Author: John Patrick Sheehy

John is a history detective who digs beneath the legends, folklore, and myths to learn what’s either been hidden from the common narrative or else lost to time, in hopes of enlarging the collective understanding of our culture and communities.

Petaluma’s Hotel Déjà Vu

HOW CITIZENS GOT PLAYED 100 YEARS AGO

Stock rally celebration for Hotel Petaluma at corner of Washington & Kentucky streets, 1922 (Sonoma County Library)

The new hotel was touted to be Petaluma’s saving grace, a means of reviving the downtown economy after a four-year pandemic and a national recession. With tourists increasingly drawn to Sonoma County, the city needed something to hook in those just passing through. What better lure than a high-rise, luxury hotel, the likes of which Petaluma had never seen, positioned at the corner of B Street and Petaluma Boulevard?

The year was 1922.

The economic recession following World War I was beginning to lift. The deadly influenza afflicting the country since the war had mutated into a less deadly seasonal flu. The town’s last livery stable had closed, motorcars having replaced horse-driven buggies. Auto tourism was suddenly all the rage in Northern California.[1]

Members of the Save the Redwoods League, 1920s (Humboldt County Historical Society Collection)

It began in 1918 with the Save the Redwoods League who set out in to preserve what remained of California’s old growth redwood groves by making them state parks.[2] Their call of the wild spoke to the new wave of automobility sweeping the country. No longer hampered by the limited speed and endurance of horses pulling wagons and stages, motor-savvy tourists were setting out on excursions to the most remote natural settings.[3]

Trailblazing auto tourists on the new Redwood Highway, 1920 (public domain)

In 1921, a group of promoters created the Redwood Empire Association to capitalize on the new craze. Their plan was to rechristen the route from Sausalito through Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, and Del Norte counties as the Redwood Highway.[4] Petaluma, having recently declared itself “The Egg Basket of the World,” was quick to jump on the bandwagon, becoming one of the first cities to declare its Main Street (today’s Petaluma Boulevard) part of the Redwood Highway.[5]

Proposed map of the Redwood Highway, 1921 (San Francisco Examiner)

Now, all the city needed was an eye-catching attraction to ensnare the gas-powered, tree huggers passing through town.

The idea of a new downtown hotel had been kicking around for a decade. Petaluma’s existing hotels—small, outdated, and shabby—were patronized mostly by traveling salesmen and itinerant workers. In 1912, a group of local businessmen formed the Petaluma Development Company to promote building a grand new hotel. After ten years, they were still struggling to make it happen.[6]

The breakthrough came in the spring of 1922, when Sophie Hammell, chair of the Chamber of Commerce’s publicity campaign, brought to town the Hockenbury System, a Pennsylvania outfit who specialized in raising local capital to build landmark hotels.[7]  

Hockenbury recommended erecting a hotel along the promising new Redwood Highway, close to the downtown commercial district. They estimated the hotel would generate annual revenues of $100,000, with a net profit of $40,000 ($1.9 million and $750,000 respectively in today’s currency). That didn’t include the indirect return from what guests spent around the city, which they projected to be as much, if not more.[8]

Their speculative projections generated considerable excitement around town. Launching a time-limited stock rally, they pulled in $258,000 from 855 local investors ($5.3 million in today’s currency. The money, less Hockenbury’s commission, was deposited in the Petaluma Hotel Company Trust under the purview of a board of local business leaders.[9]

Sophie Hammell (center beneath sign) and fellow hotel stock sale boosters, 1922 (Sonoma County Library)

Site selection quickly coalesced around an empty lot at the northwest corner of Washington and Kentucky streets. The site of the Brooklyn Hotel from the 1850s until it burned down in 1900, the property had recently gone on the market. A San Francisco movie theater syndicate had purchased it earlier with plans to build a new motion picture theater, but instead sold it to a local speculator.[10]

Empty corner lot at Washington & Kentucky streets, 1920 (Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)

The speculator already had two bids for the property from outside developers, but offered the hotel board first preference. The board’s vice-president and largest stockholder, George P. McNear, objected that the site was too far away from the new Redwood Highway. As an alternative, he offered a lot he owned at the southwest corner of B and Main streets, kitty-corner to his grain and feed mill (today’s Great Petaluma Mill).[11] 

The site was occupied by a gas station and two brick commercial buildings McNear had constructed just six months before. He told the board he was willing to tear down the buildings at his own expense, and sell the lot for the same price the speculator was asking for the Washington Street site.[12]

Public opinion quickly shifted in favor of McNear’s proposal. A four-story, 100-room hotel at B and Main streets would be visible for blocks in every direction. Most importantly, it had parking—McNear owned a garage on the adjacent corner of C and Third streets—which the Washington Street site lacked. There was just one hitch. Demolition couldn’t begin at the site for a year, until the leases held by McNear’s tenants expired.[13]

The hotel board couldn’t wait that long. They moved forward with the purchase of the Washington Street lot, along with two adjacent buildings slated for demolition. Within weeks of closing the deal, they hired a San Francisco architect to begin designing the hotel.[14]

Hotel Petaluma soon after opening in 1924 (public domain)

In April 1924, the Hotel Petaluma opened to great fanfare, California’s governor serving as a guest of honor. Rising five stories above street level, the new hotel offered 96 guest rooms, with an additional 12 rooms for staff lodging. The ground floor featured a spacious lobby, a state-of-the-art kitchen, and an ornate dining room that seated 200.[15]

The hotel’s opening coincided with an economic upswing for Petaluma thanks to the city’s egg boom, the Roaring Twenties’ bull stock market, and the increasing popularity of the Redwood Highway. The hotel quickly became a valuable community hub for luncheons and conventions of local service clubs and civic organizations. It struggled however to fill beds, passing through a rotation of hotel operators.

Hotel Petaluma postcard, 1928 (Sonoma County Library)

The arrival of the Great Depression only made matters worse. The opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 had little effect, despite an immediate surge of tourist traffic that forced Petaluma to expand Main Street from two to four lanes. The final death knell came with the 1957 opening of the 101 Freeway, which became the new Redwood Highway, putting an end to downtown tourist traffic. In hopes of luring in travelers, Petaluma changed the name of Main Street to Petaluma Boulevard.[16]

As motels sprang up along the freeway, the Hotel Petaluma was converted to a residential hotel, or SRO. In 1959, the Elks Club, seeking more space for their member gatherings, purchased the hotel from the Petaluma Hotel Company trust for $91,160. Adjusted for inflation, that represented only a fifth of the $285,000 locals invested in the hotel 25 years before.[17]

Entrance to restored Hotel Petaluma (Photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

In 2015, new owners undertook a full-scale historical restoration of the building, returning it to a hotel for overnight guests. As such, it asserted a new prominence as an anchor landmark in the city’s downtown historic district.[18]

Historical preservation became the economic engine for revitalizing the downtown in the mid-1970s. It began when Petaluma’s visionary mayor, Helen Putnam, enlisted developer Skip Sommer to convert George P. McNear’s abandoned grain mill at B Street and Petaluma Boulevard into a historically-themed center of boutique shops and eateries called the Great Petaluma Mill. A restoration fever soon overtook the downtown, drawing developers of adaptive reuse to town.[19]

B Street entrance to the Great Petaluma Mill, 1978 (Sonoma County Library)

Today, 100 years after the Hotel Petaluma’s grand opening, a new six-story, luxury hotel is being proposed for the empty lot at southwest corner of B Street and Petaluma Boulevard—the same site George P. McNear offered for the Hotel Petaluma in 1922.

The proposed new high rise will require an overlay to amend the building height limit for parts of the historic district from 45 feet to 75 feet, changing the current character and human scale of the downtown. Proponents say the trade-off is worth it. They expect the new hotel to lure in tourists and developers, revitalizing local businesses and generating needed tax revenues for the city’s coffers.

It sounds a lot like the stock rally Hockenbury pitched 100 years ago to raise money for the Hotel Petaluma. That turned out to be what Wall Street calls a “sucker rally.”

Rendering of the proposed EKN Appellation Hotel at B Street & Petaluma Boulevard (City of Petaluma)

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A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 11, 2024.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] J.R.  Vernon, “The 1920-21 Deflation: The Role of Aggregate Supply,” Economic Inquiry, July 1991, Issue 29, Volume 3, pps. 572–580; “Why the 1918 Flu Pandemic Never Really Ended,” History.com. https://www.history.com/news/1918-flu-pandemic-never-ended; “Will Close Stable on May 1st,” Petaluma Argus, April 19, 1919.

[2] “Redwood Highway Opens Vast Scenic World to Autoist,” San Francisco Examiner, July 21, 1921; Save the Redwoods League website, https://www.savetheredwoods.org/about-us/mission -history/

[3] Peter J. Blodgett, “How Americans Fell in Love With Taking Road Trips,” Time magazine, August 15, 2015. https://time.com/3998949/road-trip-history/

[4] “Redwood Highway Suggested for Hiway,” Petaluma Courier, July 11, 1921; “Redwood Highway Opens Vast Scenic World to Autoist,” San Francisco Examiner, July 21, 1921; “Redwood Highway to Traverse Scenic Wonderland,” Cloverdale Reveille, January 27, 1922.

[5] “Petaluma, the World’s Egg Basket,” Petaluma Courier, June 25, 1918; “Redwood Highway Suggested for Hiway,” Petaluma Courier, July 11, 1921; “Redwood Highway Opens Vast Scenic World to Autoist,” San Francisco Examiner, July 21, 1921; “C.C. Endorses Naming of State Highway and Boulevard Road District,” Petaluma Courier, September 9, 1921; “Great North of Bay Development Program Outlined at S.R. Session,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 6, 1921; “North of Bay Association is Formed,” Weekly Calistogan, November 18, 1921; “Petaluma C. of C. Urge Highway Completion,” Petaluma Courier, February 19, 1922.

[6] “The New Hotel Project is Being Well Received,” Petaluma Argus, December 27, 1912; “Development Co. Officers,” Petaluma Courier, June 21, 1917.

[7] “Definite Plans Made for New Hotel Campaign” Petaluma Argus, April 12, 1922; “Mrs. L.B. Hammell Has Resigned,” Petaluma Argus, February 23, 1923.

[8] “Definite Plans Made for New Hotel Campaign,” Petaluma Argus, April 12, 1922.

[9] “Enthusiasm Shown at C.C. Banquet,” Petaluma Courier, April 19, 1922; “Legal Notice for Petaluma Hotel Company,” Petaluma Courier, February 7, 1923; “Petaluma Realizes a Dream of Years Today as the Doors of the Hotel Petaluma Swing Open,” Petaluma Argus, April 10, 1924.

[10] “A Warm Old Time,” Petaluma Argus, April 10, 1900; “Turner & Dahnke Buy Brown Lot; Build Theater,” Petaluma Courier, May 18. 1921; “T&D Co. Theater Lot is Sold,” Petaluma Argus, June 8, 1922; Classified ads, Petaluma Argus, December 28, 1921; “Free Market Moves to Old Fire House,” Petaluma Argus, March 10, 1922.

[11] “Hotel Committee Confer with L.W. Clark for Purchase of Brown Lot,” Petaluma Courier, June 11, 1922; “The Largest Stockholder,” Petaluma Argus, April 10, 1924.

[12] “Brick Layers Complete Work,” Petaluma Argus, April 20, 1922; “Offers Site at Third and B Street for the New Hotel,” Petaluma Argus, July 31, 1922.

[13] “Council Votes Parking Place on Lower Main,” Petaluma Courier, October 19, 1920; “Beautify Main Street,” Petaluma Courier, October 20, 1920; “The Lower Main Street Park Will Remain as Originally Planned,” Petaluma Argus, November 2, 1920; “Offers Site at Third and B Street for the New Hotel,” Petaluma Argus, July 31, 1922.

[14] “Site for New Hotel Selected by Board of Hotel Trustees,” Petaluma Courier, August 8, 1922; “New Hotel Committee Buys Site,” Petaluma Courier, November 9, 1922; “Frederic Whitton Named as Architect of New Hotel,” Petaluma Argus, December 16, 1922.

[15] “How This City Made its New Hotel a Fact,” Petaluma Argus, April 10, 1924; “Unique Opening of Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Courier, April 11, 1924; “Dazzling Gayety at First Formal Banquet at Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Courier, April 23, 1924; “Argus Scribe Tours Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, April 10, 1924.

