‘Pioneer Past’ on display
New Royal Porter Putnam items debut Tuesday
For the first time in over 100 years a number of personal possessions that belonged to Royal Porter Putnam, Porterville’s founder, will make their way to Porterville in an exhibit at the Porterville Historical Museum.
Starting at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 23, Porterville residents and others will have the opportunity to view Putnam’s 1851 Colt Navy Revolver, his personal desk, pocket watch, jewelry, silverware, business papers, family photographs and a number of other personal effects thanks to local collector and historian John Mcwilliams, who acquired the artifacts over the past few years from an adopted descendant of Putnam.
The exhibit, which is called “Discovering Porterville’s Pioneer Past,” also features subject matter dealing with other aspects of Porterville’s history such as a company designed in the 1880s called the Pioneer Corporation, which Mcwilliams said was headed by San Francisco investors.
Mcwilliams, who is a board member at the Porterville Historical Museum, said the company built one of the first hotels in the city in 1889 called the Pioneer Hotel, which he said was located on Main Street. Mcwilliams said the company also built the first bank in town called the Pioneer Bank, and had a business called the Pioneer Land Company, all designed to promote Porterville’s coming Citrus Boom.
Mcwilliams said the exhibit, which will be on display until January 2020, also displays the history of Porterville’s citrus industry, and the history of the Saloons in Porterville.
“Porterville was a genuine Wild West town in its early days,” Mcwilliams said, adding that the city was known as a Saloon town from the 1870s up to about 1910. “I have a display within the exhibit that shows how things relate to that.”
Mcwilliams said the comprehensive exhibit, which will be held in the museum’s Hodgson’s Hall, is definitely one of a kind that Porterville residents would not want to miss.
“It is something that the Porterville Historical Museum has never really seen before and I think people will come away really enlightened as to what Porterville was like in the 1800s,” Mcwilliams said.
As far as what part of the exhibit he loves the most, Mcwilliams said it is definitely the Putnam material.
“It really paints a picture of who he was and how the town was created by his efforts,” Mcwilliams said, adding that there are written descriptions throughout the exhibit for people to read so they can “Really come away with a better understanding about how Porterville got its start.”
Mcwilliams said he also hopes others will have a greater appreciation for the town of Porterville and its history after visiting the exhibit.
“That is my hope,” he said.
Mcwilliams said he sure has a greater appreciation for not only the town of Porterville and its history, but for its founder, especially when considering the long journey he took to get Putnam’s most personal possessions.
It all started with an intense interest in acquiring Putnam’s 1851 Colt Navy Pistol. Mcwilliams said he first saw the gun in a book published in the 1980s and was so fascinated by it that he made it his life’s quest to add it to his collection of historical artifacts from Porterville.
However, one thing the book left out was who had the gun.
“I was aware that the gun existed so it was kind of a mystery to me as to where this gun was,” Mcwilliams said.
Mcwilliams, who lived in Stockton, Calif. at the time, started what would become a 30-year search for the gun, checking museums such as the Porterville Historical Museum, and a number of antique and gun dealers and collectors, but he had no luck.
“Nobody seemed to have a clue,” Mcwilliams said.
Then one day someone convinced Mcwilliams that a man in Jackson had the gun. Curious, Mcwilliams called the man who wasn’t exactly sure if he had the gun or not. He told Mcwilliams he probably had it somewhere, but when Mcwilliams asked if he could see it, the man declined and hung up.
After the incident, Mcwilliams said he was devastated.
“I kind of made up my mind that this guy has it and that I’ll never get it so I gave up my pursuit,” Mcwilliams said.
However, years later, when Mcwilliams moved to Three Rivers, he would find out that the man never had the gun.
Although he had given up on his goal of getting it, Mcwilliams was still a collector at heart and found himself in an antique shop in Three Rivers looking to collect other historical artifacts. He told the owner of the shop all the things he collected, which, at the time, was mostly old photographs. The last thing he told the owner was that he was very interested in anything having to do with his hometown of Porterville.
After he said that, another woman named Nonie Summers, who was listening to his conversation, told Mcwilliams that her great-great grandfather was Putnam and that she had his gun.
“I felt like I was hit by lightning,” Mcwilliams said of how he felt when Summers told him the good news.
Mcwilliams said he asked Summers if they could arrange a time for him to see the gun to which she responded, “See it, would you like to buy it.”
Before the day was over Summers gave the gun to Mcwilliams after he agreed to pay her over a five-month period.
In addition to the gun, Mcwilliams said he was also able to acquire from Summers other personal things that belonged to Putnam including an 1858 tintype of him when he first came to the area, his desk, his and his wife’s estate jewelry, all of their personal papers, family albums and “all sorts of just wonderful things that had belonged to him.”
Mcwilliams said Putnam died in 1889 at age 52. He said all of his possessions stayed in Porterville until his wife died in 1914. When his wife died, Mcwilliams said Putnam’s son inherited all of his belongings and took them with him when he moved to Berkeley.
When he died, Mcwilliams said his daughter, Ila Putnam, acquired all of the things and had them in her house. When Ila Putnam married Ernest Mathy, a German immigrant, Mcwilliams said the two of them moved to Three Rivers and kept the possessions in their house from the 1950s onward.
However, because Ila Putnam and Mathy had no children together, Mcwilliams said Mathy inherited all of Putnam’s stuff when Ila Putnam died.
“There were no living descendants,” Mcwilliams said.
Mcwilliams said Mathy eventually remarried. When Mathy died, Mcwilliams said all of Putnam’s possessions went to his new wife’s daughter, which was Summers.
Summers, Mcwilliams and the majority of Putnam’s possessions will be in attendance at the exhibit’s opening day and ribbon cutting along with representatives from the Porterville Chamber of Commerce, local politicians and other local dignitaries.
“I am expecting a pretty big turnout,” Mcwilliams said, adding, “It has been 100 years plus that these things have not been in Porterville so I hope everybody in Porterville gets a chance to come and see the stuff before I bring it back home to Three Rivers.”