John Sontag
| John Sontag | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
May 27, 1861 Mankato, Blue Earth County Minnesota, USA |
| Died | July 3, 1893 (aged 32) Jail in Fresno, California |
| Cause of death | Tetanus; Gunshot wounds |
| Resting place | Calvary Cemetery in Fresno |
| Residence | Visalia, California |
| Occupation | Railroad employee-turned-outlaw |
| Parent(s) | Jacob Contant and Maria Bohn Contant Sontag |
| Relatives | Brother George Contant |
John Sontag (May 27, 1861 - July 3, 1893) was an outlaw of the American West known mostly for train robberies. He was originally from Mankato, Minnesota.
Sontag was the older of two sons of Jacob Contant and the former Maria Bohn. After the death of his father in 1867, he took the name John Sontag from his stepfather, Matthias Sontag, his mother's second husband, a veteran of the Union Army during the Civil War. Sontag's younger brother, George (born 1864), kept the name Contant. The two were frequent partners in crime and known as The Sontag Brothers. After he stole cigars from an employer, George Contant was sent to reform school in St. Paul, Minnesota. A subsequent conviction for theft led to Contant's imprisonment at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Omaha.
Sontag came to California to work for the Southern Pacific Transportation Company. He crushed a leg while coupling rail cars in the company yard in Fresno. He accused Southern Pacific of failure to care for his on-the-job wounds and then refusal to rehire him after he had healed. In 1889, John Sontag was employed on a farm in Tulare County near Visalia by Christopher "Chris" Evans, a Canadian who had migrated to California. Evans was outraged over the dealings of the Southern Pacific, for high freight rates and the application of undue pressure to force landowners to sell their property to the railroad. The seizure of particularly valuable wheat-farming land is known as the Mussel Slough Tragedy. Though called the Pacific and Southwestern, the Southern Pacific is the actual villain of Frank Norris' 1901 muckraking novel, The Octopus: A Story of California, a dramatization set in the San Joaquin Valley and stemming from the injustice of Mussel Slough.
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