Horace Bell: Reminiscences of a Ranger, Part Three

Generally speaking, if Horace Bell, in his 1881 memoir Reminiscences of a Ranger, liked someone, he would not only lavish praise on them, but refer to them by name.  If, however, he had contempt for an individual, they were referred to by some usually mocking phrase or title, such as Old Horse Face (Abel Stearns) or "the man from Arkansas," the latter being the subject of this post.

Bell's book began with this arrival in the rollicking Gold Rush town of Los Angeles just in time for a popular tribunal, presided over by "Old Horse Face", in judgment of men accused of the murder of San Gabriel saloon-keeper and militia general Joshua Bean.  In his colorful way, Bell described his version of this extralegal proceeding and then went off on a variety of tangents and diversions, some covered here in the previous two posts.

He then returned to the matter of the sentencing of the several prisoners, with Stearns calling for and receiving a motion for the death sentence of hanging and the motions were entertained for each, including one that turned over one man, who Bell claimed was the true killer, over to the legally-constituted authorities.  That story will have to wait for a fuller discussion of the Bean murder, however.

Horace Bell's fantastical tale of how the Los Angeles Rangers engineered a "court martial" of marshal Alveron S. Beard seems totally fabricated, but sure is fun to read.

When it came time to execute those found guilty by the vigilante tribunal, Bell stated that "an immigrant from Arkansas had been stalking around the streets for some days previous, in a ragged and half-clad condition" and then offered to serve as the hangman.  Bell continued, "a purse was accordingly raised in his behalf, and the great man from Arkansas became the hangman of the mob."  Moreover, the day afterward, it was stated, "the uncouth Arkansas man appeared on the streets dressed in the very extreme of elegant and expensive fashion."  The unnamed individual "soon thereafter became the village pedagogue" and took out an advertisement in the Los Angeles Star for a school he had opened.  Finally, Bell reported that "at the next municipal election, the elegant hangman was honored by our people by being elected City Marshal."

Bell then told a tale about how, about June 1853 when "the southern counties were overrun with Mexican banditti" two contingents of Rangers were formed, the one in Los Angeles that Bell joined, and another in Calaveras County.  On a Sunday evening, he went on, the marshal called for the newly-constituted Rangers to arrest some thieves said to be at a fandango (dance) in town.  When the Rangers arrived, they were disposed to enjoy the festivities instead, while the marshal evidently made an excuse about having to get his revolver before going to the party.

After awhile the Rangers believed they had been deceived by the marshal, Bell claimed, and went to his home where they "found the delinquent chief in the arms of his newly wedded bridge, who, by the by, had another husband, then living, I believe, at El Monte."  After waking him up, the Rangers allegedly told the marshal that there had been a terrible fight, two of their members had been killed, and the official was needed to assist in the preservation of order.

Then, it was stated that "it required at least half an hour for him to make his toilet" before he made his appearance wearing kid gloves and carrying a gold-headed cane.  Bell went on to assert that he was then seized by the Rangers, who carried the marshal to a ditch where "a court-martial was organized, which proceeded to try the marshal on a charge of treason and desertion."  Naturally, the account continued, "he was found guilty, and the military code was read to him from a greasy pack of monte cards."  The penalty was decreed to be "cat-hauling in the public water-ditch."

Bell only referred to Beard as "the man from Arkansas" rather than by name and, indeed, Beard, a native of North Carolina, resided in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1850 just after his service in the Mexican-American War.  Within a few years, he relocated to rough-and-ready Gold Rush-era Los Angeles.

The "astonished representative of official pomposity" was tied up with a rope "and the irate Rangers amused themselves until the break of day in dragging the produ dignitary up and down the water ditch, when they left him more dead than alive and retired to their barracks."  Bell wrote that the Rangers were then arrested and a trial was held in the Justice Court, which ended when the merchant, only identified as Tom H------, who supposedly represented the Rangers went on a rampage "capsizing the court, bench and all, whereupon the Rangers went to work, and smashed the tables, broke the chairs, and tore things up generally . . . so ended this remarkable episode."

