7 years
Age: 30
She shot her lover wounding him
James & Tulah had the following children:
Castilla Irwin
James Henry Irwin
Calvin Irwin
Edward Irwin
Tulah dies between the 1880 census and the 1900 census as James is a widow, working as a bartender still in Yreka, CA.
In 1860 James is 11 years old living with a man named Edward Miller in Rockingham, NC.
I only found one other document.
Calvin Irwin was in San Quentin:
Inmate: #15737 Sand Quentin Prison
Rec: 23 Dec 1893
Crime: Assault With a Deadly Weapon
Term: 2 years
Age: 27
History Of Yreka, CA
In March 1851, Abraham Thompson, a mule train packer, discovered gold near Rocky Gulch while traveling along the Siskiyou Trail from southern Oregon. By April 1851, two thousand miners had arrived in "Thompson's Dry Diggings" to test their luck, and by June 1851, a gold rush "boomtown" of tents, shanties, and a few rough cabins had sprung up. Several name changes occurred until the little city was called Yreka. The name comes from the Shasta language /wáik'a/, for which Mount Shasta is named. The word means "north mountain" or "white mountain".
Mark Twain tells a different story:
Harte had arrived in California in the [eighteen-]fifties, twenty-three or twenty-four years old, and had wandered up into the surface diggings of the camp at Yreka, a place which had acquired its mysterious name — when in its first days it much needed a name — through an accident. There was a bakeshop with a canvas sign which had not yet been put up but had been painted and stretched to dry in such a way that the word BAKERY, all but the B, showed through and was reversed. A stranger read it wrong end first, YREKA, and supposed that that was the name of the camp. The campers were satisfied with it and adopted it.
Poet Joaquin Miller described Yreka during 1853–1854 as a bustling place with "... a tide of people up and down and across other streets, as strong as if a city on the East Coast". Incorporation proceedings were completed on April 21, 1857.
Lynchings
There have been two documented lynchings in the town of Yreka. The first took place on August 26, 1895, when four men – William Null, Garland Stemler, Luis Moreno, and Lawrence Johnson – awaiting trial for various charges of murder and robbery, were simultaneously hanged by a lynch mob from a railroad tie suspended from two adjacent trees.
The second lynching occurred about 40 years later on July 28, 1935. Clyde Johnson and Robert Miller Barr robbed a local business and its patrons in Castella, California. The pair then stole a car from a patron and drove north to Dunsmuir, California, where they planned to abandon the automobile and make a getaway by train. Soon after they abandoned the car north of Dunsmuir, the pair was stopped by California Highway Patrolman George “Molly” Malone and Dunsmuir titular Chief of Police, 38-year-old Frank R. "Jack" Daw. Johnson pulled out a Luger pistol and wounded both policemen. Malone recovered, but Daw died the next day. Clyde Johnson was caught a few hours later by a dragnet and was taken into custody. Barr, who was holding the $35 that they got from the robbery, panicked during the shootout and ran off into the woods, then escaped on a freight train. Jack Daw was a beloved figure in Dunsmuir. His title of Chief of Police was honorary, given to him because of his cool head and experience as a World War I veteran. The night of Daw's funeral a dozen cars from Dunsmuir, carrying approximately 50 masked men, drove north to Yreka to lynch Johnson. On August 3, 1935 at 1:30am, the vigilante mob reached the Yreka jail and lightly knocked on the door. Deputy Marin Lange, the only guard on duty at the jail, opened the door slightly and was quickly overtaken. He was driven nine miles east of Yreka where he was released, barefoot. The mob proceeded to search the jail, found Johnson, drove him away in one of the cars and hanged him from a pine tree. Barr was arrested over a year later, on September 4, 1936, in Los Angeles on a burglary charge. During his time on the lam, he got a part as an extra in the Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald film, Rose Marie, scenes of which were filmed near Lake Tahoe. He is credited in the film under his real name. ( From Wikipedia).
Maybe we will find out more someday.
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