My first installment will be the story of Joseph and Julia Long.
Joseph Allison Long was born in 1833 in Missouri. We know almost nothing about his early life and family, only that he had an older sister named Mary, possibly an older brother, and that his father died in 1839. His mother (and probably he) moved to live with his sister after she married in 1846, but of their lives before that, we don’t know.
We do know that in 1856, Joseph moved to California with a friend, Elisha Abbott, who later became his business partner. Joseph worked several jobs in Colusa County, possibly including ranching with a brother (he is listed as living with another Long 1860, but the relation is not certain). In 1863, he married Julia Musick, born in 1845 in Missouri. Her family had also recently moved to California. The Longs and Musicks lived on adjacent farms for several years, and three children were born to Joseph and Julia while they lived there. Joseph’s mother came to visit with his family in 1870, then returned to her daughter Mary’s house in Missouri where she died in 1871 at the age of 78.
About that time, both the Long and Musick families moved north. William Musick and his family moved to Shasta County, while Joseph and Julia moved to Tehama County, just across the county line. Both families sold their farms in Colusa and bought ranch land in their new locations. No one now knows just why they moved; Joseph’s youngest son later said the only reason he could think of why they might leave the rich farmlands in the Sacramento Valley for the higher elevations was to escape the yearly flooding.
In any case, Joseph and his partner Elisha owned and worked approximately 1200 acres of excellent farm land, raising pigs and sheep near the barnlot, and grazing cattle on the grasslands. They fared very well in their business, becoming very wealthy by the standards of the time. The Longs’ fourth child, Frank, was the first born in Tehama County, in 1871. Sadly, Frank died at the age of 9, and was buried on a small knoll on the family ranch (the barn seen in the picture is one of the original ranch buildings, built about 1871). Elisha Abbott died shortly afterward, and was buried near Frank’s grave. Having no family of his own, Elisha left his share of the ranch to Joseph and Julia, who thereby became even wealthier than before.
Four more children were born to Joseph and Julia, the last being Grover in 1885. At the time of Grover’s birth, Joseph was 52 and Julia was almost 40, but they showed no signs of slowing down. In the early 1890s, they began to purchase large tracts of land (why they would do so at such ages, instead of letting their children run their operations, we simply don’t know). All told, they owned nearly 40,000 acres by 1895, and built a very large and beautiful new house on a higher section of the land. The center of operations for the ranch moved to this new house, and their sons worked the ranch with Joseph, primarily sheep by this time though some cattle still grazed. Their children matured and gradually moved out of the house. None moved very far; the three girls each married ranchers nearby, and the four living boys each built their own houses on different parts of the ranch. Grover built his house very near the main house (in fact, next to the cabins for the ranch hands), in anticipation that he would take care of Julia and Joseph as they grew older.
In 1915, Joseph died at the age of 82 while hunting wild pigs. His properties were divided among his children and Julia. Julia continued to live in the main house, while Grover and his family lived in the smaller house. Grover ran the operations on that ranch, while his brothers now had their own ranches (they had bought out their sisters’ interests). Julia continued to be active running the house and the farmyard operations. Her complete independence finally caught up to her - she always refused help, and at the age of 94 she fell and broke her hip. She died of pneumonia just a few days shy of her 95th birthday in 1940. Only four of her eight children were still living.
Grover and his family moved into the main house. The Great Depression had forced his brothers to sell their holdings, and they had died before Julia. Grover had even tried to sell his ranch but couldn’t find a buyer, so it is the only one still in the family. Grover died in 1968, but his descendants still consider the ranch to be the “home” where family gets together every year.
