Today, a dispatch from Eureka, Nevada, 1875. Matilda Ashim and her family experience an unexpected crisis, while Louis Monaco welcomes a new family member to town and Tone confronts national law.
Dear listener,
When something happens to someone you care about, how do you react? Do you embrace them? Do you confront them? Or do you hope the whole mess just goes away?
For the first time in a long while, Matilda Ashim’s life is starting to feel stable. One year after the floods washed through Eureka, the town is back to business. And the Jewish community in town is growing, too. There are about 100 Jews living in Eureka with roots from all over the Jewish world, from Prussia, where her family is from, from Germany, from England, from France.1
There’s just one unpredictable piece of the puzzle. Her son Baruch, now 24, is off on his own. He’s ready to stop working for his dad and uncle and open his own store in a mining town. But rather than choose a town closer to Eureka, he’s decided instead to head to the edge of the vast California desert, to a place called Panamint.
Panamint is remote, even by Eureka’s standards, tucked into a high canyon in the mountains on the edge of the Mojave desert. A few years earlier, miners had uncovered a silver vein that they thought would be the biggest in the west. They called it the Wonder of the World. A big investment by Nevada money men had kicked off a mini-bonanza, and now the small town in the canyon has about 2,000 residents. Quite a few have relocated from Pioche, the rough mining town where Baruch had spent some time working at his family store.2
So, Baruch opens his store in Panamint, selling supplies the way he’s learned from his dad and his uncle. And if he doesn’t know already, he finds out quickly that Panamint is an even rougher town than Pioche. It’s tucked up in Secret Canyon, which is an old hiding spot for stagecoach robbers. They would stash stolen Wells Fargo boxes in the caves and rocks where no one ever came looking, and at least a few of those robbers have stuck around. Now, they’ve become sort of founding fathers in the town. Over the years, Panamint has attracted swindlers, con artists, Chinese workers digging out trails, and men looking to drink in the saloons and fight each other over poker games.3
And one of the men drawn to Panamint is Nick Perasich. He’s come to the west with his brothers, but he’s the only one of them living and working in California mine country.4
But he’s also a troubled man. One Panamint local later says this about Perasich:
“I knew his general reputation for peace and quietness was bad, as I should consider it. He was considered as quarrelsome and somewhat desperate. He was in the habit of carrying weapons.”5
Of course, if Baruch refused to sell supplies to any desperate man carrying weapons, he’d barely have any customers in Panamint. And so, within the first week that he’s open for business, he meets Nick Perasich.
—
The trouble starts with an unpaid bill. We don’t know the exact amount, but it was probably around $40—certainly not enough for all the trouble that will follow. But, at some point, Nick Perasich doesn’t pay Baruch Ashim money that he’s owed.6
At the same time, Baruch is considering moving his store away from the tough mining camp in Panamint to the nearby town of Darwin. As he travels back and forth between the two towns, he runs into Nick Perasich at Sullivan’s Restaurant, a popular spot in Darwin.
He sees Perasich eating there and asks him to pay the unpaid bill. Perasich walks over to Baruch’s table and, according to the restaurant owners, calls him a son of a bitch. Others say that Perasich threatens to kill him if he asks for the money again. Some say Perasich draws his gun to make the point.7
Baruch tells the restaurant owners to remember that threat, then finishes his meal and leaves.
The next day, Baruch returns to Sullivan’s for a late lunch. This time, he’s accompanied by two other men, who have been showing him around the mines near Darwin. One of them is hoping to sell Baruch a lot in town to build a new store.
Once again, Perasich is there, in the restaurant, eating with a friend. And here’s what everyone can agree happens next: Baruch Ashim shoots at Nick Perasich, and then Nick Perasich dies.8
—
Our brains are powerful machines. But they have a few flaws—and one of them is our memory.
Ask three different people to describe a scene and there will always be three different descriptions. How we feel in the moment, where we are in a space when an event unfolds, even what we believe should be true can all shape how we remember something happening. And how we talk about our memories, well, that can depend on who’s asking.
So it’s no surprise that there are a few different versions of the killing of Nick Perasich.
