This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Greenwood, McGillivray, Fremont, Everman, Cummins Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/1713.1.3 Message Board Post: STATE OF CALIFORNIA. San Bernardino County.--On this fifteenth day of May A.D. One thousand eight hundred and sixty one, personally appeared before me, James W. Wilson, County Clerk of San Bernardino County, State aforesaid, John Greenwood, who served in Fremont's California Battalion in the War with Mexico in the year 1846 -- and the said John Greenwood being duly sworn by me according to law, deposes and says that the "Discharge" which he received in the spring of 1847, when he was discharged from Fremonts California Battalion at San Gabriel near Los Angeles, was lost some time thereafter in the following manner to wit: The said discharge was kept by him with other papers in a satchel kind of buck skin bag, and after his discharge he went from San Gabriel to Sonoma in California, and from thence he went with Commodore Stockton to the United States, as interpreter and guide taking his papers with him. From San Jose, Missouri, deponent and Napoleon McGilvery sent their papers on to Washington from which place they were returned, with the word that no money had yet been appropriated for the purpose of paying off the Battalion. Deponent left San Jose, Missouri, in the fall of 1848, on his return to California and stopped at Sonora, where deponent had some horses and cattle.--Late in the fall of 1848, deponent went from Sonorma (sic), to a place callled "Fremont" ___?___ ___?___ __?__ (3 words), on his way to the Gold Mines, and left his Buck skin Satchel or Bag, containing his said discharge and other papers at Fremont with a German merchant (name not now recollected), he being the most prominent man then in that new place, intending in a few months to return and purchase some real estate in Fremont. Deponent went up to the mines and put up a store at "Greenwood Valley", and now known by that name, and on his return to Fremont in 18(49?), he found the German merchant with whom he had left his satchel of papers, had, as the phrase was, made his fortune , sold out and moved away. And as deponent did not then think his papers of any great consequence, he being then well off, he did not think it worth the while to pursue his enquiries for the German merchant any further.--Consequently, never from that time until now, having seen or heard further from him, the said discharge and other papers now lost to this deponent--He never having again laid eyes upon the same.--Signed with his X, John Greenwood. N.B.: Greenwood must be calling St. Joseph, Missouri, "San Jose". Sonora, Missouri was opposite present Peru, Nebraska....Atchison county, Missouri, marriage records show that John Greenwood was married to Francis Everman on Dec. 26, 1847 by James Cummins, J.P. Cummins lived north of present Hamburg, Iowa. The Everman family lived a couple of miles east (northeast of Hamburg)....Greenwood Valley must have received some notice in Iowa newspapers, because a company from Andrew, Iowa, in 1850 are known to have gone to that place.....Judge Thomas Greenwood and his family lived only a few miles north of the Cummins-Everman places....John Greenwood's father, Caleb, left his children with Andrew Gemecker and wife who lived at The Narrows. Perhaps it was here that John also left his satchel.--W.F.