Entrance to the Union Hotel Beer Hall, Main and B streets, c. 1892, with the saloon proprietor John Hermer most likely the man with the white beard (Sonoma County Library)
In 1852, two brothers from Germany, Herman and John Schierhold, purchased a lot at the southwest corner of Main Street and today’s Western Avenue. Using timber they hauled down from Freestone, they built a two-story hotel. A classic German “gasthaus,” it included a bar and billiards room on the bottom floor, with six rooms upstairs for boarders and guests upstairs.[1]
The Schierholds’ gasthaus became an anchor for Petaluma’s growing German merchant district. By the mid-1870s German-owned businesses extended along the west side of lower Main Street from Western Avenue to Center Park (today’s Historic Chinatown Park).
They included Heinrich Matthies’ Continental Hotel and John Pfau’s Centennial Building (today’s Land Mart), which featured a German saloon, a livery stable, Heinrich Dortmund’s Wine Depot, and the German Druids Hall.
German-owned Continental Hotel and beside it the Centennial Building, 1890s (courtesy of Dan Brown Collection)
Two blocks away on Fourth Street between B and C streets sat Turn Verein, or Turner Hall, which served as a German social club, hosting lectures, social events, dances, festivals, and musical performances.[1a]
Turn Verein or Turner Hall at Fourth Street between B and C streets, built 1875 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum and Petaluma Courier)
In 1855, the Schierholds sold their gasthaus to a woman named Rosanna Loftus who renamed it the Farmers’ Hotel. A married woman, Loftus purchased the hotel as a “sole trader,” which meant she was legally able to own and operate her own business independent of her husband.[2]
1855 map with arrow pointing to site of Farmers Hotel (Sonoma County Library)
Herman Schierhold went on to operate the Relief Saloon and the Capitol Saloon in town, as well as the Petaluma Brewery. The first brewery in Sonoma County, it was originally founded in 1855 by a fellow German immigrant, Fredrick Christlich.[3]
In 1858, a German named August Starke purchased the Farmers’ Hotel from Loftus, renaming it the Union Hotel & Saloon.[4] In 1866, he leased out operation of the hotel and saloon to Heinrich Matthies, who added “Deutsche Gasthaus” to the name Union Hotel.[5]
Illustration of the Union Hotel, Deutsche Gasthaus, 1885 (Map of Petaluma by William W. Elliott, Sonoma County Library)
In 1876, Petaluma’s leading capitalist John McNear purchased the hotel building and property from Starke’s widow, Frances.[6]
In 1881, McNear sold the Union Hotel building to fellow capitalist Isaac Wickersham, who moved it to property he owned at the southeastern corner of Main and B streets. That cleared the way for construction of the Masonic Lodge at the hotel’s original site on the corner of Main and Western Avenue.
Masonic Lodge at Main Street and Western Avenue, 1902 (Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)
Meanwhile, Wickersham undertook a complete rebuilding of the hotel in its new location, adding 17 new rooms.[7]
In 1889, the description “Deutsche Gasthaus” was dropped from ads for the Union Hotel by longtime operator Samuel Carstens, a Danish immigrant A German named John Hermer ran the Union Beer Hall in the hotel.[8]
Ad for Union Hotel Beer Hall, Petlauma Courier, May 24, 1892.
In 1900, a fire, suspected to be arson, badly damaged the hotel, destroying its bar and bowling alley. By that time, the hotel was owned by G.P. McNear, who leased it to Claus Struve, a German immigrant, and Jimmie Rasmussen, a Danish immigrant.[9]The hotel was restored and reopened.
In 1902, G.P. McNear’s Oriental Mills & Feed headquarters on Main Street across from Penry Park (then Hill Plaza) burned down. McNear decided to relocate his operation to the site of the Union Hotel, which sat in front of one of his grain mills (today’s Great Petaluma Mill).
He announced plans to move the Union Hotel to Third streets and C streets so that he could clear the site for his new building. A few months later, he changed his mind, and decided to tear the hotel down instead.[10]
New G.P. McNear Feed Company Building, 1903 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
So ended the legacy of a 50-year old Petaluma landmark building.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Local News As Condensed,” Petaluma Argus, October 3, 1902; “Built the Union Hotel,” Petaluma Courier, October 3, 1902; Note: no mention of the name of the Schierholds’ hotel found.
[1a] “Cosmopolitan Hotel,” Petaluma Argus, August 25, 1876; “Pfau’s Centennial Building,” Petaluma Argus, March 3, 1876; “Centennial Headquarters,” Petaluma Argus, July 14, 1876; “The Druids,” Petaluma Courier, December 22, 1880; “Turners’ Ball,” Petaluma Argus, January 1, 1875.
[2] Legal Sole Trader Notice, Petaluma Journal, September 22, 1855; Ad for Farmer’s Hotel, Petaluma Journal, November 20, 1855; Note: not clear if Schierholds were the owners at time of sale to Loftus.
[3] “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, October 22, 1884; “H. Schierhold Died Weeks Ago,” Petaluma Argus, December 22, 1905; “Petaluma Breweries,” Petaluma Argus, December 8, 1876; Note: Christlich launched the brewery with a partner named Erbe, who by 1860 had sold out his interest to Christian Theilman, who died in 1864.
[4] Ad, Sonoma County Journal, February 12, 1858: Starke converts Farmer’s Hotel to Lager Beer Saloon; “Brutal,” Sonoma County Journal, February 11, 1859: Starke’s establishment now referred to as the “Union Billiard Saloon”; Ad for Union Hotel, Sonoma County Journal, October 12, 1860.
[5] Ad for Union Hotel, Petaluma Argus, September 6, 1866. Note: by the 1870s, Matthies was also operating the Continental Hotel (“Cosmopolitan Hotel,” Petaluma Argus, August 25, 1876).
[6] “Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, October 20, 1876; “Real Estate Transactions,” Petaluma Argus, November 3, 1876.
[7] “City Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, June 1, 1881; “Housewarming,” Petaluma Argus, August 19, 1881; “Reopened,” Petaluma Courier, August 31, 1881; Ad for Union Hotel, Petaluma Argus, September 30, 1881.
[8] Last ad for Union Hotel including “Deutsche Gasthaus,” Petaluma Courier, January 30, 1889; Ad for Union Beer Hall, Petaluma Courier, May 24, 1892; “John Hirmer Dead,” Petaluma Courier, May 31, 1894.
[9] “The Union Hotel Badly Wrecked,” Petaluma Argus, July 9, 1900.
[10] “A Midnight Blaze,” Petaluma Courier, June 11, 1902; “Union Hotel to Be Moved to Third and C Streets,” Petaluma Argus, August 15, 1902; “Local News As Condensed,” Petaluma Argus, October 3, 1902.
Full county map with illustrations of Sonoma Democrat and Petaluma Argus newspaper offices, Historical Atlas of Sonoma County, 1877
On the evening of May 16, 1876, William Colvig rode his horse to the Washoe House in Stony Point. Having spent the day surveying ranches, he was in need of supper and a room. The next morning he traded his tired horse for a new mount, and set off to survey Harrison Mecham’s nearby 10,000-acre ranch, not knowing Mecham wasn’t at home. Like most of his neighbors, he had left for Petaluma to see Montgomery Queen’s Traveling Circus.[1]
Washoe House, Stony Point & Roblar roads, c. 1900 (Sonoma County Library0
Colvig was part of a different traveling show—Thompson & West, publisher of county atlases. A new, mass-market racket, the county atlas appealed to settlers yearning to celebrate their participation in America’s epic westward movement.[2]
Published in a 15 x 18 inch book format, the typical atlas featured more than 100 pages of hand-colored maps and illustrations.[3] Available only by pre-order from door-to-door canvassers, it was priced as a luxury item at $15 ($460 in today’s currency). Subscribers were asked to pay half down and the rest upon delivery, which was usually a year away.[4]
Historical Atlas of Sonoma County, published by Thos. H. Thompson & Co., 1877 (photo Sonoma County Library)
Thompson & West, or T&W as they were known, looked to sell at least 1,500 copies of the Historical Atlas of Sonoma County, generating $22,500 in revenue ($700,000 in today’s currency).[5] Their main targets were the farmers and ranchers whose names were to be featured on the atlas’ maps, along with the size of their landholdings.
