In a Stockton, Calif, insane asylum last week died a fat old woman with wild white hair and a lame hip. She had been locked up for nearly half a century, happily certain that she was a great, rich lady, babbling endlessly about her memories. She could never keep her story straight, sometimes asserting that she had been married to President Lincoln and General Grant, or that the King of Italy was her foster father, or that she owned the Republic of Guatemala. But the daft old crone was not to be pitied, for she had lived greatly once and her true story was almost as fabulous as her imaginings.
Sarah Althea Hill was born in frontier Cape Girardeau, Mo. in 1848, the year Louis Philippe lost his throne and General Zachary Taylor won the U. S. Presidency. Orphaned at 6, she was reared by a grandfather, migrated at 23 with her gold-seeking brother to California. Statuesque and golden-haired, sensationally beauteous, hot-tempered and flirtatious, she found lusty young San Francisco and its men exactly to her taste. She cut loose from her brother, lived around in various hotels, speculated with an inheritance, made money for a while, ended up broke in 1880. Being also unhappy in love, she tried to kill herself by drinking poison. When she met rich U. S. Senator William Sharon, "King of the Comstock Lode," she was glad she had failed. He owned two of San Francisco's hotels, the Grand and the Palace, and shortly installed Sarah Althea in the Grand while he stayed at the Palace. There was a cross-street bridge connecting their residences.
After 15 months the old Senator claimed his mistress had betrayed his business secrets, ordered his hotel managers to throw her out. They had to take her door off its hinges and pull up her carpet before they succeeded. Senator Sharon gave her a fat cash settlement, thought he was through with her. But after two years Sarah Althea produced a marriage contract she claimed they had signed, also displayed letters from him which began, "Dear Wife." The Senator brought suit in Federal court to have the papers declared forgeries. Sarah Althea countered with a State court divorce suit charging adultery and desertion, demanding large alimony and division of community property. Both won, and into the stalemate stepped that spectacular frontiersman, David Smith Terry.
David Terry stood 6 ft. 3 in., weighed 220 lb., had a temper to match. Kentucky-born in 1823, he drifted down to Stephen Austin's colony in Mexican Texas, enlisted in the war for Lone Star independence at 13. Later he practiced law in Houston, and Galveston, fought with the Texas Rangers against Mexico, rushed to California in '49, set up a law office in Stockton. The Know Nothings put him in the State Supreme Court in 1855, but that did not keep him from resting in jail next year while the San Francisco Vigilantes waited to see whether one of their men whom he had stabbed with a bowie knife was going to live or die.