The restaurant owners tell one version: Baruch spots Perasich as soon as he walks into the restaurant, approaches him, and says, “Pay me that bill.” Perasich says, “I will,” and Baruch responds, “Pay me right here, you can’t scare me like you did yesterday,” and Perasich replies, “I will pay you when I get to Panamint.” Baruch draws his gun, aims at Perasich’s head, and fires. Perasich never draws his gun, one of the owners says.
One of Perasich’s friends who’s eating lunch at their table has another version: Baruch approaches, the two men argue, and then Baruch’s gun goes off. He says that the first bullet passes through Perasich’s left arm. The man takes cover and the next time he sees his friend, he’s on the floor dead.9
Other witnesses tell a third version: they say Perasich draws his own gun as soon as Baruch approaches him. This is the moment, they say, that Baruch fires his weapon, with the bullet traveling into the wall to the right of Perasich’s table.10
All the witnesses agree that once Baruch fires the first shot, the whole place erupts. Witnesses count eight or nine shots, with Baruch firing one or two more times, sending at least one bullet into the floor. The two men joining him open fire with their revolvers, too, and some say that Perasich’s friends and even the restaurant staff return fire.11
When you tell the story one way, Baruch Ashim murders Nick Peraisch. But when you tell the story another way, there’s really no way to say who shot Perasich at all.
And, then, of course, there’s what Baruch says in his own defense. He says he approaches Perasich, asking him to settle a debt that he and a colleague have racked up. Perasich replies, “God damn you, I’ll settle it now,” and stands up, with his right hand going to his pistol. Baruch says he shoots in the direction of Perasich’s hand, trying to disarm him, and then the gunfire starts all around him.12
—
Even in a backwater mining town like Panamint, there’s a justice system. And that system bails Baruch Ashim out on a $15,000 bond to await trial. He spends six months in San Francisco before it’s time to return to rural Inyo County, where he’ll face first-degree murder charges in the death of Nick Perasich.13
Matilda Ashim is determined to go to her son’s trial. Someone has to stay behind to keep their stores running, so Simon and their youngest son George remain in town while Matilda and her two daughters make the trip.
The family will reunite in their old hometown of Carson City, where Baruch had that brief adventure as Mark Twain’s assistant in the legislature. From there, they’ll travel south to the California desert for the trial.
Baruch’s sister, Elizabeth, arrives a day earlier than the others, and she checks into a hotel. There, a waiter recognizes her and passes word to Nick Perasich’s brothers, George and Elia. He tells them the Ashim family are back in town.14
George and Elia are partners in a fruit and vegetable stand next door to the town theater, where they often sell produce to locals who want to throw it at the performers on stage.15 Their brother, Peter, is a prison guard outside of town who was wounded in a jailbreak a few years earlier. Supposedly, the prisoners shot him in the leg because he was the most disliked guard in the place.16
Clearly, the Perasich brothers are a tight pack, and losing Nick has left them bitter.
A day later, Baruch, Matilda, Elizabeth, and their youngest sister, 12-year-old May, reunite at the hotel. The Ashim women have lived in mining country long enough to be able to handle some rough roads and long stage coach rides.17
The four family members eat breakfast at their hotel, while the stage coach driver prepares the team of horses for their long trip south. But when the Ashim women head to the front of the hotel to meet the stage, Baruch ducks out another door instead.
What his family doesn’t know is that a friend has tipped him off to trouble ahead. George and Elia want to avenge their brother, and they’re looking for him.18
Baruch wants to avoid an ambush that could put his family in danger, so he arranges with the stage coach driver to meet him farther down the road, away from the hotel where the Perasich brothers believe he’ll be.
So here he is, lying in a gully on the side of the road, waiting for the stage to pass, perhaps cursing the day he ever met Nick Perasich.
Back at the hotel, Nick’s brothers George and Elia watch the stage coach at the hotel, but they don’t spot Baruch inside. Instead, they watch as Matilda, Elizabeth, and May climb inside, alongside two other women and their children, plus at least one other man. The stage is almost full.
George and Elia run down the road to the south. They suspect that Baruch might be waiting for the stage by the fenced-in cornfields on the edge of town. They question a boy herding cows, but he hasn’t seen anyone pass by. At one point, the brothers trudge down the road about forty feet from Baruch, who’s still hiding in a dusty ditch. They have their weapons drawn. It’s October but they unbutton their shirts as they start to sweat.
