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.
A snapshot history of 230-242 Petaluma Blvd. North
1895 photo of the Petaluma Incubator Company at 230-236 Petlauma Blvd North (photo Sonoma County Library)
Few sites are etched into Petaluma history deeper than the Petaluma Incubator Company, the engine behind the city’s reign as the World’s Egg Basket. Yet, thanks to urban renewal efforts in the 1960s, nothing remains of the building today other than a rock wall lining Brewster’s Beer Garden.
The incubator company had its genesis in 1877, when Isaac Dias, a young Jewish dentist from New Orleans invented an incubator capable of maintaining a steady temperature of 103 degrees, the same as a brooding hen’s body. By accelerating the hatching of newly laid eggs, the incubator freed the hen from her maternal nesting duties, allowing her to lay more.[1]
Dias patented his invention, and was joined in marketing it in 1882 by one of his patients, Lyman Byce, a 26-year-old medical student from Canada, who came to visit a sister in Petaluma, seeking the health benefits of the area’s Mediterranean sea breezes.[2]
Lyman Byce, circa 1890 (photo Sonoma County Library)
That same mild climate, along with the valley’s rich, alluvial soil, would set the stage for the chicken mania that followed.
In 1881, Byce—the Steve Jobs to Dias’ Steve Wozniak— joined Dias in forming the Petaluma Incubator Company, soon setting up their factory in a former armory near the Washington Street Bridge.[3]
After Dias’s mysterious death in an 1884 duck hunting accident, Byce employed his marketing talents in taking the Petaluma Incubator Company to new heights. Positioning himself as the “father of chickendome,” he wrote Dias out of the story.[4]
1890s photo of Petaluma Incubator Factory in the Hopper Building at 230-236 Main Street (photo Sonoma County Library)
In 1889, Byce moved the incubator factory to the Hopper Building at 230-236 Main Street, beside George P. McNear’s Oriental Mills & Feed Store. After a fire burned down McNear’s building in 1902, Byce purchased the lot at 238-242 Main, and constructed a modern new factory in its place.[5]
Aftermath of 1902 fire destroying the McNear Oriental Mills and scorching parts of the Petlauma Incubator Company (photo Sonoma County Library)New Petaluma Incubator Factory on former site of McNear’s Oriental Mills, 1912 (photo Sonoma County Library)
Overexpansion and distressed sales during World War I forced Byce to declare bankruptcy in 1919, and move to a smaller factory on East Washington Street. His former building was converted into a poultry packing plant by the Petaluma Poultry Company.[6]
1948 view of the Petaluma Milling Company, the white building on left (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
In 1938, the poultry company sold the building to Petaluma Milling Company, a feed and mill store. It operated until 1967, when the city, championing urban renewal, condemned both buildings that had once housed the Petaluma Incubator Company, 230-236 and 238-242, giving the owners the choice of either rehabilitating them or tearing them down. They buildings were demolished in 1968.[7]
2022 view of Brewster’s Beer Garden (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)
The lots remained vacant until 2016, when Brewster’s Beer Garden created an open air facility on their ground floor facing Water Street, leaving a hole in the street landscape of Petaluma Boulevard North, a reminder of good intentions gone bad.[8]
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Thea Lowry, Empty Shells (Manifold Press, Novato, CA, 2000), p. 33
[5] Ad, Petaluma Courier, August 25, 1888; “A Happy New Year,” Petaluma Argus, December 28, 1888; “Petaluma Industries,” Petaluma Courier, May 29, 1889; “A Midnight Blaze,” Petaluma Courier, June 11, 1902; “A Business Deal,” Petaluma Courier, August 29, 1902
[6] “Petition in Solvency,” Petaluma Argus, September 23, 1919; “Big Auction Sale Today,” Petaluma Argus, February 3, 1920; “Will Open a Monster Plant,” Petaluma Argus, March 25, 1920.
[7] “Milani Bldg. Bought by L. Hozz,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 20, 1938; “Petaluma Milling Company Closes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 2, 1967; “Council Orders Action,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 2, 1967; “City Budget,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 7, 1968.
[8] “Water Street Rising,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 5, 2016.
1901 photo of Robinson & Farrell Blacksmiths & Wagonmakers, 271 Petaluma Blvd. North (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
In Petaluma’s history of moving vehicles, 271 Petaluma Boulevard North is a local heritage site. Located between Martha and Prospect streets just north of Penry Park, people have been making, selling, and repairing wagons, buggies, and automobiles here since 1859, when Simon Conrad opened his blacksmith and carriage maker shop.
A native of Pennsylvania, Conrad not only gained a reputation as one of the finest carriage makers in the state, he also became a city leader, elected to the city’s Board of Trustees (city council), and serving as board president, or mayor. [1]
Upon his death in 1873, a former employee, John Loranger, took over the shop. Loranger’s buggies and blacksmithing won him top prizes at the Sonoma-Marin Fair. In 1879, he rented out to Isaac Dias a second story room in the shop, where he invented and patented a new egg incubator, partnering in 1882 with Lyman Byce to market it, kicking off Petaluma’s egg boom.[2]
After being elected to the city’s Board of Trustees in 1880, Loranger sold his shop to one of his blacksmiths, William F. Farrell and William Robinson. They secured an exclusive franchise to sell Studebaker buggies. Farrell bought out in 1901. Four years later, he replaced Simon Conrad’s original building with building that stands on the site today.[3]
1906 photo of Farrell Carriages, Buggies & Wagons, 271 Petaluma Blvd. North (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
After automobile sales came to Petaluma in 1903, Farrell expanded to selling and repairing them. Like his predecessors, he was a prominent civic leader, serving as fire chief and a member of the board of education. After his death in 1916, his sons Hamilton and William J. Farrell took over the business.[4]
In 1920, they became a dealership for Dodge cars, moving their showroom and auto repair shop next door to the north side of Prospect Street. Will Farrell became a city councilman in 1922, and was elected mayor in 1929. He resigned in 1934 after being accused of covertly profiting from servicing city vehicles at his shop.[5]
1944 photo of Inwood Auto Parts, 271 Petaluma Blvd. North (photo Sonoma County Library)
The building at 271 Main was occupied by a rotation of auto-related businesses until 1933, when William Inwood established his tire and auto repair business there. Upon his death in 1948, Jack Dunaway, who joined the firm in high school, assumed management of the shop, purchasing it from Inwood’s widow in 1952.[6]
His son Mike joined him in managing Dunaway Auto Parts in the 1970s, eventually taking over the business. In 1996, the company transitioned to Dunaway Auto Paints, which it remains today.[7]
2022 photo of Dunaway Auto Parts/ Auto Paint, est. 1952, 271 Petaluma Blvd. North (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)
SOURCES:
[1]Sonoma County Journal, July 18, 1862; “Death of Simon Conrad,” Petaluma Argus, April 25, 1873.
[2] “Wagon Making,” Petaluma Argus, May 8, 1873; “John Loranger’s Manufactory,” Petaluma Argus, February 27, 1874; Petaluma Argus, October 15, 1875; Petaluma Argus, October 3, 1879; Ed Mannion’s Rear View Mirror, Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 22, 1960.
[3] “New Firm,” Petaluma Argus, December 9, 1881; “Notice of Dissolution, “Petaluma Courier, November 14, 1901; Carriage Repository,” Petaluma Courier, March 3, 1905; “Briefs,” Petaluma Courier, April 26, 1905.
[4] “W.F. Farrell Dies at His Old Home,” Petaluma Courier, December 19, 1916; “The Whole City Mourns the Death of W.F. Farrell, Petaluma Argus, December 18, 1916; “Notice,” Petaluma Courier, December 24, 1916.
[5] “Farrell Bros. Now Agents for Dodge,” Petaluma Courier, Mary 26, 1920; Moved into New Building,” Petaluma Courier, July 17, 1920; “Certificate of Partnership,” Petaluma Argus, July 30, 1924; “Beautiful New Home of Farrell Bros.,” Petaluma Argus, July 28, 1928; “W. Farrell Councilman,” Petaluma Courier, May 6, 1922; “Mayor Farrell, Four Aides, Quit Office,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, January 27, 1934.
[6] Ads, Petaluma Argus, September 7, 1920, June 16, 1921, 1922 “J.A. Cline, Dealer” selling used cars there; Ad listing, Petaluma Argus, April 24, 1926, June 14, 1927: Inwood & Greene auto repair at 267-271 Main; Ad for Inwood & Flohr, Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 14, 1932: listed at 304 Main Street; “Inwood & Flohr Have Fine New Store,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 20, 1933; “Wim. A. Inwood, Businessman, Dies From Heart Ailment,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 25, 1948; “Jack Dunaway Buys Inwood Auto Parts,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 1, 1952.
[7] Ad, Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 27, 1974; “Petaluma Access,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 8, 1996.
Ardie Fortier, 1924-2029 (photo courtesy of Brigham Denison)
Today marks what would have been the 93rd birthday of my mentor Ardie Fortier, who died last fall.
When we’re young, some of us have the good fortune of finding a mentor—someone who sees a potential in us others don’t, and who is willing to provide us with a guiding light toward helping us realize it.
The word “mentor” comes from the name of a character in Homer’s book The Odyssey. Mentor was the person entrusted with the education of Odysseus’ son while Odysseus went off to fight the Trojan War, and then spent 10 years wandering the world before making it back home.
In my case, the roles were somewhat reversed—I left home shortly after graduating from high school, and set off for Europe with a backpack for four years. Along the way, I took as my mentor an incarnation of Odysseus in the lovely form of a woman named Ardie Fortier.
I had a passing acquaintance with Ardie growing up in my hometown of Petaluma, as she was the mother of one of my classmates, Carrie Steere. But when I first encountered her and her husband Joe during my travels in their little cottage overlooking the Shannon River in West County Clare, our connection as kindred souls was instantaneous.
View of the Shannon River from Joe and Ardie’s cottage in Knock, Ireland, 1974 (photo courtesy of Brigham Denison)
We spent hours in the kitchen—the only warm room in an Irish cottage—talking about everything under the sun—history, literature, philosophy, religion, politics, and psychology—all infused with Ardie’s contagious enthusiasm, curiosity, and good humor.
For an aspiring autodidact like myself, out to study the world first hand and not on some college assembly line, it was pure heaven.
Not long after that visit, Ardie and Joe moved to Munich, where Joe took a teaching position at an extension of the University of Maryland, and Ardie took a job at the nearby headquarters of the company that ran the PXs on American military bases in Europe.
Their Munich apartment became my refuge from the road, where I could recharge and reengage with Ardie and Joe in far-reaching discussions around the kitchen table. Some evenings, Joe’s faculty colleagues—an eclectic group of intellectuals from around the globe—would join us, and we’d have a literary salon of sorts with Ardie as host, employing her gracious humor and infectious laughter to keep things from going off the rails.
Ardie (right) with friend at Bavarian farmhouse, 1977 (photo John Sheehy)
After a couple years of hitchhiking around Europe, working odd jobs, studying history, literature, and culture, I hit a wall, both broke and burned out. I made my way back to Munich, where Ardie helped me find a place to live and a clerical job at the PX headquarters where she worked. In a weird twist of fate, some months later, I was made an office supervisor, managing a group of people twice my age, including Ardie.
Now, for most people, having to report to a scruffy 21-year old road bum you’ve just helped scrape off the streets, would be awkward, to say the least. But not Ardie.
She stepped in as a mentor, sharing her incredible wealth of emotional intelligence in coaching me on how to manage the crazy bunch of Germans and American expatriates in the office. Because she had a master’s degree in psychology and Joe was a psychology professor, that included a deep dive into the study the Myers-Briggs typology to understand how to work with others.
Ardie’s type was INFP—introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceptive. Mine type was similar—except I was typed as a thinker instead of a feeler, meaning that, while Ardie relied upon feelings to sort out the value of what she was intuitively taking in, I turned to analysis.
Joe and Ardie walking in Munich’s Englischer Garten , 1976 (photo John Sheehy)
Joe also conducted tests to determine which professions Ardie and I were best suited for. In Ardie’s case, I believe it was nursing, which she eventually gravitated to later in life. For me, it waswriting and reporting. My least suitable occupation was business management.
When I finally did get around to pursuing a career, it was indeed as an editor at a literary magazine in New York City. But within a couple of years, I gravitated to the least of my talents in becoming the magazine’s publisher. I went on to spend the next 35 years running media companies, with no business management training whatsoever aside from those tutorials with Joe and Ardie, and Ardie’s on-the-job coaching at the office in Munich.
The author riding the rails in Europe, 1974 (photo courtesy of Brigham Denison)
It was same with education. I hated the idea of going to college, but as an aspiring autodidact, I was a complete failure, overwhelmed with information. Ardie and Joe helped me to see that the “T” for thinker in my Myers-Briggs profile meant I needed some formal training in critical thinking to make sense what I was taking in.
Once again, Ardie was there as a mentor. She had attended Pomona College for two years before marrying her first husband. After her first two children were born, the family moved to Oregon and Ardie enrolled at Reed College in Portland. There she found her intellectual home, and absolutely thrived. She thought I would too.
Ardie, second from left, as a student at Reed College, 1955 (photo Reed Griffin yearbook)
As fate would have it, Reed had only one study-abroad program, and it was at the University of Munich. After hanging out with the Reed students there, I realized Ardie was right—I had found my people.
With Ardie’s help, I applied to Reed—it was the only college I ever applied to—and was surprisingly accepted. While Reed accepted me, they would not provide me with any financial aid, as they considered me a “spice student,” there to add a different life experience to the student body, but not expected to last long. I continued working in Munich for another year to save up the money for my first year of tuition.
Today, thanks to Ardie, I am not only a Reed graduate, but a long-serving member of the college’s board of trustees.
Ardie and Joe eventually returned to the states. After Joe passed away, Ardie joined the Peace Corps in Costa Rica at age 60. Upon her return, we found ourselves near neighbors in San Francisco.
Ardie in Costa Rica with the Peace Corps, 1990 (photo Steere family)
Ardie and I started volunteering together at a local food bank, making monthly food deliveries to people in need, mostly in the projects. I carried in the food, while Ardie greeted everyone with her generous smile and upbeat manner, mentoring me once again in the characteristics that opened doors wherever she went—courage, curiosity, and compassion.
“On the path laid out before you,” wrote the poet Gary Snyder, another Reed alum, “others have already been that way and picked all the berries. In order to get your own berries, you need to leave the path and make your own trail.”
On her personal odyssey in this life, Ardie not only carved out her own trail, and got her own berries, she inspired me, and I’m sure countless others, to do the same, for which I am eternally grateful.
