The digging was an event and none knew how deep or when water would be found. A half barrel was hoisted out with dirt, then the water kept out the same way as long as possible while the bottom was lined with brick and a foundation for the stone was laid. There were wooden curb and covers. There was good fishing in the well, when the rope broke, to get the bucket.

THE FIRST PIONEER WEDDING

The two families joined by the first pioneer wedding were of old American descent, tracing their ancestors to Engiand. Both were called capitalists as they loaned money, there being as yet no banks. As both came south the same year the young folks had known each other a year. The mother objected that the daughter was too young, lacking four months of seventeen, and the young man too old, he being twentyeight: eleven years was too much difference.

But she gave her permission, as she said she didn't want her daughter to run away. The father said: "Be good to her; she is all the girl I have.' "He obtained that promise and gave his consent. Her brothers were pleased as they had not liked her admirers until he came. They had promised Mrs. Cummings she might come to her a year to finishing school in San Francisco.

The young people were engaged three months, as she was attending college and had refused him earlier in the year. There wasn't any church but a minister held services in different homes, or under the oaks in pleasant weather. There were about thirty-five guests, the two families and near friends, present.

The house was decorated with wild ferns and wild clematis vines. The wedding dinner was from the older settlers and it being Thanksgiving day, the turkey, the eggs and chickens came from the Moore ranch; the green tomatoes and little pig to roast from the Shoup ranch; the apples, pears and cider from the Dens' orchard; the oranges and pumpkins for pies from the Indian rancheria.

The cakes were made by a friend of the family. They were white and gold and wedding and pound cake. Then there were preserved berries and pickles. The long table wore the linen from the Mother's treasured store, the silver from both

families. One of the bride's presents was a barrel of Haviland china. This, with the old china from both families made a brave showing.

The bride Lucy Foster wore a cashmere dress with Torchon lace. She had a traveling dress of dove gray trimmed with pale blue. She had beautiful hair, a fair complexion and blue eyes. She was tall and slight. The maid Hattie Cunningham was dark, with dark hair. She was tall and plump. The groom Joseph Sexton was six feet tall, and had curly hair and blue eyes. The bride's brother Eugene Foster was best man. The Edwards family, E. Martin and N. Martin, Delany, Sexton brothers, the sister's children Annie, George, Charles and Alfred Edwards were guests.

The music of the parlor organ sounded somewhat like that of a church to the people but the service was not the solemn thing of their Puritan ancestors. After the service by T. Y. Cool the dinner and the speeches, the toasts were drunk in cider very like champagne in its sparkle.

The party went for a week to the neighboring town, to return to their new home after night, as they disapproved of the Southern way of charivaring young people. They were home three days before it was known. Then they invited their friends and were serenaded in their new home which the bride's father and mother had furnished.

The carpets and most all of the furniture came from San Francisco by steamer. The mother gave bedding, linen and outfit, the relatives silver and china with very lovely and useful family articles. This was the only wedding in the pioneer family, as the other children were sons.

Upon their first trip to San Francisco the mother gave the young couple an outfit of silver marked with the new name, "Sexton," which consisted of twenty-four teaspoons, twelve tablespoons, and twelve knives and twelve forks. Also, she added to the bride's wardrobe things not to be had in the old Spanish town.

As the two places joined, neither the father nor mother had lost the daughter, but gained a son-in-law, so the mother years later called it "a beautiful California home."

Then the new orchard was planted, and ornamental palms with a flower garden; a row of poplar trees on the highway; two pines; two pear trees, one fig and a palm which are now, at the time of this writing, over a half a hundred years old. The poplars are brave "lifting their leafy arms to the sun.??

The house is staunch as then-one of the first built after the new settling of Santa Barbara.

In the hall above the store the community had plays, dances, Good Templars' lodge and all gatherings outside of the church and schoolhouse, as nothing was allowed but church in the schoolhouse till later years. Still, when there was to be a community Christmas tree there were thirteen different creeds, each having a booth to raise the money for a community tree.

The getting together the Fosters had long wished. They always had Thanksgiving and in their home, but this getting together as one family was the fulfillment of their ideal. When the church was built the next thing their young folks wished was an organ for it, as they had a so-called choir. They raised money for the purpose without consulting all the directors of the church board.

One was very much opposed to it. "Worshiping God by machinery," he, Mr. Kellogg called it.