Finally, Bell claimed, this event "ended the official career of that illustrious character, born of the first great Los Angeles mob."  He went on to assert that "the boys would hoot him on the street, and he was forced to resign."

Not content with stopping there, however, Bell could not resist another story, adding "then I will consign him to the life of vagabondism that he has led down to the present day."  This had to with a welcome party for Ezra Drown, who would be a prominent attorney, common council member, and district attorney in Los Angeles, in May 1853, at which "the pompous marshal" was in attendance ostensibly for "official protection" but allegedly "to get a deluging supply of gratuitous liquid comfort."  When a fight broke out between attorney Lewis Granger and the federal district attorney, who was unnamed, and "the officious head of the infantile city police" jumped in, Granger "downed the Arkansas man, and chawed his nose until it resembled a magnificent pounded and peppered beefsteak."  Bell claimed the marshal had the federal district attorney arrested, but the matter was handled without a trial and the two walked "arm in arm  . . . to the Bella Union, where they smiled at the bar and swore eternal friendship."

As is so often the case with Bell, there are grains of truth, uncorroborated statements, and an array of falsehoods in his characterization of the "man from Arkansas," who was Alviren S. Beard.  There is not a great deal of information available on Beard, who was a native of Davidson County, North Carolina and born about 1820.  He was married in his home county as a young man in the early 1840s and then served in the Mexican-American War.  Within a few years, he was in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, before making his way to Los Angeles.

There is no corroboration that Beard was the hangman in the lynching of the men accused of involvement in Joshua Bean's death.  District Court Judge Benjamin Hayes's voluminous papers at the Bancroft Library at U.C. Berkeley, include material on the lynchings of the accused men, and there are lengthy articles in the Los Angeles Star--none of which mention Beard, which is not to say Bell was wrong.

The same is the case with Bell's "rags to riches" description of Beard before and after the hangings, but it is true that Beard in mid-December 1852 received Los Angeles Common Council approval to operate a school and be paid $35 a month for teaching poor children, the number of which were to be determined by the council.  This is the earliest documented record of Beard being in the town, though it is certainly possible he was there earlier, including when the Bean lynchings took place.

Several months later, he did secure election as Los Angeles city marshal in early May 1853, about a half year after the lynchings.  Perhaps akin to the situation in which Tomás Sánchez, who had a major role in the capture and lynching of suspects in the murder of Sheriff James Barton in January 1857, was elected county sheriff in 1859 and retained that seat for several years, it is possible Beard was "rewarded" for his services in the Bean lynchings be being elected marshal--but there is no proof that this was the case.

Interestingly, however, Beard's sureties to guarantee his behavior in office were former mayor John G. Nichols and Lewis Granger, who Bell claimed pummeled Beard's nose into "beefsteak" around the same time as the election.  Why Granger would, at virtually the same time, beat Beard up and then put up bond money as the new marshal's surety is puzzling, unless Bell expansive storytelling impulses created the Granger pummeling to make Beard look more comical than he was.

But, none of Bell's tales are as outlandish as his claims of the Rangers' "court-martial" of the marshal.  Again, no other sources mention any event remotely similar to this and the Star would certainly have covered it if it had happened.  Moreover, the claim that the entirety of the militia was arrested and tried before the Justice Court--a serious case of assault and battery for the serious injuries Bell claimed were inflicted would have gone before the Sessions Court, anyway--just defies belief.  This is especially true with the part about the trashing of the courtroom.

Despite his many misadventures in Los Angeles, Beard was elected as a Justice of the Peace in San Bernardino and it is listed as his occupation in the 1860 census.

