You couldn't make this stuff up.
Thanks to two Sun-Star columnists, The Old Trainer and Sarah Lim, one of the 19th century's most intriguing yarns -- with Merced right in the middle -- can be retold today. The Old Trainer was raised on a cowboy ranch in Oklahoma, and Sarah is director of the Courthouse Museum. Both are steeped in the history of our state.
The saga started years before, but 1889 was when the final curtain fell on a tale of sex, money and murder a few miles up the tracks from the Merced depot.
It was on Aug. 14 that David Neagle, one of the most feared gunfighters of the Old West, stepped off the Southern Pacific train in Merced. He sent a telegram that led to the bloody and violent end of one of the most sordid scandals the Golden State has ever seen.
At its center was Sarah Althea Hill, a storied beauty who rose from San Francisco's bordellos to become a diva of The City during the era when gold, silver and railroad riches flooded the Bay Area. She managed to ensnare three of the most prominent men of the period in an affair that made headlines from coast to coast.
One of the men was William Sharon, the Bill Gates of his day, who owned railroads, banks, mines, the Palace Hotel and two of the fanciest mansions on Nob Hill. He also wound up with the lion's share of the riches from the Comstock silver lode in Nevada. He even managed to get elected to the U.S. Senate from Nevada, although he lived in San Francisco.
Another player was David Terry, the most brilliant legal mind in California and a former chief justice of the California Supreme Court. He was forced to resign from the court after killing U.S. Sen. William Broderick in a duel. Terry picked weapons with hair triggers, just like his temper, waited till Broderick had fired and missed and then drilled him. The senator lingered for three days before he died. Terry was a giant of a man for those times, 6-foot-3, 250 pounds, and he always carried a pistol and Bowie knife. He didn't mind using either one.
The final flawed figure was U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Field who, as all justices did in that era, lived in his judicial district -- in his case, California -- instead of in Washington.
Sarah Hill became Sharon's mistress, which suited him just fine, but she demanded that he marry her. He didn't want to lose her, but he didn't want to marry her either. He convinced her that all it took for them to get hitched was that they sign a document which said they intended to get married. Sarah bought into this notion, and their lives purred along for awhile -- until Sharon got tired of her. At that point he declared they'd never been married.
The lawsuits started flying.
Somehow she and David Terry crossed paths. Terry, as did most men, fell madly in love with Hill. He became her legal warrior and fought Sharon's legion of lawyers to a standstill for six years. Sharon himself died during that time, but his fortune ensured that the courtrooms never lacked business. Eventually, the case made its way to a federal court, which ruled against Hill and Terry.
The former state chief justice appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Field got trapped in the scandal when he ruled against Hill. With no appeals left, Terry decided that the solution was to kill Field.
The Supreme Court justice then hired Neagle. He'd already killed several men in the Nevada silver fields and, as a bodyguard, stood up to the Earp brothers in Tombstone. He'd turned respectable and made a living working for the Southern Pacific and protecting San Francisco's most wealthy residents.
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