Parker H. French

Parker H. French (c. 1826 – before 1880) was a nineteenth-century adventurer, entrepreneur, and swindler. He left no personal records such as letters or diaries, and very few formal records have been found about him. However, he was a central figure in several gold rush memoirs, participated in William Walker's conquest of Nicaragua, and was often in the news in the 1850s because of his exploits —criminal and otherwise. While not a figure of great consequence in American history, French's life provides an insight into antebellum America.

A wood engraving of French by S. F. Baker from a Brady ambrotype

The term "confidence man" first appeared in print in newspapers in the summer of 1849. It described a New York man arrested for stealing watches or small sums by gaining trust only to betray it. Within months, another confidence man was working in New York, this one far more ambitious, bold, and imaginative. Parker French ran a "big con." He duped would-be Forty-Niners out of tens of thousands of dollars and the merchants who supplied them out of tens of thousands more. The US Army wined, dined, and supplied him on credit. His demonstrable connections in New York and New Orleans to the financial backers of an irregular invasion, a filibuster on Cuba, led by Narciso López, benefited no one but him. French was persuasive, confident, and tough. As the years passed he played many parts, all of them built on quick wits, charm, a remarkably convincing manner, and chutzpa: all the skills of a con man – including deceit. He was a county DA, a state legislator, a lawyer, a newspaper publisher, and, nearly, an ambassador – if his credentials had been accepted. Federal agents accused him of being a spy and sent him to a Boston prison. For a short while, he was a gringo bandito in the mountains above Mazatlan for which French received an eighteen-month jail term in Durango. Once well known, he died in total obscurity.

No record exists of French's birth or his early years before 1849. Ned McGowan, who knew him in 1854 and 1855 in California, summarized his life in two newspapers articles in 1879, while Kenneth Johnson republished them with a commentary in 1958. McGowan cited no evidence as his source, 25 years earlier, was French himself.

It is known that Parker French was born around 1826 in Kentucky, was orphaned while very young, and was taken in by the neighboring family of a Judge Edwards. He left home as a teenager and eventually made his way to New Orleans, where he signed on with the British Navy and sailed on a man-of-war as a "powder monkey" during the First Opium War (1839–1842). He returned full of stories of his adventures and financial coups.

In April 1849, French married his foster sister, Lucretia Edwards, in Madison, Illinois. It was in nearby St. Louis that year that he put together his first scam. Doing business as "Messrs. French & Co." French launched an unfinished ship, promising to transport gold seekers to California. The 700-ton bark, christened the Matilda, was still unfinished when "she was sold by the Sheriff, to pay for her material and labor." McGowan wrote that French moved on, leaving "behind him a number of debts for borrowed money and for shipbuilding."

French and his wife arrived in New York City about the beginning of 1850. They may have already had a child; one came along at some point. Before long, French – having granted himself the rank of "Captain" – had taken an office in the Tammany Building, had placed ads in the newspapers, and had flyers printed describing his plan to lead an expedition to the gold fields of California for a fee of $250. One flyer began,

Johnson reproduced this handbill in his edition of McGowan.

"From NEW YORK to Port LAVACA, in Texas, by Steamship, thence by comfortable and easy wagon coaches ... over the gently swelling uplands of Western Texas," up to the Gila, down to the Colorado, and, finally, across "the magnificent plains of California" (the Colorado Desert) to San Diego. Moreover, as John Holmes, who signed on with his son for $500, pointed out, "French obligated himself to the company that he would take us through to California in sixty days, and to pay us five dollars each per day for every day we were more than sixty, if any, on the journey."

Initially, about 100 men signed on, some for a reduced fee in exchange for the promise of work on the trail. They sailed in late April for Port Lavaca via Havana, New Orleans, and Galveston. French himself was not aboard. An associate, North West, took charge of this group while French stayed behind signing up more men. He was also still completing arrangements for the journey. The first sailing of 100 men got to Port Lavaca on or about May 9. There they discovered that there were neither the mules French had promised would be waiting, nor any wagons for the absent mules to pull. They made camp and waited in growing fear and anger.

In New York French signed up many more paying customers from a new office on Wall Street. He acquired some wagons (from Dan Rice’s circus), cases of rifles, and other gear. It was all loaded along with "as much gold ... as two men could carry ..." aboard the steamer Georgia which finally sailed on May 13. The government had delayed the departure for a week to search the ship seeking evidence of connections to a suspected forthcoming attack on Cuba led by López, which, in fact, occurred the same day French and his group arrived at Havana harbor.

