Lewis leaves his family home sometime before 1860 and travels west to seek his own destiny. We know this because he is not listed with his family in the 1860 census and that he enlists with the Union Army at Placerville, California, on September 25, 1861. He may have left Michigan up to 7-8 years before when he is only 18 or 19 years old. Boys, in those days, were considered pretty much grown-up men and responsible for their own lives at an earlier age. I am guessing that he followed one of the three well-traveled immigrant routes across Iowa by crossing the Mississippi River at Dubuque. I find it hard to believe that when he crosses Iowa, he would not have stopped to visit or stay a while with his Uncle Horatio in Tama County, Iowa. In fact, I would further bet that he was under strict instructions to do so from his father, Samuel. There he may have become acquainted with his cousin, Joseph who is only a few months older than he, and they, being independent "Malcoms" may have decided to travel west together.
Below is a cropped portion of a beautiful 1855 antique map of Iowa showing the major immigrant trails across that state. (I have cropped the map to fit the page and to highlight the narrative here.) The three wagon trails (before the advent of the railroad in Iowa) shown here all cross the Mississippi River from the east at Dubuque, Iowa. The northern route, which runs through Cedar Falls, goes west across Iowa (today's US Highway 20 almost duplicates this trail) to cross the Missouri River at "Floyd's Bluffs" where Sergeant Floyd of the Lewis and Clark Expedition is buried located just south of today's Sioux City, Iowa. The middle trail, which goes straight through Tama County, which I have highlighted (in yellow), crosses the Missouri River to Decatur, Nebraska. This trail closely duplicates today's US 30. The southern route travels west through Poweshiek County to cross the Missouri at "Omaha City". Today's Interstate 80 somewhat duplicates this trail. I have left this map wider than the usual page width so the reader can view the full extent of the map. Please note that Cedar Falls, in Blackhawk County is only about 30 miles, as the crow files, northeast of Indian Village Township (where Horatio lives in Tama Co. (which I have designated with a small red dot) and the middle trail probably passes within a 5-mile radius of his home. Established towns in Iowa were few and far between in those days. The map was drawn and published by the D. Mendenhall "Establishment" out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Maps in those days were all hand-colored.
◄ Here, just for fun and to authenticate is the Copyright stamp and the publisher's purpose for the map shown above.
We know that Joseph also left home sometime before 1860 because that year's Iowa census does not list him with his family in Butlerville, Iowa. However, Joseph is still listed with his family in Iowa in in 1856. (Joseph is found in an 1860 census record taken in Tulare County, California. He is listed as a 25 year-old shoemaker, born in Michigan. We know he was born in New York but spent his boyhood in Michigan. Fanny Malcom, my Aunt and Joseph's granddaughter, said that Joseph spent the winter of 1856-1857 in Placerville, California and then traveled back to Salt Lake City, Utah. More will be written about Joseph Malcom on another page of this web site.) We know that Lewis spent part of his enlistment time stationed at Fort Babbitt, in Tulare County, in 1863.
Both Malcom boys probably first started out with the idea that they would would find their fortunes in gold but both soon learned that panning for gold was a largely unrewarding activity and decided that
Subject : Lewis Asa Malcom, Son of Samuel and Juditha Malcom
there was easier money to earn by other means or supplying the miners and immigrants. Besides the gold rush in California, which started in 1847, was definitely starting to "peter out" by the time our two Malcoms arrived in the late 1850s. Lewis lists his occupation when he joins the Army as an engraver?. Growing up, he probably learned his father's skills as shoemaker and cooper. Both of these skills would have been useful to miners and ordinary immigrants alike.
When Lewis enlisted Sept. 15, 1861, he became a part of the Company I, Second Cavalry Regiment, California Volunteers. He was described as 5'6" tall with a fair complexion, hazel eyes and light hair. When the Civil War broke out in the east, soldiers were desperately needed and recruitment appeals in California were strongly patriotic . New recruits were needed to replace the "seasoned" soldiers who had been sent back east to frontline battlefields to stave off the confederates. California was an important prize, a state rich in resources with sea port access to the rest of the world. It was considered valuable to both the Union and the Confederacy. There were many secessionists and southern sympathizers in California, especially in Tulare Co. and the Union volunteers at Fort Babbitt in 1862-63 were often asked to quell skirmishes and small rebellions there and in Visalia.
Below is an abbreviated military report of the activities and movements of Lewis' 2nd Regiment, Cavalry Co. I during the Civil War. This was lifted from the California Union Regimental History found on the Internet. Camp Latham was located near Los Angeles. My words are in blue type.