[16] “Improved Highway Facilities,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 15, 1937; “Petaluma Bottlenecks Doomed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 11, 1938; “Active Council Works for Petaluma Progress,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 15, 1938; “Comments in Brief: Main Street Traffic,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1957; “Old Redwood Highway Renaming,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 23, 1958; “Supervisors Vote to Change Name of Old U.S. 101,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 9, 1958; “Comments in Brief: New Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 6, 1959.

[17] “Soon-to-be Elks Property, Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 10, 1959.

[18] “Historic Hotel is Sold,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 5, 1994; “Hotel Petaluma Sold Again,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 19, 2015.

[19] Interview with Skip Sommer by John Sheehy, December 23, 2022, Sonoma County Library Archives; “He’s Not Your Typical Developer,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 28, 1975; “Ambitious New Business Owners See Potential in Old Buildings,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 8, 1977; “Mill Played a Key Role in Downtown Revitalization,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 9, 1980.

The History of Center Park

Center Park, 1930 (photo Petaluma Historical Museum & Library)

The history of Petaluma’s Center Park stretches back to the original founding of Petaluma.  Located on Petaluma Boulevard between Western Avenue and B Street, the pocket park was created by Columbus Tustin, whose development, Tustin’s Addition, followed a year after George H. Keller founded the town in 1852.[1] 

Keller’s original street grid was laid out parallel to the Petaluma River, with Main Street ending just south of Western Avenue, where the river took a bend toward the east (today’s Turning Basin). The next year, Tustin’s Addition was created abutting Keller’s grid at that bend in the river. Extending from A to F streets and First to Eighth streets, it also ran parallel to the river in its layout, but at a different angle than Keller’s.

Keller’s founding development in green (Brewster’s Survey), beside Tustin’s Addition in yellow, on 1877 Thos. Thompson map (Petaluma Historical Museum & Library)

The juncture where the two grids met created an angle of roughly 140 degrees. In the case of where Keller’s Main Street met Tustin’s Third Street, Tustin created an open rectangular space in the street between the juncture and B Street. That block between Western Avenue and B Street soon became known as Lower Main Street. (In 1958, Main and Third streets were combined into Petaluma Boulevard North and South).[2]

Arrow pointing to space created by Tustin at Main and Third Streets (1865 Jas. T. Stratton map, Petlauma Historical Museum & Library)

Throughout the 1860s, the rectangular space on Lower Main Street served as a makeshift parking lot for farmers with horse-drawn wagons bringing their goods to town. In 1871, the city’s board of trustees (predecessors to today’s city council) allowed merchants in the area to install hitching posts and a horse trough with a well in the space, which came to be called Lower Main Street Plaza.[3]

A decade later the city removed the hitching posts and horse trough, reportedly to build a shed for sheltering horses from sun and rain. Instead, the site reverted to its former makeshift parking lot until 1886, when members of the city’s Board of Trustees personally funded the installation of new hitching posts, a water trough, cobblestone paving, and shade trees. [4]

Lower Main Street Plaza, c. 1892 (Sonoma County Library)

These improvements coincided with a wave of new commercial development along Lower Main Street, beginning in 1882 with the construction of the Masonic Building at the corner of Main Street and Western Avenue.[5]

At the time, Lower Main Street was the commercial hub of Petaluma’s German and Chinese immigrant populations. The German district extended along the west side of the block from Western Avenue to the plaza. German merchants owned and operated two hotels, the Union and the Cosmopolitan, as well as the Centennial Building which housed a horse stable, shops, and the Druid’s Lodge, home to gatherings of the German community (today’s Lan Mart Building).[6]

Cosmopolitan Hotel and Centennial Building to its right, c. 1900 (courtesy of Dan Brown Collection)

The rest of Lower Main Street was the heart of Petaluma’s Chinatown, which extended from Western Avenue down Main and Third streets to D Street. Lower Main Street Plaza was surrounded by both Chinese dwellings and businesses, including laundries, groceries, tobacco shops, boarding houses, and restaurants. On the east side of the block, there were interspersed with grain and produce warehouses.[7]

In 1886, the Chinese were temporarily driven from Petaluma during a surge in anti-Chinese sentiment in Sonoma County. During their absence, local capitalist John A. McNear replaced a group of their dwellings he owned on the block with the first McNear Building. The commercial gentrification of Lower Main Street soon followed, pushing the Chinese community further south along Third Street to between B and D streets.[8]

John A. McNear with horse and carriage outside new McNear Building, 1886 (Petaluma Historical Museum & Library)

During the 1890s, Lower Main Street Plaza became a popular gathering place for public events. With the street to the west side of the plaza roped off, the site hosted political orators, concerts, parade stands, National Guard drills, street vendors, estate auctions, horse sales, and the city’s Fourth of July fireworks.[9]

Lower Main Street Plaza, c. 1908 (Sonoma County Library)

In 1920, with automobiles having replaced horse-drawn wagons and carriages in town, Petaluma’s city council voted to replace Lower Main Street Plaza with additional parking spaces for surrounding merchants. Outraged residents petitioned against the destruction of the plaza, calling instead for its beautification as a gateway to the downtown for auto tourists. The city council quickly reversed their decision, and set about beautifying the plaza with grass and plantings.[10]

This work effort coincided with the efforts of the newly-formed Redwood Highway Association. Seeking to direct the new wave of auto tourists to what remained of California’s old-growth redwood groves, the association promoted rechristening the thoroughfare between Sausalito and the Oregon border as a scenic route called the Redwood Highway.[11] In 1921, the Petaluma Chamber of Commerce made Petaluma the first city in Sonoma County to officially designate its Main Street as part of the Redwood Highway.[12]

Map of the proposed Redwood Highway, 1921 (San Francisco Examiner)

During Petaluma’s Egg Day Celebration in 1921, the newly-beautified Lower Main Street Plaza became the setting for a chicken rodeo, an egg rolling contest, a game of egg baseball, and an egg laying display. Two of the city’s banks sponsored a contest to rename the plaza. Out of 200 submissions, “Mainway”—a combination of Main Street and highway—was chosen as the winner. The name “Center Park,” signifying the plaza’s location between Walnut Park and Hill Plaza Park (today’s Penry Park), came in third.[13]

Renaming of the plaza was postponed until 1925, when, thanks to the lobbying of Park Commissioner Hiram “Hoppy” Hopkins, Center Park was chosen as the plaza’s new name.[14]

Sonoma-Marin Fair pre-breakfast, Center Park, 1950s (Petlauma Historical Museum & Library)

Over the past 100 years, Center Park has served many functions as a community hub, including serving for many decades as the focus of the city’s annual holiday festivities with bands, choirs, tree lightings, and the arrival of Santa Claus. In 1930, the large Christmas tree the city had annually erected in the park was replaced with a living Norway spruce courtesy of the Petaluma Garden Club. By 1933, there were two living trees in the park.[15] Over the years, redwoods were added to the park, until their numbers were reduced to just three trees in 1964 to allow more room for upward growth.[16]

Center Park with planted redwood trees, 1955 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

In 1985, Hospice of Petaluma launched an annual holiday tradition at the park called “light up a life.” In exchange for a donation, one could dedicate one bulb on the string of lights draped around a redwood tree in the park to the memory of someone deceased. In 2017, the event was moved to Walnut Park.[17]

In 1976, the city council approved erecting a facsimile of the El Camino Real Bell in Center Park. One of more than 585 such bells displayed along California’s mission trail from San Diego to Sonoma, it was created in the early 1900s to promote auto tourism and visitation of the missions. Petaluma obtained their bell from the Redwood Empire Association, who had stored it for decades. Although Petaluma was not on the mission trail, the city laid claim to the bell on the grounds that Padre Jose Altamira had passed through the Petaluma area while searching for a suitable location for the mission in Sonoma.[18]

Mayor Helen Putnam, right, unveiling of the El Camino Real Bell, 1977 (Sonoma County Library)

Over the years, Center Park has also been the topic of proposed repurposing. In 1957, Petaluma’s Chamber of Commerce petitioned the city to build their new headquarters on the park. Legal challenges and opposition from merchants on the west side of the park defeated the effort.[19]

Drawing of proposed Chamber of Commerce Building in Center Park, 1957 (Petaluma Argus Courier)

In 1984, four years after investing in a major facelift to the park, the city council approved making Center Park a memorial site to honor former mayor Helen Putnam, who died that year.  They set aside $85,000 ($257,000 in today’s currency) for a dome fountain, stone seating, additional walkways, permanent lighting, and a memorial plaque. The next year, the city decided instead to purchase the empty lot on Petaluma Boulevard at the end of Golden Concourse to create the memorial site known as Putnam Plaza.[20]

Drawing of proposed Helen Putnam memorial at Center Park, 1984 (Petlauma Argus-Courier)

Today, Center Park remains a landmark pocket park in the city, largely dominated by three towering redwood trees, all of which began showing signs of sickness and distress in the 2010s, resulting in the removal and replacement of the worst afflicted, the redwood at the north end. The park still has hitching posts, only now for bicycles.[21]

Center Park, 2024 (photo John Sheehy)

******

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Sonoma County Deed Records, show two grants in 1853 from Columbus Tustin, one to Edward S, Jones, May 16, 1853, and the other to Fred Starkey, August 12, 1853, indicating that he was selling lots.

[2] The boundaries of Tustin’s Addition and Keller development, entitled Brewster’s Survey, are specified in Thos. H. Thompson’s Map of Sonoma County, 1877, Sonoma County Library; “Supervisors Vote to Change Name of Old U.S. 101,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 9, 1958.

[3] “Board of Trustees,” Petaluma Argus, August 19, 1871.

[4] “Will Be Restored,” Petaluma Argus, December 2, 1881; “Should Be Replaced,” Petaluma Courier, January 4, 1882; “Hitching Posts,” Petaluma Courier, January 7, 1885; “Improvement,” Petaluma Argus, January 28, 1886;  “Good,” Petaluma Courier, June 1, 1887; “About Streets,” Petaluma Courier, July 6, 1887; “Humane Society Holds a Meeting,” Petaluma Argus, October 4, 1905; “Planted New Trees on Main Street,” Petaluma Argus, March 12, 1909.

[5] Dedication of Masonic Temple,” Petaluma Argus, April 21, 1882.

[6] Ad for Pfau’s purchase of livery, Petaluma Argus, April 13, 1865; Ad, Petaluma Argus, October 1873; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, July 23, 1875; “Pfau’s Centennial Building,” Petaluma Argus, March 3, 1876 “Centennial Headquarters,” Petaluma Argus, July 14, 1876; Ad for Centennial Saloon and Music Hall,” Petaluma Courier, March 7, 1878; Ad for Eureka horse, Petaluma Courier, May 31, 1877; Ad, Petaluma Courier, March 24, 1880; “The Druids,” Petaluma Courier, December 22, 1880; Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), p. 143.

[7] Chinese stores and shanties are listed in the 1883 Sanborn map of Petaluma extending along Western Avenue from Kentucky to Main Street, and from there down Main and Third streets to D Street, as well as along B Street from Main Street to Fourth Street.

[8] “A Terrible Crime,” Petaluma Courier, January 27, 1886; “Ah Ti, the Murderer,” Petaluma Argus, January 30, 1886; Anti-Coolie Meeting,” Sonoma Democrat, February 6, 1886; “Going Below,” Petaluma Argus, February 13, 1866; “Sebastopol Anti-Chinese League,” Sonoma Democrat, February 27, 1886; “Blew Them Up,” Petaluma Argus, March 10, 1886; Chinatown fires (no headline) Petaluma Courier, September 21, 1887; “An Additional Story,” Petaluma Argus, April 3, 1886; Jeff Elliot examines holes in the accusations against the Wickersham’s cook: “The Wickersham Murders,” “Who Killed the Wickershams,” Santarosahistory.com, http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/2017/05/the-wickersham-murders/.

