Tag Archives: Willows

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THE FLOOZIE, THE FELON AND FAKE NEWS

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Last week I was researching the history of Pulga, a small town in Northern California, for some copy I’m writing for their website.  As it happens, this town is very close to Willows, where our dad’s family settled in 1829.  Our dad was born and raised there and the land is still owned and ranched by members of our extended family.  When I wrote our family history six years ago I discovered that we had something of a colorful past – our great-great grandmother, Julia Billiou, was murdered while sitting at her dining table.  That’s not something you find on Ancestry every day.

When I was writing our history I was lucky enough to connect with a third cousin (I think twice removed but I can never keep that stuff straight) who had a treasure trove of information about Julia and her husband, Joseph Billiou, including copies of the newspaper accounts of her murder.  The local papers in Oroville and Chico reported that the Billiou’s 16 year-old Chinese cook, Hong Di, burst out of the kitchen on the night of April 7, 1887 and in a drunken rage, shot the ranch foreman, William Weaver, in the shoulder.  He then shot Julia as she rose from the table, striking her directly in the heart and killing her instantly.  Our great-grandmother, Annie, was shot at three times, but by that point Hong’s aim was a bit off and he missed her each time.  Hong ran from the ranch, hiding in the brushes near the local creek for three days until he was caught and brought to trial.  The jury found him guilty, but instead of the normal death sentence for a murder, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

It would be a vast understatement to say that the verdict did not go down well with the local townspeople.  Before the judge and jury had even left the courtroom there was shouting from the gallery calling for Hong’s lynching.  The mayor called out the posse to guard the jail that night but a raucous band of 200 vigilantes stormed the facility.  They found the cell in the basement where Hong was detained and demanded a full confession.  This confession is what was reported in the local papers – that he’d imbibed in too much whiskey and that he didn’t mean to kill Julia as she had been kind to him.  Nevertheless, the vigilantes dragged him down the street to the train turnstile and hung him.  According to the papers, there was great celebration that night over the “justice” that was carried out.  None of the vigilantes were ever arrested for their actions.

Joseph Billiou – jerk or jilted?

Fast forward to last week when I was doing research on Pulga.  I decided as long as I was studying the local area I’d Google Julia’s murder to see if there was anything I’d missed.  It turned out to be a lesson in “be careful what you wish for” because there was new information and it did not reflect well her.  A recently published book about lynching in California has a full page devoted to Julia’s murder and Hong’s hanging. The author wrote that both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee published the FULL account of Hong’s confession while the local papers chose not to run the full story because it “impinged on the good character of one of the town’s most beloved citizens”.  To say the least. It turns out that a couple of months prior to the murder, while Mr. Billiou was in San Francisco on business, Hong stumbled upon Julia and Mr. Weaver in a “compromising position” up in the hay loft when Joseph was out of town.  Mr. Weaver threatened Hong with death if he told Mr. Billiou about the affair when he returned to the ranch.  Hong’s full confession also stated that his real target was Weaver and that he had great affection for Julia because she taught him to read and write English.  So in that spring of 1887 I think it’s safe to say that tensions were running a little high in the household.  Julia was cheating on her husband, the ranch foreman was fooling around with the boss’s wife, and the cook was scared of being killed at any moment.

These new revelations have me taking a second look at Julia.  Her track record for fidelity wasn’t so great to begin with.  Shortly after she arrived in Willows from Ireland she was engaged to Joseph’s brother, Michael.  When Joseph arrived in California to join Michael, Julia broke off the engagement and married Joseph.   That had to make for an awkward Thanksgiving.  Then at age 50 – which was like 100 in 1887 – she has a fling with the ranch foreman.  Maybe Joseph was a real jerk and she could only find true love with Mr. Weaver.  She took her secrets to the grave, not even leaving a photograph of herself behind, so she’ll forever remain an enigma.

All I know is that I will never again look at all those prim and proper women in my family tree in the same way.

 

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A WOMAN AHEAD OF HER TIME – Part Two

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

When we left Annie in Part One, she had just witnessed the shooting death of her mother and was, in the norms of that time, a spinster.  But that was about to change.

In the late 1870’s, John Hoever, our paternal great-grandfather, emigrated from Germany to San Francisco.  After a short stay in ‘The City’, he moved to Willows.  This is the first indication that he might not have been of sound mind.

In any event, he made the move and opened a jewelry store, the first of its kind in Willows.  We don’t know how John and Annie met, but since they lived in a small town, it was either in church or through friends.  That  is how things were done before Match.com.

John and Annie married in 1892.  They had a son in 1893 and our grandmother was born in 1895.  Annie got pregnant again in  1899 but John Hoever died months after the baby, a girl,  was born.  My second cousin didn’t have any information on how John Hoever died, but obviously something went horribly wrong.  Another research opportunity!

Unfortunately, this may be a case of “be careful what you ask for”.  After hours of searching on the ancestry data bases I finally found was I was looking for – his census record from1900.  There he was, recorded for official purposes, in the Napa State Hospital for the Insane.  Oh boy…this explains so much about our family.

