Van Wyck, Nannie Crittenden, 1843-1916.

Alexander Parker Crittenden (1816-1870), hereafter A.P.C., was the son of the prominent Kentucky lawyer, Thomas Turpin Crittenden. He graduated from West Point in 1836 and in 1838, married Clara Churchill Jones Crittenden (1820-1881); they had fourteen children in twenty years, only eight of whom lived to adulthood. Clara was the daughter of Reverend Alexander Jones, Jr., and Ann Northey Churchill Jones, of Bardstown, Kentucky. The young couple first lived in Kentucky but moved to Texas in 1839, where they lived for the next decade. A.P.C. practiced law in Texas until 1849, when he moved to Los Angeles, California, and was elected into the state congress, then being formed in anticipation of statehood. Meanwhile, Clara and her children lived with her parents in Richmond, Virginia. They joined A.P.C. in San Francisco in 1851, where he was involved with state government and was practicing law. However, he was not prosperous and was often in debt. In 1863 A.P.C. refused to take an oath of allegiance to the federal government, and, consequently, relocated to Virginia City, Nevada Territory. Clara remained in San Francisco with the children. While living in the Nevada Territory, A.P.C. began a relationship with his landlady, the thrice-married Laura Hunt Fair, proprietress of the Tahoe House Hotel. Initially he represented himself as single, but Fair eventually learned that he was married, prompting A.P.C. to promise her that he would divorce his wife. He never kept that promise, but for the remainder of his life, he kept two residences, one for his wife and one for his mistress. In 1870, Clara made a transcontinental railroad crossing, taking her two youngest children with her to the East Coast and back. In November 1870, when A.P.C. left to meet her train in Oakland, Laura Fair followed him. On board the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco, Laura shot him as he sat with his wife and children. Clara remained in San Francisco after the murder; she died in 1881.

Laura Crittenden Sanchez (1839-1919), the eldest child of Clara and A.P.C., married Ramon Bernardo Sanchez in 1859. The two lived in Sacramento where Ramon had a state government appointment but, like his father-in-law, he refused to take the loyalty oath. The Sanchez family moved to Aurora, Nevada Territory, in 1862. They remained childless and from time to time lived with the Crittendens, depending on their financial situation (which was frequently precarious). Between March 1864 and March 1865, Ramon served as mayor of Aurora.

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