[9] “Town Topics,” Petaluma Courier, May 21, 1893; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, October 8, 1895; “Independent Foresters,” Petaluma Courier, October 9, 1896; “Salvation Meeting,” Petaluma Courier, November 13, 1896; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, July 19, 1897; “Socialist Speaker,” Petaluma Courier, October 12, 1897; “The Day,” Petaluma Courier, July 3, 1901; “The Day Fireworks,” Petaluma Courier, July 5, 1902; “Tonight’s Band Concert,” Petaluma Courier, July 5, 1902; “Local Notes, Petaluma Argus, May 23, 1903; “City Trustees,” Petaluma Courier, August 16, 1904; “Congressman D.E. McKinlay,” Petaluma Argus, August 6, 1910; “Opening Band Concert,” Petaluma Courier, May 13, 1915; “G.W. Hoyle Will Be Speaker at Saturday’s Demonstration,” Petaluma Argus, April 15, 1918; “Band Concert Here Tonight,” Petaluma Argus, August 22, 1925; “Armistice Day Parade,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 8, 1930; “1934 Parade of Witches,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 17, 1934.

[10] “Council Votes Parking Place on Lower Main,” Petaluma Courier, October 19, 1920; “Beautify Main Street,” Petaluma Courier, October 20, 1920; “The Lower Main Street Park Will Remain as Originally Planned,” Petaluma Argus, November 2, 1920.

[11] The seven counties officially formed the North of Bay Counties Association to promote the highway, of which the Redwood Highway Association appears to have been a subsidiary, referenced as early as February 1922; “Redwood Highway Opens Vast Scenic World to Autoist,” San Francisco Examiner, July 21, 1921; “Great North of Bay Development Program Outlined at S.R. Session,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 6, 1921; “North of Bay Association is Formed,” Weekly Calistogan, November 18, 1921; “Redwood Highway to Traverse Scenic Wonderland,” Cloverdale Reveille, January 27, 1922; “Petaluma C. of C. Urge Highway Completion,” Petaluma Courier, February 19, 1922; Peter J. Blodgett, “How Americans Fell in Love With Taking Road Trips,” Time magazine, August 15, 2015. https://time.com/3998949/road-trip-history/

[12] “Redwood Highway Suggested for Hiway,” Petaluma Courier, July 11, 1921; “C.C. Endorses Naming of State Highway and Boulevard Road District,” Petaluma Courier, September 9, 1921; “Santa Rosa Has Prominent Place on Map of Route of U.S. Highway,” Santa Rosa Republican, February 20, 1926.

[13] “Official Program for the Great Egg Day Celebration,” Petaluma Argus, April 19, 1921; “Prize Winners For Park Name,” Petaluma Argus, July 1, 1921; “Park Name is Debated by Council,” Petaluma Argus, July 6, 1921; “City Council Takes First Steps for Street Improvements and Repairs,” Petaluma Argus, July 19, 1921; “City Council Staged Forum on City Rezoning and the Type of Street Pavement to Be Used on Three Thoroughfares,” Petaluma Argus, August 4, 1925.

[14] “Hiram Hopkins Rounds Out 50 Years at G.P. McNears,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 1, 1951.

[15] “News Notes,” Petaluma Argus, December 13, 1916; “Living Yuletide Tree Planted,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 10, 1930; Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 8, 1930; “Santa Claus Will Arrive Here Tonight for the Big Christmas Festival,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 2, 1933; “Grand Xmas Opening Here to Take Place Tonight; Band Concert at Center Park,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 3, 1938; “Yuletide Street Decorations Dedication Here Tonight,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 30, 1946.

[16] “McDowell Park Work Urged by Recreation Unit,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 18, 1963.

[17] “Hospice of Petaluma Plans Tree Lighting Campaign,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 20, 1985; “Out and About in Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 30, 2017.

[18] “Petaluma May Soon Receive El Camino Real Mission Bell,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 4, 1976; “Council Rejects Zoning for Apartment Complex,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 17, 1976; “Bell Marks Visit by Mission Priests,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 2, 1977.

[19] “Chamber May Build an Office,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 23, 1957; “Chamber Members Favor Center Park Site, 3 to 1,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 23, 1957; “C of C Office Move Runs into Opposition,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 8, 1957.

[20] “Center Park Facelift,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 30, 1980; “Center Park at Tribute to Helen Putnam,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 20, 1984; “Reconsider Tribute to Putnam,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 21, 1985; “New Location for Putnam Tribute,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 13, 1985; “Downtown Lot Could Become Park,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 22, 1985.

[21] “Iconic Redwood Cutdown,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 17, 2013.

Eggs and Petaluma’s 15-Minute City

Petaluma’s Main Street, ca. 1900 (Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)

In the 1920s, Petaluma found itself facing a housing shortage. The local egg industry was booming, drawing hundreds of new families to the area. Some came to purchase chicken ranches, others to work for hatcheries and other industries in the prosperous “Egg Basket of the World.” Dave Batchelor, a local realtor and developer, believed he had the solution: restricted residential neighborhoods. [1]

Since its incorporation in 1858, Petaluma had developed in a haphazard manner. Not only were residential neighborhoods dotted with corner groceries and taverns, many sat cheek-by-jowl with chicken hatcheries, foundries, hospitals, and factories for processing everything from incubators to silk and dairy products.

Petaluma Cooperative Creamery in residential area at Western Avenue and Baker Street, ca. 1920 (photo Sonoma County Library)

On the plus side, city residents—who numbered just under 4,000 between 1870 and 1900—were able to access all their needs by foot, bicycle, or the city’s horse-drawn streetcars.[2] For those wishing to travel outside the city, downtown stables provided rentals of horses and carriages. Messy as it might seem, Petaluma was the definition of what urban planners today call the “15-minute city.”

Then came the egg boom.

By 1920, Petaluma was one of the largest poultry-producing regions in the country. Its population had grown to more than 6,000. Automobiles now filled the streets. New home buyers came looking for safe and quiet residential neighborhoods with garages for their cars.[3]

David W. Batchelor (photo findagrave.com)

As Petaluma lacked zoning ordinances, local developers like Batchelor began creating their own , buying up small farms at the western edge of town and subdividing them into residential-only lots for cottages and bungalows.

A Scottish immigrant, Batchelor got in early on the egg boom, purchasing Penngrove’s second poultry ranch in 1903.[4] The boom originated in the 1880s with the local invention of an efficient egg incubator by Isaac Dias and Lyman Byce. It took off a decade later thanks to the innovations of Chris Nisson, a Danish immigrant, who industrialized egg production by developing America’s first commercial egg hatchery on his Two Rock ranch. After hatching baby chicks in the Dias and Byce incubators, Nisson placed them in a brooder house equipped with a stove to serve as a mother surrogate until they were old enough to sell as laying hens.[5]

Chris Nisson’s Pioneer Hatchery Ranch, Two Rock (photo Sonoma County Library)

Batchelor, the son of a realtor, saw the boom coming. He began buying up Penngrove farms and subdividing them into small tracts for aspiring chicken ranchers, offering them a fully equipped, five-acre chicken ranch for $2,500 ($85,000 in today’s currency).[6] His speculative tendencies caught the attention of the Page brothers, who were in the process of subdividing the 10,000-acre Rancho Cotati they inherited from their father, Thomas Page. Batchelor succeeded in selling more than 900 poultry ranches for the Pages in the Cotati district.[7]

Penngrove chicken ranch, 1914 (Sonoma County Library)

In 1909, Batchelor built the Hotel Penngrove across from the train depot in Penngrove, setting up his main office on the bottom floor, with branch offices in Petaluma and Cotati.

D. W. Batchelor’s Real Estate & Insurance office, bottom floor of the Hotel Penngrove, 1915 (photo Sonoma County Library)

Three years later, he moved his headquarters and family into Petaluma, purchasing a stately home on a large lot at the corner of Howard and Prospect streets. In typical fashion, he subdivided the lot for three new spec houses.[8]

D.W. Batchelor’s new office on the bottom floor of the Wickersham Building, 168 Main Street, 1920s (photo Sonoma County Library)

Hailed as one of Petaluma’s “red hot live wire businessmen,” Batchelor ventured south in 1913 to pursue a new development in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles County. Opening a branch office in Van Nuys, he began purchasing farmland and subdividing it into 400 hundred poultry ranches, creating what soon became known as “Southern Petaluma.”[9]

Los Angeles Times, July 3, 1913

It was in Los Angeles that Batchelor first encountered restricted residential districts. In 1908, the city became the birthplace of city zoning when it banned a wide range of businesses and industries from residential zones. The intention was to promote orderly development, controlling noise, traffic flow, and activity levels as a means of protecting property values.[10] 

Returning to Petaluma, Batchelor turned his focus to residential and commercial real estate as the city began to grow with the egg boom. In 1921, he was appointed to fill a seat on the city council after an elected member resigned.[11] The next year, he co-led a community fundraising drive to build the Hotel Petaluma, raising $258,000 ($3.5 million in today’s currency) from 855 local investors.[12]

Fundraising celebration for new Hotel Petaluma, 1922; Batchelor at far right under raised hat (photo Sonoma County Library)

At the time, Petaluma was undergoing a generational shift. To help address the housing crisis, Victorian mansions built by wealthy capitalists during the city’s river town era, were being carved up into apartments, and their large property estates sold off in subdivisions by their widows and descendants.

One such widow, Harriet Brown, whose estate extended along the south side of D Street from Eighth Street to Sunnyslope Avenue, engaged Batchelor to subdivide her property. Positioning the development as a showcase for the new egg boom elite, Batchelor marketed the subdivision as Petaluma’s first “restricted residence district,” anchoring it with a quiet cul-de-sac named Brown Court.[13]

831 D St & Brown Court
15 Brown Court
28 Brown Court
25 Brown Court

Gallery of houses built on Brown Court in the 1920s (Sonoma County Library)

Two years later, he purchased an adjacent tract along Eighth Street between D and F streets from descendants of the Fairbanks family, who owned the mansion at the northeast corner of D and Eighth streets. After subdividing the tract into another restricted residence district, he carved out a cul-de-sac of tiny lots he called Batchelor Terrace, offering buyers a choice of modest four- and five-room modern cottages he built to order.[14] (An adjacent lot he sold off was later developed in a similar manner as Coady Court).[15]

In 1922, the National Association of Real Estate Boards advocated city zoning as a means of stabilizing property values. Three years later, Petaluma adopted its first residential and commercial zoning ordinances.[16] The National Association of Real Estate Boards also championed adding covenants to deeds that restricted certain neighborhoods exclusively to Caucasians. Those racial covenants were adopted in Petaluma, and remained in place until a Supreme Court ruling in 1967.[17]

1931 Petaluma Deed with restrictive residential and racial exclusionary covenants (Sonoma County Official Records, Liber 293, page 328)

In 1925, Batchelor declined to seek re-election to the city council, turning his attention instead to a new endeavor south of Santa Cruz. Leaving his partner to run the Petaluma realty office, he purchased a 290-acre retreat center from the Jesuit Fathers to develop a beachside town and resort he called Rob Roy, after the famous highlands chief, Rob Roy McGregor. He assigned Scottish names to all the streets, and moved his family into a new Mediterranean-style beachfront home.[18]

Batchelor’s promotion brochure for Rob Roy beachside town and resort (Santa Cruz Sentinel, February 8, 1976)

After investing a quarter of a million dollars in Rob Roy ($5 million in today’s currency), Batchelor found himself in a financial crisis as home sales in Rob Roy slowed during the Depression. In 1935, he sold the town to another developer who changed its name to LaSelva Beach and its street names from Scottish to Spanish. That same year, Batchelor shut down his office in Petaluma, new housing development having slowed there as well.[19]

The next Petaluma housing boom would not come until the end of World War II, when influx of discharged servicemen arrived with their families bearing low-interest VA loans. With subsidies provided by the government, developers began building a cascade of suburban tract homes, driving the city’s population up to 14,000 by 1960.

1950s Madison Square development at Madison & Payran streets, East Petaluma (photo Sonoma County Library)

Built in exclusionary and restricted residential districts, and designed around cars and shopping malls, the new developments scrambled what remained of Petaluma’s 15-minute city.[20]

Batchelor didn’t return to Petaluma to ride the new suburban housing boom. He chose instead to open a real estate office in LaSelva Beach, where he happily resided until his death in 1963 at the age of 90.[21]

LaSelva Beach (originally Rob Roy), California, 2024 (photo public domain)

******

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier September 6, 2024.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Ad, for “Dave” Batchelor, Petaluma Courier, March 9, 1924.

