Gillum Baley

Gillum Baley (June 19, 1813 – November 11, 1895) was an American pioneer and judge. With Leonard Rose he led the ill-fated Rose–Baley Party, the first emigrant wagon train to attempt the journey from New Mexico to California via Beale's Wagon Road. He was one of the earliest settlers of Bailey Flats, California, which was named for him, and eventually settled in nearby Millerton (at the time the seat of Fresno County) where he served as County Judge for twelve years.

Early life Baley's ancestors originally came from Virginia. He was born in Gallatin County, Illinois, on the Ohio river, between Flynn's and Ford's Ferry where his father William Baley had a farm. His father moved the family to Missouri when Baley was a small child. However, at the age of 13 he returned to Illinois working on farms for five years, first in Sangamon County and then in Pike County. When the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832, Gillum and his older brother Caleb enlisted in the Illinois Mounted Militia where he was elected a sergeant despite being only 19 at the time. After the conflict ended, he returned to Pike County and married Catherine Decker in 1834. She died of measles in 1836, leaving Baley with an infant son, Moses.

After his wife's death, Baley returned to Missouri, initially settling in Jackson County where he farmed and raised livestock and in late 1836 married Permelia Eleanor Myers. By the late 1840s, Baley, his older brother Caleb, and his younger brother Right had all settled in Nodaway County. In addition to running his farm, Baley also served as a Methodist lay preacher and rode circuit as a justice of the peace for the county despite having only studied law informally. With the advent of the California Gold Rush in 1849, the three brothers left their wives in charge of the farms in Missouri and made the overland journey to California to seek their fortunes. Caleb died there in 1850, shortly after arriving. Gillum and Right stayed on in the gold fields for two years before returning to their families in Missouri but had become convinced that their future lay in California.

On August 30, as the emigrants were preparing to cross the Colorado River, the first of the party's wagons to arrive at the crossing point were attacked by Mojave Indians, leaving twelve emigrants wounded and eight dead, including five children. Having lost most of their livestock and fearful of further attacks, the surviving members of the Rose–Baley party trekked the 500 miles back to Albuquerque. The two Baley families made it safely to Albuquerque in November 1858, despite the extreme hardships of the journey back, and remained there for several months. They made two more attempts to reach California the following year. The first ended in failure when their cattle died and provisions gave out. Faced with starvation they returned to Albuquerque. They eventually made it to California on their third attempt, this time by crossing the Colorado at Fort Yuma, and made their way to Visalia in the San Joaquin Valley to begin their new life.

Later years Ruins of Fort Miller, California in 1936. Gillum Baley and his family lived in the fort's disused buildings from 1860 to 1861 The Gillum and Right Baley families arrived in Visalia in November 1859. Right Baley and his family remained there, but in early 1860 Gillum relocated his family to a site near Fort Miller where they lived in disused army buildings. There he made enough money from mining in the San Joaquin, Fresno and Chowchilla Rivers to acquire some livestock and a homestead. He built a house and started a cattle and dairy farm in the area now known as Bailey (or Baley) Flats which lay at the conjunction of three forks of the Chowchilla River. The homestead was completely washed out in the floods of 1862/63, despite attempts to save the house by moving it piece-by-piece to higher ground. The family then moved into Millerton, which at the time was the seat of Fresno County. Baley got a job as a justice of the peace, and in 1867 was elected the County Judge, a post which he held for the next 12 years.

Baley appears as a character in the 1995 children's novel Sallie Fox: The Story of a Pioneer Girl which was based in part on the diary of John Udell, a member of the Rose–Baley Party. The book is a semi-fictionalized biography of Sallie Fox who as a twelve-year-old child had also travelled with the Rose-Baley Party, surviving both the Mojave attack which killed her stepfather and the trek back to Albuquerque during which her half-brother died. Like Baley and his family, she and her remaining family eventually reached California in 1859.