Baruch clocks the distance between the ditch and the stage and he waits. The rumble of the stagecoach wheels and the crunch of the horses’ hooves get closer and closer. Then he makes the jump from the ditch to the stage, tumbling into the back seat and onto the passengers’ laps.19
Baruch is barely aboard the stage when Elia Perasich steps out in the road. Several witnesses say he fires his revolver, telling the stage coach driver to stop. The driver, of course, does the opposite, snapping the reins and sending his six horses barreling ahead.20
The brothers seem to think this would have worked, so now, Elia isn’t prepared to fire on a moving target. According to witnesses, he shoots again, but his next few shots go off target, with one zinging past Baruch’s head and through the other side of the coach. Matilda instinctively puts her hand out to shield her son and a bullet whizzes nearby, sending a spray of gravel onto her arm.
By now, Baruch is able to draw his own revolver and return fire. He keeps himself tucked inside the coach, only his hand and the gun leaning outside the window as he shoots twice, both wide. Matilda leans forward, probably holding onto her son so he won’t fall off the moving coach, so close to him that his gun leaves powder burns on her cheek as he fires.
The newspaper says later, “While these things were taking place, it is said the screeching of the male passengers far exceeded that of the women.”21
Ten, eleven, maybe twelve shots, and no one hit or hurt on either side.
Eventually the stage thunders past the Perasich brothers, and they stare back at the coach disappearing in a haze of road dust.
—
For the last few years, Louis Monaco has had another pair of hands in the studio: his brother Marino, who helps him manage customers and juggle the wet plates that he needs to capture photographs.
Now Marino is leaving mining country for Stockton, California, a riverfront town that’s growing fast. So Monaco needs a new assistant.36
As the weather cools and the days shorten, Monaco receives an update from his younger brother Giovanni, who’s arrived in New York City and is making his way west. He’s ready to learn the photographer’s trade from his older brother.37
Like Monaco before him, Giovanni’s name changes as he moves from the mountains of Switzerland to the mountains of Nevada. And by the time he arrives in Eureka, Giovanni Batista is now, simply, JB.38
While Monaco is most comfortable at the camera, JB is an artist across different mediums. He paints in pastels and oils, and he sketches in charcoal. And so, naturally, Monaco finds a role for his younger brother in his process. While JB learns to work the camera, he’s also busy retouching the photographs and, for customers with bigger budgets, adding a splash of color to the final print.39
Earlier in the year, Monaco had expanded out of his one-room studio into a more spacious spot next to the San Francisco Brewery.40 He needs the space to enlarge and print bigger photographs, but he also needs space to safely store the volatile mixes that go into capturing images.41
At the beginning of the year, the town fire brigades had rushed to put out a small fire in his old studio. A bottle of the collodion chemicals he uses on his negatives had caught fire next to a wood stove.42
He took out an ad in the local newspaper thanking the fire brigades for stopping the fire before it spread to other buildings, but it was a close call.43 So,now, with a new space and his brother beside him, he’s ready to have his best year yet in Eureka.
–
Now, there will be two trials as the year comes to a close. Baruch Ashim will return to California to face charges in the murder of Nick Perasich, and George and Elia Perasich will face charges in the attempted murder of Baruch Ashim in Nevada.
The Perasich brothers go first. A Nevada jury charges Elia Perasich, the brother who tried to shoot into the coach, with attempted murder of the stage coach driver and Baruch. But the witnesses called before the jury don’t remember seeing his brother George with a weapon, so he’s set free. Elia now must return to the grand jury in a month to plead his case.22
Baruch finally returns to Inyo County for his trial in the murder of Nick Perasich about one month later.
The justice system is starting its slow turn to action, and a jury is ready to hear the evidence in the case, chosen from almost 100 locals.23
The prosecutor is what the papers call “a quick, wide awake and thorough lawyer, ready and capable of maintaining his side of the question.” Nick Perasich’s brother, Peter, the prison guard, sits near the prosecutor, and reporters say he’s “attentive and determined, but a pleasant looking man.”24
The Ashims have hired two lawyers, one of whom is Patrick Reddy, a one-armed defense attorney renowned around California for his courtroom skills.25
For his part, Baruch seems exhausted, pale, and worn down. Matilda is also there in the courtroom, as are his two sisters, apparently arriving this time without any other gunfights.26
The women watch five days of testimony, cross-examination, and objections until finally it’s time for the closing arguments.