[2] http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/Petaluma50.htm#1940

[3] Thea Lowry, Empty Shells: The Story of Petaluma, America’s Chicken City (Novato, CA: Manifold Press, 2000), pp. 1-3; http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/Petaluma50.htm#1940.

[4] Irene Hilsendager, “History-David William Batchelor,” The Community Voice, August 25, 2023.

[5] Lowry, pgs. 33-35, 49-53.

[6] Hilsendager; “Live Real Estate Firm at Penngrove,” Petaluma Courier, April 12, 1904; Ad for poultry ranch, San Francisco Call and Post, June 20, 1909.

[7] Hilsendager; “History of Cotati,”  Cotati Historical Society, cotatimuseum.com; “D.W. Batchelor Now Agent for Cotati Land Company,” Petaluma Argus, May 19, 1910.

[8] “Hotel for Penngrove,” Petaluma Courier, June 7, 1909; Ad for Batchelor & Rankin, Petaluma Argus, November 29, 1911; “Batchelor Buys Geo. Young Home,” Petaluma Argus, October 31, 1912; “D.W. Batchelor to Build Three Houses,” Petaluma Courier, February 3, 1922.

[9] More Activity in Poultry Business,” Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, October 17, 1913; “Batchelor Goes South,” Petaluma Courier, October 12, 1913; “Chickens By Wholesale,” Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1913; “More Activity in Poultry Business,” Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, October 17, 1913; “Hail to Van Nuys, the Southern Petaluma,” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1913; Hilsendager.

[10] Jonathan Vankin, “Zoning Out: Why We Have Zoning Laws, and How They Shape California and Society (Not Always For the Best),” June 15, 2023, CaliforniaLocal.com; Jeremy Rosenberg, “The Roots of Sprawl: Why We Don’t Live Where We Work,” March 19, 2012, PBSSoCal.com, https://www.pbssocal.org/history-society/

[11] “The New Hotel Project is Being Well Received,” Petaluma Argus, December 27, 1912; “Chamber of Commerce in Annual Session,” Petaluma Courier, May 11, 1915; “Development Co. Officers,” Petaluma Courier, June 21, 1917; “White Leghorn Mining Co. Move Offices Here,” Petaluma Courier, March 11, 1924; “D.W. Batchelor Made Member of City Council Succeeds W. Stradling,” Petaluma Courier, October 4, 1921.

[12] “First Stock In Hotel is Sold,” Petaluma Argus, June 10, 1922; “Legal Notice for Petaluma Hotel Company,” Petaluma Courier, February 7, 1923; “E.J. Hockenbury Was Here,” Petaluma Argus, January 27, 1923; “Mrs. L.B. Hammell Has Resigned,” Petaluma Argus, February 23, 1923 “Unique Opening of Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Courier, April 11, 1924; Hilsendager.

[13] “Death of Samuel Brown,” Petaluma Courier, December 17, 1902; “Brown Tract on D Street to be Sold by Batchelor,” Petaluma Courier, December 16, 1921; “New Home for Dr. F.W. Anderson,” Petaluma Argus, July 12, 1922; “Will Build Elegant Home,” Petaluma Argus, August 7, 1922; “Dr. Dreyer Will Build Fine Home,” Petaluma Argus, March 17, 1923.

[14] “A Chance to Own a Modern Home,” Petaluma Courier, September 20, 1919; “Will Build on Laurel Ave,” Petaluma Argus, December 8, 1921; “Splendid New Restricted District for Beautiful homes is Opened Up Today,” Petaluma Argus, August 12, 1924; “Batchelor Terrace is Accepted,” Petaluma Argus, December 2, 1924.

[15] Note on Coady Court: Batchelor originally sold the large lot to Leo Burke, owner of the Must Hatch Hatchery, to build a large estate. After Batchelor Terrace was developed next door, Bourke changed his mind and sold the lot to developer Frank Coady, who developed Coady Court. “Fine New Home for Leo Bourke,” Petaluma Argus, August 12, 1924; “Coady Apartments 11 Lots and A Fine Cottage Change Hands,” Petaluma Argus, June 5, 1925.

[16] “Zoning Plan Advocated in All Cities,” San Francisco Examiner, June 2, 1922; “Zoning Ordinance Introduced,” Petaluma Argus, October 24, 1925 “Ordinances No. 284, Charter Series,” Petaluma Argus, October 26, 1925; “City Zoning Ordinance Formally Adopted,” Petaluma Courier, November 3, 1925; “Zoning Protest Report,” Petaluma Argus, December 8, 1925.

[17] Vankin; “Is There Racism in the Deed to Your Home?” New York Times, August 17, 2021; Marisa Kendal, “For Whites Only: Shocking Language Found in Property Docs Throughout Bay Area,” Bay Area News Group, February 26, 2019. Bayareanewsgroup.com; sample Petaluma deed in Sonoma County Official Records, Liber 293, page 328, dated April 13, 1931, for sale of property on Western Avenue in Petaluma to Clifford B. Murphy and Minnie J. Murphy; Moore, Montojo, Mauri, “Roots, Race, and Place,” Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley, October 2019, p. 22.

[18] Note: the property included almost a mile of black sand beach, four acres of which Batchelor set aside for a new plant by his development partner Triumph Steel, who extracted manganese from the sand to use as an alloy in the making of steel. “D.W. Batchelor Buys Tract of Land in South,” Petaluma Courier, February 8, 1925; “F.A. Allenberg Now Associated with D.W. Batchelor,” Petaluma Argus, July 13, 1925; “Sales Among Those Sure to Be Kept in Office,” Petaluma Courier, May 21, 1925; “D.W. Batchelor Is Home from Rob Roy,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 16, 1926; “Was Up From Rob Roy Townsite,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 14, 1931; “Rob Roy District Now Being Transformed into Modern Home Subdivision,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, November 4, 1932; “D.W. Batchelor Is Here on Business,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 9, 1934; “Let’s Go to Beautiful, Secluded La Selva,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, February 25, 1951.

[19] “David Batchelor, LaSelva Beach Founder, Dies,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, July 9, 1963; “The Sand Was Gold,” Santa Cruz Sentinel,” June 2, 1985.

[20] “$500,000 Housing Program Here,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 2, 1946; http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/Petaluma50.htm#1960

[21] “David Batchelor, LaSelva Beach Founder, Dies,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, July 9, 1963; “The Sand Was Gold,” Santa Cruz Sentinel,” June 2, 1985.

Henry Chenault

PETALUMA BUSINESSMAN, CIVIC BOOSTER, AND CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST

Henry Chenault ran the local shoeshine stand in downtown Petaluma from the 1930s through the 1960s. Thanks to his friendly, engaging charm, his sidewalk stand quickly became a popular local crossroads for a wide range of discussions and camaraderie.

In this video presentation, Petaluma historian John Sheehy remembers many of those days and shares Henry’s history alongside many stories that highlight his influence on Petaluma. He also shares the history Henry kept to himself of his involvement as a Buffalo Soldier in the 1917 Houston uprising, one of the worse examples of racial injustice in U.S. military history, and how he channeled that experience into civil rights activism in Petaluma.

Free Love in 1850s Petaluma

ONE WOMAN’S QUEST FOR LOVE ON HER OWN TERMS

Abigail Goodwin Haskell (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

In 1857, Abigail and Barnabus Haskell arrived in Petaluma pursuing a California dream of free love. It wasn’t quite the promiscuous Summer of Love that would inflame the Golden State a century later, but it did share with the era one irresistible attraction: a rebellion against authority. For the Haskells, the rebellion was over marriage.[1]

Under the yoke of traditional values and institutions back east, marriage was predominately a transactional affair. Traditionally arranged between families, there was little room for love or individual consent. Once married, a bride and her fortune became the property of her husband. Divorce was largely unheard of.[2]

Free lovers denounced it as “legitimized adultery.” They believed everyone should have the ability to choose a monogamous partner based solely on love, and to end the relationship once the love did.[3]

“Woman was not created to be the slave of man,” Abigail Haskell wrote. “She was to be his equal, to walk upright by his side in her native dignity and purity.”[4]

Barnabus and Abigail Haskell with son William, 1850 (Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)

Petaluma was still in early formation when the Haskells arrived. Founded during a potato boom in 1852 that quickly went bust, the local economy was rebounding thanks to California’s new wheat boom.[5] Abigail taught at private schools before being appointed principal of the town’s first public school. Barnabus, a hatter by trade, purchased a dry goods store on Main Street.[6]

The Brick School at 5th & B streets, build 1869 (Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)

Of Petaluma’s 1,300 residents at the time, 38% were women.[7] While women were largely relegated to the home back east—leaving men to engage in the public world of business and politics—California’s boom-and-bust cycles made such separate spheres challenging. Women burdened with dissolute or absent husbands found themselves having to work to support themselves and their children.

Recognizing their financial insecurity, state legislators passed legislation allowing women to independently own property, operate businesses, enter into contracts and lawsuits, and more easily file for divorce.[8] 

Those new rights coincided with advances in safer sex. Thanks to Charles Goodyear’s recent invention of vulcanized rubber, sales of condoms, douching syringes, and “womb veil” diaphragms were soaring. An array of “female medicines” for birth control, varying in effectiveness and safety, were also available from pharmacies, dry-goods stores, and mail-order catalogs.[9]

Female medicines in the mid-1800s (public domain)

As fertility rates began to plummet in the 1850s, divorce cases began to rise, with 70% of the plaintiffs being women.[10] Meanwhile, the women’s suffragist movement was gaining traction, having recently kicked off at the Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York.

The movement evolved from an earlier 19th century evangelical crusade known as the Second Great Awakening.[11] Aimed at purifying society in preparation for Christ’s return, it was predominately composed of white, middle-class women. To exert their influence outside the home, they organized into socially acceptable prayer groups, and began calling for a range of social reforms, including temperance, abolition, children’s rights, and female emancipation.[12]

The Haskells converted to the crusade soon after their marriage in 1837, setting off from New York City with a small band of missionaries to establish a Baptist church in Galveston, Texas.[13] Returning to New York City a few years later, the couple joined the Swedenborgian Church, a Christian denomination inspired by the 18th century Swedish scientist, philosopher, and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg.

Emanuel Swedenborg (public domain)

Swedenborgians believed in marriage equality. They also believed in a divine love that pervaded and moved the material world, leaving one to follow either the path of self-love, which led ultimately to the realms of hell, or the path of love for others, which led to the heavens.[14] The path to the heavens attracted reformists like the Haskells.

But it was Swedenborg’s revelatory claims—particularly, the immortality of the soul after death—that had the greatest impact on American culture. His belief in the existence of an immaterial reality beyond reach of the human senses was buttressed with visions, trances, and dreams. He claimed to have conversed with spirits and angels on a daily basis.[15]

Those claims gave rise in the 1850s to a countercultural movement known as Spiritualism.[16]

It began when Maggie and Kate Fox, two teenage sisters in upstate New York, claimed to have heard “rappings” from the dead. Joined by their older sister Leah, they began staging public performances as trance mediums communicating with souls of the deceased, setting off a new national sensation.[17]

The Fox sisters, Leah, Kate, and Maggie (courtesy of Association of Religious Data Archives)

Despite its questionable legitimacy, Spiritualism filled a void left by traditional religion, which placed death at the periphery. At a time  when one child in every three died before age ten, and many women did not survive childbirth, Spiritualism provided a sense of solace and closure to many struggling with grief.[18] That included the Haskells, whose oldest child died when she was eight years old.[19]

(illustration from Frank Leslies Illustrated Weekly, April 2, 1887)

In Petaluma, the Haskells devoted themselves to the Swedenborgian doctrine of service to others, leading local groups calling for children’s rights, abolition, and temperance (shorthand for husbands who beat their wives and children, and spent their wages on drink).[20]Every summer, Barnabus returned to the east coast to attend the national Swedenborg convention.[21]

The couple also sought fellowship with a local group of Spiritualists who met at the Liberty Street home of Chester Hatch, operator of the town’s first foundry, and his wife Lucretia, a hospice nurse. Chester represented Sonoma County in the Spiritualists’ state conventions. The couple’s home gatherings often featured seances with visiting mediums.[22]

Petaluma spiritualist Lucretia Hatch (San Francisco Call, March 6, 1901)

During the bloodshed of the Civil War, Spiritualism’s popularity grew by an estimated two million followers.[23] The only religious sect to recognize the equality of women, it produced the first large group of female spiritual leaders—typically young, white, single, and Protestant—to address large public gatherings, free from the patriarchal environment of churches. Following the war, female mediums began migrating to California, where they became founding members of the state’s women’s suffragist movement.[24]

In December of 1869, Abigail called a meeting at her home to launch the Sonoma County Woman Suffrage Association. A few weeks later, she traveled to San Francisco with Lucretia Hatch and another local Swedenborgian, Sarah Myers Latimer, to attend the inaugural convention of the California Woman Suffrage Association. A big part of Abigail’s quest was securing equal access to higher education for women.[25] 

National Woman’s Suffrage Convention, 1870 (public domain)

At the convention, Abigail was elected the association’s first president, and Latimer one of her vice presidents.[26] The group’s first order of business was organizing a petition drive for a state referendum granting women the vote. A forceful and persuasive writer, Abigail, took to the newspapers to make her case.