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A link to Ardie’s obituary in Reed College alumni magazine:
Petaluma’s Main Street looking north from Western Avenue, 1930 (photo courtesy of Dan Brown)
On September 3, 1925, an auto caravan of 40 “cavemen” clad in the skins of mountain lions, panthers and wildcats, set off from Grants Pass, Oregon, to take possession of Petaluma, California. Before departing, they made sure to book 26 rooms at the Hotel Petaluma, requesting permission to set up a cave in the lobby.1
The cavemen were bound for a convention promoting the Redwood Highway, a new auto route extending from the Oregon Caves Monument outside Grants Pass to the docks of Sausalito. The name “Redwood Highway” was coined in 1921 by A.D. Lee, a Crescent City hotelier, who believed the new scenic thoroughfare too lucrative to be designated by merely a number.2 Regardless, in 1926 it would officially become part of U.S. Highway 101.
Lee’s inspiration for the name came from a conservationist group called Save the Redwoods League, who in 1918 mounted a campaign to preserve what remained of California’s old growth redwood groves by making them state parks.3
Members of the Save the Redwoods League, 1920s(photo Humboldt County Historical Society)
The conservationists’ call of the wild spoke to a new wave of automobility sweeping the country. No longer hampered by wretched roads, the limited speed and endurance of the horses pulling wagons and stages, or the inflexible timetable of steam locomotives, motor-savvy Americans were setting out aboard their gas-powered “vacation agents” for road trips to the wildest and most natural places on the continent.4
Auto tourists on the Redwood Highway, 1920s (photo public domain)Petaluma’s Bungalow Auto Camp, 711 Petlauma Boulevard North at Cherry Street, 1928-1975 (photo Sonoma County Library)
To capitalize on the craze, Lee and a group of fellow entrepreneurs in Del Norte, Humboldt, and Mendocino counties launched the Redwood Highway Association.5 For help in convincing other counties to get on the bandwagon, Lee reached out to fellow “booster extraordinaire” Bert Kerrigan, secretary of Petaluma’s Chamber of Commerce.6
Known for putting Petaluma on the map as “The World’s Egg Basket,” Kerrigan specialized in the sort of razzle dazzle stunts that attracted filmmakers screening newsreels in movie houses across the country.
His National Egg Day was full of eye-catching visuals like the Egg Parade, Egg Queen, Egg Ball, Egg Day Rodeo of hens and horses, and a “chicken chase” down San Francisco’s Market Street accompanied by a biplane dropping chicken feathers affixed with coupons for free Petaluma eggs.7
Bert Kerrigan, Secretary of Petaluma’s Chamber of Commerce and local egg booster, 1920 (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
The opportunity to position Petaluma as one of the last civilized outposts before driving off into the woods captivated Kerrigan. He went to work convincing Petaluma merchants to be among the first to adopt the use of “Redwood Highway” in their advertising, followed by the Sonoma County Board of Trade and the mayor of San Francisco.8
By the time Lee and 150 other members of Redwood Highway Association gathered at the Hotel Petaluma in 1925, Kerrigan had been shown the door as Petaluma’s ringmaster, having bled the Chamber of Commerce dry with his flamboyant stunts.9
His Redwood Highway legacy however lived on in the steady stream of autos and “auto stages” passing through town on summer weekends, bound for what travel brochures described as “the world’s most scenic Paradise Wonderland, 100 miles of giant redwood trees, primeval, primitive, and untrammeled, with streams full of fish and woods full of game.”10
1921 map of the new Redwood Empire route (illustration courtesy of the San Francisco Examiner)
The majority of the auto tourists were from Southern California. That led the Redwood Highway Association to believe they had a shot at displacing Highway 99—the future Interstate 5 running up the Sacramento Valley—as the main trunk between San Francisco and Oregon, and raking in some of the estimated $2 million ($32 million in today’s dollars) spent at roadside attractions along the way.11
Turning to tourist conquest, they changed their name to the Redwood Empire Association.12
Brochure for Auto Stage Tour of Redwood Empire, 1928 (photo public domain)
The keynote speaker at their 1925 convention was Harvey Toy, California’s commissioner of state highways. Thanks to a recent two cent per gallon gasoline tax imposed by the state, Toy informed the group he had the funds to iron out the kinks in the Redwood Highway, making it a safe and efficient thoroughfare.13
The association’s treasurer, Santa Rosa banker Frank Doyle, who was part of a group advocating construction of a bridge across the Golden Gate, updated the group on the impact the bridge would have on tourist traffic north. To avoid becoming a bottleneck, Petaluma would need to widen its Main Street from two to four lanes.
Frank Doyle, president of The Exchange Bank(photo public domain)
The prospect gave local merchants pause. Main Street was not only the town’s main artery of commerce, but the heart of its social connections and celebrations, with ample 12 foot wide sidewalks and convenient diagonal parking lanes.
Petaluma’s Lower Main Street late 1920s, where Center Park replaced carriage hitching posts (photo courtesy of Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
The city had bent over backwards to assimilate the automobile since its arrival in 1903, paving Main Street’s bumpy cobblestones with asphalt, converting hitching posts to parking lanes, replacing liveries and stables with garages and filling stations. But reducing the width of the sidewalks and imposing parallel parking so as to accommodate four lanes of through traffic, struck many as a death knell for Main Street.
In 1935, with construction of the Golden Gate Bridge finally underway, the chief engineer of the state highway commission, Col. John Skeggs, paid Petaluma merchants a visit. Either widen Main Street to four lanes, Skeggs told them, or else the state would reroute Redwood Highway to the flats east of town.14
The Golden Gate under construction, 1935 (photo public domain)
Merchants proposed a compromise. They were willing to reduce the sidewalk widths from 12 to 9 feet to create a center third lane for making left turns, while retaining diagonal parking.
The matter remained at a standstill until May 1937, when the new bridge opened. The flood of through traffic the first two weekends convinced merchants they had no choice but to surrender to the motoring hordes of the Redwood Empire, converting Main Street to four narrow lanes and parallel parking.15
Main Street looking south from Washington Street, 1950 (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
Twenty years later, Kerrigan’s two lingering Petaluma legacies came to an abrupt end. The advent of poultry-raising factory farms throughout the country emptied the Egg Basket of the World, and the Redwood Highway abandoned Petaluma’s sluggish Main Street for the breezy new U.S. 101 freeway constructed east of town in 1957.
Into the vacuum poured thousands of auto commuters, who, thanks to the new freeway and Golden Gate Bridge, found San Francisco within easy driving distance from Petaluma. As the ranchlands east of town began filling up with suburban tract homes, Petaluma found itself transformed into a bedroom community.
While the new freeway alleviated through traffic on Main Street, it also dealt a blow to the hotels, restaurants, bars, and gas stations that catered to it. In an effort to attract freeway travelers, in 1958 the city changed the name of Main Street to Petaluma Boulevard North. Third Street, which extended from B Street to the new freeway entrance south of town, was renamed Petaluma Boulevard South.16
It wasn’t enough. New shopping malls on the eastside drained the downtown of foot traffic. By the 1960s, Petaluma Boulevard was pockmarked with empty shops and old, dilapidated buildings, forcing the city to impose an ordinance requiring owners to bring them up to code or else tear them down.17 Many chose the latter.
Boards on the windows of Wickersham Building on Petaluma Boulevard North, 1970s (photo Sonoma County Library)
In 1969, the city put before voters an urban renewal proposal calling for the demolition of all the buildings on the east side of Petaluma Boulevard from B to Oak streets, for the installation of a six-lane thoroughfare. Voters rejected it.18
In the mid-1970s, the city turned to historic restoration as a means of reviving the downtown, beginning with the Great Petaluma Mill, an abandoned grain mill downtown converted by Skip Sommer into a gallery of boutique shops and restaurants.
Great Petaluma Mill’s B Street entrance, 1978 (photo Sonoma County Library)
In a town besieged by homogenous housing developments, garden-variety business parks, and uniform chain stores, the unique character of Petaluma’s historic downtown proved the catalyst of its rebirth as a trendy nightlife and shopping district.19 That brought with it increased traffic and accidents, most of them sideswipes of parked cars due to Petaluma Boulevard’s inherently narrow travel and parking lanes.20
In 2003, city planners proposed a traffic calming measure known as the “road diet.” Much like the city’s 1935 compromise proposal, it called for reducing the number of travel lanes from four to two, with a center third lane for making left turns.21
But unlike in 1935, many merchants opposed it, worried it would reduce downtown traffic. Like a gradual approach to healthy eating, the city administered the road diet in three stages, beginning in 2007 and 2013, with the final stage along Petaluma Boulevard South scheduled for completion in fall 2022.22
Studies show the road diet has reduced collisions while maintaining the same level of pre-diet traffic, meaning that, a century after Kerrigan surrendered Main Street to the traffic of the Redwood Highway, Petaluma has finally recaptured the pedestrian-friendly heart of its downtown.23
Petaluma Boulevard today with road diet (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)
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A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 22, 2022
FOOTNOTES
[1] “Men to Boost Highway Here,” Petaluma Courier, August 29, 1925; “Oregon Cavemen Coming, Bringing Their Own Cave,’” Petaluma Argus, September 2, 1925; “Will Stop at Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, September 2, 1925.
[2] The basic routing for what became “Legislated Route Number 1” was defined in the 1909 First Bond Act, as part of a route from San Francisco to Crescent City. It was extended to the Oregon border by the 1919 Third Bond Act. Ground was broken for the route in August 1912. LRN 1 corresponds to present-day US 101 and US 199, which were assigned in 1926, between the Golden Gate and the Oregon border. https://www.cahighways.org/ROUTE001.html#LR001; “Redwood Highway Suggested for Hiway,” Petaluma Courier, July 11, 1921; A.D. Lee referred to as the “Father of the Redwood Highway”: “Officers are Elected by Highway Assn.,” Petaluma Courier, October 25, 1925; “Wanted—A Dozen More, The Del Norte Triplicate, March 26, 1920.
[3]“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/
[4] Peter J. Blodgett, “How Americans Fell in Love With Taking Road Trips,” Time magazine, August 15, 2015. https://time.com/3998949/road-trip-history/
[5] 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; “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.
[6] “C.C. Endorses Naming of State Highway and Boulevard Road District,” Petaluma Courier, September 9, 1921; “Redwood Highway Booster is Here,” Petaluma Argus, October 21, 1922.
[7] John Benanti, “The Man Who Invented Petaluma,” Petaluma Museum Association Newsletter, Spring 2013, pp. 9-10.
[8] “C.C. Endorses Naming of State Highway and Boulevard Road District,” Petaluma Courier, September 9, 1921; “Pamphlets Advertising Sonoma County and Redwood Highway,” Petaluma Courier, June 22, 1922; San Francisco Press to Boost Petaluma Egg Day and Sonoma County Fair,” Petaluma Courier, July 9, 1922.
[9] “Kerrigan Resigns as Secretary of the C.C.,” Petaluma Argus, June 4, 1924; Benanti, p. 10.
[10] “Transit Company Plans Tours on Redwood Highway,” Petaluma Courier, November 7, 1924.
[11] “North of Bay Association is Formed,” Weekly Calistogan, November 18, 1921; “Big Increase in Redwood Highway Use,” Petaluma Courier, October 20, 1925; “Redwood Highway Association Ends in Meeting with a Banquet,” Petaluma Courier, October 26, 1925;
[12] “’Redwood Empire’” is New Assn Name,” Petaluma Courier, October 3, 1926.
[14] “Parking Bar to Petaluma Projects,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 25, 1935.
[15] “Improved Highway Facilities,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 15, 1937; “Petaluma Bottlenecks Doomed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 11, 1938; “Traffic Lanes are Painted,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 8, 1938; “Active Council Works for Petaluma Progress,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 15, 1938.
[16] “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.
[17] “Dangerous Building Code Action by Council,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 21, 1967.
[18] “Measure D is Most Vital,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 5, 1969; “Only One Bond Issue Survives Election,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 11, 1969.
[19] “Mill Played a Key Role in Downtown Revitalization,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 9, 1980; “Bill Murray and Mayor Putnam,” Petaluma Post, February, 2014.
[20] “Boulevard ‘Road Diet’ to Begin in September,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 8, 2007; “Downtown Road Diet Nixed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 8, 2009.
[21] “Boost in Economy, Increase in Traffic Downtown Anticipated,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 8, 2003; “Boulevard ‘Road Diet’ to Begin in September,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 8, 2007; “Downtown ‘Road Diet’ Narrowly Approved,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 7, 2010.
Beau Bridges crossing Washington Street to the Phoenix Theater in his search for local family roots (photo Crissy Pascual, Petlauma Argus-Courier)
The actor Beau Bridges was in town last week ostensibly to shoot a movie—“A Christmas Mystery” with Petaluma filmmaker Ali Afshar— but while on location he found himself inexplicably drawn to local history, specifically that of his father, the legendary film and TV actor from Petaluma, Lloyd Bridges.
Accompanied by his wife Wendy and French bulldog Buster, Beau began his inquiry leafing through old yearbooks at Petaluma High School, from which his father graduated in 1930. They then set out to find the house his father grew up in, which they believed to be somewhere on the hillside behind the high school.
Driving along Hill Boulevard, Beau spotted an old schoolmate of mine, Harry Lewis, standing outside his house, and randomly pulled over to ask his help. Harry contacted me, and I agreed to do some quick research and meet with the Bridges the next day at Volpi’s Restaurant, where Harry tends bar on the weekends.
What unfolded in Volpi’s historic back barroom the next day was a Petaluma version of the popular TV show, “Finding Your Roots.” A curious and congenial raconteur, Beau made it clear he wasn’t looking for the dry facts of genealogy—a family member had already undertaken that task—he wanted to hear the stories.
Publicity photo of Lloyd Bridges starring in TV series Sea Hunt, 1958 (photo public domain)
That included stories about Volpi’s, which, during his father’s teen years in the 1920s, was an Italian grocery with a backroom speakeasy. He was also eager to hear about the Phoenix Theater across the street, where he understood his grandfather, Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Sr., had worked as a movie projectionist in the ’20s when it was the California Theater. His father used to watch screenings of the same film over and over when he was young to study acting techniques. [1]
Beau Bridges tossing a signed dollar bill to ceiling of Volpi’s Bar (photo John Sheehy)
Harry and I were more than happy to oblige his request. Growing up in Petaluma in the 1960s, we were both big fans of “Sea Hunt,” the adventure TV series Lloyd Bridges starred in, as well as his many films, including the classic western “High Noon” and the madcap comedy “Airplane.” After sharing local tales and initiating Beau in the Volpi’s tradition of signing a dollar bill and affixing it to the bar’s ceiling, we got down to discussing his family roots.
