Marin Herald
December 21, 1933
First Railroad Stock List Gives Pioneers Names; Early Shooting; Story of the Kittle Shooting, And Capture of the Robber

In resuming his historical talk, Don Perry told the San Anselmo Rotarians last week several amusing incidents in connection with Ross Valley history. He said the Kittle family came to the valley about 1880 and some time after their arrival, Mr. and Mrs. Kittle were driving home one evening when they were held up by a highwayman, near the rocky point, above the place where Bottini lives in Ross, on the highway.

Mr. Kittle first pulled up his horses and then changed his mind, told Mrs. Kittle to lean forward and he gave the horses the whip. The highwayman fired at them. The bullet hit Mrs. Kittle but was deflected and she suffered no harm.

There was a great fuss about the matter and posses were selected by the sheriff, James Tunstead and George Worn, brother-in-law of the speaker, then 14 years of age, were given the Lagunitas road and adjacent hillside to work over. They followed up the road, which then was the main road to Bolinas, till dark. In the morning they resumed their search. Tunstead, first viewing the scene of the shooting, picked up a couple of small scraps of paper which he placed in his pocket.

In the morning they foIlowed up the road until they came to the old Bon Tempe ranch, then a going dairy concern. Tunstead met Bon Tempe chopping wood outside and he asked if he had seen a strange man in the vicinity that morning or the night previous. He said he had, mentioning that the man was then in the dining room eating breakfast with the other men. Tunstead told George Worn to enter by one door, leaving his rifle outside, while he entered by the other door and commenced to question the strange man, who shortly began to question Tunstead's right to question him.

Tunstead had prearranged with the boy to get his rifle and aim at the stranger if he (Tunstead) nodded, which he did. George Worn opened the door, got his rifle and aimed at the man who then put up his hands. He was searched and in his pockets there was found $5 and a small pocket testament, which had several pages in Acts torn out. These torn pages corresponded to the scraps of paper first picked up at the scene of the shooting, and on this evidence the man went back to San Quentin, where he had been released two days before.

It appears that the man started to walk when he had first been released from the prison, toward Sausalito. He had stopped at Escall's [Escalle’s], near Larkspur, asking for breakfast from a man then running a chicken ranch at that place. This man left the prisoner eating breakfast in the house while he attended to his duties and when the fellow had finished eating, he went out to a chicken house and stole the man's gun. This gun was the same which was used in shooting at the Kittles.

The speaker also told of the Rev. Miehl [Miel] telling him about shooting in these hills while he was a boy, making it his business to always stop in for a meal with an old Spanish family, then farming above where Phoenix lake now is. In this family was an old blind grandmother, who was always knitting.

Miehl asked her one day what the odd article was she was making and she told him she would give him three guesses which he said he made and missed guessing correctly. She then told him that she was making a tail for one of the cows.

It appeared that this cow's tail had been chopped off, leaving but a small stump, and the old lady, twice a year, knitted an artificial tail for the cow so she could protect herself from the mosquitoes and flies.

The speaker stated that during a storm, back about 1867, the San Anselmo creek in the rear of were Mrs. Bremfleck's [Brennfleck] home now is (Karlsrue Park) changed its course and started to carve its present course. Believe it or not - it previously ran over towards Laurel Avenue close to the foot of the hillside, following the line where you now see the larger laurel trees, running just west of where we now have our post office, through the Linda Vista tract, under the Marin Herald office and thence across the road, through the speaker's home property where the remains of the old creek are still in evidence. The streams joined at this point. There was a wooden bridge across the highway in front of where the Union Oil service station now is. The bed of the old formidable creek gradually filled in with the accretions.

Lists of Stock Are Taken By Early Marin Pioneers

The subscription list referred to by Perry in his last week’s talk to the San Anselmo Rotarians, covering the incorporation of the first railroad in Marin county, which ran from San Rafael down to Point San Quentin, was dated February 13th, 1869. The following is a copy of the original, now in the hands of the speaker. It is as follows:

"We the undersigned hereby agree to subscribe to the stock of a railroad company, to be incorporated and to be built between San Rafael and San Quentin; the capital stock to be fifty thousand dollars to be divided into five hundred shares of one hundred dollars each, and we hereby subscribe to such railroad the number of shares set hereinafter opposite our respective names:

February 13, 1869