It was in 1862 that Confederate troops had overrun the territories of New Mexico and Arizona. Rumors spread that 1000 rebel troops were gathering at Tucson and planning to capture Fort Yuma at the border of Arizona and California. Lewis cavalry duties include riding as a sentinel on the important mail an stage coach road between Fort Yuma and the southern coastal cities in California. In 1863 "while carrying the mail between San Phillippi and Creasy Creek" he was thrown from his horse and injured. This quote was taken from Lewis' Pension File. These two places mentioned are San Felipe and Carrizo Creek, both stage coach stops on the overland mail route. According to the a stagecoach traveler of the time you could not classify these two places as towns. He wrote that San Felipe was "neither a town nor a rancho but an adobe house, brackish water and poor grass like that usually growing on salty land. The population consists of a German, who occupies the aforesaid adobe house and supports himself by selling necessaries to travelers." That same writer described Carrizo Creek as " a small stream which rises on the border of the desert, and only runs some three miles before sinking into the ground.... this is the border of the Colorado Desert and is about 100 miles from Fort Yuma. I doubt whether you ever saw so desolate and God forsaken a scene as this desert" The traveler? Alfred D. Galucci. (Thanks to Donna Meszaros for finding these colorful quotations.)
Below is a map of this Overland Trail that connected San Diego, where Fort Latham was located, and San Antonio, Texas. Today this is a California designated historic route that a modern traveler can easily follow in a car. I have designated where San Felipe and Carrizo Creek are located. Below this map you will find a short write up taken from a 2007 brochure advertizing the 200th anniversary of the trail and a photo of one adobe house still standing at Vallecito station. Since these were probably "government-issue" adobe houses, I can imagine they all looked very alike in in the 1800s.
Secessionists were so active in 1862, "It is an everyday occurrence for them to ride through the streets of Visalia and hurrah for Jeff Davis and Stonewall Jackson, and often give groans for the Stars and Stripes," reported Camp Babbitt's first commander, Lieutenant Colonel George S. Evans.
He told departmental headquarters, "They do and say everything in the presence of soldiers to insult them by calling them Lincoln hirelings, and that they bear Abe Lincoln's livery, etc., and in one instance have gone so far as to draw a pistol and present it at a soldier, telling that be bad a good mind to shoot the buttons off of his coat, just for fun."
His report cited several examples, including the killing of a soldier, and predicted that if the disloyal elements were not controlled, "all the officers between here and the Potomac, in my humble opinion, cannot prevent frequent collisions between the soldiers and the citizens, the ultimate result of which will be civil war."
Headquarters reacted promptly. "Under no circumstances will disloyal citizens be permitted to harass your troops or speak disrespectfully of our government," Evans was instructed. "If necessary to check conduct so unworthy of those seeking the protection of the government, you will arrest a few of the worst, holding them in close confinement, sending the leaders, if men of position, to Alcatraz Island."
Backing up the orders, headquarters rushed a company of California Volunteers to reinforce the post, even though the original garrison bad only been there two months. The reputation of Visalia was well known, and the Army decided that immediate action was necessary.
Secession had been rife in this Joaquin Valley region as early as the 1850's when the citizens threatened to form their own republic if not granted a railroad line. In 1860, editors of the rival Union and rebel newspapers met for a duel, but tempers were so short that what was to be a shooting match ended with principals and seconds trading punches. The editors themselves faced down each other in one of the newspaper offices a few days later. The secessionist editor took a fatal bullet in his stomach. The Union man decided his popularity had waned so much he had better leave town.
Visalia was suspected of being a stop on the underground to the south, a role proved when Federal marshals intercepted a courier in 1861. The next step, obviously was to send in troops.
In October 1862, Colonel Evans reported arriving at the site of Camp Babbitt after a forced march of 120 miles in four and-a-half days. The rigors of the march were obvious on the troopers, because the horses were too weak to carry burdens and, reported Evans, the men "were compelled to walk about two-thirds of the way, and that, too, barefooted and naked, for many of them were as destitute of shoes as they were the day they were born, and had no pantaloons, except such as they had themselves made out of barley and flour sacks . . . Still the men plodded on and stood guard at night, leaving the blood from their feet upon the rocks and snow."
Captain Moses A.