The prosecutor’s message throughout the trial had been simple:
“Nicholas Perasich came to his death from pistol shots fired by B. Ashim, the defendant, while deceased was quietly taking dinner in Sullivan’s Restaurant in the town of Darwin…The killing was wholly unjustifiable.”
And his closing arguments were direct, too. He claimed that, instead of shooting in self-defense, Baruch had carefully planned the murder of Nick Perasich. And he’d ensured that he had backup from two other men so there was no way to prove who fired the shot that killed the victim.
The two defense attorneys pick apart the prosecution’s case, point by point. First, they argue that the two shots that the prosecution had identified as Baruch’s couldn’t have killed Nick Perasich. That’s because one grazed his hand and the other hit the floor. Neither shot was the one that hit Nick Perasich in the head and killed him.
Then Patrick Reddy takes to the floor and speaks for three hours, showing off why he’s the go-to attorney for men in trouble in the boomtowns of California. He reminds the jury that, according to the California Supreme Court, they must have proof beyond a reasonable doubt to convict a defendant of a crime. That means the jury must be able to say, definitively, that one of Baruch’s two shots killed Nick Perasich, and that Baruch Ashim had set out, along with two other men, to kill.
He reminds the jury that witnesses said Perasich could be violent. Baruch Ashim, he says, has no record, operates a legitimate business, and is Jewish, a faith which, he says, emphasizes peace over conflict. As the newspaper reports, Reddy asks the courtroom:
“Was it for this jury to shut their eyes to patent facts and consign this unfortunate youth to a felon’s doom? This defendant had done nothing more than they, everyone, would have felt bound to do under similar circumstances.”27
And so the unsettling logic of the trial cranks on. Sitting in the courtroom for these five days has created its own time and place apart from the rest of the world, with its own rhythm, its own schedule, its own customs and traditions. Each day, the courtroom is tightly packed, full of smoke and human breath, and an intense, never-wavering focus on whether Baruch Ashim will emerge to cheers or to chains.
Matilda and her two daughters are there everyday. Along with the rest of the courtroom, they watch the prosecutor point out the scene of the shooting on a diagram, including all of the bullet holes left behind in the restaurant. They see Patrick Reddy unleashing one question after another, trying to establish that Nick Perasich threatened Baruch Ashim a day before the shooting. And they hear the prosecutor shout objections at the judge every time a witness mentions those threats.28
At some point, in that stuffy courtroom, staring at her son at the defense bench, Matilda must feel the strain. Maybe she thinks about Leopold, her firstborn son who died at age 8, and how Baruch, now her oldest son, came so close to losing his own life.29 Maybe she wonders, when the courtroom empties for a recess, whether she should have brought her family out to this place at all.
And now, here we are. The defense attorneys and the prosecutor have made their final arguments, and the judge leans in to instruct the jury that Baruch Ashim’s future is on their desk. And the tight, cramped seats, the warmth of bodies and the stale smell of tobacco, and the pressure bearing down, down onto her shoulders is too much for Matilda. For a moment, everything goes dark. The newspaper reports later:
“Some there were…from the first hour of the trial through to the end, who felt a vital, most anxious and painful interest in the proceedings. These were the mother and sisters of the deathly pale young man whose fate was in the balance. In fact so highly wrought up was that mother, what with the anxious days of waiting and suspense, the closeness of the tobacco tainted room, and the most trying ordeal…so great was the stress upon her feelings with all this, she fainted dead away and had to be carried from the room, just as the Court was closing the instruction to the jury prior to telling them the future of that young man was now wholly at their disposal.”30
After about an hour, the jury returns with a verdict. It’s taken them three rounds of voting, but they’ve reached the conclusion that Baruch Ashim is not guilty of the murder of Nick Perasich. Ultimately, they say, they’re swayed by the defense’s arguments that Baruch Ashim may not have fired the shot that killed Perasich—and that, even if he had, they felt he had shot in self-defense.31
We don’t know if Matilda has returned to the courtroom in time to hear the verdict being read. But we know that a few days later, Simon Ashim receives an update from California that his son has been acquitted. The local newspaper says:
“It is supposed that the jury was out but a short time. The news is received with much satisfaction by the many friends of the young man here.”32
—
When the fires have hit or the floods have swept through, Matilda Ashim and her family have always reopened their businesses, returned to the baseline, tried to keep a routine in the everyday.