A delay at Havana, including a change of ships and a threatened search consequent of suspicions of French’s connection to the López filibuster, resulted in missing their ship connection in New Orleans. This meant a further delay of nearly a week. French put the men up in the best hotels available and all lived well in New Orleans – on French – as the month of May ended. On June 4, French and the additional recruits arrived at Port Lavaca. Those stranded there for nearly a month greeted him with a mixture of relief and fury. When the new arrivals discovered the absence of mules, they, too, became much concerned. French, often described as remarkably persuasive, convinced the crowd that all would be well. He purchased young and unbroken mules somewhere, and, after much more delay, they finally made it to San Antonio via Victoria on July 6. There, as he had in Victoria, French produced such papers as military orders, bank drafts, and an unlimited line of credit drawn on a major New York shipping firm. All of it was bogus. He refurbished, re-supplied, bought horses, cattle, and many, better, mules. New recruits signed up. The train of 33 colorful, individually named wagons left San Antonio with much fanfare in mid-July. The sixty days promised for the entire trip had expired and San Diego was still 1,500 miles away.

End of the expedition

A month later in the Trans-Pecos they caught up with a wagon train carrying military supplies. French bought a number of the wagons and mules from the owner, Ben Franklin Coons, for a promised payment of nearly $18,000. French arrived in El Paso a couple of days ahead of his wagon train, which finally got there on September 18. The men of the expedition found him making more big purchases and living it up. But a frontiersman named Henry Skillman, riding hard out of San Antonio, reached El Paso near midnight the next day; time had run out for all of them. Skillman had a letter from the shipping firm disavowing any claims against it, letters from merchants French had defrauded, and a warrant for French's arrest.

French and a few others, including North West, who had been in charge of the first sailing, fled into Mexico. The men of the expedition divided what they could salvage, raised what cash they could, divided into groups, and headed either west or back home. Some followed the planned route to San Diego, while others made their way to Mazatlan and other Gulf of California ports. Most were on foot and all suffered considerable hardships. The first to arrive in San Francisco made it there in mid-December.

Gunfight at Corralitos

About three weeks after escaping the law, French led a dozen mounted men into a camp near Corralitos, Chihuahua, Mexico, where eight former expedition members had made their way from El Paso. The seven known accounts of what happened there on October 9, 1850 vary substantially. In the ensuing gunfight, two men died wounds and three more were seriously wounded. One of those was French. Whoever shot him wanted him dead, but as it happened, the gunshot only cost him his right arm. The rifle ball struck at or near French’s wrist and passed through his forearm before exiting above the elbow. The gunman may have been John Holmes, who later said, "My blood boiled, and snatching my rifle from my son's hands, without taking aim I shot French." However, Holmes was not the only one who shot at French. David Cooper recalled, "I let drive at him, aiming to shoot him in the heart." But Cooper claimed he stumbled on a rope tugged by a mule, which threw off his aim. A third man, Daniel Wright, had already attacked French with a Bowie knife, and the two were fighting in the dirt when Cooper or Holmes shot him.

At about the same instant that French was wounded, someone shot and killed Wright. Some say that "Ramrod" Harris, the "wickedest man in the West," walked up to French and Wright, looked at them struggling in the dust, and fired his shotgun point blank into Daniel Wright's neck, killing him and destroying French's right arm. However, an American mine superintendent who claimed to have treated French's arm, packed the wound with charcoal, and bandaged it with bed sheets, did not mention buckshot in the wound. It is probable that Cooper or Holmes shot Parker French, and it was French who shot Wright as they fought. Expedition member William Nelson was also killed in the fighting, and both Cooper and Holmes were seriously wounded.

