"That Sanitary Sack of Flour"

Carte de visite by George H. Johnson of San Francisco, Calif. This image has its origins in Nevada Territory on an April day in 1864. The town of Austin, population about 5,000 souls, just elected its first-ever mayor. A wager connected to the outcome of this election, involving a plain sack of ordinary flour, led to an unprecedented fundraiser for Union soldiers and sailors that gained national attention.

 

Here’s what happened:

 

Two candidates in Austin vied for the office of mayor. Democratic Party candidate David E. Buell went up against Republican candidate Charles Holbrook.

 

Chances being what they were, and with no formal polling available, both sides felt certain of victory.

 

Two men on opposing sides of the contest made a bet on the outcome.

 

The Democratic Party supporter, Reuel Colt Gridley, was a Missouri transplant who had failed to find a fortune in California but earned a respectable living in Austin as a partner in a general store. With plenty of miners in town, business prospered.

 

The Republican supporter, Dr. Henry Herrick, was a Lander County official who resided in the nearby community of Clinton.

 

The wager went like this: If the Republican candidate won, Gridley would march through Austin with a 50-pound sack of flour across his back while a band played “John Brown’s Body.” If the Democrat won, Dr. Herrick would haul the sack of flour to the tune of “Dixie.”

 

There are numerous period tellings of this story and what happened next. Two versions stand out for me. One of them comes from the April 21, 1864, edition of an Austin newspaper, the Reese River Reveille. The other comes from Carl W. Torrence’s 1944 History of Masonry in Nevada. They are vivid, realistic accounts of what transpired. Together they tell the larger story of “That Sanitary Sack of Flour.”

 

We begin with Torrence’s account:

 

The name which brought lasting fame and glory to Austin's Masonic lodges is the name of Reuel Colt Gridley, known best to history for his connection with, and interest in the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. For the sick and wounded there was no Red Cross, no great Army Medical Corps. But the Sanitary Commission was carrying on nobly. Demands on its slender resources had been enormous, had time and again exhausted them. Sufficient money had been brought in to buy supplies. These had been assembled at depots, and the Commission found itself without funds to move them up to the places where they would soon be badly needed. This was the national setting.

 

The local setting was furnished by a municipal election in the little town of Austin. The election was hotly contested. In the heat of the battle, a wager was made between Doctor Herrick and Reuel Gridley. If the Democrats won, Dr. Herrick was to carry a sack of flour on his back across the town to the settlement of Clifton, a mile and a half down the canyon; if they lost Gridley was to become the beast of burden.

 

The Democrats were defeated, and in due time Gridley appeared with the flour, decorated in red, white and blue ribbons, and a few small flags. Beside him marched Dr. Herrick carrying Gridley's hat, coat, gloves and cane, and followed by thirty-six men on horseback, a band playing "Old John Brown” and then came almost the entire population of Austin.

 

Now, I want to pause Torrence’s account to share the reporting from the April 21 issue of the Reese River Reveille. Note the sponge and broom references to clean the political house.

 

Here we go:

 

Yesterday morning the wager was paid in the most splendid style. At 10 o’clock a large convocation of citizens, with the Austin band, people on horseback, and many flags of all sizes, are assembled about the store of Mr. Gridley, who was ready with his sack of flour trimmed with ribbons and mounted with a number of small flags. A procession was formed, with the city officers elect, mounted on horseback, at the head, followed by Dr. Herrick carrying the coat and cane of Mr. Gridley, who was immediately behind with the sack on his shoulder, with his son, a youngster of about ten years, carrying a small flag, marched beside him, and escorted by the Democratic Central Committee, two carrying flags, one a pole to which was attached a huge sponge, and another a pole carrying high in the air a new broom, then came the band playing “John Brown’s Body,” leading an immense procession of citizens. All marched down the street amidst the most enthusiastic cheering of spectators, and the screeching whistles of the numerous mills on the route. Upon reaching Clifton the principals, with the band and as many as could, marched in to the Bank Exchange saloon, where the ceremony of delivering the flour, surrendering the flag and throwing up the sponge was performed, with the most appropriate and graceful speeches by Messrs. Gridley, Markey, Worthington and Herrick. It is not necessary to say that the spirits of the bar added some, if possible, to the enthusiastic spirit of the attendant crowd. Cheers and tigers greets the speeches, the throwing up of the sponge, the surrender of the flags and the broom. “A new broom sweeps clean,” and the one transferred was new and large. It was typical of the clean sweep the party had made, and also that the course of the new officers of the city would be like the new broom, and that in their course of office they would leave a clean record.