Lloyd Bridges, Jr.—“Bud” as he was known in Petaluma—moved to town when he was 10, along with his mother Hattie and older sister Belle. His parents had divorced a decade earlier, a year after Bud was born, with Hattie citing her husband’s relentless “amusement” with prize fights, baseball games and automobile rides, while Lloyd Bridges, Sr. complained of her monotony. [2]
Lloyd Sr. remained in San Francisco, where ran a hotel and boarding house, while Hattie moved with the children to San Rafael initially, and then to Petaluma in 1923, purchasing a home near the high school at 11 Spring Street, named for a natural spring on the site. [3]
11 Spring Street today (photo public domain)
Petaluma was in the midst of its heady reign as “The Egg Basket of the World.” Bud quickly distinguished himself as a gifted singer—performing at Sunday services in the Congregational Church at Fifth and B streets—and a talented performer in plays and musicals staged at the high school and at the California Theater. Local critics noted he had “a natural talent for the stage, a flair for comedy, and knack for serious acting as well.” [4]
Eleanore Hawthorne, Lloyd Bridges, and Jewel Johnson in the 1929 school play, “Captain Applejack” (photo 1930 Enterprise Yearbook, Petaluma High School)
His best friend was Art Parent, who would later go on to serve as Petaluma’s mayor and owner of Parent Funeral Parlor. Art noted that Bud was always the star in their plays together, because unlike Art, he could improvise. One night while they were performing at the California Theater, Bud fell coming up the back stage steps and knocked himself out, leaving Art to recite his lines over and over until Bud finally came to. [5]
Art Parent and Lloyd Reynolds at Petaluma High, 1930 (photo 1930 Enterprise Yearbook, Petaluma High School)
“Oddly,” said Beau, “what my dad talked most about growing up in Petaluma was playing basketball.”
A fierce competitor, Bud lettered in four sports and served as captain of the basketball team. After finishing high school, he took a brief job at the local Bank of America, before enrolling in UCLA to pursue a political science degree. He spent much of his time however on the basketball court and the stage. [6]
Lloyd Bridges, center, captain of 1930 Petaluma High basketball team (photo 1930 Enterprise Yearbook, Petaluma High School)
While Bud was in high school, his mother got remarried to Clarence Breuillot, a state contractor. In the late 1930s, Breuillot was appointed foreman of the newly constructed San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and the couple left Petaluma for Berkeley. [7]
After UCLA, Bud spent five years working in New York theater, before being signed as a stock actor with Columbia Pictures in 1941. The same year, he and his wife welcomed their first child, Lloyd Vernet Bridges III, whom they nicknamed “Beau” after a character in “Gone with the Wind.” Beau’s first visit to Petaluma came three years later, when his parents visited Art Parent. [8]
A dogged performer, Bud appeared in more than seven dozen films, most of them potboilers and B-movies, before finally getting his big breakthrough in a film called “Home of the Brave,” in 1949. That same year, his second son, Jeff Bridges, was born. He would go on to become an Academy Award-winning actor.
In 1951, a budding young Petaluma newspaper columnist named Bill Soberanes arranged to stage the West Coast premiere of Bud’s latest movie, “The Whistle Stop at Eaton Hills,” at Petaluma’s Mystic Theater (then called the State Theater).
Poster for the film “The Whistle at Eaton Falls,” which had its west coast premiere at the State Theater in Petaluma in 1951 (photo public domain)
Soberanes arranged for a police escort from the city limits to bring Bud into town and to the Hotel Petaluma, where a banquet with 75 of his old friends and former teachers from Petaluma High awaited him. Art Parent served as master of ceremonies, and the city’s mayor read a proclamation declaring it Lloyd Bridges Day. Bud was then publicly sworn in as a member of the National Good Egg Club, taking an oath to “give due respect to the egg.” [9]
“I feel like I’m in high school all over again,” beamed Bud. He then lauded his music teacher, Agnes Bravo, for helping him learn his first operetta. [10]
Screening party for “The Whistle at Eaton Falls.” premiere in 1951. From left, Bill Soberanes, Hattie Breauillot (Lloyd’s mother), Lloyd Bridges, and Petlauma Mayor Leland Myers (photo Petaluma Argus-Courier)
Art remained Bud’s Petaluma connection over the years, as did Soberanes, who later enlisted him in helping to promote the World Wristwrestling Championship Tournaments. [11] When a TV show came to Petaluma in 1985 to film Bud’s early beginnings, Art filled in for Bud, who was on location as usual, taking the film crew on a tour to the Bridges home, the Phoenix Theater, and Fundas’ Candy Store beside the Mystic, where Bud and Art competed in high school for the attention of Dorothy Beidleman—a contest Art won, eventually convincing her to marrying him. [12]
After Harry and I concluded our roots presentation with Beau, we escorted him, Wendy and Buster across the street to meet Phoenix Theater manager Tom Gaffey, who started working at the theater when he, Harry and I were in high school together.
Beau Bridges crossing Washington Street to the Phoenix Theater in his search for local family roots (photo Crissy Pascual, Petlauma Argus-Courier)
Gaffey told us Soberanes was the source of the story that Beau’s grandfather had been the projectionist at the California Theater when Bud was growing up. To Beau’s disappointment, I had to dispel that lore.
Lloyd Sr. had owned a movie theater in San Leandro, where Bud was born in 1913. [13] But the next year he returned to the family hotel business in San Francisco. Shortly after Bud graduated high school, Lloyd Sr. took over the legendary Vance Hotel in Eureka, and lived out his days as a local hotelier and real estate mogul. [14]
As a consolation, Gaffey informed Beau—a three-time Emmy, two-time Golden Globe, and one-time Grammy Award winner—that as a legacy performer at the theater, he was entitled to make free use of the Phoenix for theatrical or musical productions. Beau appeared to give the offer serious consideration, expressing his love of serendipitous opportunities.
Before Beau and Wendy left to view the Bridges family home, Beau shared how he and his father bonded over playing tennis and one-on-one basketball together. In his father’s footsteps, Beau attended UCLA, where he joined the basketball team coached by the legendary John Wooden.
“My dad was always extremely competitive. But as he grew close to my age now—I’m 80—I realized I could handily beat him anytime I wanted. So to make it even, I started tanking balls into the net, but carefully, so he wouldn’t know what I was doing. One day, after three sets of tennis on a hot summer day, I looked at him sitting tired and slumped over on the bench, and I was overcome with a wave of melancholy.
Beau Bridges and Lloyd Bridges at the 44th Emmy Awards, August 1982 (photo credit Alan Light, public domain)
“Dad,” I said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”
There was a long pause. “What makes you think I’m going to go first?” he said. There was a little piece of a smile on his face, but he was dead serious.
Petaluman Lloyd Bridges died in 1998 at the age of 85, after starring in dozens of TV series and more than 150 feature films. [15]
******
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 24, 2022.
RESPONSES FROM LOCALS
Menu at the Little Hill Banquet on Main Street following State Theater premiere of The Whistle at Eaton Falls” (courtesy of Melissa Musso James)
Beau Bridges’s search the local roots of his father, the actor Lloyd Bridges, prompted an outpouring of reminiscences from locals. Many people with family members who went to school with Lloyd dug out the old yearbooks they still keep from that era.
A number of people shared that their mother, grandmother, or aunt laid claim to being Lloyd’s date at the 1930 Petaluma High senior prom. Yvonne (Armour) Cornilson, who appeared in school musicals with Lloyd, appears to be the most likely candidate.
Tammie Tower-Snider said her grandmother told stories about riding to school on the handlebars of Lloyd’s bike when they were young. As the school was only a half a block away from his house on Spring Street, it must have been a short ride.
Marion Johnson said her mother recounted how Lloyd carried her books home from school for her. Lauri Carlson’s grandmother taught at Petaluma High in the 1920s, and had Lloyd for study hall.
Linda Parker shared that A Tale of Two Cities was required reading when Lloyd was in high school. You had to write your name on a list pasted in the back. When she was a student 30 years later, they were still using the same old copies. She got the one with Lloyd’s signature in it, and never gave it back.
Betty Prior remembered Lloyd’s return to Petaluma in 1951 for the West Coast premiere of a movie he was starring in, and visiting her and other students at Petaluma High.
Melissa Musso James shared the menu from her parents’ Little Hill restaurant on Main Street, where Lloyd Bridges was feted following the West Coast premiere of his 1951 film The Whistle at Eaton Fall at the State Theater.
Joe, the chef at the Little Hill restaurant ,and Lloyd Bridges, 1951 (photo courtesy of Melissa Musso James)
Some people shared that their fathers and uncles telling stories about attending school with Lloyd. Melinda Webb Zerrenner said her father, longtime Petaluma judge Rollie Webb, was a schoolmate of Lloyd’s, and took the family to see him whenever they visited Los Angeles.
Gig Schuster Jones said her grandfather Cap Schuster was Lloyd’s high school physical education teacher. When the family sat around watching Lloyd in his hit TV series Sea Hunt, her grandfather often boasted that he was the one who taught Lloyd to snorkel.
FOOTNOTES:
“TV and Film Actor Lloyd Bridges Dies,” Washington Post, March 11, 1998.
“Prize Fight Cause of Rout of Cupid,” Oakland Tribune, September 13, 1914.
“Will Move Here from San Rafael,” Petaluma Argus, January 18, 1923; “Sold 7th Street Property,” Petaluma Courier, September 18, 1926; Katie Watts, “Names of Streets and Places,” Petaluma Argus Courier, March 26, 2008.
“Lloyd Bridges Stars in High School Play,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 5, 1929.
Bill Soberanes, “Art Parent: A Petaluma Legend,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 20, 1991.
“Lloyd Bridges in Film at ‘Cal’,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 20, 1936; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Bridges
“Local Couple Are Wedded,” Petaluma Courier, July 26, 1927; “Daughter Arrives for Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Stout,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 16, 1933; “Fire Damages 11 Spring Street,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, December 2, 1938 “Real Estate Deals Closed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 21, 1941; “Clarence Breuillot Obituary,” Los Gatos Times, October 23, 1970.
“Recent Guests at Arthur Parent Home,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 25, 1944.
“Wonderful to be Back,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 2, 1951.
“Wonderful to be Back,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 2, 1951.
Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 2, 1981; “Petaluma Memories of the Late Lloyd Bridges,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 24, 1998.
Bill Soberanes column, “Lloyd Bridges TV Special,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 26, 1985.
“Motion Picture News: Best Theater, San Leandro,” Oakland Tribune, November 22, 1913.
“Lloyd Bridges Sr. Dies,” Humboldt Standard, May 1, 1962.
Gunerius “George” Aanunsen, standing center, in the first Aanunsen Oyster Shell Yard at the southwest corner of the D Street Bridge, with brother Pete seated on wagon, 1906 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
On the evening of September 9, 1909, Gunerius Aanunsen sailed up the Petaluma River on his schooner the Fearless with a cargo of oyster shells, docking at his supply yard beside the D Street Bridge. Returning the next morning, he found the boat submerged. During evening low tide its hull, weighted by the shells, cracked on a hidden silt mound.1
The sinking of the Fearless illustrated the perils of using a tidal estuary as a shipping channel. The genesis of Petaluma’s founding, the waterway came with a congenital birth defect—instead of flowing like a stream, it rose and fell with the ocean tides twice each day, making it prone to silting up.
At the time of the mishap, only the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers exceeded the estuary as a waterway for shipping commercial tonnage in California.2 Two steamers and more than 60 flat-bottomed schooners plied its 18 miles to and from San Pablo Bay with an annual 200,000 tons of goods, including 100 million eggs, Petaluma’s new agent of wealth as the self-proclaimed “Boss Chicken Town of the Pacific Coast.”3
Steamer Gold steamer traveling up the Petaluma River, circa 1900 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
But with economic prosperity came more silt. The expansion of farmlands led to the elimination of wetlands and rechanneling of tributary streams, sending erosion from the plowed fields into the estuary during rainy seasons, where it trapped boats like the Fearless in its muddy grasp. 4
Having a clogged artery at the heart of town raised the perennial question, according to local historian Skip Sommer, as to whether Petaluma wanted to be known as a river town or a mud town.5 For more than a century, the answer turned on the secret sauce of the Boss Chicken Town—oyster shells.
The arrival of oyster shells coincided with the Army Corps of Engineers’ first dredging of the estuary in 1880. Petaluma previously funded two dredgings of the upper channel north of Haystack Landing in 1859 and 1866, along with cuts made by ferryboat operator Charles Minturn.6 The arrival of the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad in 1870 however made dredging an existential imperative.
Having bypassed Petaluma, the railroad created its own shipping terminus on the estuary south of town near Lakeville. Fearing a transportation monopoly, local business leaders successfully lobbied Congress in 1880 for $28,000, or $875,000 in today’s currency, to have the Army Corps dredge the estuary and re-channel some of its 80 serpentine bends.7
The dredging coincided with the invention in Petaluma of an efficient egg-hatching incubator by Isaac Dias, a dentist from New Orleans. He was later joined in perfecting and marketing it by one of his patients, Lyman Byce.8
In 1880, Christopher Nisson, a Danish immigrant, purchased one of Dias’ incubators, and employed it to launch the country’s first commercial egg hatchery on his ranch in Two Rock.9
Christopher Nisson’s Pioneer Hatchery Ranch in Two Rock (Sonoma County Library)
The one ingredient Nisson lacked in his transformation of the chicken from pastoral farm animal to egg assembly line was calcium. If his hens were to dramatically increase their egg production, they needed many times their natural amount of calcium to avoid brittle bones and soft-shelled eggs. For a calcium supplement, Nisson turned to oyster shells.10
Crushed oyster shells were already being used in feed for backyard chickens, but not on the industrial scale he envisioned. Fortunately for Nisson, large mounds of ancient oyster shells, or middens, had been preserved beneath the waters of the South San Francisco Bay near San Mateo, built up by indigenous tribes over thousands of years.11
Sacks of “Egg Food” with oyster shells being loaded for delivery at George P. McNear’s Oriental Flour Mill on Petlauma Boulevard North across from Penry Park, 1895 (Sonoma County Library)
In 1880, Nisson persuaded Petaluma grain merchant George P. McNear to ship oyster shells up the estuary from the South Bay. The shells enabled him to quickly increase his flock to 2,000 hens, and begin selling incubated baby chicks to his neighbors.12 Within a decade, six additional hatcheries were operating in Petaluma, drawing hundreds of aspiring chicken ranchers to the area.13
Gunerius “George” Aanunsen immigrated to San Francisco from Norway in 1889.14 At the turn of the century, he and his brother Pete opened a supply yard in Petaluma for oyster shells, coal, and wood at the southwest corner of the D Street Bridge. The brothers dissolved their partnership un 1907, with Pete retaining the coal and wood supply business while Gunerius opened the South Bay Shell Company on the southeast side of the D Street Bridge. The site would remain an oyster shell facility for the next 110 years.15
Schooner on Petaluma River just north of D Street Bridge, circa 1900 (Sonoma County Library)
In 1907, the brothers dissolved their partnership, with Pete retaining the coal and wood supply business while Gunerius opened the South Bay Shell Company on the southeast side of the D Street Bridge.16 The site would remain an oyster shell facility for the next 110 years.