Sarah Myers Latimer, founding vice-president, California Woman Suffrage Association (Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)

“Woman is declared inferior to man,” she wrote. “She has no voice in politics, government or law, and we see the sad, lamentable consequences. Brute force is acknowledged as the only power in the universe. Love, that love which the Lord enjoined upon his disciples, is trampled underfoot under the ruthless, iron heel of man-made civilization.”[27]

In March 1870, Abigail led a female delegation to Sacramento to address a select committee of the state legislature—the first women in California history to do so. She presented the committee with the suffrage petition signed by more than three thousand supporters, calling for a referendum to amend the state constitution granting women the vote.[28]

“We claim to be recognized as citizens of this free Republic!” she told legislators.[29] She also asked legislators to open up the new state university in Berkeley to women (the campus began enrolling women six months later).[30]

The referendum proposal was overwhelmingly defeated in the state assembly. California women would not be granted the vote until 1911.[31]

There were further setbacks. In 1873, Congress sought to curb the free love movement by passing the Comstock Law, which banned sending contraceptives through the mail, along with sex education, including information about sexually transmitted diseases. By 1880, most states had outlawed abortion.[32]

Free love advocate Victoria Woodhull depicted as “Mrs. Satan in parody of conservative pushback (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, February 17, 1872, Library of Congress)

“Woman suffrage in America is on the decline,” reported the Petaluma Courier in 1877, “and justly so. It has been agitated by a bad lot of harum-scarum women, who have mixed free-love, spiritualism, and all sorts of woman’s rights into a sort of political and social hotchpotch that has disgusted right-thinking people.”[33]

Abigail viewed such attacks as teaching moments, although she expressed disappointment that her opponents only had “trash and scurrility” to offer in their opposition. In 1879, she launched the Sonoma-Marin Women’s Christian Temperance Union as its founding president. It was to be her last reform effort. After a lingering illness, she died in 1884 at the age of 64. [34]

Abigail Goodwin Haskell (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

Placed in a white casket, Abigail was drawn by a team of white horses to the Cypress Hill Cemetery in a white hearse of white plumes and drapings. The pallbearers were all former students of hers.[35]

“Following the doctrines of the illustrious Swedenborg,” wrote Philip Cowen, a close friend and local bookstore owner, “death had no terror for a mind like hers, who, no doubt, never wronged any living being, hence she had no fear of an angry God, for with her, “God was love.”[36]

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier July 19, 2024.

******

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Ann Nisson, “Abby and Barney,” an unpublished biography of Abigail Haskell, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum.

[2] Carol Faulkner, Unfaithful: Love, Adultery, and Marriage Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), pp. 1-3; Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, Second Edition (Indiana University Press, 2001), p. 195.

[3] Faulkner, p. 1; Braude, p. 119.

[4] Nisson.

[5] Gaye LeBaron, “How Sonoma County Prized Potato Got its Start,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 17, 2013; Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), pgs.69, 156; Robert A. Thompson, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877), pp. 24-25; James Gerber, “The Gold Rush Origins of California’s Wheat Economy,” http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-22532010000200002;.

[6] Ad announcing the Excelsior dry goods store now owned by Barnabus Haskell, Sonoma County Journal, December 25, 1857; Per Ann Nisson, from May 1856 or 1857 to April 1859, Abigail was employed at Miss Atkins Young Ladies Seminary in Benicia, teaching English, before beginning to teach in Petaluma; List of teachers, Sonoma County Journal, July 22, 1859; “The Closing of Our Public School,” Sonoma County Journal, December 28, 1860.

[7] Thompson, p. 56.

[8] Bonnie L. Ford, “Women, Marriage, and Divorce in California, 1849–1872,”  California Legal History, Vol. 16, 2021, pgs. 6-7, 10, 34.

[9] Halle Lieberman, “A Short History of the Condom,” JSTOR Daily, https://daily.jstor.org/short-history-of-the-condom/; “19th Century Artifacts: History of Birth Control,” Dittrick Medical History Center, Case Western Reserve University, https://artsci.case.edu/dittrick/online-exhibits/history-of-birth-control/contraception-in-america-1800-1900/19th-century-artifacts/

[10] Ford, p.11; Janet Farrell Brody, Contraception and Fertility Rates in Nineteenth Century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), pgs. ix-x, 2-3.

[11] Faye E. Duden, “Women’s Rights, Abolitionism, and Reform in Antebellum and Gilded Age America,” Oxford Research Encyclopedias, oxforedre.com. https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-20

[12] George M. Fredrickson, “The Coming of the Lord: The Northern Protestant Clergy and the Civil War Crisis,” in Miller, Randall M.; Stout, Harry S.; Wilson, Charles Reagan, eds. (1998). Religion and the American Civil War. Oxford University Press. pp. 110–30; Nancy Cott, “Young Women in the Second Great Awakening in New England,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 3 (1), 1975, pp. 15-16;Mary Ryan, “A Woman’s Awakening: Evangelical Religion and the Families of Utica, New York, 1800 to 1840,”American Quarterly, Vol. 30 (5), 1978, p. 619.

[13] Nisson; Benjamin Franklin Fuller, History of Texas Baptists (Louisville, KY: Baptist Book Company, 1900), p. 109.

[14] Emanuel Swedenborg, The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Marriage Love, 1768 (Rotch Edition. New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1907), in The Divine Revelation of the New Jerusalem (2012), n. 308; Olle Hjern, “The Influence of Emanuel Swedenborg in Scandinavia,” in Scribe of Heaven, edited by Jonathan S. Rose, Stuart Shotwell, and Mary Lou Bertucci (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2005), 157; “Swedenborg’s Cultural Influence,” Swedenborg Foundation, Swedenborg.com. https://swedenborg.com/emanuel-swedenborg/influence/

[15] Richard Lines, “Swedenborg and Spiritualism,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 69, 2005, 113–119; Richard Lines, Things Heard and Seen, the Newsletter of the Swedenborg Society, London, No. 1, (Spring 2000); “Swedenborg’s Cultural Influence,” Swedenborg Foundation, Swedenborg.com. https://swedenborg.com/emanuel-swedenborg/influence/

[16] “Swedenborg’s Cultural Influence,” Swedenborg Foundation, Swedenborg.com. https://swedenborg.com/emanuel-swedenborg/influence/

[17] Karen Abbott, “The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism,” Smithsonian magazine, October 30, 2012; Braude, p. 2; Daniel Bowlin, “The American Phantasmagoria: The Rise of Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century America,” Masters Thesis, Eastern Michigan University, 2019.

https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2369&context=theses

[18] Bowlin; “Swedenborg’s Cultural Influence,” Swedenborg Foundation, Swedenborg.com. https://swedenborg.com/emanuel-swedenborg/influence/

[19] Nisson.

[20] Barnabus led the local Sons of Temperance, and Abigail their ladies auxiliary (Ad, Petaluma Argus, January 14, 1862; “Card of Thanks,” Sonoma County Journal, July 8, 1859); Abigail also served as Worthy Chief Templar of the local Independent Organization of the Good Templars (IOGT), and as a board member of the local California Youth Association 1861 (Ad for IOGT, “Youth’s Association,” Petaluma Argus, November 12, 1861).

[21] Barnabus’ attendance at the annual conventions is documented from 1851 to 1871 in the Journal of the 35th-36th General Conventions of the New Church in the U.S, Journal of the 37th-46th General Conventions of the New Church in the U.S.

[22] “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, November 14, 1883; “State Convention of Spiritualists,” Petaluma Argus, June 7, 1866; “Death of Col. C.P. Hatch, Petaluma Courier, March 19, 1893; “Mrs. Lucretia Hatch,” Petaluma Courier, March 14, 1901; “Noted Spiritualist Dies,” San Francisco Call, March 5, 1901.

[23] Abbott.

[24] Braude, pgs. 2, 195.

[25] Nisson.

[26] “Woman Suffrage,” Petaluma Argus, January 8, 1870; “Woman, State Convention of Female Suffragists,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 28, 1870; “Woman Suffrage, Third Day of the State Convention,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 1870;

[27] Nisson.

[28] The Suffrage Question,” Sacramento Bee, March 19, 1870; Theodore Henry Hittell, History of California, Volume 4 (San Francisco: N.J. Stone & Co., 1898), p. 435.

[29] Hittell, p. 435; “The Suffrage Question,” Sacramento Bee, March 19, 1870.

[30] Nisson; “They Have Done It,” Sacramento Bee, October 4, 1870.

[31] “Sacramento Correspondence,” San Francisco Examiner, March 23, 1870; “Woman Suffrage Carries by About 4,000,” San Francisco Call, October 12, 1911.

[32] “What to Know About the Comstock Act,” New York Times, May 16, 2023; “The History of Abortion Access in the U.S.,” Penn Today, University of Pennsylvania. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-profs-weigh-history-abortion-access-us

[33] Petaluma Courier, September 13, 1877.

[34] Nisson; “Women’s Christian Union,” Petaluma Courier, November 12, 1879; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, January 16, 1884.

[35] “Polly Larkin’s Pot-pourri,” Petaluma Courier, January 16, 1884.

[36] “In Memoriam,” Petaluma Argus, January 26, 1884.

Julia Moriarty Casey

Julia Moriarty Casey, ca. 1900 (Sheehy family collection)

Born in County Kerry, Ireland, Julia was only 14 when she boarded a ship in 1866 called The City of Dublin bound for New York City accompanied by her Aunt Mary Moriarty, who had taken her in after she lost her mother at age 10. Also along on the journey were Mary’s three daughters, all under 18.

The women comprised part of the second wave of Irish emigration, the first wave having peaked during the 1850s in the wake of the Great Famine that devasted Ireland following the potato crop failure in 1845. Unlike the first wave, the second wave was predominately made up of single females, the majority of them under the age of 25.

Irish immigrants approach New York aboard ship in 1893 (photo Museum of the City of New York)

From New York City, the Moriarty women sailed via the Isthmus of Panama for San Francisco, where Julia was briefly reunited with her father, who had left Ireland for America soon after his wife’s death.

Like more than three quarters of Irish female immigrants, Julia found ready employment for five years as a domestic for a liquor merchant and his family in San Francisco. It was grueling employment that most working-class American girls avoided, as domestic service bore a social stigma, preferring jobs as shop girls, mill hands, and seamstresses.

Illustration of a St. Patrick’s Day dance (State Library of New South Wales)

While attending a St. Patrick’s Day dance, 19-year old Julia met a 30-year old Irish bachelor from Petaluma’s Lakeville area named John Casey. Casey had emigrated to America from County Kerry in 1863 with an older brother, Jeremiah, and two sisters, Mary and Catherine. Jeremiah and John established a 120-acre wheat farm on the northern end of Tolay Lake. Mary married a neighboring farmer named George Eades, and Catherine another neighboring farmer named John Gregory.

Site of the Casey Ranch in Lakeville (photo Scott Hess)

After their marriage, John and Julia leased a 160-acre ranch in Lakeville from J.B. Lewis for raising dairy cows. Julia gave birth to seven children, who all attended St. Vincent’s Academy on Howard Street. Soon after the birth of her sixth child in 1887, John Casey died unexpectedly from a bad case of the measles.