But recovering from Baruch’s trial is slower. The verdict is popular around Eureka, and Baruch is, for a little while at least, a hero coming home.33 The story has all the fun and adrenaline of a good adventure—gunplay, stagecoach robberies, even a courtroom fainting—and it has a happy ending, at least if you believe Baruch’s version of events.
But there are rumors circulating that the Perasich brothers are still looking to avenge their sibling.34 The Ashims, now back in Eureka, are easy to find, in their stores and businesses, for any Perasich brother who wants to come to town for a chat, non-murderous or otherwise.
Of course, all of these rumors don’t change the outcome: Baruch is now a free man. Elia Perasich still faces charges of attempted murder for the attack on the stagecoach. And Nick Perasich is dead.
Winter is settling into Eureka, and Matilda, once again, does what she always does when the unexpected happens: she gets to work.
By the Christmas holidays, she’s already opened another new business in town, this one a small grocery store where she sells turkey, chicken, and fish just in time for New Years parties. In her store, surrounded by chickens plucked clean and seafood on ice, she must feel some balance being returned to her life.35 She probably appreciates the chance to work with her hands and talk to customers and earn a living instead of sitting, waiting to hear about the fate of her son. And maybe, along with that sense of balance, she also feels some hope—a hope, however faint, that next year will finally be calm.
—
Becoming a real place on the map, at least in the United States, means getting counted.
And so, this year, as more people head here to try to find their fortune, the Nevada state legislature orders a census. It’s a head count, yes, but it’s also a snapshot of who is living in the state, what they do, and where they come from.
The population of Nevada at large has jumped from about 6,000 people to more than 40,000 people in 15 years.44 In Eureka and surrounding towns, there are now 6,000 people—2,000 of whom were born outside of the United States.
The Chinese community in town is still small, relatively—600 men and 60 women—but it’s busy.45
Chinese immigrants like Tone dig out the mines on Prospect Mountain, do the laundry in Eureka, and work on the railroad that’s slowly being built to connect the town to the outside world.46 From time to time, Chinese physicians pass through town, also. They heal fevers with herbal remedies and treat muscle pain with acupuncture.47
At the same time, the newspaper reporters love to walk over to Chinatown—just a few minutes from their office—for some local color and flair for their readers. Here’s how they describe the New Year celebrations:
“Early yesterday morning the deafening racket of exploding bombs and firecrackers betokened the advent of the Chinese festival of the New Year. A general rush was made by those on the streets at that time of night to the Chinese quarter to view the sights and ceremonies…The windows of nearly every occupied house of Chinatown were illuminated, and in full view of passers by, was a table decked with fruits and confections.
Yesterday and last night the Chinese quarter was visited by many ladies, drawn thither by the curiosity of the celebration. All were uniformly treated in the most respectful manner and presented with a package of bon-bons with the compliments of the season.”48
At the end of the day, for all their insults and eye-rolling, the people of Eureka are actually fascinated by their Chinese neighbors.
The Chinese in town cook spiced chicken and pork and cakes that draw crowds of locals for funerals and celebrations. They shoot off fireworks and firecrackers to mark big occasions. Their physicians treat both Chinese and non-Chinese patients with methods very different—and sometimes more effective—than frontier doctors. And they do the jobs that many locals don’t want to do, like placing down railroad tracks in the afternoon sun or tending to big vats of boiling laundry.
Yet the Chinese residents of Eureka rarely see this fascination reflected back to them. Instead, the newspapers run endless stories about the Chinese invasion they say is swamping San Francisco and other cities on the West Coast.49
So this year, it comes as no surprise when the US government passes a law—the Page Act—that makes some of these suspicions official.