Canvassers preyed upon their egos and sense of social status, assuring them nothing better reflected agrarian progress, personal accomplishment, and civic pride than a luxurious atlas. Designed for display on the parlor table, the atlas was an heirloom families would treasure for generations.[6]
Colvig had worked previously for atlas publishers in the Midwest, where the books gained a reputation for being quickly and carelessly assembled, leaving behind duped customers and a flawed record of local landscapes.[7] Reluctant to rejoin the circuit, but in need of money, he agreed to work as a field surveyor for T&W, on the condition he wouldn’t have to double as a canvasser.[8]
William Colvig, 1873 (courtesy of Tim Colvig)
After discovering Mecham had gone off to the circus, Colvig rode into Petaluma, where he kept a room at the American Hotel (site of today’s Putnam Plaza). Awaiting him at the hotel was a telegram from T&W’s owner, Thomas H. Thompson, summoning him to the company’s office in San Francisco.[9]
American Hotel (center two story building), Main Street, Petaluma, 1869 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
A founder of the county atlas craze, Thompson served in the Union Army as a battle captain and surveyor during the Civil War. After the war, he teamed up with two former army colleagues, Louis H. Everts and Alfred T. Andreas, to revolutionize the mapmaking business. They did so by combining the popular characteristics of the county wall map with illustrations and county histories in a book format.[10]
Captain Thomas Hinkley Thompson, Union Army, 1860s (public domain)
The three began publishing county atlases in Iowa and Illinois. In addition to ordering copies, subscribers also could purchase a full-page illustration of their farm or business for $145 ($4,400 in today’s currency), a hand-drawn portrait for $100 ($3,000 today), and a biography at two and half cents a word ($1 today).[11]
Farm illustrations included any improvements a farmer envisioned, and omitted anything he didn’t wish to show.
Illustration of atlas artist from Bates Harrington’s 1879 book How ‘Tis Done
Likewise, subscribers were given the final review of their biographies. Local merchants who endorsed the atlas received free listings in the book’s “business directory.” Newspapers willing to provide free publicity were rewarded with illustrations of their offices in the atlas.[12]
Illustration of Harrison Mecham’s ranch, Sonoma County Atlas, 1877
In 1875, Thompson brought his “maps for the masses” craze to California, teaming up with Albert A. West to launch Thompson & West Publishing. Thompson handled the mapping and production, West the histories and biographies.[13]
Albert A.West & Thomas H. Thompson, 1870s (Sacramento Bee)
The two began peddling atlases in Santa Clara, Solano, and Alameda counties. In 1876, they added Sonoma County to the mix. To round out their 12-man crew of canvassers, artists, surveyors, and writers, Thompson reached out to Colvig, who, after working with Thompson in the Midwest, had returned home to Oregon.[14]
Trained as a mapmaker in the Union Army, Colvig was assigned by Thompson to verify and update official surveys of Sonoma County. That included the county’s first comprehensive wall map, created in 1866 by A.B. Bowers.[15] Traveling by horse, Colvig reviewed property lines and mapped out significant topographical features, along with churches, schools, mills, roads, and railroads.[16]
Colvig’s sketch of Harrison Mecham’s property near the Washoe House (courtesy of Tim Colvig)
Known for his people skills, Colvig paid ranchers $1 a night ($30 in today’s currency) for supper and lodging. That led to some strange encounters, including the night he spent at the ranch of Dr. J.H. Happy, a spiritualist, whose young son attempted to induce him into a trance by playing a violin made from an old cigar box.[17]
Colvig accompanied Thompson to Santa Rosa to successfully lobby the county Board of Supervisors to adopt the atlas as the county’s official map.[18]They also appealed for free publicity from the publisher of the Sonoma Democrat newspaper, Thomas L. Thompson (no relation to T&W’s Thomas H. Thompson).[19]
Thomas Larkin Thompson, proprietor and co-editor of the Sonoma Democrat newspaper(public domain)
He informed them that his brother Bob—Robert Augustus Thompson, Jr., who co-edited the newspaper, had already written a 24,000-word history of Sonoma County the Sonoma Democrat had published the year before.[20]
A positive, reaffirming narrative, Bob’s history sidestepped or downplayed any political, economic, and social divisions in the county’s 26-year old history. Instead, he provided descriptions of the county’s climate, geography, topography, agriculture, and timber. There were also sketches of its milling, mining, and wine interests, and brief histories of each town .
Bob Thompson’s “A Brief Historical Sketch” of Sonoma County, Sonoma Democrat, January 2, 1875
Bob’s format and approach was the same T&W used in their county atlases, indicating he might have anticipated their arrival. To gain the Sonoma Democrat’s support, T&W agreed to license an expanded version of Bob’s history for the atlas, and allow Bob to publish it independently. Bob’s motives for doing so were likely political.[21]
Robert A. “Bob” Thompson (Honoria Tuomey, History of Sonoma County, 1926, p.207)
A leader of the Sonoma County Democratic Party, he was planning to run for county clerk in 1877. Authoring the county’s first comprehensive history would not only burnish his credentials, but also make for good publicity.[22]
In August 1877, The Historical Atlas of Sonoma County was delivered to subscribers under the imprint “Thos. H. Thompson & Co.,” presumably because Thompson’s partner West was not involved with the history section.[23]
Title page of the Historical Atlas Map of Sonoma County, 1877
The book contained 12 colored maps; 15 town and village plats; 120 engraved illustrations of farms, businesses, and buildings; Bob’s history; and five commissioned biographies and portraits of prominent settlers.
The book was met with great acclaim, at least from T&W’s local promoters. Many acknowledged that while it got some details wrong, on the whole it was the most complete effort to date.[24]
There were, however, disappointed subscribers who refused to pay for the balance of their orders. After T&W sued them for payment, a handful countersued, claiming their signatures on the orders had been forged.[25]
Illustration of a canvasser from Bates Harrington’s 1879 book, How ‘Tis Done
Colvig left Sonoma County long before the publication date. Having grown increasingly frustrated with the sketchiness of official surveys in the county’s western region, he returned early to Oregon. Pursuing a new career in the field of law, he was eventually elected district attorney of a district encompassing Jackson, Josephine, Lake, and Klamath counties.[26]
Judge William Colvig, Oregon, early 1900s (photo courtesy of Tim Colvig)
Coinciding with the atlas’ release, Bob became the Democratic Party’s nominee for Sonoma County clerk. He also published his own pamphlet version of the atlas’s history—A Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, for sale in bookstores for $1 ($30 in today’s currency). Shortly after, he was elected to the first of three terms as county clerk. His legacy today is as Sonoma County’s first historian.[27]
Robert A. Thompson’s Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, 1877
While T&W’s atlas provided a sense of stability to Sonoma County residents, its landscape images projecting a spatial permanency rooted in social values of family, community, and commerce, the ephemeral nature of the county atlas itself suggested such stability to be precarious.[28]
By the late 1870s, the novelty of “maps for the masses” began to lose its appeal. Subscription publishers like T&W quickly transitioned to a new model known as the “mug book.” Gone were the maps and illustrations, replaced by commissioned biographies with engraved portraits of their subjects, hence the nickname “mug book.”[29]
Sonoma County’s first mug book, History of Sonoma County, made its appearance in 1880.[30] Written by J.P. Munro-Fraser, it provided a more robust and colorful history than that of the 1877 atlas. However, the book’s main attraction was its 349 commissioned biographies and 67 engraved portraits, comprising more than 300 of its 745 pages.
Title page of the mug book History of Sonoma County, 1880
Written in the laudatory style of a newspaper obituary, the biographies provided valuable information for future genealogists, but were, for historians, riddled with factual errors and errors of omission.
For better or worse, the mug book became the template of the four subsequent Sonoma County histories that followed, three of them written by local newspaper editors—Samuel Cassiday (1889), Tom Gregory (1911), and Ernest Finley (1937) —and one by Bodega school teacher Honoria Tuomey (1926).
The vanity of their attraction meant that for the next half century, the county was periodically flooded with canvassers knocking on doors with offers to publish the resident’s story and portrait in exchange for a fee and a subscription to the county’s new, exciting history.
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier on February 20, 2026.Special thanks to Tim Colvig for sharing family documents and photos.
