Rediscovering the Peninsula: The consolidation of San Mateo County

Billy Mulligan was an Irishman who was feared by all due to his bullying tactics. A short, 5-foot, ferret-faced, 120-pound character who was a prizefighter and gambler and whose friends were more savory than he. Mulligan’s art of ballot-stuffing was perfected while residing in New York. His friend, Chris Lilly, owned the notorious Abby House at the “Top of the Hill” (later Daly City) where Lilly was in control of everything and everybody around the area. He wanted the Abby House in a new county because he knew the laws in San Francisco would shut his business down. Lilly was not deterred by morals and Mulligan was a perfect partner for him. Things had gotten hot in San Francisco for the gamblers and crooked politicians.

In January 1856, Assemblyman Horace Hawes introduced a bill that would consolidate and separate the government of San Francisco and that of the area south of San Francisco. He did not advocate a new county, but another bill was combined that resulted in a vote for the creation of a 449-square-mile San Mateo County out of San Francisco County (which began at the tip of the Peninsula and ended at San Francisquito Creek in Palo Alto).

On Election Day, May 12, 1856, ballots were collected in the Crystal Springs Hotel (now under water below the Crystal Springs Reservoir, at Abby House and at McDougall’s house in Belmont. Two-hundred-and-ninety-seven votes were supposedly collected at the Crystal Springs Valley, although only 25 people lived in the area. The vote excluded any women in the area as women did not yet have the right to vote. The “toughs” that Mulligan and Lilly had associated with took over the polling places. They brought ballot boxes with false bottoms with signed ballots that could be taken out when the counting began at the end of the day. The overseers at the voting places were not known to the local citizens and when asked who they were did not provide adequate answers other than that they were in charge. When the votes were tabulated at Abby House, 500 votes were cast in an area with only 50 potential voters. Belmont registered 1,800 votes.

The total vote was a farce. It was contested in court almost immediately and the state Supreme Court ruled the vote illegal not because of the ballot stuffing but due to the fact that the election had occurred too early (before July) and without a specific enabling clause that stated this fact. Many of the gang-backed candidates had actually lost in this vote. Eventually, new elections were set for May 1857 and all of the incumbents who were still around were returned except for the assessor, who chose not to run. Thus the county of San Mateo was begun in political turmoil.

For a more extensive recounting of the facts surrounding the birth of San Mateo County, read “San Mateo County, A Sesquicentennial History,” by Mitch Postel, director of the San Mateo History Museum. It is available at the San Mateo County History Museum bookstore. It is a good and entertaining presentation of an exciting period of history.

Rediscovering the Peninsula runs every weekend. It is compiled through our archives created by Jim Clifford and the late Darold Fredricks.