After the election Mr. Parks introduced himself to me, and from that time to this he has been a warm and steadfast friend.  He afterwards settled in Sutter County, but now resides in Marysville.  He has amassed a handsome fortune, and takes an interest in all public affairs.  He has represented his county as a Senator in the Legislature of the State.  He is a gentleman of high character and has the confidence and respect of the community.

My opponent for the office of Alcalde was Mr. C.B.  Dodson, from Illinois.  I afterwards met him only once or twice in California, and knew little of his history.  But when I was a member of the Electoral Commission, in February of this year (1877), a copy of a paper published in Geneva, Illinois—­the Republican, of the 10th of that month—­was sent to me, containing the following account of him, from which it appears that he, too, has lived a life of strange vicissitudes and stirring adventure: 

REMINISCENCES.

An account of the various positions of the selected arbitrators says that in 1850 Judge Field was elected Alcalde and Recorder of Marysville, California.  Judge Field’s competitor for the position was our townsman, Capt.  C.B.  Dodson, who was defeated by nine votes.  As there is no doubt that had the Captain gained the position of Alcalde he would have risen as his competitor did, to various judicial positions, and finally to the arbitrator’s seat, these nine votes must be considered as the only reasons why Geneva does not number one of her citizens among the arbitrators for the highest of the world’s official positions.  Among the votes polled for our friend Dodson on that occasion was that of Macaulay, one of the family of the famous historian of England’s greatest days and proudest times.

The Captain has been a natural and inveterate pioneer, and few citizens of the State have figured more prominently or proudly in its early annals.  In 1834, forty-three years ago, Mr. Dodson came to dispute with the aboriginal Pottawatomies the possession of the Fox River valley.  White faces were rare in those days, and scarcely a squatter’s cabin rose among the Indian lodges.  The Captain built the first saw-mill on the river, and he and Col.  Lyon were the hardy spirits about whom the early settlers clustered for encouragement and advice.

In 1837 he was employed by the government to superintend the removal of the Indians to Council Bluffs and Kansas, and their successful emigration, as well as their uniform good will toward the whites prior to their removal, were largely due to his sagacity and influence among them.

When Capt.  Sutter first found the yellow gold gleaming in the dirt of his mill-race, and all the world joined in a mad rush to the mines, the venturesome spirit of Capt.  Dodson led him to press forward with the first, and he was a “forty-niner,” that pride of the old Californians.  In that surging crowd of wild adventurers from the ends of the earth, the Captain was, as he has been among the early pioneers of Illinois, a directing and controlling spirit.  Though he failed in his judicial aspirations for Alcalde, and Judge Field succeeded, yet his continued exertions and marked influence caused him to leave a name richly associated with all the early history of Marysville and vicinity.