******
FOOTNOTES:
[1] William M. Colvig, “Journal for 1876: May 16, 1876,” courtesy of Tim Colvig, Wm. M. Colvig Collection; Ad for Montgomery Queen Circus, Petaluma Argus, May 5, 1876; Mecham acreage cited in Historical Atlas Map of Sonoma County (Thompson & West, 1877), p. 99.
[2] Michael P. Conzen, “The County Landownership Map in America: Its Commercial Development and Social Transformation 1814-1939,” Imago Mundi, Vol. 36 (1984), p. 29
[3] Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, “Picturing Progress: Assessing the Nineteenth-Century Atlas-Map Bonanza,” Michigan Historical Review, Vol. 30, No. 2, Fall 2004), pp. 194, 198.
[4] Walter A. Friedman, Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pps. 37-39; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 169; Note on pricing: Cheryl Lyon-Jenness notes atlas books in Michigan in the early 1870s were priced at $9 a copy. In 1876, Sonoma County’s Board of Supervisors approved the purchase of 15 copies of the Sonoma County atlas for $225, or $15 each. They approved an additional acquisition of one copy in 1877 for $15 (“Board of Supervisors,” Sonoma Democrat, March 11, 1876; “Board of Supervisors,” Petaluma Argus, September 21, 1877; “Where the Money Goes,” PetalumaArgus, November 16, 1877). The Alameda County atlas, published by Thompson & West in 1878, sold for $20, but at 170 pages, was 66 pages longer than the Sonoma County atlas (“A County Atlas Map,” Oakland Daily Transcript, February 25, 1877).
[5] “A County Atlas Map,” Oakland Daily Transcript, February 25, 1877; Conzen, Agricultural History, p. 119. Note: Conzen cites the sales goal was generally 1,000 copies, but the Oakland Daily Transcript estimates the number at 1,500.
[6] Michael P. Conzen, “Landownership Maps and County Atlases,” Agricultural History, Vol. 58, No. 2 (April, 1984), p. 119; “Minnesota Atlas,” Freeborn County Standard, Minnesota, April 30, 1874; Bates Harrington, How ‘Tis Done: A Thorough Ventilation of the Numerous Schemes Conducted By Wandering Canvassers Together with the Various Advertising Dodges for the Swindling of the Public (Chicago: Fidelity Publishing Co., 1879), pp. 22, 27; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, pp. 194, 198.
[7] “Minnesota Atlas,” Freeborn County Standard, Minnesota, April 30, 1874; Harrington, pps. 42-43, 79-80, 87-88.
[8] Colvig Journal, April 23, 1876. Note: T&W agreed to pay him $100 per month ($3,000 in today’s currency) plus expenses.
[9] Colvig Journal, May 18-22, 1876. Note: in 1877, T&W moved their offices to Oakland.
[11] Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 198; Conzen, Agricultural History, p.119.
[12] Harrington, p. 40; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, pp. 180, 196, 198.
[13] David F. Myrick, Introduction to the 1958 Reprinted Edition of Thompson & West’s History of Nevada, 1881 (Howell-North, Berkeley, CA, 1958), p. h; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 168.
[14] “Minnesota Atlas,” Freeborn County Standard, Minnesota, April 30, 1874; “County News,” Vallejo Chronicle, September 29, 1876; “Proposed New Maps,” Oakland Tribune, January 25, 1877.
[15] Charles Sweet, “The Judge Colvig Story,” Table Rock Sentinel, Southern Oregon Historical Society newsletter, September 1986; “Bowers Map of Sonoma County,” Petaluma Argus, December 13, 1866; William Walsh, “The Story of an Inventor,” Overland Monthly, January-June, 1897, pp. 166-179; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 182; Colvig Journal, April 23, 1876; Note: Colvig reviewed property lines and mapped out significant topographical features, along with churches, schools, mills, roads, and railroads.
[16] Colvig Journal, April 23, 1876; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 182.
[17] “A Friendly Call,” Petaluma Argus, November 6, 1874; Colvig Journal, April 23, May 3, July 14, August 14, 1876. Note: Colvig ended up working on the atlas for four and a half months, from May 3rd to August 14th.
[18] Harrington, p. 32; “New Advertisements: To the Citizens of Sonoma County,” Petaluma Argus, February 18, 1876; “Sonoma County Atlas,” Petaluma Argus, May 11, 1877; “Card from T.H. Thompson,” Petaluma Courier, August 16, 1877; Note: the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors agreed to purchase 15 copies of the atlas for $225, or $15 each (“Board of Supervisors,” Sonoma Democrat, March 11, 1876; “Board of Supervisors,” Petaluma Argus, September 21, 1877).
[19] Note: Thomas L. Thompson was commonly referred to in newspaper articles of the time as “Tom.” Likewise, Robert A. Thompson went by “Bob” (“Nine Men Have Had Part in Building P.D. in the Last 71 Yrs.,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, October 28, 1928).
[20] ”The County of Sonoma: A Brief Historical Sketch,” Sonoma Democrat, January 2, 1875.
[21] “Nailed to the Counter,” Sonoma Democrat, June 19, 1877; “A Kindly Recommendation,” Sonoma Democrat, June 19, 1877; “Sonoma County,” Petaluma Argus, September 21, 1877; “Now Ready,” Petaluma Courier, October 4, 1877.
[23] “Thompson’s Sonoma Atlas,” Petaluma Courier, August 16, 1877; Historical Atlas of Sonoma County (Oakland, CA: Thompson & Co., 1877), p. 3; Note: Thompson & West published 14 county atlases and histories between 1876 and 1884, after which their partnership was dissolved, and Thompson moved to Tulare, where he became a real estate broker; the imprint Thompson & Co. published three historical atlas map books on its own—Sonoma County (1877) while Thompson was still in partnership with West, and Fresno County (1891) and Tulare County (1892) after their partnership ended (Introduction to the 1958 Edition of Thompson & West’s History of Nevada, 1881 (Howell-North, Berkeley, CA, 1958, p. I).
[24] “Board of Supervisors,” Oakland Daily Times, January 29, 1878. Note: Facing criticism for their county atlas, officials in Alameda County issued a statement acknowledging the atlas was not entirely correct in some of its details, but was more complete than any previous map.
[25]“Thompson’s Sonoma Atlas,” Petaluma Courier, August 16, 1877; “Card from T.H. Thompson,” Petaluma Courier, August 16, 1877; “The Forgery Case,” Sonoma Democrat, December 1, 1877; “County News,” Vallejo Evening Chronicle, December 7, 1877; “The Atlas Suits,” Oakland Tribune, November 15, 1878.
[26] Colvig Journal, June 14, June 23-24, August 14-16, 1876; “Autobiography of Wm. M. Colvig, 1928,” Oregon Pioneer Association, courtesy of Tim Colvig.
[27] “Proceedings of the Convention,” Petaluma Courier, July 18, 1877; “Sonoma County,” Petaluma Argus, September 21, 1877; Note: R.A. Thompson’s pamphlet, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1877), was published by Thomas H. Thompson’s former atlas partner in Illinois, implying that T.H. Thompson might have arranged for its publication.
[29] Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 208; Rhonda Frevert, “Mug Books,” Commonplace: Journal of Early American Life, Issue 3.1, October 2002, https://commonplace.online/article/mug-books/
[30] “The History of Sonoma County,” Petaluma Courier, February 3, 1880; J.P. Munro-Fraser, History of Sonoma County (San Francisco, CA: Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880).
770 B Street, designed and built by A. M Seeberg in 1929 (photo John Sheehy)
The Mediterranean Revival Style home at the corner of B and Spring Streets was built in 1929 by A.M. Seeberg for Catterina Carpella Berri.
Catterina was born in 1868 in Ticino, Switzerland, to Giuseppe and Grace Bedolla Carpella. As a young girl, she immigrated to California to join her older sister Severina, who had married a Swiss-Italian dairy rancher in Olema named Stephano Toroni. A second sister, Modesta, also immigrated to California, marrying Joseph Silacci of Salinas. Catterina’s brother, Joseph Carpella, remained behind in Switzerland.