As it was in real life, Beard was already pretty amusing or worse on his own without embellishment.  For example, shortly after taking office as marshal, Beard petitioned the Common Council for a salary and did so again in October and November, but the council replied that the schedule of fees paid to the marshal for various services was considered sufficient.  After the last attempt, the council's minutes for 23 November included the admonition that, if fees were not sufficient compensation for Beard, "he is at liberty to resign."

Other conflicts between the town's governing body and Beard included his issuing business licenses instead of collecting the fees, which was his job as dictated by ordinance and question about fees he was charging for services, such as arrests made of individuals who, as the council recorded in its minutes of 21 June 1853, "had not paid any fine because they succeeded in making good their escape owing to the lack of vigilance on the part of the Marshal."  Consequently, his claims were reduced only to account for those prisoners who did not escape and who paid their fines!  At one point, Beard requested fees for burying a dead Indian, but the council rejected this, noting that such an action was under the auspices of the county, nor the city.

The marshal also had a trio of legal problems within months of his assuming office, involving bigamy, unlawful detainer of an Indian and his role in the homicide of a man he ordered to jail.  These incidents will be discussed later in a more detail post about Beard.

Beard's resignation in early 1854, however, was not due to being shamed by the Rangers. Instead, he failed to forward money to the city treasurer in his role as the town's tax and fines collector.  More on this will be presented in that forthcoming post on Beard, but it turned out that Beard was hundreds of dollars in arrears.  The Los Angeles Common Council pressed him for the assessment book and funds until the matter led to the vacating of his office and the demand of the monies from his sureties, the same Lewis Granger mentiond above and former mayor John G. Nichols.  Eventually Beard ponied up some cash, as did Granger and Nichols, though it looks like a couple hundred bucks never made it to the city's coffers.

As to Bell's claim that Beard was a vagabond for the next few decades, it is true that the former marshal moved around a good deal.  In 1860, he was in San Bernardino serving as Justice of the Peace--an indication that, despite his misadventures in Los Angeles, voters in his new home found him worthy of a judicial position.

Within a decade, though, Beard decamped to Virginia City, in what was then Idaho Territory.  The settlement was new, having been founded as a mining boom town in 1863, but within months crime became rampant, as was often the case in western American mining communities.  The response was a vigilance committee that operated at the end of that year and into the next, which also was when Montana was declared a territory of the U.S. by President Lincoln.  Dozens of men were killed by so-called "road agents," and, in turn, about fifteen or twenty of the latter were executed by what were known as the Montana Vigilantes.  

Whether Beard was in Virginia City, which served as Montana's capital from 1865-75, during this period is not known, but it is ironic that he may have been a vigilante executioner in Los Angeles in 1852 and then happened to live in Virginia City eighteen years later, a few years removed from its own vigilante period.

In any case, by the mid-1870s, he had moved once more, this time to Elko County, Nevada, where he was a rancher.  He appeared in an 1875 state census there and just afterward was quoted in a Los Angeles Herald article about a cannon said to have been used in a notorious fight at an 1852 party in town.  

In 1880, he had roamed back to California, this time taking up residence in San Pasqual, near San Diego, which was the site of the famed 1846 battle when Californios defending their homeland defeated American forces in the main victory for locals in the Mexican-American War in California.  It appears that Beard remained at San Pasqual into the 1890s and may have died during that decade, while in his seventies.  Whether this frequent moving from place to place constituted "vagabondism" or not is arguable.

In Bell's telling, Alveron S. Beard was a dirty, dishelved volunteer vigilante hangman, an effete and cowering marshal, and a discredited vagabond.  Bell's pungent penchant for elaboration, exaggeration and embellishment can obscure those elements of documented history that are present in his work, as well.  Other sources, however, indicate that Beard certainly had some significant character flaws--as he was a bigamist, a marshal with questionable discretion, and an (ab)user of public funds while Los Angeles's marshal. 

As is so often the case, parsing out accounts of first-person history (if Bell can be viewed as a reliable chronicler) can be a challenge and sorting out fact from fancy frustrating!