Reuel Gridley may have living descendants. See:

http://westsidenewsonline.com/OldSite/westside/news/2004/1128/
features/ancestors.html

For what it's worth this story was dramatized on the TV program
"Death Valley Days" as "The $275,000 Sack of Flour" . The program
first aired in 1962 and starred James Best as Gridley. See:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0556757/

A search of Amazon and eBay suggests that Death Valley Days was not
systematically preserved and released on tape or disk. Only a few
episodes starring really big stars seem to be in circulation.

When I attended Sac State I had a professor who was a member of E
Clampus Vitus an organization dedicated to gold rush history and
generally having fun. He played in their brass band. I notice from
some versions of the story that Gridley was accompanied by the local
band when he carried his sack. I could try to get in touch with him
and see if he and his compatriots might want to participate as the
band and extras. The club has a reputation for boisterousness which
would certainly be appropriate.

Here is a version that I copied from http://www.eclectichistorian.net/
Gridley/

One of the important aspects of the American Civil War is that it was
a truly national conflict. Virtually every sector of American
society was touched by it in one way or another. The devastation of
war was most visible in the areas where the armies marched, camped
and fought- but it was felt too in the communities north and south
who sent their young men off to fight and endured the economic
impacts of modern industrialized warfare. Even in the far western
states and territories, seemingly separated by geography from the
war’s main theaters, patriots of both the Union and the Confederacy
worked to further their cause. Soldiers were recruited, funds were
raised, and political maneuvers were made.
Political activity, however, was about more than just
patriotism in the 19th Century. Prior to the advent of such
diversions as professional sports, cinema and television, politics
was one of the only forms of visual entertainment available to most
people. When not staging elections to fill governmental posts,
American men held boisterous elections for everything from positions
in volunteer fire companies to officer’s commissions in militia
units. In small towns even those not running for an office usually
knew somebody who was, and their support sometimes took strange and
amusing forms. Such was the case in the little mining town of
Austin, Nevada Territory in April of 1864. An election for mayor
was being held, and a shopkeeper named Reuel C. Gridley, a Democrat,
bet a Republican friend of his that the Democratic candidate would
win the race. Apparently deciding that a public spectacle should
result from a public election, the men decided to put their dignity
on the line, and the wager was made that the loser of the bet would
carry a fifty-pound sack of flour from the towns of Austin to
Clifton, a distance of about one and a quarter miles.
Reuel Colt Gridley had been born in Hannibal, Missouri on
January 23rd of 1829. Mark Twain, who grew up in Hannibal, went to
school with Gridley and wrote about him in his book Roughing It.
Gridley served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War of 1846-48,
and settled for a time in Louisiana, where he married, in 1850.
Coming to California in 1852, Gridley over the next ten years was a
sort of Gold Rush jack-of-all-trades. He worked as a prospector,
newspaper publisher and banker. Seeing a need for postal service in
the Sierras, between 1859 and 1862 he ran an express service
delivering mail and packages to places that Wells, Fargo and Company
could not reach. At some time in the early 1860’s Gridley and his
family ended up in Austin, Nevada, where he was the senior partner in
a general store. His stone-built storehouse has survived to the
present day.


So, it was this Reuel C. Gridley who bet his friend that that
the Democratic mayoral candidate would prevail in the Spring election
in Austin. As it happened, the Republican won, and, true to the
terms of the wager, on the morning of April 20th, 1864 Gridley
appeared on the street with a 50 lb. sack of flour, decorated with
American flags and bunting, and in a grand parade which included a
band playing The Battle Hymn of The Republic, he hoisted the bag onto
his shoulder and started to march amidst the cheers and jeers of the
entire excitement-starved populace of Austin. It took about an hour
for Gridley to carry his burden the requisite 1.25 miles to Clifton,
and upon arrival the procession took refuge in a local saloon. Over
liquid refreshments, the question of what to do with the flour was
raised, and Gridley, an army veteran himself, made a suggestion:

“This crowd of people has had its fun at my expense; let us
see now who will do most for the sick and wounded soldiers. We will
put this sack of flour up at auction, and sell it, with the
understanding that, whoever the purchaser may be, he shall pay the
amount bid, and give the flour back to be sold again for the benefit
of the Sanitary Commission.”

The crowd roared its approval, and the auction began. Gridley
himself won the first round with a bid of $300, but the sack was put
up for symbolic auction again and again. Competition flared as
individuals and groups pooled their resources to outbid one-another.
By the end of the day a total of almost $5,000, a small fortune in
1860’s terms, had been brought in. These proceeds were sent to the
United States Sanitary Commission, a precursor of the Red Cross,
which raised private funds to provide medical care for soldiers in
the United States Army. Raising funds for the Sanitary Commission in
California and Nevada was nothing new. Most famously the Unitarian
Reverend Thomas Starr King toured California during the first half of
the Civil War, delivering impassioned and eloquent sermons that
encouraged his listeners to give to the cause of aiding the war’s
wounded. In the rough mining boom-towns, however, something other
than King’s refined urbanity was desired and the absurdity of
Gridley’s flour sack appealed greatly to the jocular prospectors.
Reuel Gridley suddenly found himself a local celebrity. Approximately
three weeks after the first auction, Gridley and his sack of flour
went on tour, making a triumphant circuit of the Nevada mining
region, repeating the symbolic bidding-war wherever they went, and
bringing in tens of thousands of dollars for the Sanitary Fund.