Catterina Carpella, circa 1894-1898 (courtesy of Dan Brown Collection)
Catterina lived in Olema with the Toroni family until her marriage in 1898 to Bartolomeo Berri. A 46-year old, Swiss-Italian immigrant, Berri was partners with his brother Vittore (Victor) in the Berri Bros. Dairy Ranch at Salmon Creek near Marshall in Marin County.
Batholomew and Catterina Berri, c. 1900 Bartholomew, Victor, and Catterina Berri, c. 1900 (Dan Brown Collection)
Catterina and Bartolomeo resided on the Berri Ranch, one of the largest in West Marin, until Bartolomeo retired in 1907, at which time they moved to Petaluma, purchasing a house at 816 B Street. Bartolomeo died in 1918, leaving Catterina a small fortune of $75,000 ($1.6 million in today’s currency).
The couple did not have any children. After Bartolomeo’s death, Catterina’s niece and nephew, Sara and Stephen Toroni, came to live with her following the death of their mother, Catterina’s sister Severina.
In 1929, Catterina purchased an empty lot on the corner of B and Spring streets from Charles Lynch, whose family had owned the property since 1875. She then hired A. Mariam Seeberg, a popular Norwegian architect and contractor in Petaluma, to build a new home for her and her niece and nephew.
The chimney at 770 B Street still displays the letter “B” for Berri(photo John Sheehy)
Seeberg, who had designed and built a number of residential and commercial buildings in town, designed Catterina’s new house in the Mediterranean Revival Style popular among his Swiss-Italian clients.
Acclaimed at the time as one most elegant homes in town, it became a signature building for Seeberg, along with his design of Charles Garzoli’s house on Old Redwood Highway in Penngrove.
The Charles Garzoli house designed and built by A.M. Seeberg in 1933 (photo John Sheehy)
A avid gardener, Catterina took great pride in her prize-winning flower beds, which she planted with seeds imported from Europe. She died at her home on B Street in 1937, attended by her niece and nephew, Sara and Stephen Toroni, who continued to reside at the house for the next couple decades.
******
SOURCES:
“Married in San Francisco,” Petaluma Courier, June 8, 1898.
“Marriage Licenses,” San Francisco Examiner, June 5, 1898.
“Mrs. Toroni Died in Olema,” Petaluma Courier, May 25, 1912.
“B. Berri is Summoned,” Petaluma Courier, June 12, 1918.
“Left Big Estate to His Widow,” Geyserville Gazette, July 5, 1918.
“Purple and Pink, Blue and Gold, Flower Show Story in Short is Told,” Petaluma Courier, May 1, 1927.
“A.M. Seeberg Will Build New Building for Hunt & Behrens,” Petaluma Argus, July 27, 1927.
“Mrs. B. Berri Will Build Costly Home,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 5, 1929.
“Gorgeous Flower from Berri Gardens,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 1, 1933
“Funeral Notices,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 6, 1937.
“A. Mariam Seeberg, Long Prominent Here, Succumbs,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 9, 1946.
A Video Presentation on the Historical Prequel to the Lafferty Ranch Battle
For nearly the past 200 years, since European contact, neighbors on Sonoma Mountain have battled each other in the courts over legal challenges to deeds, property boundaries, water rights, livestock, and trespassing. Occasionally, those quarrels battles have lead to physical threats and altercations.
No feud has been as long standing as the one being still be waged over public access to Lafferty Ranch, which has been owned by the City of Petaluma since 1959 as part of the city’s water works. In 1992, the the city announced plans make Lafferty into a public park, kicking off the series of lawsuits filed by neighbors over the past three decades.
While feuds may appear to come with the territory, it wasn’t always like that. It arrived with the European and American settlers, and their self-centered entitlement of “I have rights.”
Chinese grape pickers at Fair Oaks Winery, Sacramento County, c. 1885 (Huntington Library)
The feud began with two murders. In January 1886, Jesse and Sarah Wickersham were found dead in their remote farm house outside Cloverdale. A former Petaluma couple, the two were married cousins, the nephew and niece of prominent capitalist Isaac Wickersham.
Although their killer’s identity was never determined, unfounded accusations pinned the murders on the couple’s Chinese cook, Ah Ti, who had gone missing.[1]
Such accusations were not uncommon. Vilified as criminals and cheap labor, Chinese immigrants had been largely banned from the United States for ten years by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.[2] The manhunt for Ah Ti unleashed a new fury of violence, triggering racists to drive them out of Sonoma County.[3]
Wickersham cabin outside Cloverdale, where Jesse and Sarah died (David Otero, Wickersham Ranch)
Ethnic hostilities didn’t end there. A wave of immigrant workers from Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, and Germany—most, like the Chinese, fleeing war and economic upheaval in their home countries—also threatened some American workers with their cheap labor, along with fears their Catholic and Jewish faiths were diluting the country’s Protestant identity.[4]
In local newspapers, a war of words broke out among three factions.
Capitalists like John McNear welcomed the Chinese for their low wages, while evangelists like Petaluma’s Rev. William Pond targeted them as Christian converts. Local Democrats, having sided with the South during the Civil War, opposed Chinese “aliens” but welcomed white Europeans. Nativists sought to limit or cleanse the country of all immigrants.[5]
Illustration of “WASP” (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) with Morrow’s Anti-Chinese Bill in pocket, holds Chinese man with paper labeled “Coolie contracts” in one hand and a European immigrant with with papers labeled “Contract cheap labor” in the other hand (Bancroft Library)
Nowhere was the ink slinging more ferociously eloquent than in the feud waged between two poets, Jack and Puck.
“Jack” was the pen name of a 35-year-old itinerant reporter named Tom Gregory. He stumbled into journalism as a war correspondent while in the U.S. Navy monitoring a war between Peru and Chile. Upon leaving the Navy, Jack went to work for newspapers in San Francisco and Sacramento. Between jobs, he lived with his mother and stepfather, Sarah and Martin Stone, on their farm in Bloomfield, serving as a correspondent and poet for Petaluma and Santa Rosa newspapers. His poetry earned him a reputation as Sonoma County’s “finest word-painter.”[6]
Poet, journalist, and historian Tom Gregory (History of Sonoma County, 1911)
Alfred James “Puck” Puckett was an 18-year-old literary prodigy known as “Petaluma’s boy poet.” He lived on his parents’ dairy ranch atop Sonoma Mountain. His mother, Mary Meany Puckett, an Irish immigrant and poet in her own right, presided over Petaluma’s Catholic School before marrying. She began Puck’s school days with story and song, cultivating his melodic relationship to language.[7]
Alfred James Puckett, 1886 (Courtesy of Janet Puckett, Puckett Family Collection)
Neither man had more than a rudimentary education.
The feud kicked off with one of Puck’s poems in the Petaluma Argus denouncing the Chinese as those “who have a fearful havoc made/to blot our country’s prime/who destroy morals, ruin trade/and fill the land with crime.”[8]
A fellow Democrat, Jack was no fan of the Chinese. Bloomfield had been the first town in Sonoma County to run out the Chinese after the Wickersham murders.[9]
Panoramic view of Bloomfield, taken by Thomas Rea, 1876 (Sonoma County Library)
But he had issues with Puck’s knee-jerk jingoism. In a letter to the Argus, Jack schooled Puck not to “mix up iambic, trochaic, and dactylic meter all in one line,” before invoking the wisdom of the Roman poet Virgil, omnia vincit labo, or work conquers all.
“I have seen a young Dutchman,” Jack wrote, “with his wardrobe locked up in a cotton handkerchief, strike a job, pitch in, save his low wages, and soon was a capitalist himself; while strong, healthy American boys sat at the saloon doors through all the long, golden, summer days, until the whole political and physical economy of their pants were worn threadbare.
“But here comes a Chinaman! I’ll go out and kill him. Hence my song, armo virumque cano—I sing of arms and the man! Catch on?”[10]
Illustration lampooning anti-Chinese whites who still continue to use their services, San Francisco Wasp magazine (Bancroft Library)
Puck did. Like a pawn learning to navigate the chess board with the king in public, he accused Jack of “venting his spleen against white labor” while “laboring hard” to make the Chinese seem respectable. He also recounted some juicy gossip about Jack before he became a temperance crusader, being “turned over like a rum-logged wretch in an old barn in Bloomfield.”