The opening of Aanunsen’s new shell yard coincided with the third major dredging of the estuary by the Army Corps, the second having taken place in 1892.17 In the River and Harbor Act of 1904 Petaluma was provided a $7,500 ongoing annual appropriation for dredging ($234,000 in today’s currency).18 The Army Corps recommended accumulating the annual allocation to fund a thorough dredging of the channel every four or five years.19
Dredger on the Petaluma River, 1920s (Sonoma County Library)
But, as the Fearless’ sinking demonstrated just two years later, Petaluma couldn’t wait that long. After only one or two heavy rain seasons, enough silt filled the estuary’s upper channel to make it a mud trap for vessels at low tide. As a result, the annual funding allocation was eaten up by regular maintenance dredging. The exception was the River and Harbor Act of 1930, which allocated $200,000, or $4.4 million in today’s currency, to fully dredge and straighten parts of the estuary to Cloudy Bend.20
1930 also saw Aanunsen’s retirement from the oyster shell business. After resurfacing the sunken Fearless, he converted it into a sloop-rigged barge, purchasing a tugboat to pilot it up and down the creek.21 The tugboat also served as his home. For the next 30 years, he helped keep the Boss Chicken Town supplied with shell as annual egg production soared to half a billion eggs.22
Gunerius “George” Aanunsen aboard his tugboat Solano docked in Petaluma, circa 1930 (Sonoma County Library)
At the age of 70, Aanunsen set sail for the San Diego Bay, where he devoted a year to collecting sea shells for museum collections before his body was found floating in the bay, the apparent victim of an unsolved murder.23
Aanunsen’s shell yard beside the D Street Bridge changed hands a few times before being purchased in 1948 by the Pioneer Shell Company, which constructed a processing plant on the site capable of crushing 10 to 12 tons of oyster shell an hour. By then, oyster shells were being used not only for poultry feed, but horse feed, fertilizer, and landscaping.24
Pioneer Shell Company plant, southeast corner of D Street Bridge, 1954 (Sonoma County Library)
Other shipments on the estuary were decreasing however, due to the rise of trucking and the demise of Petaluma’s chicken industry. After World War II, more efficient caged factory farms were springing up around the county, putting the area’s small chicken ranches out of business.25
In an attempt to turn the tide, Petaluma presented Congress with two bold proposals. The first was a name change for the estuary from the Petaluma Creek, which it was commonly called, to the Petaluma River. Contrary to popular lore, the name change was not required to maintain federal funding for the dredging. Instead, Petaluma believed that “river” would carry more prestige than “creek” in helping the town attract new industries in need of water transportation.26
Site of the oyster shell plant beside the D Street Bridge (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)
The second proposal, which carried a price tag of $6.5 million ($58 million in today’s currency), called for a major reengineering of the estuary in hopes of attracting new commercial traffic and also recreational boats.27 Congress quickly passed the name change in 1959, but the reengineering proposal was eventually ruled out as cost prohibitive.28
The city succeeded however in attracting a handful of enterprises that used the river for transporting heavy construction materials like gravel and concrete. Together with the oyster shell plant, then owned by Jerico Products who diversified to also transporting sand for construction, there was sufficient commercial tonnage to qualify for continued dredging by the Army Corps.29
Mitch Lind, owner of Jerico Products (later renamed Lind Marine), at the oyster shell plant beside the D Street Bridge, 1981 (photo courtesy of Murray Rockowitz)
After the Corps’ dredging in 2003, the Petaluma River was classified as a “low use” waterway, placing future dredging in jeopardy. At that time, barge traffic was largely dependent on just two companies, a concrete plant and the oyster shell plant. In 2006, the concrete plant closed, leaving only oyster shells to justify future dredging.30
It wasn’t enough. Lind Marine, the new name of Jerico Products, steadily reduced the tonnage of shells and sand on their barges to navigate the increasingly shallow channel until 2017, when it proved no longer profitable to do so.31
By then, river traffic consisted almost entirely of recreational boats which, while contributing tourism revenues to the city, didn’t figure into the Corps’ criteria for dredging. By 2020, even they were unable to safely navigate the muddy channel. Thanks to local lobbying, the Army Corps returned that year for a $9.7 million dredging of the river, with the understanding that it would be their last.32
By that time, most of the industrial sites on the riverfront that once neighbored Aanunsen’s oyster shell yard had been converted to infill housing, shopping malls, and office space, reflecting Petaluma’s transformation from an agricultural shipping hub to a suburban community.
In 2022, Lind Marine announced plans to replace its historic shell plant with an infill housing development called Oyster Cove.33
Proposed design of new Oyster Cover development at the southeast corner of the D Street Bridge (courtesy of Urban Design Associates)
******
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 20, 2022.
Video of Proposed Oyster Cove Development:
FOOTNOTES
[1] “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Courier, December 1, 1902;“Schooner Fearless Sinks,” Petaluma Argus, September 7, 1909.
[2] Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Scottwall Associates, 1982), p. 78.
[3] 200,000 annual tons is cited in “Saw the Engineers,” Petaluma Argus, January 18, 1908, but 155,000 annual tons in “Official Report of Government Engineer on River Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, November 24, 1909; egg production volume is from an advertisement from the Petaluma Chamber of Commerce, Pacific Rural Press, April 10, 1910; “Boss Chicken Town of the Pacific Coast” was first used in an 1898 issue of the Petaluma Weekly Budget, as cited in Thea Lowry’s Empty Shells: The Story of Petaluma, American’s Chicken City (Novato, CA: Manifold Press, 2000), p. 27.
[4] Petaluma Valley Historical Hydrology and Ecology Study”. SFEI Contribution No. 861, 2018. https://www.sfei.org/documents/petaluma-valley-historical-hydrology-andecology-study.
[5] “Petaluma River Dredging Due,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 1, 1983.
[6] “Approved,” Sonoma County Journal, April 15, 1859; “Improvement of the Creek,” Sonoma County Journal, October 14, 1859: “Act to Improve the Creek,” Sonoma County Journal, April 13, 1860; “Straightening the Creek,” Petaluma Argus, February 11, 1862; “Notice To Contractors,” Petaluma Argus, August 23, 1866; “Contract Awarded,” Petaluma Argus, August 30, 1866.
[7] “Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Argus, December 4, 1876; “Straighten the Creek,” Petaluma Courier, January 1, 1879; “Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Argus, December 5, 1879; “Of Interest to Us,” Petaluma Courier, March 8, 1880; “Improvement of Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Argus, August 27, 1880; “Work Commenced,” Petaluma Argus, October 8, 1880; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, October 22, 1880; “Important Change,” Petaluma Argus, May 13, 1881; “Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Courier, November 15, 1882; “Petaluma Township,” Petaluma Argus, January 5, 1884. “Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Argus, August 9, 1884.
[8] Lowry, pp. 33-34 (after Dias’s death in a mysterious 1884 hunting accident on the estuary, Byce wrote him out of the incubator’s origin story).
[9] Lowry, pp. 49-51; p. 146; “Nisson’s Famous Poultry Yard,” Petaluma Courier, November 11, 1891.
[10] Lowry, p. 156.
[11] N.C. Nelson, “Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region,” University of California Publications in Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 7, No. 4, Berkeley, The University Press, 1909, pgs. 337, 346. https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/anthpubs/ucb/text/ucp007-006-007.pdf; Lydia Lee, “Olympian Dreams,” Alta magazine, January 4, 2022. https://www.altaonline.com/dispatches/a38325907/west-coast-native-oyster-lydia-lee/ Charles H. Townsend, “Report of Observations Respecting the Oyster Resources and Oyster Fishery of the Pacific Coast of the United States,” Report of the Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for 1889 to 1891,United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, 1893. https://penbay.org/cof/cof_1889_91.html;
[12] “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, March 18, 1881; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, August 31, 1881.
[13] Lowry, p. 50; “Nisson’s Famous Poultry Yard,” Petaluma Courier, November 11, 1891.
[14] Ancestry.com: Norway Select Baptism 1634-1927 (Gunerius Aanunsen’s birth: May 10, 1862, Ostre Moland, Aust-Agder, Norway); Hamburg Passenger Lists (Hamburg departure date: May 2, 1889); San Francisco Directory, 1889.
[15] Note: It appears that the Aanunsens formed their first shell yard along the river near Washington Street Bridge by 1902, before moving to the First and D street location a few years later; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Courier, December 1, 1902; “Briefs,” Petaluma Courier, August 31, 1906; “Has Sued for Accounting,” Petaluma Argus, October 21, 1907.
[16] “Briefs,” Petaluma Courier, July 24, 1907; “Has Sued for Accounting,” Petaluma Argus, October 21, 1907; Ad, Petaluma Courier, January 22, 1908; “Opinion in Local Case,” Petaluma Argus, April 24, 1908; The 1914 Petaluma City Directory lists George Aanunsen as owner of the South Bay Company, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum.
[17] “Local News,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 9, 1889; “Local Brevities,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 3, 1891; “Official Report of Government Engineer on River Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, November 24, 1909.
[18] “Official Report of Government Engineer on River Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, November 24, 1909; “Who Got the Money,” Petaluma Argus, October 22, 1914; “City Dredging Woes Date to 1890,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 7, 1983.
[19] “Official Report of Government Engineer on River Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, November 24, 1909.
[20] “Saw the Engineers,” Petaluma Argus, January 18, 1908; “Official Report of Government Engineer on River Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, November 24, 1909; “River & Harbor Committee Reports to the C. of C. Board,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 10, 1930 “Dredging Crew Start $200,000 River Cut Here,” AC, January 24, 1933; “Extensive River Improvements Coming to River Channel,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 4, 1959.
[21] “Schooner Fearless is Now a Sloop Rigged Barge,” Petaluma Argus, April 29, 1910; “Briefs,” Petaluma Argus, October 8, 1908.
[22] Heig, p. 115; “Poultry Industry in Upward Trend,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 4, 1929.
[23] “Has Taken Over Shell Business,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 28, 1930; “George Aanunsen Meets Mysterious Death in San Diego Bay,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 10, 1931; Findagrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/142750468/george-aanunsen
[24] Note: Aaunensen sold his shell yard to William Cartensen. Jerry Hannigan purchased it in 1939, renaming it Jerry’s Shell Yard. In 1945, he moved the yard across the river to 735-741 Third Street. In 1948, Pioneer purchased the yard; Ad, Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 20, 1939; Ad, Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 4, 1945; “City Council,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 5, 1948; “Oyster Shell Processing Plant Opens In Petaluma,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, February 22, 1950.
[25] “Poultry Must Organize,’” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 2, 1959; Lowry, Empty Shells, pp. 229-233.
[26] “Creek Naming and Dredging Supported,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 14, 1959; “Miller Submits Bills, Works on More,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 23, 1959; “River Name Bill Sails To Senate,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 16, 1959.
[27] “Creek Naming and Dredging Supported,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 14, 1959; “Extensive Improvements Coming to River Channel,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 4, 1959.
[28] “Petaluma Might Get River Yet,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 20, 1959; “International Scoop,” So They Tell Me Column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 24, 1959; “River Dredging Should Be Completed by September,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 8, 1964; “River Project Gets a Boost,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 26, 1965; “City records Progress and Problems in 1967,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 30, 1967.
[29] “Oakland Firm Given Contract to Dredge the River,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 4, 1964; “River Project Gets a Boost,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 26, 1965 “City Records Progress and Problems in 1967,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 30, 1967.
[30] “The Ebb and Flow of the River Industry,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 19, 2006:
[31] “Nearly $10 million Petaluma Dredging Project Begins after 13-year Wait,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 5, 2020; “River Dredging Crucial for City,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 27, 1992; Katherine J. Rinehart, “Processing Oyster Shells Along the Petaluma River,” Sonoma County Farm Bureau Newsletter, February 11, 2022. https://sonomafb.org/processing-oyster-shells-along-the-petaluma-river/
[32] “Nearly $10 million Dredging Begins After 13-year Wait,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 5, 2020; John Shribbs, “Dredging,”2021, Petaluma Wetlands Alliance, petalumawetlands.org. https://petalumawetlands.org/dredging/
[33] “Oyster Cove Project,” a video presentation by UrbanMix Development and Urban Design Associates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTg6JZcx1Ms&list=PLtMVX2ASLE4rwOq9VROofcEcGpFkfnk6e&index=2
Fashion, Sex, and Suffrage During the 1890s Bicycle Craze
Two young Petaluma women with their safety bicycles, circa 1890s (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
On July 4, 1896, Petaluma found itself anointed the new “bicycling Mecca” of the West Coast, as a reported 6,000 people turned out at the city’s new Wheelman Park for the annual divisional meet of the League of American Wheelmen.
Among the 18 Northern California teams competing were two comprised entirely of women—San Francisco’s Alpha Cycling Club and Petaluma’s own “women of the wheel,” the Mercury Cyclists.
Their presence embodied perhaps the greatest social disruption of the 1890’s bicycle craze: women were no longer dependent upon men for their transportation.
Women’s cyclist club, 1890s (photo public domain)
“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling,” Susan B. Anthony told New York World reporter Nellie Bly in 1896. “I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”
Female liberation came thanks to introduction of the “safety bicycle” in the early 1890s. Its predecessor, the high-wheel, had been strictly a masculine pursuit. With its enormous front wheel and small back wheel, both made of rubber-lined wood, the bike was nicknamed the “boneshaker” for its jarring and often dangerous ride.
Men with their highwheelers, 1880s (photo public domain)
The safety, with its two equal-sized wheels and inflated rubber tires, not only provided a smoother ride but was easier to mount, making it accessible to women in dresses, who dubbed it the “freedom machine.”
Petaluma’s first safety bicycles went on sale in 1892 at Joe Steiger’s Gunsmith Shop on Main Street, across from current day Putnam Plaza. The following year, a group of young men led by Frank Lippitt formed a local chapter of the League of American Wheelmen called the Petaluma Wheelmen.
