'Once upon a time' is a monthly feature written by Northborough Historical Society Historian Robert Ellis highlighting Northboro's past.

What link does a house at 75 Main St. have with the governance of California? To find out, we must go back to the year 1820, when it was the home of Seth and Susannah Grout.

Seth manufactured nails, but he was also a deacon of the Westboro Baptist Church. Seven years later the Northboro Baptist Church would be organized in this house, but on April 17, 1820, it was the scene of a wedding between the Grouts' niece, Susan, and William Brown Ide.

Ide, who was not originally from Northboro, was a carpenter, occasional teacher and traveler.

Between 1820 and 1839, nine Ide children would be born in Keene, N.H.; Woodstock, Vt.; Madison, Ohio; and Springfield, Ill. But a few years later, William Ide decided to move to Oregon.

On April 1, 1845, the now middle-aged Ides and their five surviving children set out for Independence, Mo., with three wagons, 28 oxen, and 165 cattle.

On May 10, after Susan and her daughter, Sarah, sewed "Oregon" onto the back curtain of their rear wagon, they joined a larger party over the trail followed by Lewis and Clark four decades earlier.

The party seems to have scared away all hostile Indians. At any rate, they arrived safely at Fort Hall.

At this fort, near present-day Pocatello, Idaho, most of the party decided to follow the Snake and Columbia rivers into Oregon, but William Ide decided he would go to California with some other members of the group instead.

Sarah wrote of one trip over a particularly steep mountain: "It took us a long time to go about two miles over our rough, new-made road up the mountain, over the rough rocks, in some places, and so smooth in others that the oxen would slip and fall on their knees, the blood from their feet and knees staining the rocks they passed over. Mother and I walked (we were so sorry for the poor, faithful oxen) all those two miles."

By early October, they arrived at, what one year and a couple of weeks later would be a difficult spot for the famous Donner party - some of whom tried to stay alive by committing cannibalism at the snow-covered mountain pass.

This time, the weather remained benevolent, and the Ides passed down to Sutter's Fort near present-day Sacramento, Calif., where gold would later be discovered.

In California, Ide met several people, including Ezekiel Merritt, a settler described as "hard-featured (with) blood-shot eyes and a peculiar stuttering speech - a man moved by some revengeful intoxicating passion."

Another acquaintance was the leader of a group of western explorers, the already quite famous John Fremont.

Merritt wanted to wrest California away from the Mexicans, who controlled it; Fremont liked the notion of acquiring California but, as an American army officer assigned to an exploring expedition, he acted a bit more cautiously about the best means to achieve that end.

Merritt couldn't be stopped; he led a band of roughnecks who attacked and subdued a small camp of Mexican authorities at Sonoma, Calif.

Proclaiming a new republic, they called on Ide, their best-educated companion, to serve as governor, and Ide actually composed a constitution for what became known, in its brief history, as the "Bear Flag Republic." They lowered the Mexican flag and raised their bear flag, designed by a settler named William L. Todd, a cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln, over Sonoma.

This "republic" never ruled over much of California, which only became an official part of the nation as a result of the Mexican War, then in progress. But the Bear flag remains; at least an adaptation of it is still the flag of the state of California.

After "retiring" as governor, Ide concentrated more humbly on the politics of Colusi County, Calif., and on his ranch, which grew to a thousand cattle and 150 horses. His daughter, Sarah, came back east and eventually married the son of her mother's cousin, Eliza (another niece of the Northboro Grouts).

Simeon Ide compiled his brother's memoirs and life, incorporating Sarah Ide's recollections. The book has a forward written by Ronald Reagan.

John Fremont's complicated life has been written by several biographers, among them Tom Chaffin, whose book is called, "Pathfinder: John Charles Fremont and the Course of American Empire."