The men who stayed with French took him to Chihuahua where a surgeon completed the amputation of French's infected right arm, removing it near the shoulder. French lingered there recovering for several weeks. Once back on his feet, he went to Durango and approached the governor of the state with a proposal to establish an American colony on the Gila, with the benefit of providing protection for the locals from Indian attacks. The governor was interested and planned to raise $600,000 for the project, only to cancel it when Ben Coons came to town from El Paso and told of French's swindles. Coons, bankrupted in part due to French, was on his way to San Francisco to borrow money from his brother. By December, French was in Mazatlan where he encountered several former members of his expedition. There, according to one, he helped a number of men get passage to San Francisco. According to another he managed to con some of the men again. He re-organized his gang, acquired weapons, and took to the mountains intending to rob a government silver train. They didn’t manage that, but did rob some ranchers and travelers. By February he was in a gunfight with Mexican troops, which resulted in the death of North West. He was captured and jailed in Durango where he remained for about 18 months.

In July 1852 he was released and made his way back to Mazatlan. There he boarded a brig called the Hallowell, San Francisco bound. The Hallowell was unable to resupply in Mazatlan and, on the morning of August 18, 47 days of unfavorable wind out of Panama, somewhere off the coast of Baja, with its food stores nearly exhausted, a lookout sighted a clipper ship, the North America. The owner and captain, John Noyes, signaled distress, flying the ensign at half-mast and union-down. Noyes boarded the North America. "Captain" Parker H. French accompanied him. Captain Artell Austinprovided Noyes with twelve days provisions but refused French’s offer of $40 to join the passengers aboard his ship.

Things continued badly for the brig. Early in September, after more than two weeks of beating along the coast, Noyes put in at Cave Landing, on San Luis Bay, in San Luis Obispo County, California, again seeking provision. This was not by any means a regular port-of-call. There was no wharf, no dock. No matter, everyone but Noyes abandoned ship. French, a notorious criminal, found himself broke, friendless, and carrying all he owned in a remote, scarcely populated "cow county."

But by January the land-grant dons who ran the county had appointed the smooth talking French as their District Attorney at $500 a year. That fall he was elected overwhelmingly to represent the county in the State Legislature. He sailed to New York and collected Lucretia and his daughter, returning with them to the Bay Area at the end of 1853. He served one term as an Assemblyman, unsurprisingly serving on the Ways and Means Committee.

He launched a Sacramento newspaper, was shot in a bar (in the leg), and decked a former governor in a fistfight, in spite of being a very short, slight, one-armed man. He practiced law with a fellow member of the 1854 legislature and others. He left the newspaper in other hands the same year, 1855, to join William Walker in Walker’s doomed Nicaraguan filibuster. He sent his wife and child back to New York. In Nicaragua he promoted himself from Captain to Colonel and served, unsurprisingly, as "Minister of Hacienda," which amounted to being Secretary of the Treasury. Walker appointed him Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States, but President Pierce refused his credentials. This did not prevent him from living for months in luxury hotel suites and entertaining the press and politicians with cigars and champagne.

After some legal problems relating to recruiting volunteers for the Nicaraguan filibuster, he returned there in March 1856, only to be sent away by Walker. Things then started gradually to unravel for Parker French. He lectured on Walker, purporting to raise money for him. He was in Minnesota with his family for a few months in 1856, buying and then selling at least one newspaper and promoting a land development scheme. A wealthy Bostonian reported that French cheated him in a deal involving the selling of two ships to the Navy. There was some unsavory business connected to ginseng. He launched a "Black Republican" (anti-slavery) paper in San Francisco that died after three issues in 1857. He got into trouble in New Orleans over a fake opium shipment. He was arrested by federal authorities in Connecticut and imprisoned in Fort Warren in Boston on charges of spying for the Confederacy, but was soon released without being tried. The evidence suggests that if he was spying, it was for both sides. It is much more likely this was some sort of attempted con, not spying.

French was living in Washington, D.C. by 1863, where he registered for the Civil War draft in July, describing himself as a 40-year-old lawyer with only one arm. For prior military service, he gave "2 years in Mexico". He is listed in the 1865 directory of Louisville, Kentucky, residing on the east side of 6th, between Chestnut and Broadway, with no occupation stated. Three years later, he (with Lucretia, at least in name) bought some property in St. Louis in 1868 with a promise of payment which did not materialize on the due date. French turns up in the 1870 census in New York; Lucretia does not.

According to McGowan, who saw him in D.C. in the 1870s, he "... appeared to be a perfect wreck of his former self," drinking himself to death with cocktails of whiskey and chloroform. He does not appear in the 1880 census, but no record of his death has been found. An 1893 California political history mentioned him as "French, Parker H., Assemblyman, San Luis Obispo, 1854. Dead."