By 1894, the national bicycle craze was in full swing. New dealerships started popping up in hardware stores around town. Lyman Byce, the entrepreneur behind Petaluma’s booming new egg industry, opened one at his Petaluma Incubator Company across from today’s Penry Park. The bikes weren’t cheap. Byce’s popular Erie model sold for $100 ($3,150 in today’s currency).
Lyman Byce’s Petaluma Incubator Company and Eric Bicycle shop, 1896 (photo Sonoma County Library)
A popular novelty among Petaluma’s younger, middle-class set, bicycles also found early adopters among some older residents, including the city’s leading capitalist, 63-year old John A. McNear. After purchasing a bicycle from Byce, McNear was convinced by Petaluma’s “father of chickendome” to build a local velodrome for racing events. With bicycles at Byce’s incubator factory selling as fast as he could stock them, Byce assured McNear he would make his money back within a year.
In 1895, McNear converted an old baseball stadium he owned on the city’s east side (now the site of the Petaluma Public Library) into Wheelman Park. After building a quarter-mile race track with six-foot-high banked curves, he surfaced it with hard-packed decomposed granite, making it conducive to speed. He then doubled the seating capacity of the baseball bleachers to accommodate 2,500, leaving ample room for standing spectators as well as those who wished to watch from their parked carriages.
John McNear on bicycle alongside a Sonoma Express wagon of chickens (photo Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)
Shortly before the track was completed, a group of young women led by Gertrude Hopkins and Florence Mauzy formed the Mercury Cyclists, joining a number of women’s cycling clubs starting up around the country
“The bicycle,” wrote the League of American Wheelmen, “has taken those old-fashioned, slow-going notions of the gentler sex, and replaced them with a new woman, mounted on her steed of steel.”
As the Mercury Cyclists and other wheelwomen took to their steel steeds, they ran into some cultural speed bumps from conservative Victorians, who wanted to know where they were riding to.
When the question was put to women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton by American Wheelman magazine, she succinctly replied: “To suffrage.”
San Francisco’s Liberty Cycling Club, 1895 (photo California Historical Society)
Victorians believed otherwise. For them, women were stationary, and men mobile. Any female intrusion into the outdoor world of travel, athleticism, or free movement threatened their world order. The only place women were riding to, in their opinion, was heavenly disgrace and eternal destruction.
“As a chivalrous gentleman,” a newspaper article asked of Victorian men, “do you tremble at the revolution of bicycling women?”
Actress Mabel Love with bicycle, 1897 (photo public domain)
The answer was complicated, especially for men grappling with conflicted feelings of repulsion and attraction. A man’s poem in the San Francisco Examiner in 1895 conveyed their dilemma.
“The Bicycle Girl, oh, the Bicycle Girl, /with a spinnaker skirt and a sleeve like a furl; / such a freak on the wheel, such a sight on the tire, / I am certain I never will love or admire.”
Within a few lines of this dismissive opening, the poet fell into a head-turning swoon.
“The sound of her bell and the hum of her wheel / Is enough to make any man’s cranium reel . . . And why did she smile as she lightly spun by? . . . The Bicycle Girl, oh, the Bicycle Girl, / she has tangled my heart in her mystical whirl.”
The introduction in 1895 of tandem bicycles for sale at Joe Steiger’s shop created a small sensation in town. As moonlight rides in the countryside began to usurp dates to dances and musical concerts, some men looked to the bicycle as a revealing test of character.
The popular song Daisy Bell, or Bicycle Built for Two, was written by Harry Dacre in 1892 (Illustration in public domain)
“The woman you see is seldom the woman you think you see,” wrote a man in the Petaluma Courier in 1896. “Mounted upon bicycles, most women have to tell the truth about themselves. One can distinguished at a glance the daring, willful beauty from the timid, tender girl. A woman’s health, vigor of mind and body are apparent. I will even go so far as to advise a man not to get married until he has seen the object of his choice disport herself upon a bicycle.”
Victorians disagreed. The only character trait they believed a woman revealed on a bike was a proclivity for sin and fast living. A woman out cycling without male supervision was not only placing herself in danger, she was exposing herself to the temptations of sexual stimulation, caused according to medical professionals by the protruding pommel of bicycle saddles.
The fear of unleashed female sexuality led bicycle manufacturers to introduce special “hygienic” saddles with little or no pommels, along with high seat stems and upright handlebars that supported a more dignified and ladylike riding position than the bent over, “camel back” style, which required women to provocatively lean forward in the saddle.
Ad for bicycle saddle with reduced pommel for women, Ladies Home Journal magazine, April 1896.
The break with tradition most disturbing to Victorians was fashion. At a time when middle-class women rarely challenged fashion’s dictates, the practicality of bicycling offered them an opportunity to rethink their clothing.
Shedding the restrictive Victorian corsets and large, billowy dresses, women wheelers adopted for riding the “divided skirt,” or baggy trouser cinched at the knee. Originally championed in a dress reform movement led by suffragist Amelia Bloomer, the divided skirts were commonly known as “bloomers.” Their appeal rapidly spread beyond the practicalities of bicycling to women who didn’t ride.
Ad for Continental Bicycle Tires (photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
When asked about bloomers in her interview with Nellie Bly, Susan B. Anthony was blunt.
“Dress to suit the occasion. A woman doesn’t want skirts and flimsy lace to catch in the wheel. Safety, as well as modesty, demands bloomers or extremely short skirts. You know women only wear foolish articles of dress to please men’s eyes anyway.”
The male gaze gladly overlooked the bloomers’ practical modesty, as the trousers scandalously exposed a woman’s ankles, raising an outcry form Victorians.
The hotly contested fashion battle that ensued forever altered public perceptions of female athleticism and proper female behavior. Bloomers permitted women cyclists to jettison the heavy, drop-frame bicycles designed for riding in a dress, and jump aboard the much lighter, diamond-framed bicycles ridden by men, making the women viable competitors in races like Petaluma’s meet on Independence Day in 1896.
Women competing in cycling race in Buffalo, NY, 1897 (photo courtesy of BnF–Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Disappointingly, no records were broken that day at the new Wheelman Park by men or women cyclists. Likewise, while the new safety bicycle technology was liberating for women, it failed to place them on the fast track to suffrage. Their right to vote wasn’t secured in California until 1911, and not on a national scale until 1920.
Bicycling mania itself proved to be short-lived, dying off before the turn of the century, as production improvements dramatically lowered bike prices and the novelty wore off among the younger middle class.
In 1903, Joe Steiger’s Gunsmith Shop sold the first automobile in Petaluma, after which the moral panic over women finding liberation on a bicycle shifted locally to women finding liberation behind the wheel of a car.
A joke from the time captured the challenge women faced:
Jack and Jill have just climbed a steep hill on their tandem bicycle, with Jill riding in front. “Phew, that was a tough climb,” Jill said, leaning over, breathing hard. “The climb was so hard, and we were going so slow, I thought we were never going to make it.”
“Yeah,” said Jack, “good thing I kept the brakes on, or we would have slid all the way back down!”
Couple riding a tandem bicycle, 1890s (photo in public domain)
*****
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier on March 3, 2022.
SOURCES:
Newspapers
Los Angeles Herald: “Sports of the Day,” February 10, 1895.
Lincoln (Nebraska) Courier: “The Bicycle as a Reformer,” August 17, 1895.
New York World: Nellie Bly, “Champion Of Her Sex: Miss Susan B. Anthony,” February 2, 1896.
Petaluma Argus: “Two New Automobiles for Petaluma People,” October 31, 1903.
Petaluma Courier: “Bicycling,” April 1, 1893; “Here and There,” August 13, 1893; “The New Track,” April 30, 1894; “The Bicycle Trade,” July 18, 1894; “The Riders,” July 25, 1894; “The New Track,” June 22, 1895; “Out of Door Life for Women,” June 22, 1895; “The Wheel: a Test of Character,” September 12, 1895; “Bicycle Chat,” September 13, 1895; “The Mercury Cyclists,” October 16, 1895; “Local Counsel,” November 15, 1895; “For the Fourth of July,” December 19, 1895; “The League Meet,” January 29, 1896; “Bicycle Notes,” February 12, 1896, June 24, 1896; “Bicycle Races,” May 13, 1896; “Getting Ready,” June 24, 1896; “The Day,” “The League Meet,” July 8, 1896; “Osen Does Some Sprinting,” July 22, 1896.
San Francisco Call: “Wheel Races at Petaluma,” July 5, 1896; “Lady Cyclists Indignant,” August 28, 1896.
San Francisco Chronicle: “Petaluma’s Day to Shine,” June 26, 1896; “Wheelmen Race at Petaluma,” July 5, 1896; Gary Kamiya, “Sex and Cycling,” October 18, 2019.
San Francisco Examiner: “Wheelmen Make Merry,” July 4, 1896; “Greeting the Wheelmen,” July 2, 1890.
Magazines & Websites
Adrienne LaFrance, “How the Bicycle Paved the Way for Women’s Rights,” The Atlantic, June 26, 2014.
Ellen Gruber Garvey, “Reframing the Bicycle: Advertising-Supported Magazines and Scorching Women,” American Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 1 (John Hopkins University Press, March 1995), pp. 66-101.
Matt Reicher, “Photography, the Bicycle, and the Women’s Movement of the 1890s,” Medium, February 12, 2020. medium.com.
Michael Taylor, “Rapid Transit to Salvation: American Protestants and the Bicycle in the Era of the Cycling Craze,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 9, No. 3 (July 2010), pp. 337-363.
Yosemite Hotel, East Washington and Copeland streets, 1950 (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
One Sunday evening in December 1919, two Black men, Arthur Davis and Harry Crosby, entered the Yosemite Soda Fountain Emporium across from the Petaluma railroad yard. Located on the first floor of the Yosemite Hotel, a boarding house for cowhands, hay balers, and railroad workers on the corner of Copeland and East Washington streets, the Emporium was a working man’s soda fountain.[1]
The soda jerk that evening was George Delehanty, an Irish immigrant with a history of assault charges, including a shootout in a Bodega saloon that left two men dead, one of them shot five times in the chest.[2] Delehanty’s recent transition from bartending to soda jerking was dictated by the Wartime Prohibition Act, a temporary measure passed by Congress during World War I to conserve grain used in the making of alcohol.
By the time the act was implemented July 1, 1919, the war had ended, the 18th Amendment indefinitely banning the making and sale of alcohol had been ratified, and Prohibition was set to commence on January 17, 1920.[3] Rather than nullify the temporary act, Congress let it stand as a soft launch of banning alcohol.
“Last call” in Detroit before the Wartime Prohibition Act went into effect on July 1, 1919 (Photo courtesy of Wayne State University)
While most Petaluma’s saloons were forced to close on July 1st, a handful like the Yosemite converted to soda fountains. At least publicly. Privately, many surreptitiously added jackass brandy to the sugary syrup used in making sodas with carbonated water drawn from a spigot, giving birth by necessity to the fizzy cocktail.[4]
But serving booze under the table wasn’t the Yosemite’s only concealed practice—it also had an implicit “whites only” policy, as Crosby and Davis discovered the evening they walked into the soda fountain, when Delehanty grabbed them by their collars and began dragging them to the door.[5]
Davis was relatively new to town, having operated a sidewalk shoeshine stand for three months outside the Ecker Barbershop in the Washington Hotel, which wrapped around either side of the Bank of Sonoma County building on the northwest corner of Main and Washington streets. He boarded at the hotel.
Entrance to Washington Hotel under awning on Washington Street, with the Petaluma Hotel in the background, 1928 (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
Crosby worked as a chauffeur for Dr. Arthur Lumsden, a prominent physician in town. He and his wife Josie, who worked as a domestic for the doctor and his family, lived in the doctor’s household at 301 Sixth Street.[6]
Davis and the Crosbys were among only 13 Blacks living in Petaluma at the time, out of a total population of more than 6,000.[7] While the city served during the Civil War as Sonoma County’s abolitionist enclave with a small but vibrant Black community, by the turn of the century it had become what was known as a “sundown town,” excluding non-whites through some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, or violence.
Its racial barriers were maintained institutionally through legal covenants inserted in property deeds banning the sale or rental of homes to “persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent,” as well as more informal means, such as the reception Crosby and Davis received the night they entered the Yosemite.[8]
In Delehanty’s effort to eject them, a scuffle ensued that left Delehanty with a deep, eight-inch wound down his left arm. Crosby and Davis promptly fled the soda fountain, with Davis running up East Washington Street toward the Washington Hotel, and Crosby speeding home in Dr. Lumsden’s sedan.
Hillside Hospital, 223 Kentucky Street, 1920s (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
Delehanty was rushed to Hillside Hospital, a repurposed Italianate-style Victorian house at 223 Kentucky Street across from Penry Park, to be stitched up.
Police Chief Mike Flohr and Officer Otto Rudolph arrived at the scene in a cab, as the police force lacked patrol cars. The two quickly set out after Davis, arresting him in Penry Park across from his hotel.[9]
Taxi fleet outside Prince Building at northwest corner of Kentucky Street and Western Avenue, circa 1920 (Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library)
Charges against Davis and Crosby were dropped a few days later at their arraignment for lack of evidence. Police were unable to locate the knife used in the stabbing, or find anyone in the Yosemite that night willing to testify to having witnessed the incident.[10] As became clear in coming months, when it came to enforcing the town’s racial boundaries, some Petalumans preferred to take a vigilante approach.
Part of that had to do with the high level of national racial tension at the time. The release of Birth of a Nation, a 1915 epic silent film glorifying white supremacism, had spawned a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which grew to more than two million members nationwide. Petaluma’s KKK chapter made its presence known in 1925 with a giant burning cross at a nighttime rally held near the Petaluma Adobe, so large it was visible from the downtown.[11]
The period also saw the beginning of The Great Migration as Blacks left the South for urban areas in the North, seeking to escape the violence and oppression of living under Jim Crow. In a number of Northern cities their arrival was met with attacks, violent riots, and lynchings in what came to be known as The Red Summer of 1919.[12]
The national unrest was relayed to Petaluma that summer by the city’s two newspapers, which depicted America in the midst of a racial war.[13]
Davis and Crosby left Petaluma shortly after their arraignment, no doubt fearing for their safety.[14] Davis’ position at the shoeshine stand outside the Ecker Barbershop was filled by a Black man from San Francisco named Sidney Smith. Like Davis before him, he lodged at the Washington Hotel.
Smith had only been in town a month when rumors began circulating that he was making “slurring remarks” about young white women in town. One night an angry mob assembled in the hall outside his hotel room, violently threatening him. They had just knocked him to the floor when Flohr arrived, and took custody of Smith, escorting him to the police station in City Hall at Fourth and A streets.
