Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Hank Monk, one helluva stagecoach driver


So there I was in Carson City in my motel room watching a movie I’ve seen umpteen times and still enjoy.  It’s one of my top ten, and it’s none other than Stagecoach.  While the movie played on, I couldn’t help but think about what it must have been like to travel in one of those awkward looking contraptions.  It must have been pretty uncomfortable at any normal time and especially bad when racing across a playa with hostile Indians in hot pursuit.

 Stagecoach drivers were revered and in a class all their own.  They were the road warriors of their day.  I did a little research and found that they were called Jehus.*  The title was bestowed on them because of a quote from the Old Testiment, Kings 9:20,..” and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.”  And some of them did indeed drive like Jehus.

    I ran across a piece on Henry James “Hank” Monk who was a real Jehus.  Monk drove the stage from Carson City, Nevada to Placerville on the other side of the Sierra and was famous for driving the route at breakneck speeds.  It was reported that he could make the 109 miles in less than 9 hours, which was amazingly fast then.**
    Hank Monk was born in Waddington, New York in 1826 and grew up with a great admiration for horses.  He first drove stage for Clark County in New York State.  His age at the time...12!  In 1852 he migrated to California and it’s believed he started driving stage between Sacramento and Auburn for the California Stage Company.  By 1857 he was driving for a different outfit that eventually was owned by Wells Fargo and Company.  He drove Nevada stages for them for more than twenty years.
    The trip that would eventually immortalized Monk was when Horace Greely, the famous New York Tribune editor, hired Monk to drive him from Carson City to Placerville.  As the story goes, Greely was running behind schedule.  He asked Monk if it was possible to cross the Sierra in time to make an appointment he had in Placerville that evening.  Monk assured Greely that he’d get him there on time.  What followed was the ride of Greely’s life.  Monk would later tell a newsman, “I looked into the coach and there was Greely, his bare head bobbing, ... holding on to whatever he could grab.”  Greely arrived in Placerville on time but completely disheveled and somewhat shaken.  He mailed the Tribune his version of the harrowing ride along with other accounts of Monk’s skills as a stagecoach driver. 
    The story eventually reached mining towns in Nevada and California where it was told and retold.  It then caught the attention of none other than Mark Twain.  If you go to chapter XX of Roughing It, you’ll find Twain’s heavily embellished version of the ride.  The following is from that chapter:

                  “Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was a while ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time!’—and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”

    Humorist Artemus Ward, a pseudonym of Charles Farrar Browne, wrote a comical account of what he called the stagecoach ride from hell.  Apparently his version was less than flattering toward Greely.  It was read by Congressman Calvin Hulburd into the Congressional Record as a jab at Horace Greely, Hulburd’s political nemesis.
That's not Monk, but that's a typical stagecoach.
    Apparently Greely wasn’t pleased with what he considered less then flattering accounts of the trip.  He tried in vain to distant himself from Monk.  During this time Greely was a presidential candidate and he felt these stories could cost him the election, but actually it was his stand on major issues that led to a resounding defeat. 
    There’s even a song dedicated to the memory of Hank Monk.  It was published in 1885 with poet Joaquin Miller writing the words and none other than John Philip Sousa writing the music.  It was entitled Tally-Ho, which was the name Hank gave to his stagecoach.
    Hank Monk died of pneumonia in Carson City in 1883.  I’m sure that Mark Twain and the others had a lot to do with the fact that Monk is considered by many to be the greatest stagecoach drivers in American history.  And those same people called him one of our folk heroes.  On his tombstone these words are inscribed, “Sacred to the memory of Hank Monk, the whitest, biggest-hearted and best-known driver in the West.”

*Apparently Jehu can be pronounced several ways, JEE-hew, YAY-hoo, Gee-hu, or JAY-hugh.
**Stagecoaches averaged speeds of 4 to 7 mph for trips of 70 to 120 miles.  Monk made the 109-mile trip averaging 12 mph!

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