With the help of her sons, Julia operated the dairy ranch until 1898, when she moved into Petaluma, purchasing a house at 322 Bassett Street and adjacent empty lot. On the lot she built a two story house at 326 Bassett Street, renting it out to boarders for income before eventually selling it to fellow Irish immigrants Charles and Hannah Sheehy. Sheehy established a painting business on Main Street in 1973. Julia’s youngest daughter Mary married the Sheehy’s oldest son Charles, Jr.

326 and 322 Bassett Street, both built by Julia Casey (Sheehy family collection)

Julia was very involved with her parish at St. Vincent’s Catholic Church, and a founding member and longtime officer of Catholic Ladies Aid Society, established in 1891. In 1922, she replaced her house at 322 Bassett Street with a new modern home built by local contractor Stewart Scott. By that time, three other houses she had purchased on the block were occupied by members of her extended family.

Of Julia’s seven children, none of her fiv e sons married, only her two daughters. Catherine (1874-1925) married John Bennett, a prominent Molino nurseryman during Sebastopol’s apple boom; Jeremiah Casey (1875-1893) died at 19 from lung disease; John (Jack) Casey (1877-1951) was a teamster for the Golden Eagle Mill; William (1878-1968) was general manager of A. Kahn Grocery and grain distribution; James (1886-1928) operated meat markets, including King’s Corner Grocery on Bodega Avenue; George (1881-1972) was ranch manager for Joe Redding in Rancho Nicasio and Shellville; Mary (1887-1969) married Charles Sheehy, Jr., who operated Sheehy Brothers Painting at 128 Kentucky Street until his unexpected death in 1929. Mary supported her two children working for Newburg department store, Tomasini’s Hardware, and for ten years in the office of the Petaluma Creamery.

Julia Casey with granddaughter Betty Sheehy, 1922 (Sheehy family collection)

Julia died at her home surrounded by family members in 1934 at the age of 82. Through hard work, persistence, community engagement, and family devotion, she overcame poverty and adversity to reign as the matriarch of a thriving Irish clan in Petaluma.

******

Julia Moriarty Casey was the great-grandmother of the author.

Petaluma’s Deadly Steamboat Race

The steamboat James M. Donahue bound for the Petaluma Creek , ca. 1878 (Sonoma County Library)

On April 15, 1854, Tom Camron boarded the steamer Secretary in San Francisco to return home to Petaluma. He had come to the city to explore investing in the refurbished Secretary, which had begun plying its way to Petaluma just three weeks before.[1]

For “forty-niners” like Camron, the Gold Rush might have ended, but gold fever still ran high. With bays and rivers serving as early California’s main highways, steamboats were the new investment frenzy. Camron wanted in. So did many others.

Competition on the waters was so fierce that passenger fares and freight rates had dropped to unprofitable levels. Operators complained their only profits came from the liquor dispensed in the steamers’ saloons. On the wharves, ticket promoters tussled in shouting matches and fisticuffs, proclaiming to prospective passengers the superiority of their boats .[2]

Steamer Amelia at San Francisco wharf, 1860 (photo Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives)

The rivalries didn’t end there. Daredevil crews, hell-bent on proving their steamers the best, engaged in spontaneous races on the waterways, while on their decks, excited passengers made their bets on the match.[3]

Towns with navigable waterways like Petaluma flourished. Shortly after the town’s founding in 1852, the steamer Red Jacket began making trips three times a week to and from San Francisco on the tidal slough then known as the Petaluma Creek. By 1854, Petaluma had developed into a bustling agricultural river port of 400 residents with steamers and schooners navigating the creek’s 19 narrow, winding miles daily.[4]

That caught the attention of speculators, including Vulcan Iron Works, a San Francisco manufacturer of steam engines and boilers, who decided to get in the game by refurbishing an old tub called the Gabriel Winter.[5]

Vulcan Iron Works, 137 First St, San Francisco, ca. 1870 (photo California Historical Society)

Like many of California’s early steamboats, the Gabriel Winter was originally dismantled on the East Coast during the Gold Rush and shipped around the Horn to San Francisco, where it was reassembled and put into service on the Feather River between Sacramento and Marysville.[6]

The biggest danger facing steamboats was boiler explosion. If boilers were not carefully watched and maintained, pressure could build up in the boiler and cause a spectacular and deadly explosion. Racing only increased that danger. On its maiden run, the Gabriel Winter was challenged to a race by the steamer Fawn, whose boiler blew up during the race, killing a number of passengers on board.[7]

To purchase and overhaul the Gabriel Winter, Vulcan Iron Works raised $20,000 in capital ($785,000 in today’s currency). They spruced the boat up with a new coat of paint, a new boiler, and an engine scavenged from the remains of a recently exploded steamer. Rebranding it the Secretary, they dispatched it on runs up the Petaluma Creek.[8]

It is unknown what drew 41-year-old Camron to the Secretary as a potential investor. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he spent his younger years in Illinois, where he befriended a young Abe Lincoln, who boarded for a time with the Camron family. (Lincoln asked for the hand of one of Camron’s 11 sisters in marriage, but was rejected because he was too poor.) The family then moved to Iowa, where Camron and his father, the Rev. John Camron, operated a general store.[9]

Rev. John Miller Camron (photo public domain)

In 1849, members of the extended Camron family set out on a wagon train for California. Camron and his father spent the winter working the gold mines before settling in Sonoma County. His father purchased a farm near Sebastopol, where he also started the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Camron and his wife Cynthia settled with their four children on a farm in Two Rock along Spring Hill Road, near those of his sisters Nancy and Mary Jane and their respective husbands Silas Martin and Charles Purvine.[10]

Mary Jane Camron Purvine (public domain)
Charles Purvine (public domain)
Two Rock farms of Camron, Purvine, and Martin families highlighted in red (Thos. Thompson & Co., 1877, Sonoma County Library)

On the day Camron boarded the Secretary, he was returning home to a new daughter his wife had given birth to nine days before.[11] The Secretary disembarked that morning with 65 passengers aboard. Two hours into the five-hour cruise, another steamer, the Nevada, drew up beside them as they approached San Pablo Bay.[12]

The Nevada was making its second trip to Petaluma. A sternwheeler, it was narrower and more maneuverable than the Secretary, a sidewheeler, in the winding, shallow waters of the Petaluma Creek, which prior to any dredging had an average depth of only six feet at high tide.[13] In a race, the Secretary’s only chance of beating the Nevada to Petaluma was in reaching the creek first.

1860 Coast Survey Map of the Petaluma Creek (public domain)

As the Nevada began to overtake the Secretary, the captain in the pilot house shouted through a speaking tube down to the engineer, “Let her go!”

Instead, the engineer ordered the fireman to increase the steam pressure. “Shove her up, damn it,” he yelled, “shove her up!” He then lashed an oar over the lever of the safety valve to keep it from tripping.[14]

Realizing they were engaged in a precarious race, Camron reportedly went to the engine room to get the engineer to pull back.[15] He failed. As the two boats approached the Petaluma Creek entrance at Black Point, the Secretary began shaking and jerking. Within minutes the boiler exploded, ripping the boat apart. Bodies were blown into the air, heads flying in one direction and limbs and trunks in another. Sixteen passengers were killed, and 31 badly scaled.[16]

Illustration of the boiler on the steamboat Lucy Walker exploding, 1856 (public domain)

The tragedy of the Secretary led to calls for stronger steamboat regulations. Instead, market forces prevailed. A few weeks before the explosion, a group of the major steamboat operators formed a monopoly called the California Steam Navigation Company in an effort to end the profitless chaos on the waterways.[17]

They quickly cracked down on steamboat racing by eliminating independent operators, either through buyouts or other means. That included the Nevada, which they allegedly wrecked by paying its captain to run her aground.[18] Denounced as “a monster steamboat company conceived in sin and born in iniquity,” the group then imposed considerably higher rates and fares throughout California.[19]

Charles Minturn, 1870 (Sonoma County Library)
Minturn standing on San Francisco wharf , 1852(Sonoma County Library)

Charles Minturn, a founding partner of the group, operated the monopoly on the Petaluma Creek, charging exorbitant fees for transportation on dilapidated and dangerous vessels. His monopoly ended in 1870, after the San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad laid down its tracks in Sonoma County, opening a new port on the Petaluma Creek below Lakeville called Donahue. Likewise, the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 broke the group’s broader monopoly in California.[20]

With the shift to rail transportation, Petaluma soon found itself replaced by Santa Rosa as the county’s main agricultural shipping hub. Steamboats continued to ply the Petaluma Creek, but the city’s population remained stagnate until the local invention of an efficient incubator set off an egg boom in the early 1900s.[21]

Some days after the explosion of the Secretary, Tom Camron’s body was found on the beach and buried in Petaluma.[22] His wife Cynthia remarried, but continued to live with her children on the farm in Two Rock, where along with the Purvine and Martin families, they gave rise to generations of local Camron descendants to come.[23]

Headstone of Thomas P. Camron, Cypress Hill Cemetery (photo John Sheehy)

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier April 12, 2024.

******

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Trial Trip of an Iron Steamer,” Sacramento Union, July 24, 1851; “Explosion of the Steamboat Secretary,” Daily Alta California, April 16, 1854; Alice Purvine Murphy, The Rev. John M. Camron and Descendants 1790-1962 (A.P. Murphy,1962), FamilySearch.org; Casey Gauntt, “Thomas P. Camron,” Write Me Something Beautiful.com, January 19, 2022. https://www.writemesomethingbeautiful.com/2022/01/19/thomas-p-camron/

[2] Wilbur Hoffman, “When Steamers Sailed the Feather,” Sutter County Historical Society News Bulletin, Vol. XVIII, April 1979; Jerry McMullen, Paddle Wheel Days in California (Stanford University Press, 1944), pp. 17-19.

[3] Hoffman.

[4] Robert A. Thompson, Historical And Descriptive Sketch Of Sonoma County, California (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877), pgs. 18, 24, 55, 56; Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), pp. 69-70.

[5] “Explosion of the Steamboat Secretary,” Daily Alta California, April 16, 1854.

[6] “Trial Trip of an Iron Steamer,” Sacramento Union, July 24, 1851.

[7] “Steamboat Racing and Steamboat Explosion,” Sacramento Union, August 18, 1851; “Explosion of the Steamboat Secretary,” Daily Alta California, April 16, 1854; Hubert Howe Bancroft, Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth (San Francisco: The History Company, 1891), pp. 133-134.

[8] “Explosion of the Steamboat Secretary,” Daily Alta California, April 16, 1854.

[9] Gauntt.

[10] “Obituary,” Sonoma Democrat, March 16, 1878; Helen Purvine Kolb, One Hundred Years on the Ranch: A Study of the Purvine and Martin Family Efforts to Establish Part of the Community of Two Rock, 1969, Sonoma County Library; Gauntt.

[11] Gauntt.

[12] “Explosion of the Steamboat Secretary,” Daily Alta California, April 16, 1854.

[13] “Old Steamboat Days,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955.

[14] “Explosion of the Secretary,” Daily Alta California, April 17, 1854.

[15] Gauntt.

[16] MacMullen, p. 26; “Explosion of the Steamboat Secretary,” Daily Alta California, April 16, 1854; “The Grand Jury and the Steamer Secretary; Letter To The Public,” Daily Alta California, June 5, 1854.

[17]  Hoffman.

[18] MacMullen, pgs. 27, 61.

[19] Hoffman; MacMullen, p. 27; Bancroft, p. 137.

[20] Heig, pp. 73-75; Hoffman; Bancroft, pgs. 138, 142.

[21] “Completion of the Railroad,” Petaluma Argus, December 31, 1870; Gaye LeBaron, Dee Blackman, Joann Mitchell, Harvey Hansen, Santa Rosa: A Nineteenth Century Town (Historia, Ltd, 1985), pp. 42-43, 102; “City of Petaluma, Sonoma County,” Bay Area Census, http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/Petaluma.htm.

[22] Gauntt.

[23] Kolb.