As for his poetry, Puck asserted, “I never allow meter to cramp free expression of thought. Do you catch on, Jack?”[11]
“My dear, bright boy,” Jack replied, “do you really contemplate more poetry? You are driving on to destruction! You need praying for! Get right down on your knees, Brother Puckett, and I will pray for both of us, and give my genius a picnic: Gracious father in the sky/hear two awful sinners cry/Two poor poets on their knees/poorer, Heaven seldom seen!”[12]
Puck responded with a poem ending with the lines: “Pray that another foreign race/from shores beyond the sea/may never trample or erase/the birthright of the free.”[13]
Puck’s patriotic invocation reminded Jack of a traveling circus.
Ad for the Forepaugh Traveling Circus in Petaluma, 1877 (Petaluma Argus)
“A circus is a caravan of blacklegs and thieves,” he wrote. “Whenever one hits Petaluma with a bag of monkeys and a bare-back riding prostitute, every man who has a $, or can borrow one, goes to see them.”[14]
The two poets continued slinging insults back and forth for months like two modern-day hip-hop artists waging a “beef.” In the fall of 1886, their beef took an ominous turn as they began to run out of words.
Jack lifted some lyrics from “I’ve Got a Little List,” a song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta “The Mikado.” A satire of society set in an imaginary Japan, the musical was breaking box office records that year all across America.[15]
Poster for The Mikado operetta, 1885 (public domain)
“Now someday,” Jack wrote, tweaking the lyrics, “I am thinking, the Fool-Killer/must come round/I have got a little list—I have got a little list/Of rabid, red rhyme-writers who might well be underground/And who never would be missed/who never would be missed!”[16]
“Alas, poor Jack,” Puck replied in verse, “you are doomed/I feel it in my soul/That, when you have counted up your list/Yourself must head the roll/Better come down from the hill tops/And hide yourself away/The Fool-Killer is on the march/The oldest fool to slay.”[17]
Neither Jack nor Puck was a stranger to violence. The year before, Jack had wounded his 17-year-old stepsister’s suitor with a shotgun after catching him sneaking into her bedroom window one night.[18]
Puck’s views aligned with those of his father, Edward Puckett, who, prior to settling on Sonoma Mountain in 1854, had been a member of San Francisco’s Vigilante Committee. Seeking to wrestle control of the city from the Sydney Ducks, an Irish gang from the Australian penal colonies, the vigilantes resorted to secret trials, lynchings, and deportations.[19]
San Francisco Vigilantes Committee lynching Sydney Ducks, 1815 (public domain)
“You are almost gone, you poetic comedian,” Jack warned Puck. “You have the worst dose of cacoethes scribendi (an insatiable urge to write) that ever fell to the lot of juvenile flesh. In poetry you have no more chance than a stump-tail calf in fly-time. Good bye!”[20]
Before their feud could escalate any further, Jack fell victim to a lingering illness, forcing him to lay down his pen. By that time, Sonoma County’s racist fever had begun to subside, as labor shortages—largely in jobs whites refused to fill—made the Chinese appear less threatening, leading to their gradual return.[21]
Chinese field hands in California, 1890s (Huntington Library)
However, immigration from China continued to be highly restricted, thanks to an extension of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act introduced in 1892 by Sonoma County congressman Thomas Geary, a former Petaluma lawyer. The restrictions would not be lifted until 1943.[22]
Shortly after his feud with Jack, Puck and his father became involved in a violent dispute with a neighbor over a calf that had strayed onto their ranch. Puck was shot twice, in the abdomen and shoulder.[23] After recovering from his wounds, he went on to establish a reputation as “the poet of Sonoma Mountain,” publishing several books of his work, and as a local historian.[24]
Alfred James Puckett, 1915 (Courtesy of Janet Puckett, Puckett Family Collection)
As for Jack, a year after the feud he became editor of Santa Rosa’s Sonoma Democrat, replacing longstanding editor Thomas L. Thompson, who had been elected to Congress on his anti-Chinese platform.[25]
Finding his poetic temperament unsuitable for daily newspaper editing, Jack quit after a year, and went to work for the U.S. Post Office, and then the U.S. Navy’s recruiting office, before returning to covering the waterfront for San Francisco newspapers. [26]
In the early 1900s, Jack and his wife moved back to Santa Rosa, where he freelanced for local newspapers.[27] A few years before his death in 1914, he began writing books of regional history. His first was The History of Sonoma County, which, despite its rambling verbosity and questionable factchecking, still serves as a seminal work for local historians.[28]
In the book, he made no mention of the Chinese.
Tom Gregory’s History of Sonoma County, 1911
Versions of this story appeared in the Petlauma Argus-Courier, November 28, 2025, and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 30, 2025
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “A Terrible Crime,” Petaluma Courier, January 27, 1886; “Ah Ti, the Murderer,” Petaluma Argus, January 30, 1886; Jeff Elliot examines holes in the accusations against the Wickersham’s cook: “The Wickersham Murders,” “Who Killed the Wickershams,” Santarosahistory.com, http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/2017/05/the-wickersham-murders/.
[2] Michael Luo, “The Forgotten History of the Purging of Chinese from America,” The New Yorker, April 22, 2021. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-forgotten-history-of-the-purging-of-chinese-from-america?_sp=0b6879cb-dd67-4dcd-a2c6-f519bac1ace0.1757793793358.
[3] “Anti-Coolie Meeting,” Sonoma Democrat, February 6, 1886; “Going Below,” Petaluma Argus, February 13, 1886; “Sebastopol Anti-Chinese League,” Sonoma Democrat, February 27, 1886; “Blew Them Up,” Petaluma Argus, March 10, 1886; Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans (University of California Press, 2008); Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Harvard University Press, 2018), p. 5-8; Hannah Clayborn, “History of Healdsburg: The Chinese in Sonoma County, https://www.hannahclaybornshistoryofhealdsburg.com/the-chinese-in-sonoma-county.html
[4] “Speech of John F. Swift,” Petaluma Argus, October 30, 1886.
[5] Lew-Williams, pp. 5-8; Thomas Chinn, A History of the Chinese in California (San Francisco, CA: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), p. 21; William C. Pond, Gospel Pioneering: Reminiscences of Early Congregationalism in California 1833-1920 (Oberlin, OH: The News Printing Company, 1921), pgs. 10, 17, 91-95, 130-135; Robert Segar II, “Some Denominational Reactions to Chinese Immigration to California, 1856-1892,” Pacific Historical Review , February, 1959, Vol. 28, No. 1, pgs. 51, 58; Wesley S. Woo, “Presbyterian Mission: Christianizing and Civilizing The Chinese in Nineteenth Century California,” American Presbyterians, Fall 1990, Vol. 68, No. 3, pgs. 68, 71, 167-172.
[6] “Death Calls for Tom Gregory,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 9, 1914; Jeff Elliott, “Tom Gregory,” Santa Rosa History, December 29, 2011. http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/2011/12/tom-gregory/
[7] “Decoration Day,” Petaluma Argus, May 24, 1884; “Early Days in Petaluma,” Petaluma Courier, October 12 1899; “Mary Catherine Puckett,” Petaluma Courier, July 6, 1901; “Sudden Death of A.J. Puckett,” Petaluma Argus, March 9, 1926.
[8] “Free Labor,” Petaluma Argus, March 6, 1886; “Mary Catherine Puckett,” Petaluma Courier, July 6, 1901; “Early Days in Petaluma,” Petaluma Courier, October 12 1899.
[9] “The Ball Still Rolling,” San Jose Herald, January 30, 1886; “Letter from Bloomfield,” Sonoma Democrat, February 27, 1886.
[10] “Omnia Vincit Labor,” Petaluma Argus, April 24, 1886.
[11] “Jack and Puckett,” Petaluma Argus, May 1, 1886; On Jack’s sobriety, “I haven’t drank a drop for six months”: “Letter from Jack,” Petaluma Courier, April 18, 1883.
[12] “Puck and Jack,” Petaluma Argus, May 8, 1886.
[13] “Reply to Jack,” Petaluma Argus, May 29, 1886.
[14] “An Alcoholic Ramble, addressed to “Bro. Puckett,” Petaluma Argus, June 5, 1886.
