How Stockton Got Its Name

Opportunity is one of the many words that you can use to describe The United States, sure not everyone will succeed and not everyone will get the same opportunities but you get a heck of a lot more than you would in most if not all other countries. This is why so many people immigrated here and still do today. Well, even within this country there were and are places that may give you better odds of success than others. You don't need to stay where you were born and raised or where you arrived.  You can go wherever you like even if it means starting out lower than where you were for a little bit. It's all about perseverance and to put it simply, Hope.

Back on the Eastern side of the United States, there was a young guy who had been here a few years from his homeland of Germany. The Eastern States were in a depression of sorts that started in 1837. Many people decided to pack up and leave for whatever was on the horizon, including this young man. He joined up in a travel party that was called the Bartleson-Bidwell party which was the first overland emigrant party to travel to California.

When the party arrived in California this young man got a job working for a man you may have heard of; John Sutter, who was kinda like Elon Musk for California at the time if that makes any sense.

This young man then changed his name for some reason from Karl David Weber to Charles Weber.

After a year or so he basically got himself a letter of recommendation to the Mexican Government from Mr. Sutter and made his way to San Jose where he joined up with William Gulnac in business.

They ran all kinds of businesses, A salt mine, a bakery, a corn mill, They made shoes, and soap, and were ranchers as well.

One of the cool things back then was after living in California for a while you could apply to become a Mexican citizen and if you were granted that, you would be given a big piece of land. Land that was untamed, and essentially untouched, and may have Indians living there which would be an issue for you. But the point is, you got land. With some work could easily be a way for a man to get extremely rich, Just like today land can be a huge money maker.

Well, Webers’ business partner was a Mexican Citizen and was given this nice big land known as El Rancho Del Campo De Los Francesse which was over 48 thousand acres in modern-day Stockton and French Camp, He gave up on the land in 1845 and sold it to Weber who gladly took this opportunity to create a city.

The next year 1846, the Mexican-American War broke out. This helped Weber with getting people to settle on his land where there would be some protection rather than being all spread out.

This new city was called Tuleburg, yet some called it Mudville, and a few called it Weberville. It was growing nicely and as the war continued, Weber was asked to be a Captain for the Mexican Army but he refused. Not long after, He was approached by US forces and he gladly took on the title of Captain from them. Politically, this hurt him and some loyal to Mexico essentially boycotted him but it didn't matter in the long term because he knew America was greater than Mexico and it would be better for that to be on his resume' than that of an enemy of the US.

A guy who became famous for his work in California, practically taking over on his own when he wasn't even supposed to be there was a man named Robert Stockton which you can learn all about in my episode about him.

Weber wanted to honor the man who made California part of the US and renamed his city, Stockton.

Around that time, Gold was discovered and he quickly got himself a mining operation near Placerville and bought the land near it to make another city. This time he named it after himself calling it Weberville. It would not have the same success that Stockton did in the long term but it was definitely a boomtown for a couple of years, it was abandoned sometime in the 1850s.

After all this, he essentially retired and lived the rest of his days as a rich man in a land of opportunity.