This is the second article in a two-part series. Read part one.
“I will get you yet, and very soon.”
Burwell Branch Barker, county surveyor and justice of the peace, and William Victor McGarvey, county assessor, were important public figures in San Juan Bautista, then known as San Juan. But they were on crossed paths which would leave one dead, shotgunned by the other in Fred Kemp’s Saloon on the morning of Sept. 7, 1866.
Their confrontation began with a pile of gold coins Barker had buried in his garden. Barker was leaving on a lengthy surveying trip and wanted to hide his fortune while he was away.
On June 4, 1866, the Daily Alta California reported, “B. B. Barker, of San Juan, not long since buried in the vicinity of that town $2,020. A few days ago he went to dig the money out, but it was gone.”
It’s hard to establish exactly what the value of that money is today. An inflation calculator estimates that it would be $32,750 in 2020 dollars, but that doesn’t take into account the ups and downs of supply and demand in small western towns of the period, nor does it take into account some of the goods and services of the time.
In-person consultation with an astrologer cost $2. A fine men’s silk hat cost $10. A one-week stay with room and board at a resort offering “hydropathic” treatment for lung, liver, and kidney disease cost $10. Board and tuition at the Young Ladies Institute in San Jose was $62.50 a quarter (extra charges for painting or piano lessons, no extra charge for fancy sewing).
One way of putting the 2020 value into perspective is to consider the average wages of the time. Doctors were paid $2 a visit. Farmhands were paid $250 a year. Common laborers were paid $300 a year. Blacksmiths were paid around $560 a year. Barker lost the equivalent of several years’ wages.
Barker’s first response was violent. He accused a Native American woman who worked for him as a housekeeper of stealing the money. Isaac Mylar, in Early days at the Mission San Juan Bautista, writes, “In his rage, he went so far as to hang her in order to make her confess to the theft. She knew nothing about it, and after torturing the woman he cut her down and released her.”
Another report in the June 10, 1866, edition of the Grass Valley Daily Union was even more graphic. It reported that on “Saturday night, May 26th, the citizens assembled and hung her up several times by the neck but she refused to confess the theft and declared she knew nothing about it.”
The Sacramento Daily Union reported that Barker “incurred the wrath of some of the residents on account of his severe treatment of the Indian in his endeavors to extort from her a confession.”
‘Wild over his loss’
Barker became obsessed over the lost money. The Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel reported, “His mind has become shaken by brooding over the loss of his money and the futility of all of his efforts to get any trace of it.”
In desperation, Barker sought help from the spirit world. Mylar said he was “wild over his loss. Barker went to San Francisco and consulted a medium. The soothsayer told him the money was taken by a light-haired man who lived within sight of his home. Vic McGarvey lived on First Street on rather high ground, and having light hair, answered the description given by the medium.”
Barker and McGarvey knew each other professionally, and one account of the shooting describes them as “near neighbors and intimate friends.” Barker’s estate was near the corner of North and Third streets and McGarvey lived two blocks above him on First Street.
McGarvey was born in Ohio and served in the Mexican War in 1846. He arrived in San Juan around 1862 at the age of 36. He was also a Democrat, but not a Copperhead like Barker. In a statement made to the Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel when he was first elected county assessor, he denied being a secessionist.
Barker had become convinced that McGarvey took the money, and accused him of the theft. According to the Sacramento Daily Union, McGarvey previously had tried to make peace with Barker but was “violently repelled and plainly told by Barker he was the man he was after.” McGarvey then sent friends to Barker, trying to set up a time when they could discuss it all together. Barker again threatened to kill McGarvey.
Confrontation
Sept. 7, 1866 was a Friday and the final fight between Barker and McGarvey began around 8:30 a.m. near Barker’s home. Barker was walking toward town and noticed McGarvey was about a dozen steps behind. Barker whirled around suddenly, asking McGarvey why he was following him (one account claims Barker pulled out a knife). McGarvey opened his coat to show he was unarmed and said “I am not a fighting man.” Barker told him to go arm himself and said, “I will get you yet, and very soon.”