McLaughlin succeeded Evans and on December 21, (1862) reported, "This command
does not number more than 100 effective men, and the rebels can bring against it
250 men in 24 hours, and 400 in two days, all of them well armed." He had
arrested three persons "who had the audacity to ride and drive in front of the
battalion while on dress parade, hurrahing for Jeff Davis and Stonewall
Jackson." McLaughlin refused to
acknowledge a writ of habeas corpus for the release of the prisoners, and
predicted "the sheriff will summon a strong posse comitatus", trying to regain
them by force.
Some of the dissension was quieted when the prisoners were released two weeks later after taking the oath of allegiance. One, L. P. Hall the editor of the secessionist newspaper Equal Rights Expositor which had been banned from the mails, was kept in confinement when he balked at the oath.
In 1862, L. P. Hall and S. J.
Garrison established this newspaper in Visalia called the Civil Rights Expositor, later changing the name
to The Equal Rights Expositor. The office was located above the Visalia House.
It was a red-hot secession newspaper, ably edited but extremely radical in its
utterances, and at once gained great favor with its readers and acquired a large
circulation.
On account of his open advocacy of the
southern cause Hall was arrested and taken to Camp Babbitt, where he was forced to take
the oath of allegiance. After this incident the editorials in the Expositor were
more bitter and inflammatory than ever before, angering beyond measure the
soldiers and volunteers. Among the choice utterances were:
"We have said that Abraham Lincoln has perjured himself, and have proved it. We now tell those who participate in this detestable war, to the extent of their support, that they participate with Lincoln in the crime of perjury."
"Let our states' rights friends look around them and note the passion slaves of the President, who prate about rebels and traitors, while they hug their chains with the servility of a kicked and cuffed hound."
Dr. Davenport, owner of the building in which the printing office was located, fearing that Hall's vituperative utterances would incite a riot and damage be done to his property, ordered them to leave the premises. The office was removed to Court street adjoining the lot on which the Times office now stands.
On the night of March 5, 1863, a party of soldiers from Camp Babbitt, together with a number of townspeople, entered the office, tied Garrison up, threw the type into the street and destroyed the printing presses. Guards were posted at the street corners to prevent interference with the diversion. So resentful of this act were Hall and Garrison's friends in Mariposa that a party of seventy or eighty armed men came down for the purpose of "cleaning up" Camp Babbitt. These hid themselves in the swamp, expecting to be reinforced from Visalia. Cooler counsel among the leaders of the southern sympathizers here prevailed, however, and they were induced to disband and return to Mariposa.
Other than the killing of a soldier by a rebel five months later and a rumor that "an outbreak may be looked for at any moment," public displays of disloyalty ceased.
It may have been because the townspeople organized two Home Guard companies, "To
protect ourselves against the soldiers who came to protect us," one wag remarked
after the war, or because the government rushed a howitzer to Babbitt with the
orders: "Maintain your position at all costs."
Or
it may have been that increased Indian depredation, caused both
It may seem that I have deviated very far from the story of Lewis Malcom here. I thought it important to explain the background and atmosphere of the times when Lewis served at Fort Babbitt. Very soon after he returns there to join his Company, he is assigned to guard duty on October 17, 1863. He falls asleep while on duty and is court martialed for this offence.
Court records dated 10/28/1963, tell that he pleads as his defense, that he was "unwell at the time" and that he had unformed his Sergeant thus. The camp surgeon was called as a witness for Lewis' defense saying that Lewis is "a man of "delicate health and a billious temperament". However, the court is not sympathetic and since the post was under constant threats and rumors of attack, I understand their decision . After all, it is a time of war.
Lewis is sentenced to hard labor for 90 days wearing a ball and chain and is fined $10 of his monthly pay for the same period of time. After that he was returned to duty. He finished out Army service as a nurse serving in the camp hospital. He is mustered out October 6, 1964. (Thanks to Donna Meszaros for generously providing Lewis' pension and court records for us all to see.)
Lewis returns back east and may have first gone to Michigan but soon he goes to Tama County (in 1865) where his uncle Horatio and his Uncle George had once resided. Horatio and his two younger sons probably had already gone west by the time Lewis arrives as he had sold his last piece of land in Tama County in May of 1864. George died in 1863. Perhaps he meets his father, Samuel, there. He does meet a young widow with two children, Olive Strong Parcher. They marry on March 13, 1866 and live in Iowa until 1873. They then move to Skamokawa, Wahkiakum County, Washington. After a few years there, they moved to a government land claim in the Beaver Valley, Columbia County, Oregon. Lewis dies on November 24, 1918, age 83. To fill in more blanks, read the web page for Olive Jane Parcher Malcom on the former page.