Police Chief Mike Flohr sitting behind desk with fellow officers and secretary in police station, 1924 (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
Smith was detained for half an hour while police searched for someone willing to press charges against him. Finding no one, Flohr had no choice but to release him.
The mob was waiting for Smith outside the police station. They escorted him on foot to the city limits, warning him not to return.
City Hall from intersection of Western & Kentucky streets, 1920 (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
The next afternoon, a defiant Smith returned to work at his shoeshine stand. That night, a large mob gathered for him outside the Washington Hotel. Flohr met with the mob’s leaders, requesting they swear out a warrant against Smith, allowing the chief to arrest him. They refused.
At 10 p.m. Flohr and Rudolph rushed Smith out of the hotel and into a waiting taxi. As they sped off, members of the mob secured other taxis and gave chase, raising alarm as they raced through the streets of the city. They failed to overtake the taxi carrying Smith and the police as it headed south into Marin County.
A few days later, one of Smith’s customers from Petaluma ran into him outside the Ferry Building in San Francisco, where Smith asked him to buy him a meal, as everything he owned was back at the hotel, which he was unable to return to.[15]
By 1930, Petaluma’s Black population had dropped to just three residents. It would remain in the single digits for the next two decades. In 1960, a federal commission on civil rights found only one home in town owned by a Black family, that of shoeshine operator Henry Chenault and his wife Bessie at 32 West Street. Their daughter Nancy had been the only Black student in Petaluma High School when she graduated in 1950.[16]
Home of Henry and Bessie Chenault, 32 West Street (photo public domain)
Petaluma’s Black population would not increase significantly until after passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, reaching 136 in 1970.[17]
By that time, the Yosemite Hotel was targeted for demolition. Three months after the incident with Crosby and Davis, the soda fountain was shut down by federal marshals, who arrested Delehanty and the Yosemite’s owners after finding liquor on the premises. The establishment operated as a speakeasy throughout Prohibition, and then as an Italian restaurant and bar until 1966, when it was shuttered for good.
In 1971, the entire hotel was demolished for the widening of East Washington Street.[18]
*****
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 10, 2022.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Yosemite Opened,” Argus, April 4, 1905; Bill Soberanes, “Petaluma Loses Well-Known Landmark,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 14, 1971.
[2] “Blood at Bodega,” Petaluma Courier, July 18, 1894; “Delehanty,” Sonoma Democrat, October 13, 1894; “Delehanty Acquitted,” Healdsburg Tribune, October 18, 1894.
[3] Michael A. Lerner, “Going Dry,” Humanities, The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, September/October 2011, Volume 32, Number 5.
[4] “The Great Drought Begins at Midnight,” Petaluma Argus, June 30, 1919; Tristan Donovan, Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014), pp. 89-98.
[5] “Stabbing Affray Sunday,” Petaluma Argus, December 15, 1919; “Man Stabbed by a Negro,” Petaluma Courier, December 16, 1919.
[6] 1920 U.S. Census.
[7] 1920 U.S. Census.
[8] “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864; “Notice,” Petaluma Argus, November 30, 1865; “Flag Presentation,” Petaluma Argus, January 1, 1869; “The Picnic,” Petaluma Argus, July 9 1870; “Uncle Aleck Dead,” Petaluma Argus, August 4, 1886; Moore, Montojo, Mauri, “Roots, Race, and Place,” Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley, October 2019, p. 22; Sharon McGriff-Payne, John Grider’s Century: African Americans in Solano, Napa, and Sonoma Counties from 1845 to 1925 (iUniverse, 2009), p. 58; James E. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New York: Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster, 2006), pp. 3-5; An example of the covenants can be found in the Sonoma Deeds of Record, Book 293, Page 330, April 13, 1931, for the sale of property by Willian and Marie J. Deiss to Clifford B. and Minnie J. Murphy: “FOURTH: That prior to the first day of October, 1990, no persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent shall be permitted to purchase or lease said property, or any part thereof and this restriction shall bind, whether such attempted purchase shall be made at any execution sale, foreclosure sale or in any other manner.”
[9] “Stabbing Affray Sunday,” Petaluma Argus, December 15, 1919; “Man Stabbed by a Negro,” Petaluma Courier, December 16, 1919.
[10] “Dismissed at the Hearing,” Petaluma Argus, December 18, 1919.
[11] “Initiation of KKK Before Guests,” Petaluma Courier, June 2, 1925.
[12] “Racial Violence and the Red Summer,” African American Heritage, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/wwi/red-summer
[13] “Race War in Washington,” Petaluma Argus, July 21, 1919; “More Die in Race War in Chicago,” Petaluma Courier, July 31, 1919;“Race War Deaths Now Total 33,” Petaluma Argus, October 13, 1919.
[14] “Case Dismissed for Lack of Evidence,” Petaluma Courier, December 18, 1919.
[15] “Negro Threatened by Angered Citizens,” Petaluma Courier, June 2, 1920; Brief Item, Petaluma Courier, June 5, 1920.
[16] “Ex-Petaluman Honors King: As a Girl, She Was the Only Black Student,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 19, 1993; U.S. Census; United States Commission on Civil Rights, Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Hearings held in Los Angeles, California, January 25, 1960; San Francisco California, January 27, 1960, January 28, 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 588, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hearings_Before_the_United_States_Commis/fUXVAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1
[17] U.S. Census.
[18] “8 Violators of ‘Prohi’ Law Arrested,” Petaluma Courier, December 30, 1925; “Two Are Fined $500 Each and One Case Pending Following Federal Raid,” Petaluma Argus, June 22, 1926; “Abatement Proceedings Against East Petaluma Hotel,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 19, 1927; “Federals Start Abatement Suits Here,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 18, 1931; Bill Soberanes column, “Petaluma Loses Well-Known Landmark,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 14, 1971.
Linda Jones, second from right, first Black contestant for Petaluma Dairy Princess, 1971, standing with other contestants outside the Brown mansion at 920 D Street (photo Sonoma County Library)
The successful and persistent efforts of Black people to reach Petaluma, find jobs, combat discrimination, raise families, create positive images, and become a part of the community represent the creative and heroic aspects of Black history.
While Petaluma’s Black population has historically remained below two percent, it doesn’t mean the city lacks in stories of remarkable Black citizens. Even in the face of persistent racism, Black people have thrived, accumulating wealth, property, political clout, and a legacy that has left an indelible mark on Petaluma as we know it today.
Rivertown Era (1852 to 1900)
The Gold Rush
Black miner during Gold Rush era (photo California History Room, California State Library)
The Gold Rush brought Black people, both those free-born and educated in the North and those enslaved in the South, to California in search of economic and social opportunities. While many of those enslaved were able to purchase their freedom working for their owners in the gold mines, others escaped to freedom.
California’s Fugitive Law of 1852 authorized the return of runaway slaves to the South, placing any Black person who lacked clear legal documentation of their freedom at risk of being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Although slaveowners were only briefly allowed to keep their slaves in California, many informally held them until 1864.[1]
While most Black people settled in mining counties or in San Francisco during the 1850s, some chose towns like Petaluma, a small but bustling agricultural river port. Settled largely by Protestant abolitionists from New England, Petaluma was the sole Union outpost in Confederate Sonoma County during the Civil War.[2]
George W. Miller (1825-1873)
Inside a 19th century Black barbershop (photo public domain)
One of the more lucrative occupations for Black men was barbering. Their access to a white clientele provided them with economic and social advantages that conveyed prestige and influence within their communities.[3]
Petaluma’s leading barber was George W. Miller. Born a free man in New Jersey, Miller migrated to San Francisco in 1850, before moving to Petaluma in 1855 and opening a barbershop on Main Street.[4]
Miller continued to commute regularly to San Francisco, where he maintained his membership with prominent Black organizations, including the Olive Branch Lodge of the Black Masons, the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Brannan Guards ceremonial militia. The latter inspired him to establish the Colfax Guard in Petaluma.[5]
Miller was also a contributor to San Francisco’s two Black-owned newspapers, the Pacific Appeal and the Elevator, which provided Black people on the Pacific Coast as sense of community.[6]
He also represented Sonoma County at the four California Colored Conventions held between 1855 and 1865, where members organized to fight for full citizenship rights for Black people, including the right to court testimony, homesteading, publicly-funded schools, and suffrage.[7]
Union African Methodist Episcopal Church
Former Union A.M.E. Church, 109 Howard Street (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)
In 1865, the first African Methodist Episcopal church (A.M.E.) in the North Bay was established in Petaluma. Located in a house at 109 Howard Street, the church served as a religious, social, and political center for the town’s small but vibrant Black community, a number of them homeowners.[8]
Reverend Peter Killingsworth, a former slave and A.M.E. circuit preacher, was assigned as founding pastor.[9] In 1865, he accompanied George Miller to the Colored Convention held in Sacramento, serving as the convention’s chaplain. Killingsworth noted in his convention report that Sonoma County had 70 black residents, 58 adults and 12 children. Of the adult men, a dozen were general laborers, ten farmers, seven barbers, two blacksmiths, and two carpenters.[10]
A schism later developed between Killingsworth and the Petaluma church’s more politically cautious trustees—all former slaves—leading to his departure in 1869. That same year, those trustees were among 12 Black residents who signed a petition for woman’s suffrage, on the eve of ratification of the 15th Amendment, which extended voting rights to Black men.[11]
The church operated with visiting preachers before shutting down in 1878 after a large decline in the local Black population.[12]
“Colored School”
“Colored school” in Oakland’s Brooklyn neighborhood, 1870 (photo in the publicdomain)
In 1864, George Miller spearheaded the opening of a private “colored school,” as it was called at the time. A young Black woman from San Francisco, Mrs. Rachel Coursey, was hired as the school’s first teacher.[13]
Later that year, after the California Supreme Court ruled public school districts were required to provide “separate but equal” schools for Black students, Petaluma’s “colored school” became one of six such schools in the state to be publicly funded.[14]
In the early 1870s, Miller joined with other members of the Colored Convention’s Education Committee in bringing a case for school integration before the California Supreme Court. Although the court upheld “separate but equal” schooling in Ward v. Flood, committee members convinced most of the cities with “colored schools” to voluntarily integrate.[15]
Petaluma was the lone hold-out, generating national press and serving as a polarizing issue locally.
The city’s “colored school” remained in operation until 1880, at which time the state legislature voted to abolish segregated schools.[16] By that time, the school had only one student, as most Black families had relocated to friendlier communities in Vallejo and Oakland, where jobs were readily available in the shipyards and on the railroads.[17]
Egg Boom Era (1901 to 1945)
Sundown Town
New housing development in Los Angeles, 1950 (photo Irving C. Smith, California Eagle newspaper; California Eagle Photo Collection, Southern California Library, Los Angeles, California)
Having served as an abolitionist, pro-Union enclave during the Civil War, Petaluma became less friendly for Black residents following the end of Reconstruction in 1877.
Abolitionists may have supported the end of slavery, but not all were in favor of providing Black people with equal rights.
Black barbers in town, who had gained wealth, prominence, and influence servicing white clientele, found themselves displaced in the 1880s by German and Swiss-Italian immigrants.[18]
By the beginning of Petaluma’s prosperous egg boom at the turn of the century, the city had become a so-called “sundown town,” intent on excluding non-whites through a combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence.
This was accomplished largely by restricting housing access to Caucasians through both implicit and explicit means. The latter came in the form of institutional racism.[19]
In 1927, the National Association of Real Estate Boards championed the inclusion of legal covenants in property deeds that banned the sale or lease of property to non-whites. The Federal Housing Administration, created in the 1930s to insure home mortgages, also required racial covenants to guarantee loans, a practice better known as “redlining,” referring to the red colored areas on maps they would not insure. [20]
While Petaluma’s population surged with the egg boom in 1920 to 6,226 residents, only 13 of them were Black, and were employed as domestics, porters, chauffeurs, and shoeshine men.[21]
The largest Black presence in town during the 1920s and 30s were traveling Black minstrel troupes and jazz groups performing at the Mystic Theater and Hill Opera House, and Black cowboys at the local rodeos held at the fairgrounds.[22]
Black rodeo champion Jesse Stahl, a frequent visitor to Petaluma (photo public domain)
The 1920s also brought a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, thanks largely to the release of the epic silent film Birth of a Nation, which glorified white supremacism. The local Petaluma KKK chapter staged a recruiting rally in 1925 with a nighttime cross-burning outside the Petaluma Adobe that was visible from the downtown.[23] By 1930, the city’s Black population had dropped to three citizens.[24]
One open-minded group in town was the Men’s Forum of the Congregational Church, led by grain merchant George P. McNear. The forum regularly brought to town Black speakers, including Dr. E.W. Moore, a Baptist preacher and charter member of the NAACP, to educate them on race matters.[25]
Suburban Boom Era (1946 to current)
Housing Discrimination
Chenault House at 32 West Street, only Petaluma home owned by a Black family in 1960 (photo John Sheehy)
The suburban tract housing boom following World War II more than tripled Petaluma’s population to almost 25,000 by 1970. However, the boom however came with restrictive deed covenants redlining by the banks that prevented the sale or resale of homes to “persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent.”[26]
Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such covenants unenforceable in 1948, they were still being used in the North Bay as late as the 1960s, often serving as a means of placing social pressure on white families not wishing to discriminate.[27]
In 1960, a report by a federal commission on civil rights found only one home in Petaluma owned by a Black family, that of Henry and Bessie Chenault. The commission attributed this to a cabal of bankers, realtors, developers, and neighborhood associations who ostracized and financially threatened anyone attempting to sell or rent a home to Black people.[28]
In 1963, the California Fair Housing Act was passed, making it unlawful to discriminate against home buyers and renters. The next year, the California Real Estate Association put forth a successful ballot measure to nullify the Fair Housing Act. The ballot measure was overruled by the U.S Supreme Court in 1967.[29]
Henry Chenault (1895 -1969)
Henry Chenault at his Western Avenue shoeshine stand, 1954 (photo Sonoma County Library)
From the 1940s through the 1960s, Petaluma’s most prominent Blacks were Henry and Bessie Chenault. Actively engaged in politics, they served as officers of Petaluma’s Democratic Club and founding members of the Sonoma County NAACP, where Bessie was elected the chapter’s first treasurer.[30]
Henry moved to Petaluma in the 1930s, after serving 13 years in Leavenworth Prison for his participation in a deadly uprising of Black soldiers on a Houston army base in 1917.[31]
Keeping his past secret, he operated a sidewalk shoeshine stand at 18 Western Avenue, across from Andresen’s Tavern, until his death in 1969.