Barker proceeded to Kemp’s Saloon, about six blocks from his home, situated across from the National Hotel on First and San Jose streets. McGarvey continued further into town to a gunsmith’s shop owned by French immigrant Sigisbert Durin, located at the time at the Vache Adobe on the corner of Third and Washington.
McGarvey asked to borrow a double-barreled shotgun and had it loaded with heavy shot, which is referred to in contemporary accounts as “bullets.” Durin advised McGarvey that he was “loading it too heavy.” McGarvey replied that he was “going to kill a wild steer.”
He walked five blocks to Kemp’s Saloon and, passing the front of the building, could see Barker seated inside reading a newspaper. One account states McGarvey “could have killed him through the window but entered the saloon.”
It was now around 9 a.m., a half-hour since their last encounter.
McGarvey entered Kemp’s. Kemp himself was away at breakfast, leaving his bartender, Samuel Clarke, in charge.
Barker was sitting at the first window of the saloon, to the right of the door. McGarvey walked past him to the counter and spoke to Clarke, who was standing by a billiard table. Barker and McGarvey were about 10 feet from each other. Only these three men were in the room at the time.
According to Clarke at the inquest, when Barker saw McGarvey he “made a move in his chair” as if to feel for his weapon. McGarvey whirled around and fired his first shot, hitting Barker full in the chest.
Barker struggled out of his chair and turned toward the door. As he got up, McGarvey fired the second barrel, hitting Barker in the right side.
At that point, according to Clarke, Barker “went out of my sight, out the door.”
Llewellyn Bixby, a rancher and part-owner of Rancho San Justo, was walking on Second Street and saw Barker collapse.
“I saw Barker falling in front of Kemp’s Saloon; he was a little past the door and fell on his hands and knees and pitched over on his face, off the platform onto the ground,” Bixby testified at the inquest. “I went over, McGarvey came out with a gun in his hands. Clarke and Hubbard’s man took hold of the deceased and laid him on the porch. He seemed to be dead; not exactly breathing but sort of gasping.”
McGarvey confessed to Bixby that he had shot Barker. Barker’s shirt was open and the witnesses could see the wounds.
According to the post-mortem, “The first shot sent nine bullets into the breast of the deceased, about half an inch below the line drawn through the nipples. The second shot struck him in the right shoulder, eleven of the bullets passing through the body at a right angle to those of the first shot. It’s estimated that at least sixteen bullets penetrated the heart.”
After the shooting, McGarvey walked to the office of Judge A. H. Whitney, who had been elected justice of the peace with Barker a year before, and turned himself in.
An inquest was held that evening in the Freemason’s third-floor room at the National Hotel, which was used for government functions at times. McGarvey would have known the place; not only was he a Mason but four of the six jurors were Masons as well.
Clarke and Bixby testified and their accounts were published. McGarvey testified, but there is no record of what he said. The account of the Monterey Gazette, reported by the Sacramento Daily Union, dryly noted, “The testimony was the same as we have seen. The defendant made a statement on the stand which our correspondent forgot to furnish us.”
The jurors found Barker died “from shotgun wounds fired from a shotgun in the hands of W. V. McGarvey.” Judge Whitney acquitted McGarvey on the grounds of self-defense.
The Monterey Gazette went on to say that “although he was honestly acquitted before a properly constituted authority, he does not seem to have inspired the same verdict in the bar of public opinion. Public sentiment is considerably divided as to the justification of the act and the case may yet go before the grand jury.”
It didn’t.
Aftermath
Despite the Gazette’s call for a “thorough and dispassionate investigation,” the matter was legally settled for good that night.
The shooting made papers around the state, with articles in the Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, the Daily Alta California, the Sacramento Daily Union (twice), the Mariposa Gazette, the Marysville Daily Appeal, and the San Jose Weekly Mercury, among others.
San Juan took the shooting in stride. Soon the excitement died down and the town moved on.