[15] “Some Recent Outbreaks of the Mikado Madness,” San Francisco Examiner, January 28, 1886; “Footlight Flashes,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 12, 1886.
[16] “Song from the Mikado,” Petaluma Argus, September 4, 1886.
[17] “To Tom Gregory,” Petaluma Argus, September 18, 1886.
[18] “The Impetuous Step-Brother,“ Sacramento Bee, March 18, 1885; “Bloomfield Shooting Fracas,” Petaluma Argus, March 28, 1885; Simple Assault,” Petaluma Argus, May 23, 1885; “Love vs. Shotguns,” Sonoma Democrat, May 23, 1885.
[19] Mick Sinclair, San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History (UK, Signal Books, 2024), pps. 53-60; “Another Pioneer Passes,” Petaluma Courier, September 11, 1907.
[20] “Cacoethes Scribendi” Petaluma Argus, October 2, 1886.
[21] “Fruit Growers,” Petaluma Courier, March 13, 1886; “Potato Diggers,” Petaluma Argus, November 19, 1887; U.S. Census, 1890: Sonoma County’s Chinese population rebounded to 1,145, of which 104 lived in Petaluma.; Gordon C. Phillips, “The Chinese in Sonoma County, California, 1900-1930: The Aftermath of Exclusion,”Masters Thesis, Sonoma State University, 2015, pgs.38-39, http://sonoma-dspace.calstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.3/153831/PhillipsG_Thesis.pdf;sequence=1
[22]Iris Chang, The Chinese in America (NY: Viking Books, 2003), pp. 125-141.
[23] “Another Shooting,” Petaluma Courier, December 10, 1890; “Card from Mr. Puckett,” Petaluma Courier, December 17, 1890.
[24] “Pioneer Was a Visitor,” Petaluma Argus, January 26, 1925; “Sudden Death of A.J. Puckett,” Petaluma Argus, March 9, 1926; “A.J. Puckett Drops Dead at His Home,” Petaluma Courier, March 9, 1926; “Rich Petaluman Poet Dies of Heart Attack,” Santa Rosa Democrat, March 8, 1926.
[25]Petaluma Argus, November 19, 1887; Hannah Clayborn, “History of Healdsburg: The Chinese in Sonoma County.”
[26] Personal and Social,” Petaluma Argus, November 19, 1887; “Personal and Social,” Petaluma Argus, April 14, 1888; Petaluma Argus, October 20, 1888; “Peggy’s Pencilings,” Petaluma Courier, November 19, 1890; From 1893 to 1896 Gregory’s byline appears regularly in the San Francisco Call Bulletin: “The Call’s Staff Sups,” San Francisco Call Bulletin, June 7, 1896; “To Secure Men for Naval Vessels,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 26, 1898; Waterfront coverage: Petaluma Argus, July 9, 1904; Petaluma Courier, September 21, 1907; “Tom Gregory is Dead,” Sacramento Bee, September 9, 1914.
[27] “Born,” San Francisco Call, May 13, 1900; “New Up-to-date Home,” Santa Rosa Republican, October 12, 1905; “Bennett Valley,” Santa Rosa Republican, October 25, 1910.
[28] “History of Sonoma County Comes from the Press,” Petaluma Courier, December 26, 1911; Santa Rosa Republican, June 27, 1911; “Tom Gregory is Dead,” Sacramento Bee, September 9, 1914.
That phrase, customarily uttered in an Irish brogue by Father James Kiely when confronted with one of life’s wonders or mysteries, served as a secret code between Lee Torliatt and me.
The two of us grew up a generation apart under Kiely’s watchful eye, just a couple blocks away from the towering St. Vincent de Paul Church he oversaw the bu in 1928. Kiely’s exclamation summed up our mutual obsession of delving into local history as a means of making sense of the world, but always coming up short.
Father James Kiely, 1965 (Sonoma County Library)
After swapping stories of what W.E.B. DuBois called “the hideous mistakes, the frightful wrongs, and the great and beautiful things that people do,” we inevitably circled back to historian Shelby Foote’s appraisal of history as nothing more than “paradox, irony, and existential reality.”
Lee embraced that investigative cul-de-sac with both empathy and dry wit.
“Oh my, oh my.”
St. Vincent de Paul Church, built 1928 (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)
The two of us bonded over shared anchor places in our lives—the Petaluma neighborhood near St. Vincent’s where we both grew up in large family clans, and Sonoma Mountain, where our immigrant ancestors originally settled in the 19th century, and where I live today.
Site of the strawberry ranch of Lee’s grandfather, “Strawberry Pete” Torliatt, in the late 19th century, Upper Lichau Road, Sonoma Mountain (photo public domain)
In the storytelling traditions of both our families— mine Irish, his French-Italian—facts were merely the bare bones of history. Unless cast in an engaging tale, they didn’t have legs. As John Keats noted, “a fact is not a truth until you love it.”
Lee loved facts, but not to the point they compromised his storytelling. Heaven forbid. Like the best history teachers, his stories had heart. They conveyed the humanity necessary to help students imagine the lives of people in the past, and the humor to show they were just as human as we are today.
Father Kiely liked to show up at the homes of parishioners unannounced, make a quick, five-minute inspection of the place, then abruptly leave. It was a vivid reminder that in a small town, knowing eyes are always upon you.
For Lee and me, they always were.
They bore witness to our stories—to who we were, how we got to be where we were, what we had been through, what we accomplished—just as we bore testimony to their stories before us, their footsteps we walked in, lending meaning to the transitory nature of our own wondrous presence.
“Oh my, oh my.”
Lee Torliatt (photo courtesy of Santa Rosa Press Democrat)
******
A version of this tribute appeared in the Fall 2025 edition of the Sonoma Historian
_____________
Born in Petaluma, Lee Torliatt was a Sonoma County high school teacher, newspaper reporter, storyteller, and author of Historic Photos of Sonoma County, Golden Memories of the Redwood Empire, and Sports Memories of Sonoma County.
Segregated 19th century school (photo courtesy of Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com)
In 1855, the first California Colored Convention was held in Sacramento. Members made it one of their top priorities to lobby the state legislature to educate all of California’s children. But they also took matters into their own hands, pooling their resources to buy land and create private schools for Black children, often in alliance with the A.M.E. Church, which opened its basements for use as school rooms, deployed its ministers and their wives to serve as teachers, and raised money from its congregations to keep the schools operating.[1]
Along with Chinese and Native American students, Blacks had been excluded from California’s common public schools since the state’s admission to the Union in 1850. The California School Law of 1855 strengthened that exclusionary policy by providing school funding based strictly on the number of white students attending a school. The policy was further fortified by an 1860 law that prohibited public schools from admitting “Negroes and Mongolians” under the threat of losing all funding.[2]
An engraving featured in harper’s Weekly of the National Colored Convention in Washington, D.C., 1869 (courtesy of the James Casey Collection/New York Times)
For George Miller and the other members of the Colored Conventions—most of whom had been educated as free men in the North—access to education was vital to Black success in California, not only in terms of becoming financially autonomous, but also in being viewed as educated and respected members of the community, and hopefully extinguishing some of the racist attitudes that whites held toward them. By embargoing Blacks from entering public schools, California was choosing to perpetuate the Southern fallacy that Blacks didn’t have the ability to survive off the plantation because of their illiteracy.