At this time “Sanitary Fairs” were being held all over the
Union to raise money for the Commission. In the summer of 1864
Gridley took his show (and his sack) on the road and held auctions at
Sanitary Fairs being held in Sacramento, San Francisco and Stockton.
All along the way Gridley paid out of his own pocket for his
expenses, determined to send every penny he raised to the Fund. In
January of 1865 Gridley even brought his sack to New York, where he
was heralded by the newspapers and accorded the honor of having his
(and the sack’s) likeness appear in an engraving in Harper’s
Weekly. Gridley’s Austin hometown newspaper, the Reese River
Reveille, had the following to say about the image:

“R.C. Gridley, Esq., of this city, has not only got into New
York, but also into the papers, bag and baggage. “Harpers Weekly”
for January 21 has an engraving purporting to be a picture of
Gridley, and his famous Sanitary Flour. Looking at the engraving, we
are at a loss to tell which is Gridley and which is the sack of
flour, but… you can have your choice. We remember our fellow-
townsman as a rather handsome man, but this has no more resemblance
to Gridley “than I to Hercules”.

Gridley toured the eastern states but, as the Civil War drew to a
close, interest in the cause of aiding the war’s wounded ebbed. All
told, the otherwise ordinary sack of flour had raised some $275,000
for the U.S. Sanitary commission during its career. Gridley’s
buckskin sack of flour, still carrying its flags and ribbons and
emblazoned with the words “Gridley’s Sanitary Sack,” presently
resides in a display-case at the Nevada Historical Society Museum in
Reno.


Upon his return to his store in August of 1865, Gridley found his
business on the verge of bankruptcy. Additionally, the stress of
travel had badly weakened his health, from which he never recovered.
In 1866 a penniless Gridley and his family came to Stockton,
California and in 1868 they moved to Stanislaus County where he again
operated a general store. Dying on November 24th of 1870, Gridley
was interred in Stockton. In 1887 a marble monument, complete with a
statue of Gridley and his famous sack of flour, was dedicated at the
site of his grave.
The inscription on the monument, which still stands, hails
Gridley as “The Soldier’s Friend,” a suitably-humble epithet for
a humble man, but he deserves to be remembered for more than that.
The amount of money raised was indeed impressive but Gridley, the
simple shopkeeper, also made by his actions an enduring statement
which is all the more profound for its tacit nature. During the
course of great events it is natural for individuals to feel
powerless, especially when isolated by distance and a lack of
position and influence. Gridley stood up as an example that everyone
has something to contribute to the causes they believe in and, by
working together, a community can accomplish far more than its
members ever could separately.

Reuel Colt Gridley Monument
ADDRESS:Cemetery Ln & E Pine St, Stockton, CA 95204
PHONE:+1 213 480 3232
Reuel Colt Gridley Monument Details
DESCRIPTIONS FROM ACROSS THE WEB
Erected in honor of the soldier's friend, Reuel Colt Gridley
DIRECTIONS
From Stockton, CA - Head east on E Weber Ave toward N El Dorado St,
Turn left at N El Dorado St, Turn right at E Harding Way, Turn left
at Cemetery Ln
OPEN HOURS
4 scheduled tours at 10:00 AM, 11:30 AM, 1:00 PM, & 2:30 PM.


So what can be learned from all this?

1. Gridley may have bet on the election but contrary to Twain he was
not necessarily the candidate.
2. Gridley may have thought of the idea of auctioning the sack for
charity himself rather than someone in the crowd as Twain suggests.
3. The sack was made of buckskin. At least it was by the time the
campaign was over. It never occurred to me that flour sacks were
ever made of anything but cloth. If buckskin was a common material
for flour sacks in the 1800s then we might want to simulate it with
pleather or something. On the other hand a cloth sack might have
worn out from all the handling and been "reenforced" with buckskin as
the campaign wore on.
4. Gridley's friends didn't think much of the likeness. Of course
maybe he grew his beard as he traveled east and so looked different
to eastern artists or photographers. However facial hair was
fashionable during the civil war and probably had been popular in the
west for even longer due to frontier conditions.
5. I like the way he is dressed in the photo. That is the way I
would have imagined a businessman and possible candidate to dress in
the middle 1800's.
6. Perhaps a closer look at his statue would be instructive.
7. The Gridley store in Austin appears to be in really good
condition. I don't know what the rest of the town looks like but it
might be fun to stage the start of the flour sack carry from in front
of it.
8. According to the account above Gridley sought refreshment in a
saloon where the auction idea was hatched. Maybe we can find an
authentic looking saloon in one of the old mining towns that wouldn't
mind having us film in exchange for the publicity.
9. If Gridley did indeed win the first auction he may not have been
the auctioneer.

Items 1 and 2 do not matter if we want to tell the story from Twain's
viewpoint but there appear to be independent sources that have a
different angle.

I am interested in traveling to Stockton to get a closer look at the
statue and to Reno to see the sack and the pictures. Hopefully the
Reno museum will have a docent who can answer questions about them.
If anyone else wants to go to either place however I wouldn't object.

Erick

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