The next evening following the shooting, McGarvey presided as senior warden over the monthly meeting of the Freemasons. There is no mention of the shooting in the minutes. McGarvey was still in good standing and was elected president of the lodge at the end of the year.
On Nov. 9, 1866, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors appointed S. W. Smith to Barker’s surveyor position, and petitions were accepted for the job of justice of the peace.
At the same meeting, $20 was “allowed” to be given to Barker’s widow. There was no explanation. It might have been payment of back wages. Records also show McGarvey was paid $70.
McGarvey remained active in community politics. Less than a year after he shot Barker, the July 10, 1867, edition of the Sacramento Daily Union announced he had been nominated again as Monterey County assessor.
In 1868, McGarvey sold his home and land overlooking the Barker estate to the school district, perhaps to help escape the memory of his actions two years earlier.
McGarvey moved to Salinas in 1872, shortly before San Benito County was created. His obituary claims at one point he owned one-fourth of the present area of Salinas. He served as assessor until 1875, then went on to become the postmaster and tax collector. He also became an officer of Salinas Masonic Lodge 204. The Free Lance in Hollister mentioned on November 25, 1904, that he had celebrated his golden wedding anniversary. He died in 1906 and is buried near John Steinbeck in the Salinas Garden of Memories Memorial Park.
Kemp’s Saloon remained a popular spot in town and made the papers once in a while when things got rowdy. In one case the Sacramento Daily Union reported “a colored man and a German had some words in Kemp’s Saloon and finally exchanged five or six shots.” The marshall tried to apprehend one of the men involved, who “drew a knife and cut the marshal on the hip and attempted to escape, cutting and slashing at everyone as he ran.”
In 1869, the vote for San Juan’s incorporation was held at Kemp’s Saloon.
Barker’s lands and property were probated on Feb. 4, 1867. They were given a value of $700 and his wife, Margaret, was named as the heir.
His personal effects were probated on April 1, 1867. Margaret inherited his surveying equipment, a meerschaum pipe, $25 worth of clothing and furniture and a map of California valued at $1. The total value of his personal effects came to $430.25 including $290.00 owed for surveying jobs.
What happened to the $2,020 in buried gold?
Mylar reports a rumor that spread through the town: “It was Barker’s wife that dug up the money and hid it in another place, fearing that it might be discovered by some thief. When Barker discovered his loss and got into such a rage over it, fearing that he would kill her, his wife remained silent.”
Mylar adds: “I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this story.”
Barker’s funeral was the next day and, according to one account, a “large concourse attended the remains.” Barker is reported to have looked “life-like and serene.”
Barker’s wife did not accompany the body from their home to the cemetery. Margaret was pregnant when Barker died. She was described as being “on the eve of her confinement.”
As they took him away, Margaret’s grief was “heart-rending as she piteously clung to the body with widowed despair.”
His headstone, erected later, gives his name as B. B. Barker and it incorrectly identifies him as a native of South Carolina. A small footstone is inscribed “B. B. B.” A brief inscription reads “Aged 33 years. He leaves a wife and three children to mourn his loss.”
Barker’s three children are listed in the April probate document as Ambrose Branch Barker, three years old, Elvira Barker, two years old, and Kate Barker, “a posthumous child aged three months.” Kate was born four months after her father was killed.
The delay in carving the stone can be explained by the decoration directly below Barker’s name: the three linked chain of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F.), the letters “FLT” in the links standing for “Friendship, Love and Truth.”
Barker left his wife destitute, without the money to bury him. The grave and stone were paid for by the IOOF.
His grave overlooks his estate. The headstone faces toward his home, toward the family he left behind.
And toward the garden where he had buried his money.
BenitoLink is grateful to Barker’s grand-cousins Lee Chandler and William Barker for their generous assistance with interviews and source material for this article. Thanks also to Wanda Guibert of the San Juan Bautista Historical Society, James Perry of the Monterey Historical Society, Mary Anzar, Marcos Vizcaino at the San Juan Bautista State Park, and Ray Hill of Texas Lodge No. 46 in San Juan Bautista for providing historical context, documents, and information.
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