Annie was no doubt devastated by having to put her husband “away”, especially considering the stigma associated with mental illness in those days.  I imagine that his behavior must have been pretty bad for her to decide it was better to raise three small children alone than live with him in the house.  John died in September of 1900, presumably from his illness.

Faced with this overwhelming loss, Annie might have chosen to do what so many Victorian women did when their husbands died – don a black dress and stay home for the rest of her life.  But Annie was not a typical woman.  She made the decision to keep her husband’s jewelry store open and manage it herself.

In a book published in 1918 about the early history of Willows and its inhabitants, the authors noted that “Annie Billiou Hoever took over the management of her husband’s jewelry store after his death.  She has demonstrated her ability as a business woman and won great success through her own efforts”.   That was quite a high endorsement for a woman to receive in 1918.  Heck, it’s a great compliment today.

Annie not only became a successful business woman, she also excelled in raising her three children.  Two of the three graduated from Stanford University (our grandmother, the rebel, being the lone exception) and they all went on to lead rewarding lives.  She was active in the community and enjoyed a wide circle of friends until her death in 1940.  She is buried in a joint grave with John.

Which brings me back to the ring.  The diamond had been re-set over the years and the latest iteration “smothered” it.  So for our anniversary last year my husband had it put in a new setting so that I could wear it as my engagement ring.  Every day when I look at it I think of Annie and of all that this diamond has “seen” in its lifetime.  I think about her joys and her sorrows and how she persevered through it all.  I wish that I had known more about Annie when I was younger – somehow it gives me strength to know that I come from such an inspiring woman.

So on this Mother’s Day I hope that somewhere Annie knows that she is still remembered and makes her family proud.

Annie with her three children

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A WOMAN AHEAD OF HER TIME – Part One

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

This week, in honor of Mother’s Day, I want to pay special tribute to my paternal great-grandmother, Annie Billiou Hoever.  Last year I received a ring from my mother that I always assumed was my paternal grandmother’s engagement ring.  When I told mom I would enjoy wearing Grandma’s ring she looked at me with alarm – something I’ve become used to – and said, “It wasn’t her engagement ring, it was her mother’s engagement ring.  It belonged to Annie Hoever.”

Sheesh!  Good thing I found this out before mom died or I would never have known the truth.  In all the stories I’d heard about our family, I couldn’t remember one mention of Annie Hoever.  Mom had only met her a few times after she married our dad so she couldn’t tell me much about her.  I wanted to know more about the woman who first wore the ring so I started doing some research.  Luckily, I found a second cousin who had stories, pictures and old newspaper clippings about the whole Billiou clan.  Jilted lovers, murder, insanity…it was all there.  Just your typical American family.

Annie’s father, Joseph Billiou, was born and raised in St. Louis.  Her mother, Julia, had emigrated from Ireland to Willows, California in the 1850’s.  Willows is in rice farming country north of Sacramento.  My father, who was raised in Willows, often spoke of his home town in rapturous terms.  I’m not sure Fodor’s would agree with Pop; Willows is a typical agricultural outpost that could barely be found on a map until Interstate 5 was built and they constructed some off ramps to the town.  Now its claim to fame is that there is a both a Denny’s and a Burger King right off the freeway exit.

In any event, when Julia came to Willows she fell in love with Joseph’s brother, Michael.  Michael (rather foolishly in hindsight) asked Joseph to move from St. Louis to Willows to join him in the rice business.  In a move worthy of a Kardashian, Julia took one look at Joseph, broke off her engagement to Michael,  and married Joseph.   That must have made for some rather awkward Thanksgiving dinners.

Joseph became major rice and grain farmer in his own right.  He and Julia eventually had four children, Annie being their firstborn, and they lived a wonderful life on the ranch.  Annie was educated at a Catholic boarding school near San Jose and then returned to Willows to settle down.  However, no eligible bachelor presented himself and by age 27 she was still unmarried.  Today, that would be the equivalent of someone at age 40 still being single.  In other words, getting hit by lightening was a more likely event.

Unfortunately, in 1887 the family idyll was rather unceremoniously torn apart when their cook, having drunk too much of the cooking sherry, stormed into the dining room one evening and shot Annie’s mother to death.  The cook then chased Annie around the house, shooting at her twice but – the cooking sherry having taken its toll – missed her both times.

The subsequent newspaper accounts of the cook’s trial and the vigilante justice that took place afterward are something right out of the Wild West.  I guess because it was  the Wild West.  A jury convened the week after the murder (makes you long for frontier justice, doesn’t it?) and found the cook guilty, sentencing him to life imprisonment.  Upon hearing the verdict  an angry mob formed and demanded “an eye for an eye”.  The sheriff, knowing a “situation” when he saw one, put guards at the entrance to the jail and hid the cook in the basement. He wasn’t aware that one of the vigilante group members was a former sheriff’s employee who knew all of the jail’s hidden entrances.  That night the group broke into the jail, extricated the cook, and lynched him in a nearby field.  No member of the group was ever arrested for the cook’s murder.

You would think Annie had suffered enough trauma to last her a lifetime, but unfortunately she had more ahead of her.

Stay tuned for Part Two…coming on Thursday!