Thanks to Henry’s outgoing personality, his stand became a popular downtown crossroads. Among merchants, it served as the city’s “second chamber of commerce.” For local politicians, many of whom relied upon Henry as a trusted advisor, it helped them keep a finger on the pulse of the community.[32]
For many years, Henry was Petaluma’s only Black businessman, and he and Bessie were the city’s sole Black homeowners.[33] Henry was posthumously pardoned in 1972 for his role in the Houston uprising, determined to have been staged by white racists.[34]
Sonoma County NAACP
Sonoma County NAACP leaders meeting in Petaluma, 1970 (photo Sonoma County Library)
The 1950s and 60s marked a period of unprecedented protests against the status of second class citizenship accorded to Black Americans.
The protests took form in civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance, marches, protests, boycotts, “freedom rides,” and rallies. There were also continuing efforts to legally challenge segregation through the courts.[35]
In 1955, Platt Williams and Gilbert Gray of Santa Rosa spearheaded organizing the Sonoma County chapter of the NAACP. Henry and Bessie Chenault represented Petaluma as founding members.
One of the chapter’s first actions was closing down the Montgomery Village Lions Club’ annual minstrel charity show, which harkened back to blackface entertainment.[36]
While the chapter supported the national NAACP movement—for example, picketing and boycotting the F.W. Woolworth department stores in Petaluma and Santa Rosa over the chain’s refusal to serve Black people at lunch counters in the South—their primary focus was securing equal treatment in jobs and housing for the county’s Black residents, who by 1960 totaled 916.[37]
That included successfully lobbying for the California Fair Employment Practice Act of 1959 and the California Fair Housing Act of 1963.[38]
Gloria Robinson moved to Petaluma from San Francisco in 1971 with her husband Herbert and four children, attracted by the affordable real estate. She quickly made friends with civil rights activist Bessie Chenault, and began working with the NAACP and Sonoma County People for Economic Opportunity.[39]
Petaluma’s Black population by that time had grown from 11 in 1960 to more than 100, and was on its way toward reaching almost 500 by 1980.[40]
In 1976, Gerald Ford became the first U.S. president to recognize February as Black History Month, an event started 50 years before by Black historian Carl G. Wooden.[41]
Seeing an opportunity to increase Black visibility and representation in town, in 1978 Robinson formed Petaluma Blacks for Community Development. Serving as president, she was joined by founding board members Faith Ross, Ted Morris, and Nadine Lawson.
The group’s mission has been to share Black history and culture with the Petaluma community and bring Black families together for social and educational activities by sponsoring events, speaking engagements, and exhibits.
Their vision is to help “make the Petaluma community free of hate and get rid of those issues that divide us based on color.”[42]
******
FOOTNOTES
[1] Rudolph M. Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Douglas Henry Daniels, Pioneer Urbanites (University of California Press, 1990), pp. 12-13; Mike McPhate, “California’s Black Slaves and the Myth of Free Soil,” California Sun, January 23, 2019. Californiasun.com.
[2] Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing,1919) p. 42; Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), p. 47.
[3] Douglas W. Bristol, Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015); Sean Trainor, “The Racially Fraught History of the American Beard,” The Atlantic, January 20, 2014.
[4] Advertisements, Sonoma County Journal, August 25, 1855, and September 5, 1856; “Deaths: George Miller,” Pacific Appeal, October 25, 1873.
[5] “Prince Hall Freemasonry,” Freemason Information, freemasoniformation.com; Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing, 1919) p. 146; “Masonic Notice,” The Elevator, December 21, 1872; “Died,” The Elevator, October 25, 1873; “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864; “Flag Presentation,” Petaluma Argus, January 1, 1869; “The Picnic,” Petaluma Argus, July 9 1870.
[7] Herbert G. Ruffin II, “The Conventions of Colored Citizens of the State of California (1855-1865),” February 9, 2009. BlackPast.com.
[8] “Rudolph Lapp, Afro-Americans in California (San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser Publishing Company, 1987); “Santa Rosa,” The Elevator, July 4, 1865, the first newspaper mention of Rev. Killingsworth at the A.M.E. Church in Petaluma; “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864; “Notice,” Petaluma Argus, November 30, 1865; “Campbell’s Chapel,” Petaluma Argus, November 30, 1865.
[9] California State Convention of Colored Citizens, held in Sacramento on the 25, 26, 27, 28 of October 1865. Coloredconventions.org; Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing,1919) p. 158; “The Appointments of the A. M. E. Church for the Conference,” Pacific Appeal, November 8, 1862; “The Appointments of the A. M. E. Church for the Conference,” Pacific Appeal, September 12, 1863; 1860 U.S. Census, Sacramento, California; 1861 Sacramento City Directory.
[11] Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing,1919) p. 252-253. “Petaluma,” The Elevator, November 1, 1867; “Correspondence of the Elevator,” The Elevator, February 19, 1869; “Petition for Woman’s Suffrage in Senate, March 2, 1870,” Journals of Senate and Assembly of the 18th Session of the legislature of the State of California, Volume II, pp. 14-18, 23-24; Note: the 12 identified Black residents who signed the 1870 woman’s suffrage petition were Charles and Rebecca Montgomery, Peggy Barnes, Alexander and Malvina McFarland, Thomas and Juliana Johnson, John and Ellen Looney, E. Cooper and Eliza A. Smith, and Mary Espee.
[12] “Sixteen Volume: A.M.E. Appointments,” Pacific Appeal, August 10, 1878; City of Petaluma Deed Records, Lot 276, Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library, Ref. 979.418.732: Sold on October 3, 1885 by two trustees of the AME, a religious society not incorporated; includes a small frame structure; states it has been many years since any religious services were held, and that but four or five members of the society remain; remains of the sale to be extended to other A.M.E. churches throughout the state. Last service listed in the Petaluma Argus was August 14, 1878, when Bishop Black of Baltimore preached there.
[13] “Correspondence,” Pacific Appeal December 12, 1863; “Married,” Pacific Appeal June 27, 1863; “Arrivals from the Interior,” Pacific Appeal, February 13, 1864; “School for Colored Children,” Petaluma Argus, December 16, 1863; “Opened,” Petaluma Argus, January 13, 1864.
[14] Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), p. 25; “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864.
[15] Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing, 1919) p. 180-182; “Educational Public Meeting at Bethel Church,” The Elevator, April 27, 1872; “Address of the Educational Committee,” The Elevator, May 11, 1872; “1874 Ward V. Flood, Blackpast.org, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/ward-v-flood-1874/
[16] “Educational Items,” Petaluma Argus, August 13, 1875; “A Pennsylvania Opinion,” Petaluma Argus, May 18, 1876; “Our ‘Colored Schools,’” Petaluma Argus, December 22, 1876; “Our Colored School,” Petaluma Argus, August 11, 1876; “The Negro School,” Petaluma Argus, April 5, 1877; “A Pennsylvania Opinion,” Petaluma Argus, May 18, 1877.
[17] Sharon McGriff-Payne, John Grider’s Century: African Americans in Solano, Napa, and Sonoma Counties from 1845 to 1925 (iUniverse, 2009), p. 58; History of Sonoma County, Sonoma County,CA (Archives History – Books …..Petaluma Township, Part 3 1880); Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), 25; John Ford, Journal of the American Association, Volume 6, 1907, p. 84; “The Public Schools,” Petaluma Courier, June 18, 1879.
[18] Douglas Walter Bristol, Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers on Slavery and Freedom (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009).
[19] Moore, Montojo, Mauri, “Roots, Race, and Place,” Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley, October 2019, p. 22.
[20] “Is There Racism in the Deed to Your Home?” New York Times, August 17, 2021.
[21] 1920 U.S. Census; “Negro Attacked Officer; Arrested,” Petaluma Courier, April 24, 1920.
[22] “At the Theaters, California,” Petaluma Courier, June 19, 1927.
[23] “Initiation of K.K.K. Before Guests,” Petaluma Courier, June 2, 1925.
[24] U.S Census.
[25] The Negro and His Outlook,” Petaluma Argus, March 30, 1925; “Negro Lecturer Returns to Congregational Open Forum,” Petaluma Argus, November 18, 1925; “Solve the Race Problem If We Would Avoid War, Says Noted Authority,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 21, 1932; “Dr. Kingsley Addresses Club,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 8, 1933.
[26] An example of the covenants can be found in the Sonoma Deeds of Record, Book 293, Page 330, April 13, 1931, for the sale of property by Willian and Marie J. Deiss to Clifford B. and Minnie J. Murphy: “FOURTH: That prior to the first day of October, 1990, no persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent shall be permitted to purchase or lease said property, or any part thereof and this restriction shall bind, whether such attempted purchase shall be made at any execution sale, foreclosure sale or in any other manner.”
[27] Moore, Montojo, Mauri, pgs. 7, 13; Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation,2017), pgs. 6, 36, 52.
[28] “United States Commission on Civil Rights: Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights.” Hearings held in Los Angeles, California, January 25, 1960; San Francisco California, January 27, 1960, January 28, 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 590.
[29] Moore, Motojo, Mauri, p. 54.
[30] Bill Soberanes, So They Tell Me Column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 24, 1960; “Santa Rosa Unit of NAACP to Receive Charter,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 2, 1955.
[32] Bill Soberanes, “So They Tell Me” column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 19, 1952; Bob Wells, “Everybody Here Knows Henry L. Chenault,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 24, 1954; “A Paragraph for Mr. Chenault,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 29, 1954; Bill Soberanes, “Henry Chenault Was a Petaluma Institution,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 20, 1993.
[33] Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 20, 1993; United States Commission on Civil Rights, Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1960, p. 588.
[34] Jaime Salazar, Mutiny of Rage: The 1917 Camp Logan Riots and Buffalo Soldiers in Houston (Prometheus eBooks, 2021), p. 51.
[35] “The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship,”Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-american-odyssey/abolition.html
[36] “County Negroes are Forming NAACP Unit,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, February 9, 1955; “Santa Rosa Unit of NAACP to Receive Charter,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 2, 1955; “Village Minstrel Show Called Off After Protest,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 16, 1955.
[37] “Picketing by NAACP Continues in County,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 20, 1960; “Negro ‘Test’ Stores Open—Part of the Way,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 9, 1960.
[38] “F.E.P. Bill To Be Discussed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 29, 1955; Michael C. Tobriner, “California FEPC,” Hastings Law Journal, 1965, Vol. 16, issue 3; Moore, Motojo, Mauri, p. 54.
[39] 1970 U.S. census; Ann Gray Byrd, Glimpses: Santa Rosa African Americans (Santa Rosa, CA, 2003),p. 96; “Gloria Robinson: If Not You, Then Who?” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 3, 2013; “Gloria Robinson Still Active, Still Working for Change,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 16, 2019.
[40] U.S. Census.
[41] “Black History Month,” history.com: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-month
[42] Petaluma Blacks for Community Development website: https://pbcd4us.com/about/.
Rev. Lorenzo Waugh, circa 1870s (photo by George Ross, courtesy of the Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
The tall tales regarding Reverend Lorenzo Waugh began a month before his death in September 1900, with a story that ran in the Petaluma Argus celebrating his upcoming 92nd birthday.
The Argus reported that Waugh: 1) built the first Methodist Church in Petaluma at Fourth and A streets, hauling lumber from the redwoods north of town with the same team of oxen he used to cross the plains; 2) was gifted with 320 acres by General Vallejo as a reward for his services as a missionary among the Shawnees; and 3) donated the land upon which Waugh School at Corona and Adobe roads was built in 1864.[1]
Over the next century, these and other apocryphal stories grew, fueled by newspaper articles that relied upon twice-told tales. Waugh was credited with not only donating the land for Waugh School, but also with building the 1865 schoolhouse, alleged to be the first country school established in Sonoma County.
Children with their teacher outside Bethel School (later renamed Waugh School), 1908 (photo Sonoma County Library)
The school itself, originally named Bethel, was reported by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in 1991 to have been initially founded as a religious school in accordance with Waugh’s Methodist beliefs. The paper went on to say it was converted to a public school in 1897, three years before Waugh’s death, at which time it was renamed Waugh School.[2]
None of these stories are true, as the facts assembled below demonstrate.
The Founding of Petaluma’s Methodist Episcopal Church
By all accounts, Rev. Waugh was a moral upstanding and admirable man. Most of what is known about his life however comes from the autobiography he wrote and first published in 1883. None of the 19th century historians who wrote books about Sonoma County— Thompson (1877), Munro-Fraser (1880), Cassiday (1889), Gregory (1911)—mention Waugh in any detail in their biographies of prominent early settlers.
As is true for all autobiographies, Waugh’s life story is selectively depicted through his eyes, with omissions and inaccuracies.
Title page of Waugh’s 1883 autobiography, third edition published in 1885 (public domain)
In the book, Waugh writes that he rode across the plains to California in 1852 with his wife and children in a wagon pulled by a team of oxen. He came not for the gold rush, but for his health, having suffered for years from the long-term effects of malaria, possibly contracted during his time as a missionary among the Shawnee and Kaw tribes in pre-terriotorial Kansas. After spending 20 years as an itinerant Methodist preacher in Ohio and Missouri, Waugh came west with the aim of retiring from the being a circuit rider and taking up farming. [3]
Petaluma’s first Methodist Episcopal Church, constructed in 1856 at Fourth and A streets, was not built by Waugh, nor was he ever one of its resident ministers. He did give sermons from time to time, as well as wed couples and perform burials.
In 1859, he took up what would become his main preoccupation for the next 40 years: traveling the state giving temperance lectures to young people. He also launched that year the Sonoma County chapter of the Settlers’ League, in protest of fraudulent land grant claims and the eviction of homesteaders on the land grants denounced as squatters.[4]
The Gift from Vallejo
After arriving in Petaluma, Waugh purchased 160 acres of farm land near the junction of Davis Lane and East Railroad Avenue in current-day Penngrove, planting a fruit orchard and vineyard. The two men Waugh purchased the land from told him it was government owned, and so available for homesteading.[5]
Under the terms of the Preemption Act of 1841, a squatter had the right to purchase up to 160 acres in the public domain, assuming he resided on the land for at least 14 months or made agricultural improvements to it for five years. [6].
Unfortunately, the men who sold Waugh his property lied about it being in the public domain. When Waugh learned he was actually squatting on part of the 66,000-acre Rancho Petaluma land grant owned by Mariano Vallejo, he asked for a meeting with Vallejo.