Chasing the Hobble Skirt Vote

FASHION MEETS POLITICS IN THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

Hobble skirt race, 1912 (photo The Missouri History Museum)

On October 21, 1910, the musical comedy “The White Hen” opened at Petaluma’s Hill Opera House, setting off a new fashion craze in town. The fashion foray was led by the traveling theater company’s showgirls, who took the stage adorned in feathered plumes and the latest couture from Paris, an ankle-length skirt so narrow at the hem the women could only “hobble” around in short, pigeon-like steps.[1]  

“The hobble skirt,” the Petaluma Argus announced, “has invaded Petaluma with a vengeance.”[2]

When two women wearing the skirts attempted to board a train departing the Petaluma depot, they were unable to mount the steps. Clinging onto the handrail, they found themselves dragged down the platform as the train pulled out of the station.[3]

Hobble skirt illustrations, 1910s (public domain)

“Of course, women must wear what is ‘worn’ even at the risk of death,” observed the Petaluma Courier. “Shall railroad corporations now dictate fashions for women?”[4]

No, but the government appeared ready to. As reports of similar incidents surfaced, a California state legislator proposed subjecting hobble skirts to the same scale used by the Fish and Game Department to regulate fishing. Those with a bottom circumference of less than 35½ inches would be banned from the streets.[5]

A dentist located on the second floor of a building recommended installing new stairs with a rise of only five inches to accommodate women wearing hobble skirts.[6]

The hobble skirt, 1910 (photo public domain)

Petaluma’s reigning fashionista, Charles Kelly, aka “Kelly the Tailor,” pointed out that physical danger wasn’t the only thing preventing some women from climbing stairs in hobble skirts. There was also having to hike up their skirts and scandalously expose their ankles in doing so. Kelly noted that the excuse “Oh, I’ve got nothing to wear,” was becoming commonplace among women choosing instead to stay home.[7]

Woman in hobble skirt boarding New York City streetcar, 1910 (public domain)

The hobble skirt craze coincided with suffragist efforts to place a proposition on the California ballot giving women the right to vote. Some men cited the skirt as one of the reasons they were opposed to the proposition. “So long as a woman buttons her clothes up the back,” declared an Episcopal minister, “she certainly has not sense enough to vote.”[8]

With tongue-in-cheek, the editor of the Courier chided, “Any unregenerate man who has ever been called upon to button a woman’s dress with the usual hooks and eyes, and who is not permitted to swear, will certainly agree.”[9]

A year after the “White Hen” played Petaluma, the suffrage proposition passed by a narrow margin, making California the sixth state in the county in which women could vote. Male politicians chasing the votes of women found themselves baffled by the demographic labeled the “hobble skirt vote.”[10]

Transition from Victorian S-curve style to Poiret’s corset-free Empire line(photo public domain)

By 1911, women were increasingly entering the workforce, demanding more freedom, more rights, and more comfortable fashions. Gone were the suffocating corsets, bulky crinoline skirts, and voluminous gigot sleeves of the Victorian era. The high-waisted Empire line was back, only now with dresses that skimmed the body instead of billowing petticoats.[11]

Why then, some men wondered, had such a seemingly restrictive, masochistic style of wear suddenly come into vogue?

Ad for the hobble skirt, 1910 (photo public domain)

Paul Poiret, the Paris designer credited with creating the hobble skirt, reportedly took his inspiration from the famous pioneer aviator Wilbur Wright, of the Wright brothers.

French fashion designer, Paul Poiret, 1908 (photo public domain)

While on a visit in France, Wright took popular American actress named Edith Berg up for a joyride in his biplane. To prevent Berg’s large skirt from ballooning over her head or getting caught in the plane’s engines, Wright tied a rope around her skirt at the ankles. The flight lasted a mere two minutes, but distinguished Berg as the first American woman to fly.[12]   

Edith Berg in roped skirt with Wilbur Wright on historic 1908 flight (photo public domain)

Poiret found himself captivated by the contradictory image of Berg flying freely while being bound up. It was a puzzling fascination for a man previously dubbed “The King of Fashion” for his streamlined, corset-free dresses that liberated women from the Victorian confines of the S-curve silhouette. “It was,” he confessed in his autobiography, “in the name of Liberty that I proclaimed the fall of the corset and the adoption of the brassiere . . . . Yes, I freed the bust, but I shackled the legs.”[13]

Those fashion historians who view clothing styles as reflections of the zeitgeist, point out that while women may have been on the verge of emancipation, the tradition of being sheltered and in need of protection in a male-dominated society still lingered. Hence the hobble skirt. Others believe the skirt’s popularity was expressive of newly emancipated women confidently experimenting with fashion, no longer held to the suffocating standards of Victorian modesty.[14]

Actress Fannie Brice in hobble skirt, 1910 (public domain)

Whatever the skirt’s social or political implications, Poiret’s shackled design didn’t stop women from adopting subtle slits, hidden pleats, and buttons at the skirt’s hem for greater range of motion.[15]

Among those most perplexed by the new fashion was the Anti-Saloon League. A powerful group of conservative men, the League, along with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, were hellbent on banning the manufacturing and sale of alcohol. They viewed California’s newly enfranchised women as critical swing voters, calling upon their innate morality to cleanse the nation of its sins and provide “home protection” against the tyranny of drinking men.[16]

National officers of the Anti-Saloon League (photo Library of Congress)

Thanks to their influence, the rural districts west of Petaluma voted to go “dry” in 1912, banning the sale and possession of alcohol at country roadhouses. Petaluma, meanwhile, remained stubbornly “wet.”[17]

In 1914, the Anti-Saloon League succeeded in getting a prohibition proposition on the state ballot. To mobilize women voters, they dispatched a temperance campaigner to Petaluma. She made the hobble skirt into a wedge issue, denouncing it as indecent and vulgar, and proposing police stop women from wearing it on the streets. “The morality of men,” she declared, “cannot be improved as long as women wear such suggestive clothes.”[18]

The prohibition proposition was soundly defeated in 1914, and again when reintroduced in 1916, indicating California women were not single-issue voters. Some of that had to do with the underlying motives of the Anti-Saloon League and the WCTU.

Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Sonoma County, 1910s (photo Sonoma County Library)

For all their talk of saving people from the saloons’ cauldrons of sin and debauchery, their deeper concern was who the saloons catered to—European immigrants flooding into the country, threatening to change the America they knew.[19]

Petaluma remained stubbornly anti-prohibition, due in part to the city’s large number of first- and second-generation Irish, German, Danish, Italian, Portuguese, and Swiss citizens, who viewed their ethnic taverns as community hubs in keeping their traditions alive.[20]

America’s entry into World War One, followed by the terrifying influenza epidemic of 1918, put an end to idle indulgences like the hobble skirt. In 1919, the Anti-Saloon League succeeded in imposing a nationwide Prohibition. The following year, women secured the vote nationally.[21]

The paradoxical mix of restriction and liberation gave birth to unexpected new freedoms for women. Taking advantage of the underground culture and social chaos created by Prohibition, women began to indulge in the forbidden pleasure of drinking in speakeasies, which, unlike traditional American saloons, were coed, and out of the public eye.

Ladies night out in Speakeasy, 1920s (photo public domain)

Their new sense of independence was reflected in the loose flapper dresses of the Roaring Twenties, which, in a nod to the hobble skirt’s focus on women’s legs, were distinguished by rising hemlines.[22]

Flapper dress styles, 1920s (photo public domain)

The hobble skirt surfaced again in the 1950s as the inspiration for French designer Christian Dior’s slim-fitting pencil skirt, which quickly became a popular form of office wear. Like the hobble skirt, it required a very particular way of walking, famously epitomized by Marilyn Monroe’s wiggle along a train platform in the film Some Like It Hot.[23]

Marilyn Monroe wearing pencil skirt in Some Like it Hot (photo public domain)

A version of this story ran in the Petaluma Argus-Courier.

*****

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Max Dill Has ‘Come Back,’” Petaluma Argus, October 22, 1910.

[2] “Rare Comedy, Pretty Girls,” Petaluma Courier, October 22, 1910; “Local Notes,” Petaluma Argus, October 22, 1910.

[3] “A Dangerous Practice,” Petaluma Courier, February 20, 1911.

[4] “Shall a Railroad Dictate Women’s Fashions,” Petaluma Courier, September 28, 1911.

[5] “A Law to Regulate Hobble Skirts,” Petaluma Courier, January 11, 1911.

[6] “‘Hobble Stairway,’” Petaluma Argus, April 15, 1925.

[7] “Accident Cause by Hobble Skirt,” Petaluma Courier, January 16, 1911

[8] “The Temerity of Cyrus,” Petaluma Courier, May 10, 1911.

[9] “The Temerity of Cyrus,” Petaluma Courier, May 10, 1911.

[10] “Wise Talks by the Office Boy,” Petaluma Argus, November 14, 1911.

[11] Ann Beth Presley, “Fifty Years of Change: Societal Attitudes and Women’s Fashions, 1900-1950,” The Historian, Winter 1998, Vol. 60, No. 2, pp. 307-324.

[12] “Snapshot: A Hobble Skirt Race, a Century Ago,” St. Louis Magazine, August 25, 2017.

[13] Presley, p. 312; Harold Koda, Andrew Bolton, “Paul Poiret (1879–1944),”Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/poir/hd_poir.htm

[14] Presley, p. 312; Cecile Paul, “Before the Pencil Skirt there was the Hobble Skirt,” Messynessychic.com.

[15] Daniel Milford-Cottam, Edwardian Fashion (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014). P. 49.

[16] Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (NY: Scribner, 2011), pp. 65-66.

[17] “’Drys’ Win by Big Majority in Supervisor Green’s District,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 13, 1912.

[18]“Prohibition, Slavery and Woman’s Dress,” Petaluma Courier, May 15, 1914.

[19] “Vote in Doubt on Red Light Abatement,” San Francisco Examiner, November 6, 1914; “Petaluma Complete Returns,” Petaluma Argus, November 8, 1916; “110,000 and 40,000 Estimate on Nos. 1 and 2,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 10, 1916; Pietro Pinna, “Fresh Water Triumphs: The Italian American Wine Industry’s Struggle Against Prohibition in California,” Italian American Review, Vol. 8, Issue 8, Winter 2018, pp. 23-46; Okrent, pp. 85-87.

[20] Pietro Pinna, “Fresh Water Triumphs”: The Italian American Wine Industry’s Struggle Against Prohibition in California,” Italian America Review, 81., Winter 2018, pp. 23-25; ’Drys’ Win by Big Majority in Supervisor Green’s District,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 13, 1912; “Amendments in Petaluma,” Petaluma Courier, November 6, 1914.

[21] Cecile Paul.

[22] Cecile Paul.

[23] Rosalind Jana, “Everything to Know About the History of the Pencil Skirt,” Vogue, June 27, 2023.

Dicky Jessup: White Man in a Black Man’s World

Illustration of Richard P. “Dicky” Jessup, 1892 (San Francisco Examiner)

Growing up in Tomales, Henry Kowalsky dreamed of a life grander than working in his father’s general store. For years, he burned the midnight oil studying the law, until finally, in 1883 at the age of 24, he passed the California bar. With the help of his father, he opened a legal office in San Francisco, furnishing it in Victorian gilt and plush more suggestive of a parlor than a place of business.[1]

Kowalsky’s flamboyant performances—pulling out a pistol to defend himself from opposing counsel, falling asleep during trial—made good tabloid fodder, as did his life outside the courtroom, where he cast himself as a bon vivant, raconteur, and connoisseur of the arts, nonchalantly racking up debts residing at the luxurious Baldwin Hotel on Market Street.[2]

Baldwin Hotel, Market and Powell streets, 1885 (photo Marilyn Blaisdell Collection)

In 1887, he was appointed advocate-general of the California National Guard with the honorary title of colonel. That same year, the Colonel—as he insisted on being called—took on the case of an illegitimate son of a wealthy bachelor challenging his father’s will. As probate cases go, it was fairly commonplace, except for one twist: the father, Gershom Jessup, had his white son raised by a Black family in Petaluma.[3]

The case became one of the most sensationalistic of San Francisco’s Gilded Age, casting a spotlight on an issue bedeviling the country since Reconstruction: race.

