How Stuart Creek in Glen Ellen got its name

Stuart Creek in Glen Ellen was named for the Stuart family, who settled near it in the 1860s.

Born in 1819, Charles Stuart was a merchant in upstate New York when he married Ellen Tourtelotte. The couple had three small children when the news of California gold reached the East Coast in 1848. Gathering 50 men, Stuart formed the Ithaca Company and made plans to lead a mule train to California.

Bidding his family farewell, he set out with the company the following spring. There were hardships all along the way. On the final leg across the desert, Stuart recalled enduring “112 miles without water only such as carried in our canteens. We lost 1/4 of our animals abandoned under the scorching sun...”

Reaching San Francisco in November, Stuart started a farm near Mission Dolores and opened a popular tavern. Business was good enough for him to build San Francisco’s first brick residence.

By the mid-1850s, his family had joined him. Buying land in Sonoma Valley, Charles planted a vineyard and hired Chinese masons to construct a two-story home from local stone. The Stuarts moved there in 1869, the same year the transcontinental railroad was completed.

The railroad’s construction had relied heavily on Chinese immigrants. In appreciation, a Chinese crew was given the honor of laying the last piece of rail, into which the famous “Golden Spike” was set. Later, they were guests of honor at a celebratory dinner and praised by railroad baron Leland Stanford.

Incredibly, this and their many other contributions to California were immediately forgotten. By the mid-1870s, the immigrants were being blamed for low wages and high unemployment, and they suffered widespread discrimination and violence.

In 1878, Stuart was a delegate to the California Constitutional Convention. The Workingman’s Party set the tone with the slogan “The Chinese Must Go!” Speaker after speaker spoke out against the immigrants. Of 150 delegates, Stuart was the only one to stand up for them.

Stuart praised the Chinese for “building our railroads, clearing our farms, planting our vineyards” and many other things, “thus contributing to our happiness and true prosperity.”

He encouraged the delegates not to be “carried away through blind prejudice” and ended with a Robert Burns quote:

“Man’s inhumanity to man/Makes countless thousands mourn.”

Even though he was attacked in the newspapers and received death threats, Stuart never wavered from his position.

When he died the following year of natural causes, Ellen took over the running of Glen Oaks Ranch. Like Charles, their home has stood firm, weathering major earthquakes. It still stands today, a steadfast survivor from another time.