Petaluma at the time lacked both an A.M.E. Church and a school for Black children. George Miller set out to change that. By the early 1860s, his Humboldt Shaving & Hairdressing Saloon was thriving. In 1861, he added a bath house, and in 1863 moved into the newly constructed Towne Building on Main Street across from the American Hotel (today a small parking lot extending between Petaluma Boulevard North and Water Street).[3]
19th century Black barbershop (photo public domain)
That same year, Miller was joined by another Black barber in town, Frank Vandry Miller, who had immigrated to American from Jamaica in 1843. He opened up his barbershop a couple doors down from George Miller’s shop, also in the Towne Building.[4]
By 1863, Miller’s wife Catherine had given birth to two more children, bringing the total number of school-age children in their house to four. Miller felt that it was time to establish a school for Black children in town. On December 4th, he organized a gathering of Petaluma’s Black community, presided over by John Richards of Santa Rosa. (Richards would personally fund the opening of Santa Rosa’s “colored school” a year later in January, 1865).[5]
After the meeting, the group pooled their resources to rent a small house on Washington Street and furnish it with seats and desks. They also began recruiting for a teacher in the pages of the Pacific Appeal. A young Black woman from San Francisco named Mrs. Rachel Coursey, responded to the query. Despite having been married just six months before to John G. Coursey, a music teacher at the Bethel A.M.E. Church in San Francisco, Rachel Coursey came to Petaluma and began teaching at the so-called “colored school” on opening day, January 11, 1864.[6]
1870 Brooklyn Colored School in Oakland, Mary J. Sanderson, teacher (photo public domain)
Two months after the school opened, the California Supreme Court ruled that public school districts were required to provide “separate but equal” schools for Blacks, except in cases where there were fewer than ten such students in the district, in which case they would be integrated into white schools. At the time, there were 831 Black children of school age living in California. After some pushback, two years later, the Revised School Law of 1866 specified that in the event a town had fewer than ten Black children, the school district could integrate those students into its white schools, assuming that a majority of the white parents didn’t object—a clause that would later become a bone of contention in Petaluma.[7]
Although Petaluma’s “colored school” had only eight students, George Miller’s group succeeded in obtaining public funding for their “colored school” after the passage of the new school law, thanks in part to Petaluma’s new Superintendent of Public Schools, Rev. Edward S. Lippitt, a Republican abolitionist minister originally from Connecticut.[8] By the end of 1864, Petaluma was identified as one of six California cities with a public-funded “colored school,” the others being San Francisco, Sacramento, Marysville, San Jose, and Stockton.[9]
As the school year began in July 1867, Petaluma had 627 school-age children between the ages of five and fifteen, eight of whom were Black.[10] Petaluma’s “colored school” however was clearly shut down by the fall of 1867 when Philip A. Bell, editor of The Elevator, a Black newspaper in San Francisco that Bell spun off from the Pacific Appeal in 1865, came to Petaluma to lecture on the topic of education at the bequest of Rev. Killingsworth.
Drawing of Philip A. Bell, editor of The Elevator (courtesy of blackpast.org)
The day before Bell’s scheduled lecture, the trustees of Petaluma’s A.M.E. Church overruled Rev. Killingsworth, cancelling the talk. Bell, an articulate and outspoken advocate of education for Black children, instead spent the weekend attending Rev. Killingsworth’s Sunday sermon at the church and being introduced around the community by Petaluma’s two black barbers, George Miller and Frank Miller.[11]
In 1871, George Miller and other Black parents in Petaluma began to lobby the school district to reopen the “colored school.” The town’s Black population had grown to forty-four, twenty-two of whom were school-age children.[12]
In 1871, George Miller and other Black parents in Petaluma succeeded in convincing J.W. Anderson, who had replaced Rev. Edward S. Lippitt as the town’s school superintendent, to their cause. “The colored citizens,” Anderson said, “are clamoring for a school, and should have one.” The school district rented a dilapidated house on Fifth Street between D and E streets to house the “colored school,” and in January of 1872 hired A.G.W. Davis, a young man just beginning his teaching career, to teach the twelve Black students who had enrolled. That year Petaluma joined nineteen other “colored schools” in California teaching a total of 510 students.[13]
At the start of the school year in July, 1873, eighteen-year old Miss Rose Haskins was appointed teacher of the “colored school.”[14] Haskin lived just half a block away from the “colored school,” in the house her father, English contractor and stonemason Robert Haskins, had built on the southeast corner of 5th and E streets. Enrollment that year totaled seventeen students, two of whom were Chinese.[15] In July, 1874, the school district, after complaints about the school’s ramshackle condition, moved the “colored school” into a former private school at the northeast corner of Fifth and D streets.[16]
During Rose Haskins’ first semester in the fall of 1873, the Petaluma Argus, a weekly newspaper edited by Henry L. Weston under the motto “equal rights and equal justice to all men,” began a campaign employed by other Republican newspapers in the state of questioning the cost efficiency of maintaining a separate school for such a small number of Black students (the Radical Republican Party, of which Weston was a member, were abolitionists supportive of expanding civil rights, including school integration, while the southern-dominated Democratic Party, for which Santa Rosa’s Sonoma Democrat newspaper served as the county organ, was strongly opposed to granting such rights).
Petaluma Argus editor, Henry L. Weston (Photo Sonoma County Library)
Weston pointed out that, given Haskins’ salary and rent for a separate school building, the average annual cost of educating a student in the “colored school” was $35, as opposed to $12 in Petaluma’s white schools ($1,100 and $370, respectively, in early 21st century currency). Denouncing school segregation as an abomination, Weston declared that the “colored school” must soon “fade away before the ceaseless march of progress and civilization.”[17]
In the spring of 1872, Miller again gathered with the Educational Committee in San Francisco, and under the leadership of Elevator newspaper editor Philip Bell, decided to put a test case before the California Supreme Court.[18]
Call in The Elevator to 1870 Color Convention of the Pacific Coast, featuring George W. Miller as President of the Executive Committee
The case was initiated by Mrs. Harriet A. Ward on behalf of her daughter Mary Frances. After the closing of a “colored school” on Broadway Street in San Francisco, Mary Frances was faced with having to walk a long distance to the nearest available “colored school” across town. Instead, Harriet A. Ward applied for admission of her daughter to the nearby white Broadway School. Her application was denied by Principal Noah F. Flood.
The case of Ward v. Flood became the first school segregation case to go before the state Supreme Court. In May, 1874, the court ruled on the case, upholding California’s School Law of “separate but equal” facilities for Black and Native American children, but also affirming that, based upon the civil rights extended by the Fourteenth Amendment ratified in 1868, the education of Black and Native American children must be provided for in separate schools upon the written applicated of parents of at least ten such children. If the trustees of the schools failed to do so, the children had to be admitted into the white schools.[19]
For the members of the Educational Committee, the ruling overall was disappointing, but it also represented an incremental victory in that it clearly mandated the public education of Black children, including admitting them into white schools if need be. With the ruling in hand, committee members turned their efforts to lobbying school districts to abolish “colored schools.” By 1875, San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland, and Vallejo had done so.[20]
But not Petaluma.
As the school year began in July, 1875, Rose Haskins was promoted to a teaching position at the Brick School, Petaluma’s main grammar school for white students, at Fifth and B streets. She was replaced at the “colored school” by her cousin, Miss Annie Camm, the daughter of local English contractor William Camm.[21] A few months into Camm’s tenure, Henry Jones, a native of Massachusetts who had recently opened a new barbershop on Washington Street, complained about Camm’s competency in teaching his son at the ungraded “colored school.” He requested that Principal Martin E. Cooke Munday of the Brick School admit his son to the white school.[22]
Munday, a young leader of the local Democratic Party, claimed to have examined Jones’ son—a claim Jones subsequently denied—and found him to be unqualified for entry into the Brick school. Privately, he told Jones that “no colored child should be admitted as long as he was principal of the school.” Jones, who pointed out that he paid school taxes just like everyone else in town, told the Petaluma Argus that he was “just looking for some justice.”
Instead of returning his son to the “colored school,” Jones placed him in a private school.[23] (Although this incident occurred in 1875, it was not made public until 1877 when the Argus reported it in an effort to embarrass Principal Munday, who at the time was running for county school superintendent. Munday ended up losing to the race to the Republican candidate, but subsequently went on to be elected to the state assembly and then to mount an unsuccessful campaign for Lieutenant Governor.)[24]
In 1876 however, Lippitt, distressed and angered by what he considered the Republican Party’s retribution against the South during the Reconstruction Era, switched his allegiances to the pro-South Democratic Party. He and Shattuck launched the Courier as an advocacy organ for Democratic candidates running in the 1876 election, including presidential candidate Samuel Tilden.