 

Now, let’s flip back to Torrence’s Masonic History:

 

An argument arose as to the disposition of the flour. Herrick proposed that it be made into griddle cakes and swore that no Democrat should have one. Gridley insisted that it be put up at auction, the purchaser to put up the amount in gold and retain possession until the sack was again offered at auction and sold and so on until everyone had a chance to possess it. All proceeds to go to the Sanitary Commission.

 

Gridley was the first purchaser. This brought a round of cheers, and the bidding started in earnest. From the sale, the sum of five thousand dollars was sent by Gridley to the Commission.

 

Gold Hill in Storey County heard of the auction, and asked that the residents of that town be permitted to conduct an auction. So to Gold Hill went Gridley and his flour. The auction was repeated, miner bidding against merchant, banker against doctor. $5,225.00 was raised, and the supremacy of Gold Hill over Austin publicly admitted. Then the parade filed through Devil's Gate to Silver City, but a rain storm interfered with the sale, so on they went to Dayton, the county seat. Rivalry between the towns of the Comstock boosted Gridley's sales enormously. At Virginia City, Mr. Bonner of the Gould and Curry mine started the ball rolling with his bid of $3,500.00. The sales mounted until that section of Storey County raised $22,000.00.

 

From there Gridley, with his now famous sack of flour, went to Sacramento, San Francisco, and then to New York and the East. In all, Gridley turned over to the Commission, over $265,000.00, a sum which made possible the fine work of the Commission the last year of the war. Gridley, his work completed, returned to the West, broken in health and financially ruined. He had exhausted his means transporting his flour over the country. In 1866 he landed in Stockton without a dollar. He died in Paradise City, Stanislaus county, Nov. 21, 1870, and was buried in Stockton on Admission Day. A monument to his memory was dedicated in Rural Cemetery by Rawlins Post, Grand Army of the Republic.

 

And so you have the story of “that Sanitary Sack of Flour” pictured in this photograph. The money Gridley raised went along way to support U.S. military personnel.

 

A few months later, in October 1864, Nevada gained admission to the Union as the 36th state. The statehood processed was rushed by the Republican Congress so that Nevada citizens could vote in the presidential election. They did, and overwhelmingly, by almost 20 points, to send Abraham Lincoln back to the White House for a second term.

 

I want to thank Jeremy Rowe, who first made me aware of Gridley’s Sanitary Sack of Flour in a story he wrote for Military Images magazine in our Autumn 2019 issue. You can read it here: www.militaryimagesmagazine-digital.com/2019/09/01/rc-grid...

 

You’ll find another account of this story in the 1866 book, History of the United States Sanitary Commission, by Charles J. Stille: ia801609.us.archive.org/16/items/historyofuniteds00stiluo...

 

There is yet another account by Sam Clemens, who we know best as Mark Twain, the great American humorist. Sam, then in his late 20s, worked at the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise as a reporter. Twain happened to grow up near the Gridley family in Hannibal, Missouri, and knew Gridley. Twain’s version of the story is told in his 1872 classic, Roughing It. You can read it here: books.google.com/books/about/Roughing_it.html?id=BKgvAAAA...

 

Here’s his version of events:

 

The new mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered it and carried it a mile or two, from Lower Austin to his home in Upper Austin, attended by a band of music and the whole population. Arrived there, he said he did not need the flour, and asked what the people thought he had better do with it. A voice said:

 

"Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary fund."

 

The suggestion was greeted with a round of applause, and Gridley mounted a dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer. The bids went higher and higher, as the sympathies of the pioneers awoke and expanded, till at last the sack was knocked down to a mill man at two hundred and fifty dollars, and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flour delivered, and he said:

 

"Nowhere-sell it again."

 

Now the cheers went up royally, and the multitude were fairly in the spirit of the thing. So Gridley stood there and shouted and perspired till the sun went down; and when the crowd dispersed he had sold the sack to three hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousand dollars in gold. And still the flour sack was in his possession.

 

The news came to Virginia, and a telegram went back:

 

"Fetch along your flour sack!"

