Public domain photos of Fairfield founder Capt. Robert Henry Waterman in 1870 and Cordelia Sterling Waterman when she was 35. (Courtesy photos)

David Weir’s out of print 1957 book “That Fabulous Captain Waterman,” a gushing fanboy account of the life of Fairfield founder Robert Waterman with sometimes questionable historical accuracy, is split into two parts. The first is his early life and adventures as a sea captain and the second is his time as a farmer and businessman.

The book has several interesting anecdotes throughout, including the following.

“Deacon” Waterman: A Methodist Church was organized in 1858 and trustees were chosen and a building site secured. Then a donation drive ensued. Waterman saw that very little money had been donated and so he made a “Stingy List” that had “names of local citizens whom he knew to be financially sound, but a little slow at opening their pocketbooks.”

He then went with his Suisun City postmaster friend in a horse-drawn carriage to visit some of the people on the list. Oh, and he took a battered .44 rifle with him. The tales of Waterman’s days as a barbarous sea captain grew taller over the years and he did little to quell them as sometimes they could serve a purpose.

Tony Wade, Back in the Day

Their first stop was at the Abernathie Lane home of Jim Spencer. Waterman explained to Spencer about the church project and said he’d done some calculating and he’d put him down for a $250 donation. Spencer complained at first, but Waterman pointed out that he’d done quite well for himself with his hogs and cattle . . . all while he toyed idly with the bolt of his wicked-looking rifle. Spencer agreed to the donation amount.

Sam Martin, next on the Stingy List, not only agreed, but rode along with Waterman to make sure subsequent cheapskates also got on board.

The spacious brick church building was dedicated in September 1859.

The county seat battle: Prior to California statehood in 1850, Solano County was called Benicia County. Vallejo was once the state capital, but that honor was wrested away by Benicia in 1853. Then Solano County’s seat was in Benicia.

The belief that the county seat should be moved to a spot more centrally located caught on and the fact that it ticked off Benicia-ites was a bonus. Eventually it was put up to a countywide vote.

Robert Waterman pledged 16 acres for the county buildings plus four other blocks and $10,000. In the election on Sept. 8, 1858, Benicia was feeling confident, but didn’t anticipate Vallejoans throwing their votes to Fairfield in a revenge move for Benicia taking the state capital from them.

When the news hit that Fairfield won the Solano County seat race, according to Weir, “the lid blew off in Fairfield and Suisun City and for three glorious days every grog shop served free beer and sandwiches to all comers.” Waterman also held a monster barbecue at his farm.

Waterman never had any doubt Fairfield would win and in fact had commenced the erection of a brick building six months previously. It was finished and ready to be moved into by the county clerk and treasurer just two weeks after the election.

The racist jerk: David Weir labeled the chapter about the following incident as “The Prankster,” but I think my title is more appropriate. Fred Fann, a 19-year-old African-American man, worked in Waterman’s 12-room house and Waterman called him his “cabin boy.”

Cordelia Waterman, Robert’s wife, complained about how he treated him and Waterman replied, “Why, Cordelia, that Black rascal would be offended if I didn’t play a joke on him once in a while.”

So here’s the “joke” described. Waterman, who had a friend over, sent Fred to his spring house and told him to “fetch a bottle of port wine and no loitering, hear?” The spring house was a stone room with a spring of cold water on a hill which served as a cooler for vegetables and Waterman’s collection of foreign and domestic wines.

Fann came back a half-hour later and, according to Weir, said he had Waterman’s “pote wine, suh, but I did’n see any o’ that there lorterin wine, suh.”

Waterman’s friend started laughing as the old sea captain then grabbed his .44 rifle and Fann took off running. Waterman started firing his gun near Fann as he ran away. Weir, once again indulging in unrelenting puffery, said that Waterman “could shoot the eye of a squirrel from a hundred yards away and never singe an eyelash.” So his object was to amuse himself and his friend by terrifying his employee, not actually to kill him.

Fann ran to his mother’s house, a shanty off of Texas Street. Weir then incredulously adds this: “Captain Waterman’s pranks often bordered on the ludicrous, but they were never malicious or cruel to the point of mental of physical injury.”

Perhaps they didn’t have accurate dictionaries in 1957 when Weir’s book was published so he didn’t have an accurate understanding of what “malicious” and “cruel” meant.

Over a period of years, workmen on the Waterman ranch had unearthed a quantity of Indian skeletons. They put them on the side of a barn pending a time for a more decent interment or at least that’s what Weir claims. There had accumulated a huge pile of sun-bleached human carcasses, hidden from view by a clump of purple lilac bushes.

If a worker wanted overtime for their shifts on Waterman’s ranch, he “negotiated” with them by silently leading them over to the barn and pulling back the lilac bushes revealing “the gruesome collection of human bones – arms, legs and skulls.”

Paying it forward: Waterman was evidently a complex man. When he wasn’t raising money for churches at the point of a rifle or securing the county seat for a city he founded or shooting at employees for sport or using the remains of human beings to save labor costs, he was a philanthropist. For years he sent money to aid in the education of an old shipmate’s two sons as he and Cordelia Waterman had no children.

One of the sons wrote a letter to Waterman after he promised his father he would not seek to repay Waterman for his gifts. But he and his brother anonymously financed two young men through engineering school at Harvard and two others from Dartmouth School of Law. He said that once those “grandchildren” of Waterman’s generosity were established, they, too, would also “extend timely aid to other deserving, ambitious young students – so your chain of kindness and philanthropy shall never be broken.”

Capt. Robert Henry Waterman died Aug. 8, 1884, of peritonitis at the age of 76.

Fairfield freelance humor columnist and accidental local historian Tony Wade writes two weekly columns: “The Last Laugh” on Mondays and “Back in the Day” on Fridays. Wade is also the author of The History Press books “Growing Up In Fairfield, California” and “Lost Restaurants of Fairfield, California.”

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