According Waugh’s account, Vallejo agreed orally to sell him the farm in recognition of his missionary work on the Shawnee and Kaw tribes reservations back in pre-territorial Kansas. But first, Vallejo said, they had to wait for the California Land Commission to survey the boundaries of his land grant as part of their legal review of his claim.[7]
Mariano Vallejo, circa 1870s (photo Sonoma County Library)
Since Vallejo was actively selling off other parcels of Petaluma Rancho without awaiting final claim review from the Land Commission, it’s likely his concern with Waugh’s farm was that it bordered the Rancho Cotate land grant, raising some uncertainty as to its exact boundaries.[8]
In 1856, the commission approved Vallejo’s land grant claim (although, like most of the commission’s decisions, the approval was subjected to years of court appeals), clearing the way for Waugh to purchase his farm. For unknown reasons, Waugh failed to make the purchase.
Instead, on October 25, 1858, two years after the commission’s approval, and six years after Waugh first squatted on the Rancho Petaluma, Vallejo sold Waugh’s farm to two of his sons, Antonio and Jose, as part of a larger 1,039-acre land acquisition.[9]
In his autobiography, Waugh blamed the sale on Vallejo’s lawyer, whom he claimed stealthily exercised his power of attorney during a period in which Vallejo was away in Monterey County, tending to the death of his brother. Vallejo’s brother died in 1856, and while it’s true Vallejo temporarily moved to Watsonville to tend to his brother’s estate, by the fall of 1858 he had returned to his home in Sonoma. His signature, not his lawyer’s, is on the county deed record of the sale.[10]
Three weeks after purchasing the 1,039 acres for $100 from their father, Vallejo’s sons flipped the property for $8,500 to George L. Wratten, the lawyer who served as the notary public on their original deed transaction with their father. A week later, Wratten sold 501 acres of his new purchase at a profit to a real estate agent named George W. Oman. Included in the sale was Waugh’s farm. [11]
A month after acquiring the land, Oman sold off Waugh’s 150-acre farm to a settler named Jacob Adamson for $1,500, and filed a lawsuit to evict Waugh from the property.[12]The property had been reduced from 160 to 150 acres following the Land Commission’s survey of the Petaluma Rancho and Cotate Rancho land grant boundaries).
Waugh’s original farm (circled), lot 376 of Vallejo Township near Penngrove, was sold in 1859 to Jacob Adamson (1877 Thompson Atlas map courtesy of of Sonoma County Library)
Waugh claims he approached Oman with a counter offer, but was turned down. Given that Waugh’s net worth according to the 1860 U.S. census was only $600, it’s possible the terms of his offer came up short.
In 1860, with the eviction lawsuit still making its way through the courts, Waugh again approached Vallejo. According to Waugh, Vallejo offered him 320 acres of lots 286 and 287 in the Vallejo Township as recompense for selling his farm out from under him.
Waugh claimed Vallejo gifted him the property, however the deed records show a murkier series of transactions. [13]
Vallejo first sold the 320 acres to Hereziah Bisel Wilson, a workingman in San Francisco, for $1. A week later, Wilson sold the land to Waugh for $3,200. Given Waugh’s net worth at the time, it’s possible the land was in fact a gift, and that Vallejo used the intermediary sale to Wilson as a means of hiding that from county officials. The terms of transaction remain a mystery however. [14]
1866 map shows in circle Lots 286 and 287, comprising the 320 acres Waugh received from Vallejo, of which he gifted half, lot 287, to his son John; the arrow points to Bethel School (listed as “Waugh School”) at the southwest corner of Adobe Road and Corona roads (1866 Bowers Map courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
The Founding of Bethel School (Waugh School)
In the early 1850s, American settlers in rural areas outside Petaluma created public school districts as a means of taxing themselves to build country school houses, and also to qualify for county and state school taxes in operating them.
Bethel School was most likely established in 1853 or 1854. While one of Sonoma County’s earliest country schools, it was not the first. That honor goes to Iowa School near Two Rock, established in 1852. [15]
Bethel was originally one of three rural schools established in the Vallejo Township, which extended east from the Petaluma River to Sonoma Mountain, north to current day Cotati, and south to San Pablo Bay, comprising the western portion Vallejo’s Rancho Petaluma and the southeastern portion of Cotate Rancho.
Waugh was appointed one of three school trustees to oversee the Vallejo’s Township’s initial schools, along with Judge Stephen Payran and County Supervisor Alexander Copeland, both of whom lived in the township.
Because of the township’s large size, the county board of supervisors decided by 1855 to divide it into three school districts, each named after a founding trustee: District No. 1, the Payran District; No. 2, the Waugh District ; and No. 3, the Copeland District. [16]
Bethel School was the only school in Waugh School District during the 19th century and most of the 20th century. From early on, the schoolhouse served as the district’s election precinct as well as a community center for festivals, lectures, elections, political gatherings, and fraternal groups.[17]
Men outside Bethel School on election day, circa 1890s (photo Sonoma County Library)
The location of the Bethel Schoolhouse in the 1850s and early 1860s is uncertain, as no property transaction could be found in the county’s deed records. It most likely wasn’t located on Waugh’s original farm, lot 386 of the Vallejo Township, as country school houses were usually centrally located within school districts for commuting purposes.
Waugh’s farm resided at the far western edge of the Waugh School District, bordering both the Eagle School District in current-day Penngrove to the west and the Copeland School District to the north.
1877 map of the Waugh School District (in tan), with a star marking location of Bethel School and an arrow pointing to Waugh’s first farm at the edge of the district, adjacent to the Eagle School District of Penngrove (map Sonoma County Library)
Bethel School most likely sat originally at the same place it occupied throughout the 19th century—the southwest corner of Adobe and Corona roads, which served as the main crossroad of the Waugh School District, Corona Road being its primary thoroughfare to Petaluma.
The property the school sat on was originally part of a 160-acre parcel purchased in 1853 from Mariano Vallejo by Judge Philip R. Thompson, an elected associate county judge.[18]
Born into a prominent Virginia family in 1797, Thompson came to California during the gold rush.[19] He was soon joined by his nephews, Thomas and Robert Thompson, who went on to edit and publish Petaluma’s first newspaper, the Sonoma County Journal, and then Santa Rosa’s Sonoma Democrat, as well as write some of early history books of Sonoma County.
Judge Thompson, along with two other elected judges, served as the initial judicial body of Sonoma County, whose population in 1851 numbered only 561. Along with their judicial powers, the three were responsible for dividing the county into townships and school districts, and establishing county-owned buildings.[20]
Despite Bethel School’s lack of deed records, it appears likely Thompson donated a small portion of his property for the Bethel School soon after purchasing it in 1853.
As the school-age population in Waugh School District grew, by the early 1860s a larger school house was needed. Waugh’s term as trustee apparently ended sometime in the mid-1850s. The district’s subsequent three trustees—Lorenzo Jackson, John Hardin, and George W. Frick—held a successful tax election in March 1863 to raise $1,650 to construct a schoolhouse that would accommodate 60 to 70 students.[21]
Judge Thompson, who became a real estate agent in Petaluma after retiring from the bench in the mid-1850s, sold his farm due to failing health in September 1864 to an English immigrant named Mark Carr, who had originally settled in California during the gold rush. A month after the sale, Thompson died.[22]The new Bethel schoolhouse opened that fall.[23]
Arrow points to Bethel School (listed here as “Waugh Dist. Schl.”) at the corner of Adobe and Corona roads in 1877 map, directly across from Waugh’s 40-acre farm (1877 Thompson Atlas map courtesy of Sonoma County Library)
The 320-acre ranch Rev. Waugh acquired from Vallejo in 1860 sat directly across the street from the Bethel School property, on the southeast corner of Adobe Road and Hardin Lane.[24]No deed records have been found of Waugh having owned the property the school sat on, nor of his donating it to the school district.
In the 1860s, Waugh gave or sold all but 40 of his 320 acres to his three children, building a home for himself and his wife on remaining acreage at 1515 Adobe Road. In 1890, three years after his wife died, he sold his 40 acres and moved to San Francisco to live with his granddaughter.[25]
The boarded up remains for Waugh’s 1860s house at 1515 Adobe Road (photo public domain)
The Bethel School was often referred to in the newspapers during the 19th century as the “Waugh School.” In 1925, the school was formally renamed the Waugh School, after residents of the Waugh School District approved a $10,000 school bond to erect a new schoolhouse. [26]
Waugh School, 1925-1991 (photo in public domain)
The old Bethel schoolhouse was divided into two structures, and moved to the nearby chicken ranch of Thomas King at 1055 Adobe Road, where it was repurposed as an egg house and a shop.[27]
The new school Waugh School remained in operation until 1991, after which it was sold as a private residence, which it remains today. [28]
******
Thanks to Simone Kremkau of the Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library for her research assistance.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Lorenzo Waugh Visits Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, August 3, 1900.
[2] “Pioneers Bought Vallejo’s Land,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955; “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963; “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 13, 1963; “Mumbly peg’ and ‘Giant Stride,’” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 7, 1991; “Waugh School the Way it Was,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 27, 1991; “Larry Reed and Cinda Gilliland Have Converted the Former Waugh School into Their Residence,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, February 19, 2011.
[3] Lorenzo Waugh, Autobiography of Lorenzo Waugh (Oakland, Calif.: Pacific Press, 1883), pgs. 135, 189; “A Long Life: Short Historical Sketch of Rev. Lorenzo Waugh,” Daily Commonwealth, August 27, 1884.
[4] J.P. Munro-Fraser, “Methodist Episcopal Church,” History of Sonoma County (Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880), pp. 311-12; Waugh autobiography, pp. 218-220; “The Temperance Cause,” Marysville Daily Appeal, June 1, 1860; “M.E. Church in Windsor,” Russian River Flag, June 10, 1869; “Settlers’ Meeting,” Sonoma Democrat, March 24, 1859.
[5] Waugh, pp. 208-209; According to deed records, Waugh’s farm was lot 276 in Vallejo Township of Bower’s 1866 map of Sonoma County.
[8] Note: Waugh’s ranch was originally 160 acres. It sat on lot 376 of the Vallejo Township. The sale of lot 376 at 150 acres by Vallejo to his sons is listed as a partial sale, implying the additional 10 acres may have extended into the adjacent Cotate Rancho, and hence were cut from the lot in Rancho Petaluma.
[9] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 7, page 763, index image 390, October 25, 1858,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.
[10] Killed,” Sacramento Daily Union, May 29, 1857; Allan Rosenus, General M.G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), pp. 215-218; Waugh autobiography, p. 213. Note: Waugh also erroneously states he lived on the land for 9 years, not the actual 6 years (1852-58), before Vallejo sold the farm.
[11] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 7, page 764, index image 390, November 19, 1858”; November 24, 1858; Book 7, page 795-6, index image 407; Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.
[12] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 9, page 123, index image 840,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.
[14] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 10, page 583, index image 428, September 29, 1860,” and “Book 10, page 604, index image 4439, October 11, 1860,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.
[15] “Iowa School Built Way Back in 1852,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955; Note: the report that Bethel was the first country school house built in Sonoma County most likely goes back to an erroneous news item in the July 17, 1863, edition of the Sonoma County Journal entitled “Laudable Enterprise,” reporting on the initiative of the Waugh School District to pass a tax to build a new schoolhouse for Bethel School.
[16] “Schools in Vallejo (Township),” Sonoma County Journal, February 26, 1858; “Our Public Schools,” Sonoma County Journal, December 19, 1856; “County School Funds,” Sonoma Democrat, January 28, 1858; “Apportionment,” Sonoma Democrat, July 14, 1859; “County School Funds,” Sonoma Democrat, January 28, 1858; “Apportionment,” Sonoma Democrat, July 14, 1859.
[17] “Sonoma County Elections, Sonoma County Journal, August 18, 1855; “Union Meeting at Bethel School House,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, October 13, 1864; “Bethel League,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, February 9, 1865; “May Day Festival,” Sonoma Democrat, May 13, 1865.
[18] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book K, pages 176-77, index image 138,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; Note: Unfortunately, Book K is not included in the digitized database of deeds previously on microfilm, so this is an assumption that Thompson, who located to the Vallejo Township at that time, purchased lot #269 from Vallejo, and that it totaled 160 acres. This assumption is reinforced by newspaper ads from the 1850s that cite Judge Thompson’s ranch as a landmark in the Vallejo Township.
[19] Thompson’s younger brother, Robert A. Thompson, Sr., a former U.S. Congressman, followed him to Petaluma in 1853, before moving to San Francisco where he served on the justices’ court in the 1870s. Two of Robert A. Thompson’s sons, Robert Jr. and Thomas Larkin Thompson, became newspapermen in Sonoma County. Thomas founded the Sonoma County Journal and was the longtime editor and publisher of the Sonoma Democrat, and later a U.S. congressman and ambassador to Brazil. Robert Jr. served as the county’s longtime county clerk, and also wrote a history of the county in 1877 (Sources: Robert A. Thompson (1805-1876), findagrave.com; “Thomas L. Thompson,” Petaluma Courier, February 1, 1898; “R.A. Thompson,” Petaluma Courier, August 4, 1903).
[20] Robert A. Thompson, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877), p. 47.
[21] “To the Electors of the Waugh School District,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, March 11, 1863; “Enterprising,” Sonoma County Journal, March 27, 1863.
[22] “Deaths,” The Sacramento Daily Bee, October 28, 1864; “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 15, page 254, index image 180,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; “Pioneers Bought Vallejo’s Land,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955: this article states that Mark Carr donated the land for Bernal School from his property, but no records of that donation or sale was found in the Sonoma County database of deed transfers; The deed of sale lists the property—lot 289 in the Vallejo Township— at 145 acres, which is also how it is also reflected on the 1866 A.B. Bowers map of Sonoma County. At some point not found in the deed records, Thompson reduced his property by 15 acres from the original 160 acres he purchased from Vallejo.
[23] “To the Electors of Waugh School District,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, April 20, 1865; “May Day Festival,” Sonoma Democrat, May 13, 1865.
[24] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 10, page 604, index image 439,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.
[25]Index to Grantors, Vols. 8-12, 1888-1901: March 14, 1890, Book 125, page 330, image 418, Lorenzo Waugh, grantor, John Caltoft, grantee; San Francisco Directory, 1891 to 1892: Rev. Lorenzo Waugh, 1605 Mission Street, along with Edwin and Franklin Waugh; “Peggy’s Pencilings,” Courier, October 1, 1890: Waugh returned to his property on Adobe Road to remove the remains of his young son who died 20 years before, and move the body to Cypress Hill Cemetery; Source of boarded up Waugh home photo at 1515 Adobe Road: “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963.
[26] “Contract for School at Waugh is Let for $8,114,” Petaluma Courier, June 26, 1925; “New Waugh School to Open November 1,” Petaluma Courier, October 16, 1925; “Waugh P.T.A. Plans Old Fashioned Dance, Petaluma Courier, October 15, 1925.
[27] “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963.
[28] “New Use for Old Waugh School,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 13, 1991.