 

Thirty-six hours afterward Gridley arrived, and an afternoon mass meeting was held in the Opera House, and the auction began. But the sack had come sooner than it was expected; the people were not thoroughly aroused, and the sale dragged. At nightfall only five thousand dollars had been secured, and there was a crestfallen feeling in the community. However, there was no disposition to let the matter rest here and acknowledge vanquishment at the hands of the village of Austin. Till late in the night the principal citizens were at work arranging the morrow's campaign, and when they went to bed they had no fears for the result. At eleven the next morning a procession of open carriages, attended by clamorous bands of music and adorned with a moving display of flags, filed along C street and was soon in danger of blockade by a huzzaing multitude of citizens. In the first carriage sat Gridley, with the flour sack in prominent view, the latter splendid with bright paint and gilt lettering; also in the same carriage sat the mayor and the recorder. The other carriages contained the Common Council, the editors and reporters, and other people of imposing consequence. The crowd pressed to the corner of C and Taylor streets, expecting the sale to begin there, but they were disappointed, and also unspeakably surprised; for the cavalcade moved on as if Virginia had ceased to be of importance, and took its way over the "divide," toward the small town of Gold Hill. Telegrams had gone ahead to Gold Hill, Silver City and Dayton, and those communities were at fever heat and rife for the conflict. It was a very hot day, and wonderfully dusty. At the end of a short half hour we descended into Gold Hill with drums beating and colors flying, and enveloped in imposing clouds of dust. The whole population—men, women and children, Chinamen and Indians, were massed in the main street, all the flags in town were at the mast head,

and the blare of the bands was drowned in cheers. Gridley stood up and asked who would make the first bid for the National Sanitary Flour Sack. Gen. W. said:

 

"The Yellow Jacket silver mining company offers a thousand dollars, coin!"

 

A tempest of applause followed. A telegram carried the news to Virginia, and fifteen minutes afterward that city's population was massed in the streets devouring the tidings for it was part of the programme that the bulletin boards should do a good work that day. Every few minutes a new dispatch was bulletined from Gold Hill, and still the excitement grew. Telegrams began to return to us from Virginia beseeching Gridley to bring back the flour sack; but such was not the plan of the campaign. At the end of an hour Gold Hill's small population had paid a figure for the flour sack that awoke all the enthusiasm of Virginia when the grand total was displayed upon the bulletin boards. Then the Gridley cavalcade moved on, a giant refreshed with new lager beer and plenty of it-for the people brought it to the carriages without waiting to measure it-and within three hours more the expedition had carried Silver City and Dayton by storm and was on its way back covered with glory. Every move had been telegraphed and bulletined, and as the procession entered Virginia and filed down C street at half past eight in the evening the town was abroad in the thoroughfares, torches were glaring, flags flying, bands playing, cheer on cheer cleaving the air, and the city ready to surrender at discretion. The auction began, every bid was greeted with bursts of applause, and at the end of two hours and a half a population of fifteen thousand souls had paid in coin for a fifty-pound sack of flour a sum equal to forty thousand dollars in greenbacks!It was at a rate in the neighborhood of three dollars for each man, woman and child of the population. The grand total would have been twice as large, but the streets were very narrow, and hundreds who wanted to bid could not get within a block of the stand, and could not make themselves heard. These grew tired of waiting and many of them went home long before the auction was over. This was the greatest day Virginia ever saw, perhaps.

 

Gridley sold the sack in Carson city and several California towns; also in San Francisco. Then he took it east and sold it in one or two Atlantic cities, I think. I am not sure of that, but I know that he finally carried it to St. Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was being held, and after selling it there for a large sum and helping on the enthusiasm by displaying the portly silver bricks which Nevada's donation had produced, he had the flour baked up into small cakes and retailed them at high prices.

 

It was estimated that when the flour sack's mission was ended it had been sold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks ! This is probably the only instance on record where common family flour brought three thousand dollars a pound in the public market.

 

It is due to Mr. Gridley's memory to mention that the expenses of his sanitary flour sack expedition of fifteen thousand miles, going and returning, were paid in large part, if not entirely, out of his own pocket. The time he gave to it was not less than three months. Mr. Gridley was a soldier in the Mexican war and a pioneer Californian. He died at Stockton, California, in December, 1870, greatly regretted.

 

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