Legends and Mystery

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 Stockton and Lemuria: Case Closed

Record columnist 

Mike Fitzgerald

Posted Jun 3, 2017 at 1:30 PM 

A  New York paranormal researcher and filmmaker says he’s finally cracked  the case of a mysterious man who pulled off the most outlandish flimflam  in Stockton history.

Stephen Sindoni says after years  of sleuthing he’s discovered the true identity of a ‘J.C. Brown’ who in  1934 tricked scores of Stocktonians into believing in a fabled place  called Lemuria.

“The information below will connect the dots,” Sindoni writes. “American folklore and legend has now one less mystery.”

Come with me down the rabbit hole as I explain. And remember, I don’t make ’em up. I just report ’em.

The  Stockton Record of June 9, 1934, reported that 80 Stocktonians were  found that morning at the inner harbor waiting in vain for boats. When  questioned, the people said they had signed onto an archeological  expedition. One supposed to take them north to Mount Shasta and deep  inside the mountain.

There, these people believed,  recently had been discovered remains of a race of higher beings, the  Lemurians. Lemuria is a legend, “the Atlantis of the Pacific.” Many  Stocktonians had sold their houses and quit jobs, expecting to become  rich and famous, like Lord Carnavon had done a decade earlier by  discovering the treasure-filled tomb of Tutankhamen.

Except  the boats didn’t come. It was all bullpucky. The Record ran a jubilant,  top-of-the fold, page 1 headline: 80 Stocktonians Left Behind in Search  for ’Lost Continent.′ When the reporter got around to the “who” and  “why,” the victims said they had been attending daily lectures on  Lemuria held in a house on the 1700 block of North San Joaquin Street.  The lecturer, a mining engineer who claimed to have discovered it,  called himself J.C. Brown.

Cultured, white-haired,  Brown, 79, said he had stumbled onto a hidden door on Mount Shasta while  doing geological research. The door opened onto a tunnel. In  spellbinding detail, Brown described descending 11 miles to what he  called “the Village” and finding among its dwellings, streets and ornate  altars 27 skeletons of beings up to 10 feet in height; an embalmed king  and queen; and a fortune in gold, radium and copper.

Brown  was supposed to lead the expedition. But on departure day the boats  (which had unbreakable Lemurian glass bottoms, Brown said) Brown did a  royal Houdini. He was never heard from again.

Reporters  investigating found he wasn’t who he said he was. But they never  established Brown’s true identity. Or why he’d run such an elaborate  ruse — he never took a penny from anybody.

I reported  this delightful, baffling tale 10 years ago. Sindoni plucked it off the  web. Sindoni became — I won’t say obsessed — determined to unravel the  mystery of J.C. Brown.

The twist (as if this saga needs  another one) is that Sindoni is one of those New Age/ufologist-types  who really believes in Lemuria and other paranormal things.

He’s  traveled to Stockton with a film crew to film locations (and me,  sheepishly). He’s scoured the side of Mt. Shasta for the hidden door.  For a decade he’s burrowed into archives in America and the United  Kingdom to find who J.C. Brown really was.

“It is my  strong belief that that J.C. Brown was really a man named John Benjamin  Body,” Sindoni said. J.B. Body really was a (retired) mining engineer  who had worked in Mexico and elsewhere for the Lord Cowdray Mining  Company of England.

Sindoni unearthed  records that show Body’s in-laws lived in a house right across San  Joaquin Street from the one in which he lectured about Lemuria.

So it appears the man who pulled off the biggest prank in Stockton history was really a visiting retiree named J.B. Body.

But why? Who does that? Powered, perhaps, by energy from the vortex surrounding Mount Shasta we’ll find answers one day.

Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray

Personal details

Born- 15 July 1856

Pearson was born at Shelley, Woodhouse, Yorkshire,  

the son of George Pearson and Sarah Weetman Dickinson.

Nationality-British

Political party-Liberal

Spouse-Annie Pearson, Viscountess Cowdray

Bio- Weetman Pearson

Weetman Dickinson Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray,  

GCVO, PC (15 July 1856 – 1 May 1927), known as  

Sir Weetman Pearson, Bt, between 1894 and 1910  

and as The Baron Cowdray between 1910 and 1917,  

was a British engineer, oil industrialist,benefactor and

Liberal politician. He was the owner of the Pearson conglomerate.

Business career

The Pearson firm, started by his grandfather Samuel  

in 1844 and today known as a publishing house,  

initially focused on construction. He took over  

the company in 1880, eventually moving the  

headquarters from Yorkshire to London.

An early proponent of globalization, S. Pearson & Son  

built the Admiralty Harbour at Dover, docks in Halifax,  

tunnels, railways and harbours around the world, and  

the Sennar Dam in Sudan.

Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company

In 1889, Porfirio Diaz, the President of Mexico, invited  

Pearson to his country to build a railroad—the Tehuantepec  

Railway—from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

On one of Pearson's trips to Mexico, Pearson missed a rail

connection in Laredo, Texas and was obliged to spend the night

in the town which, according to Pearson, was "wild with the oil craze"  

from the recent discovery of oil at Spindletop.

After doing some quick research that night about oil seepages in Mexico,  

with the help of his top lieutenant John Benjamin Body alias

J.C. Brown of the legend, Pearson began acquiring prospective

oil lands in Laredo, thinking he could use discovered oil to fuel

the Tehuantepec Railway he was helping President Diaz build.

After nine years of relatively minor  success, Pearson fired the  

English consulting geologists he had been using, and hired  

Americans formerly employed by the U.S. Geological Survey.  

One year later, Pearson began making major oil strikes,  

beginning with Potrero del Llano 4, which flowed at 110,000  

barrels a day and was considered the biggest oil well in the world.

In 1911, President Diaz was overthrown, and the Mexican Revolution began.  

The associated violence and turmoil had a negative effect on foreign  

investors in Mexico's oil industry.

1. In October 1918 Calouste Gulbenkian  

offered, on behalf of the Royal Dutch Shell, to buy a substantial portion  

of Mexican Eagle stock and take over its management.  

Pearson agreed to the buyout.

Died

1 May 1927

Lord Cowdray died in his sleep at Dunecht House, Aberdeenshire on  

1 May 1927, age 70. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Harold.