Colonel Henry Kowalsky, 1889 (illustration public domain)

Jessup was manager of a stage line company in Marysville in 1865 when he became romantically involved with an attractive 18-year-old named Josie Landis. She became pregnant with his child. That same year, Jessup inherited a small fortune from his deceased brother Richard, co-founder of the prosperous California Steam Navigation Company.[4]

Moving to San Francisco, Jessup arranged for Josie to spend the final stage of her pregnancy at the North Beach home of Mrs. Abigail Nugent. A Black widow from Philadelphia, Nugent served as a midwife and nurse to the city’s elite. Two months after giving birth to a boy, Josie returned to Marysville. Keeping her child a secret, she quickly married a local dentist.[5]

Jessup named the boy Richard, or “Dicky,” after his recently deceased brother. He paid Nugent to raise him, and to have him baptized by the bishop of San Francisco’s Bethel African Methodist Church, T.M.D. Ward, where Nugent was a prominent member.[6] It was at the church that Nugent’s 18-year-old daughter Maggie met 42-year-old George Miller, a recently widowed barber from Petaluma.

Bethel A.M.E. Church, Powell & Jackson strets, San Francisco, 1870s (public domain)

Born and educated a free man in New Jersey, Miller came to San Francisco in 1850 to open a barbershop. In 1855, he moved his business and young family to Petaluma. He continued to spend a good deal of time in San Francisco, where he was actively engaged with the A.M.E. Church, the Black Freemasons, and the California Colored Convention, a group of businessmen, clergy, and journalists working to rescind the state’s racial restriction laws.[7]

Illustration of a Colored Convention held in 1876 (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper)

Miller’s exclusive white clientele provided him with economic and social advantages that he put to use in Petaluma opening a state-supported “colored school” and the North Bay’s first A.M.E. Church. In 1868, two years after his wife’s death, Miller married Maggie Nugent, bringing her to town to live with him and his four children. Within a year, the couple had a child of their own.[8]  

Margaret Nugent Miller, 1886 (photo courtesy Sharon McGriff-Payne)

Soon afterward, Maggie’s mother brought Dicky, a sickly child, to reside with the Millers. She hoped the move would improve his health. Jessup continued to provide financially support the boy, occasionally visiting him at the Miller home, as did Dicky’s mother on one occasion. When Dicky came of school age, the Millers enrolled him with their own children in Petaluma’s “colored school” under the name Richard Miller.[9]

1870 Brooklyn Colored School in Oakland, Mary J. Sanderson, teacher (photo public domain)

At the time, George Miller and the Colored Convention were engaged in a case before the state Supreme Court to desegregate California schools. Although the court ultimately upheld the state’s “separate but equal” education law, a major economic recession led most California cities with “colored schools” to desegregate by 1875 as a cost-saving measure.[10]

Petaluma was the exception, maintaining its “colored school” until the state abolished them in 1880. As Dicky’s presence at the school violated Petaluma’s segregation adherence, he was forced to transfer to a white elementary school, where students bullied him so badly the Millers withdrew him for homeschooling.[11]

Washington College, Alameda County, 1878 (illustration David Rumsey’s Historical Map Collection)

In 1876, Jessup instructed Maggie—George Miller having unexpectedly died in 1873—to board 10-year-old Dicky in Washington College, a technical school in Alameda County under the name Richard Miller. He was afraid Josie’s family, having recently learned of the boy’s existence, would try to steal him away. Dicky lived with Maggie during school breaks.[12]

That same year, Maggie’s mother died, leaving her a sizable inheritance.[13] Her four stepchildren grown and gone, Maggie decided to move with her seven-year-old son Hoddie to Napa, where she eventually purchased a ranch, opened a restaurant, and married a Black barber named Ed Hatton.[14]

Ad for Maggie’s Arcade Restaurant (Napa Register, 1887).

In 1881, Dicky’s mother Josie died. Jessup had Maggie pull Dicky out of the Alameda technical school and send him to work on a friend’s ranch in San Diego, ending financial support for the boy. Within a year, Dicky returned to live with Maggie in Napa, working in a tannery and as a bootblack in her husband’s barbershop.[15]

Jessup died in 1886 at Harbin Springs in Lake County while seeking treatment for his rheumatism. In his will he named his brother and two sisters as sole beneficiaries of his estate. The estate was valued at $140,000, or $5 million in today’s currency.[16]

Maggie engaged Jerry Mahoney, a private detective, to determine if 20-year-old Dicky had a claim to the estate. Mahoney enlisted Colonel Kowalsky as legal counsel. Borrowing $20,000 ($600,000 in today’s currency) against a prospective settlement, Kowalsky filed a probate challenge and sent Mahoney scouring the state for witnesses to testify to Jessup’s fatherly relationship with Dicky.[17]

Senator Jeremiah H. Mahoney, 1896 (illustration public domain)

A media circus erupted around the trial, putting Dicky in the public spotlight. Mahoney took the young man under his wing, introducing him to the life of white luxury denied him by his father. To pay for his posh hotel, fancy meals, and tailored suits, Dicky borrowed against his prospective settlement at usury rates.[18]

In district court, Kowalsky was able to convince the judge that Jessup, through his actions and public acknowledgements, had legitimized Dicky as his offspring, entitling him to the entire estate. Jessup’s siblings filed an appeal with the state’s Supreme Court, who affirmed the lower court ruling. [19]  

Undeterred, the siblings filed a second appeal. A new presiding judge, Charles Fox, reversed the ruling. Although he cited insubstantial evidence, the main thrust of his decision was race.[20]  

California Supreme Court Justice Charles Fox (photo public domain)

Fox believed Jessup’s actions toward Dicky were not those of a loving father, but a punitive one. Why else would he have the boy brought up by a Black family, “considered inferior and by most white people as degrading,” having him take the family’s surname, attend a “colored school,” and work in a Black barber shop? Fox also speculated that Jessup’s cut off of funding for Dicky the same year the boy’s mother died, indicated he had agreed to provide support only during her lifetime, most likely out of fear she would expose their affair if he didn’t.[21]

Following the decision, Kowalsky incited a campaign among Black political leaders to oppose Fox’s reelection to the bench. It quickly escalated into death threats against the judge.[22] After Kowalsky filed for a new trial in district court, he discovered his key witness, Maggie Nugent Miller Hatton, refused to testify.

Maggie’s relationship with Dicky had apparently deteriorated during his time under Mahoney’s tutelage. To convince her to retestify, Kowalsky secured a $5,000 promissory note for her against the prospective settlement.[23]

The retrial once again ended in Kowalsky’s favor. Jessup’s siblings filed another appeal, but this time the two sides negotiated a settlement, granting one-third of the estate to the siblings. Dicky walked away with $90,000, or $3 million in today’s currency.[24]

Colonel Henry Kowalsky, 1899 (photo public domain)

Of that amount, Kowalsky took $40,000 for his fee. Another $20,000 went to paying off the loan he secured at the beginning of the trial. Mahoney, Kowalsky’s legal associate, and the court-appointed administrator of Jessup’s estate got $15,000. Dicky’s loan sharks got $10,000. That left Dicky with $5,000, which he legally owed to Maggie. She never received a penny.[25]

After the trial, Dicky moved to Sacramento to live with Mahoney, who had used his newfound fame to get elected to the state senate. Mahoney got him a job working as a senate page for $3 a day. After the senator’s death in 1897, Dicky vanished from sight.[26]

Maggie and her family moved to Oakland. She died there in 1928. Kowalsky went on to land a number of high-profile cases, including defending Belgium’s King Leopold II against charges of genocide in the Congo. He died in 1914, still living the high life at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel.[27]

******

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 2, 2024

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Col. Kowalsky was Reared at Tomales,” Petaluma Courier, December 9, 1914; “Aneurysm Cause of Kowalsky’s Sleeping Sickness,” Sacramento Bee, November 30, 1914.

[2] “Henry Kowalsky Called by Death,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 29, 1914.

[3] “Colonel Kowalsky is Dead,” San Francisco Bulletin, November 28, 1914.

[4] “Estate of Gershom P. Jessup, Deceased,” Decided March 29, 1891, by California Superior Court, Reports of Decisions in Probate, Volume 2 (San Francisco Probate Department, James Vincent Coffey, Bancroft-Whitney, 1909), pp. 480-481; “First Boatbuilder on the Pacific Coast,” San Francisco Call and Port, March 9, 1902.

[5] Reports of Decisions in Probate, Volume 2, p. 481. “The Lost Heir,” San Francisco Examiner, September 8, 1887.

[6] Reports of Decisions in Probate, Volume 2, pp. 482-483; “Young Jessup Wins,” Napa Register Weekly, July 5, 1889; “Jessup Contest,” Napa Register Weekly, September 19, 1890.

[7] John Sheehy, “Black Sonoma County’s Birth,” PetalumaHistorian.com, https://petalumahistorian.com/black-sonoma-countys-political-birth/

[8] Sheehy, https://petalumahistorian.com/black-sonoma-countys-political-birth/

[9] Reports of Decisions in Probate, Volume 2, p. 482; “Jessup Contest,” Napa Register Weekly, September 19, 1890.

[10] Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing,1919) p. 180-182; Jo Ann Williamson, Lori Rhodes, Michael Dunson, “Chapter 7 A Selected History of Social Justice in Education,” Review of Research in Education, November 15, 2016, Vol. 31 (1), pp. 195–224; “1874 Ward V. Flood,” Blackpast.org, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/ward-v-flood-1874/.

[11] Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), 25; “Local Dots,” Petaluma Courier, July 21, 1880; “Jessup Contest,” Napa Register Weekly, September 19, 1890.

[12] Reports of Decisions in Probate, Volume 2, p. 484.

[13] “Died, The Elevator, October 25, 1873; Maggie inherited property valued at $8,000: “The Jessup Case,” Napa Register Weekly, September 19, 1890.

[14] “Dancing Party,” Napa Register Weekly, November 30, 1883; “Real Estate Transfers,” Napa Register Weekly, March 5, 1885; “Local Brevities,” Napa Register Weekly, April 1, 1886; “Local Brevities,” Napa Register Weekly, August 5, 1887; “Local Briefs,” Napa Valley Register, January 17, 1890; “Death of Edward Hatton,” Napa Register Weekly, May 11, 1897.

[15] Reports of Decisions in Probate, Volume 2, p. 485; “Gershom P. Jessup’s Estate,” Lawyers’ Reports Annotated, Book VI (The Lawyers’ Co-operative Publishing Company, 1890), p. 600.

[16] Reports of Decisions in Probate, Volume 2, p. 477; “Stripped of His Birthright,” San Francisco Examiner, April 9, 1893: The Jessup estate, initially valued at $93,000 at the time of Jessup’s death, rose in value to $140,000 by the time of the settlement in 1892.

[17] “Mahoney Did It,” San Francisco Call and Post, October 13, 1894.

[18] “Young Jessup’s Estate,” San Francisco Examiner, July 2, 1892; “Stripped of His Birthright,” San Francisco Examiner, April 9, 1893; “Mahoney Did It,” San Francisco Call and Post, October 13, 1894.

[19] Reports of Decisions in Probate, Volume 2, p. 476.

[20] Lawyers’ Reports Annotated, Book VI, pp. 594-601.

[21] Lawyers’ Reports Annotated, Book VI, pp. 600-601.

[22] “Offices Seeking Men,” San Francisco Examiner, August 6, 1890; Stockton Evening Mail, August 7, 1890; “The Fox Resolutions,” San Francisco Call and Post, August 7, 1890.

[23] “To Protect Her Claim,” San Francisco Examiner, September 8, 1894; Hatton’s promissory note was issued September 12, 1890, she testified September 19th.

[24] “Stripped of His Birthright,” San Francisco Examiner, April 9, 1893.

[25] In the Hotel Corridors,” Sacramento Bee, December 8, 1892; “Stripped of His Birthright,” San Francisco Examiner, April 9, 1893; “Made Certain of His Fees, San Francisco Examiner, May 15, 1893; “Young Jessup’s Note,” San Francisco Call and Post, September 8, 1894; “To Protect Her Claim,” San Francisco Examiner, September 8, 1894.

[26] “Stripped of His Birthright,” San Francisco Examiner, April 9, 1893; “Jessup is Penniless,” Pacific Bee, December 27, 1893; “State Senator Mahoney Dead,” Sacramento Bee, December 24, 1897; “List of Letters,” Sacramento Union, October 11, 1897: Jessup still in Sacramento.

[27] “Deaths,” San Francisco Examiner, December 28, 1928; “Aneurysm Cause of Kowalsky’s Sleeping Sickness,” Sacramento Bee, November 30, 1914.