When it was installed he wouldn't stand or sing, so deeply he felt the shame of the church. They held camp meetings in the Cathedral Grove. None will ever know the beauty of that Grove, as it was destroyed for firewood. At one of these meetings a new sect calling themselves "Holiness, a branch of the Methodists, at that time was organized. The father Foster delivered the greatest speech of his life against such a doctrine in the then advanced thinking age, another time he was "justly indignant," he said. There were none holy but One. The mother said they had helped build seven churches, and when assessed more than was their portion, as they had kept their membership in the Santa Barbara church, the presiding elder took her name from the books while she was absent on her summer trip, saying he thought she had moved away.

He also removed the presiding minister because his name was in a Los Angeles church, so both would have to join again as new members. She did not, and lived the rest of her life outside the church, another injustice, she felt, to a lifelong member; or, as the younger ones felt, a church row to get even on two members doing all they felt able to do.

After he had helped Eugene, Fred, Frank and Lucy, they had leisure to make several summer trips, one of which was to the Yosemite. A corner blacksmith Pettis and another neighbor Rich, a wheelwright, made the wagon and a folding chair, camp tripod and grate. Then the bed

was fitted and a cover made so they could sleep in the wagon as the wife had no desire to sleep on the ground.

Their companions, two couples, were similarly outfitted, and it must have been a real summer outing without hurry. They visited at San Jose and Cambria; and made San Francisco and back another year over the same way, up to Sonoma valley to their old-time friends, the Alexanders, as destination.

their

THE RINCON TRAGEDY

The Rincon tragedy commenced on the coast. A neighbor and friend of the Fosters', whose children attended for two years the same school, had a daughter who was involved in it. Lucy Foster often stayed at night with the younger daughter when it rained too hard for her to go home with her brothers. The elder daughters of this neighbor family were out of school. She always tied up a cut finger and gave the visitor a piece of pie, and was their favorite. This girls were little, light and fine.

She, the seventeen-year-old daughter of this family was keeping company against her father's command with a horsethief, a young man who had served time in San Quentin, a jailbird, so-called. She met him at his sister's, unknown to the parents as he was forbidden the home.

She ran away with him. Then the Fosters, moving south, lost sight of them for eight years. The eloping couple had come to the Rincon and had two children. He had not reformed, but had become brutal and drunken. With a comrade much like himself, they were supposed to farm rented land on shares. They went back and forth to Los Angeles, trading horses at each end.

The husband had sold a man south a span, promising to deliver in two weeks. This is the testimony, both confessing the facts, at the trial. When the man did not appear and there were arrests, the Foster wife and daughter were summoned as having known the woman in her coast home.

The partner said the husband had come home very drunk and abused his wife and beat her. He stood it as long as he could and as she sat crying at the supper table he went out and got a spoke from a wheel and struck him from behind, crushing his skull.

The floor was covered with the stains which she had tried to clean up with hot water. She testified she was afraid of both of them but had no place to go with the children. they dug a shallow grave in the sand hills and buried him.

So

Fearing the black earth would show through the sand she strewed rags and sent the children to slide the clean sand over their father's grave. Then they went to Los Angeles; coming back, said he had died there. They sold all the tools and household furnishings, going, they said, to her mother's where he was to leave her, in the north somewhere.

The man who did not get his horses came up and said the woman's husband had never returned to Los Angeles. A search was made, the stains on the floor and on the sled by which the man's body was moved were found and proven to be blood. The couple was found in Nevada, stranded, and was sent to prison for life. The little children, too young to remember their names, were placed where they will never know.

The man died in prison. The woman, after many years of life in confinement, and of right living there, was released. A tragedy at the beginning, another at the ending. The murdered man's grave is in an abandoned cemetery. The stone has fallen face downward over an early horsethief's resting place. They say at Hallowe'en he is bidden to rise from his grave, but which grave as he has two, does he go to? "The loud waves roll in perpetual flow, and sigh for pity and answer No. At Rincon Point sand dunes.

HUNTING TRIPS

Mr. Foster went with several friends, men only, on hunting trips to Lompoc, then a deer paradise, or into the back country to some rancher's home. The children remember their coming by the fruit and candy. One tells of his bringing apricots which he gave them the first day but he smelled of peppermint candy, and while all were hunting, his father as well, he went through the outfit until he found the candy, "and ate a little, too."

They got it all next day, he said, after the fruit was gone. When this boy was allowed to go with them and carry one of the guns, he was almost a hunter, too. Many beautiful heads of horns and dried venison-jerky," they called it,