We don’t know if Tone and his fellow Chinese miners have plans to settle down in the United States after they strike it big. Most Chinese workers end up returning to China.50 One main reason is that Chinese immigrants can’t become US citizens, and another reason is that, in Nevada, Chinese men can only marry Chinese women, and, as the census shows, very few Chinese women choose to migrate here.51
The Page Act adds another complication to Tone’s life here in Eureka. Now, the US government says, to be eligible to emigrate at all, Chinese women must meet a vague and subjective new standard. They must prove that they are not going to engage in sex work once in the United States. No one seems to be able to say exactly how a woman proves this, but proof is now necessary to receive travel documents to the US.52
In practice, this new law virtually guarantees that most Chinese women will stop immigrating to the US, even if a tiny number ever did in the first place. For Tone, this also makes it very unlikely that he will find a Chinese woman to marry in the United States.
We don’t know how many of these new rules make their way to Tone and other Chinese workers up on Prospect Mountain. These rules probably don’t change day-to-day life very much. But they do close off a possibility—a very thin, very unlikely possibility, but, still, a possibility—that Tone could make a real life for himself in the United States like other immigrants can.
If you’d like to learn more about the dreams and disappointments of California’s desert towns like Panamint, check out Death Valley and the Amargosa by Richard E. Lingenfelter.
Works Cited:
1. John P. Marschall, Jews in Nevada: A History (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2008)
2. Richard E. Lingenfelter, Death Valley and the Amargosa: A Land of Illusion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
3. Ibid.
4. Inyo Independent, November 13, 1875
5. Ibid.
6. Eureka Daily Sentinel, December 2, 1875
7. Ibid.
8. Inyo Independent, November 13, 1875
9. Ibid.
10. Eureka Daily Sentinel, December 2, 1875
11. Inyo Independent, November 13, 1875
12. Ibid.
13. Eureka Daily Sentinel, October 16, 1875
14. Eureka Daily Sentinel, October 31, 1875
15. Nevada State Journal, September 30, 1973
16. Eureka Sentinel, June 1, 1889
17. Eureka Daily Sentinel, October 31, 1875
18. Eureka Daily Sentinel, October 19, 1875
19. Eureka Daily Sentinel, October 31, 1875
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Eureka Daily Sentinel, October 21, 1875
23. Eureka Daily Sentinel, November 12, 1875
24. Ibid.
25. Grant H. Smith, “The Last of the Old-Time Mining Camps,” California Historical Society Quarterly, March 1925
26. Eureka Daily Sentinel, November 12, 1875
27. Inyo Independent, November 13, 1875
28. Ibid.
29. “Mathilda Adelaide Jacobi,” FamilySearch.
30. Inyo Independent, November 13, 1875
31. Ibid.
32. Eureka Daily Sentinel, November 16, 1875
33. Ibid.
34. Gold Hill Daily News, November 30, 1875
35. Eureka Daily Sentinel, December 31, 1875
36. Audrey Tomaselli, “Richard Monaco,” Telegraph Hill Dwellers Oral History, 2001.
37. “Introducing John B. Monaco,” The Focus, March, 1938.
38. Richard Dillon, “J.B. Monaco: The Dean of North Beach Photographers,” North Beach: The Italian Heart of San Francisco (Novato: Presidio Press, 1985).
39. Eureka Daily Sentinel, June 12, 1887
40. Eureka Daily Sentinel, May 7, 1875
41. Eureka Daily Sentinel, July 8, 1875
42. Eureka Daily Sentinel, February 23, 1875
43. Ibid.
44. “Census Bulletin,” Twelfth Census of the United States, January 18, 1901.
45. Eureka Daily Sentinel, October 2, 1875
46. Eureka Daily Sentinel, November 17, 1875
47. Eureka Daily Sentinel, January 6, 1875
48. Eureka Daily Sentinel, February 13, 1877
49. Eureka Daily Sentinel, March 4, 1882
50. Sue Fawn Chung, In Pursuit of Gold: Chinese American Miners and Merchants in the American West (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014).
51. Deenesh Sohoni, “Unsuitable Suitors: Anti-Miscegenation Laws, Naturalization Laws, and the Construction of Asian Identities,” Law & Society Review, September 2007.
52. Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia and Margaret Hu, “Decitizenizing Asian Pacific American Women,” William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository, March 2022.