Edward S. Lippitt, 1910 (photo Sonoma County Library)
They wasted no time attacking the Republican positions held by Henry Weston’s Argus, labeling the paper a “negro-worshipping sheet” for its stand on integrating Black students into the white schools.[25] (Later in life, Lippitt wrote that although he believed in freeing the slaves, he did not expect Blacks to be granted the vote until they had been properly educated to execute it, which he suspected may take generations; he deplored passage of the Fifteenth Amendment as merely a Republican political maneuver to humiliate the South.)[26]
One result of the newspaper war waged between the Argus and the Courier in 1876 is that the “colored school” became a polarizing topic. Ezekiel Denman, one of the town’s most prominent and wealthiest men, was defeated in his 1876 re-election bid to the Board of Education after voicing support for eliminating the “colored school.”[27] The Board’s stubborn refusal to abolish the “colored school” went viral in 1877, drawing ridicule from newspapers from as far away as The presidential election of 1876 was undermined by voter fraud, resulting in an deal between Republicans and Democrats to allow Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to ascend to the presidency, on the condition that he formally end Reconstruction in the South, removing all federal troops.
The end of Reconstruction reversed whatever gains Blacks had made since the Civil War, ushering in an era of Jim Crow laws, voter suppression, and lynchings. During this period, many Black living in Petaluma were drawn away to more vibrant Black communities in Oakland and in Vallejo, the latter of which offered jobs in the nearby Mare Island shipyards.[28]
By the spring of 1877, enrollment in the “colored school” had dropped to four students, which Henry Weston was quick to point out in the Argus raised the annual cost per student to $125, as opposed to $12 for students in the white schools.[29] Still, Petaluma’s Board of Education held its ground.
The following spring, Miss Annie Camm resigned from teaching at the “colored school” in order to get married.[30] She was replaced by Miss Mary C. Waterbury.[31] By 1880, Petaluma’s “colored school” was down to merely one student who was being taught by an Black teacher named Miss Louisa Dickson.[32] The population census year listed only seventeen Blacks living in Petaluma.[33]In April, 1880, the California state legislature voted to abolish “colored schools,” citing the expense of providing a separate education system for a relatively small number of children. They passed a new law requiring that schools be open “for the admission of all children.”[34]
At the beginning of the new school year in July 1880, E.S. Lippitt’s Petaluma Courier, unwilling to acknowledge the new law, spuriously reported that the “colored school” had been discontinued after enrollment had dwindled down to but one student.”[35] In 1882, there were four Black students enrolled in the newly integrated Petaluma public schools. By 1885, there were none.[36]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] J. Gordon Melton, J. Gordon, A Will to Choose: The Origins of African American Methodism (MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) pp. 8–11; Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, editors, The Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840-1865, Volume 2 (Temple University Press, 1979).
[2] Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), p. 25.
[3]Petaluma Argus: Humboldt Shaving Saloon Advertisement, December 15, 1863; “Passing Away,” July 30, 1862.
[4] Advertisement for “Frank Miller’s Hairdressing Saloon,” Petaluma Argus, January 23, 1863.
[5] Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), p. 25; Sharon McGriff-Payne, John Grider’s Century: African Americans in Solano, Napa, and Sonoma Counties from 1845 to 1925 (iUniverse, 2009), p. 24. “Correspondence,” Pacific Appeal, December 12, 1863. The Elevator: “Santa Rosa,”, July 4, 1865 (The Santa Rosa “colored school’ was entering its second semester in July, indicating the first started in January of 1865). “School Examination in Santa Rosa,” February 16, 1866.
[6]Petaluma Argus: “School for Colored Children,” December 16, 1863; “Opened,” January 13, 1864; Pacific Appeal: “Correspondence,” December 12, 1863, “Married,” June 27, 1863, “Arrivals from the Interior,” February 13, 1864.
[7] Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), p. 25.
[8] “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864; Lippitt’s role is speculated given the silver spoons presented to him by Miller and other A.M.E. members in 1870 for his advocacy in helping them attain their civil rights.
[9] 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. (Eight students is an estimate–it’s unknown exactly how many students were in attendance during the Petaluma’s “colored school’s” first year. George Miller had four school-age children. In 1867 and 1868, Petaluma’s annual school census counted eight black school-age children between the ages of five and fifteen in town, out of a total of 627 children in the city.)
[10]Petaluma Argus: “School Census,” July 4, 1867, July 2, 1868, July 1, 1869, June 18, 1879.
[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.
[13]Petaluma Argus: “Our Public Schools,” June 3, 1871; “Our Public Schools,” January 6, 1872; “Educational,” March 9, 1872; “The Public Schools,” July 20, 1872.
[14]Petaluma Argus: “Our Public Schools,” July 18, 1873;
[15]Petaluma Argus, “The Colored School,” November 7, 1873.
[16]Petaluma Argus: “Educational Notes,” July 17, 1874; “Colored Schools Elsewhere,” April 27, 1877. (E.S. Lippitt confirms that the “colored school’ was on the northeast corner of Fifth and B streets in An Autobiography of Edward Spaulding Lippitt, edited by Lee Torliatt, p. 42.)
[17]Petaluma Argus: “Our ‘Colored Schools,’” December 8, 1876.
[18]The Elevator: “Educational Public Meeting at Bethel Church,” April 27, 1872; Address of the Educational Committee, May 11, 1872.
[21]Petaluma Argus, “Educational Notes,” June 25, 1875; “Educational Notes,” July 9, 1875.
[22] The Colored School,” Petaluma Courier, April, 12, 1877. Petaluma Argus: “Cozy Barber Shop,” April 23, 1875; “Died,” September 3, 1879; “Our Colored School,”
[23]Petaluma Courier: “The Colored School,” April, 12, 1877; “Letter from a Citizen,” April 19, 1877. Petaluma Argus: “The Colored School,” April 6, 1877; “The Colored School,” April 20, 1877; “Personalities,” August 31, 1877; “How is This?” August 24, 1877.
[24] “The Election,” Petaluma Courier, September 6, 1877. “In the Assembly,” San Francisco Examiner, January 28, 1884.
[25]Petaluma Courier, “The Negro School,” April 5, 1877.
[26]An Autobiography of Edward Spaulding Lippitt, edited by Lee Torliatt (Santa Rosa: Sonoma County Historical Society), p. 43.
[27]Petaluma Argus: “The Negro School,” April 5, 1877.
[28] Sharon McGriff-Payne, John Grider’s Century: African Americans in Solano, Napa, and Sonoma Counties from 1845 to 1925 (iUniverse, 2009), p. 58.
[29]Petaluma Argus: March 30, 1877; “Our Colored School,” March 23, 1877.
[30] “Our Public Schools,” Petaluma Argus, June 14, 1878 (listed her as teaching for two months the spring). “Married,” Petaluma Courier, July 18, 1878.
[31]Petaluma Courier, “Election of Teachers,” June 19, 1878; “Teachers Elected,” January 8, 1879.
[32]Petaluma Courier, “The Public Schools,” June 18, 1879; History Of Sonoma County, Sonoma County,CA (Archives History – Books …..Petaluma Township, Part 3 1880).
[33] 1880 Population Census, Sonoma Country History and Genealogy.
[34] Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), 25; John Foord, Journal of the American Association, Volume 6, 1907, p. 84.
[35] “Local Dots,” Petaluma Courier, July 21, 1880.
[36]Petaluma Argus: “School Census Report,” June 2, 1882; “School Census,” June 6, 1885.
Chenault Way where Western Avenue meets Petaluma Boulevard (photo John Sheehy)
Petaluma’s beloved “sidewalk philosopher” and iconic shoeshine entrepreneur Henry Chenault was honored on September 17, 2025, in a ceremony remaining the former alleyway where Western Avenue meets Petaluma Boulevard as “Chenault Way,” not far from where he operated his shoeshine stand.
A bronze plaque recognizing Chenault for his contributions to Petaluma for more than 30 years, was also installed on Chenault Way, the first street in Petaluma to be named after a Black resident.
Plaque below Chenault Way street sign (photo John Sheehy)
Brief remarks were offered by Faith Ross, Bill Fishman, John Sheehy, and Chenault’s niece Barbara Clark.
Faith Ross, Bill Fishman, and Barbara Clark with Chenault’s original street sign, at the ceremony (photos courtesy of Connie Williams)
The ceremony was attended by the city mayor and city council members, as well as city officials. The proposal to rename the street in honor of Chenault was spearheaded by Carol Eber.
John Sheehy’s remarks can be viewed here:
Video of remarks at dedication by John Sheehy (video courtesy of Connie Williams)
THE COCKEYED LIAR WHO CLAIMED TO BE THE FATHER OF CHICKENDOM
Statue of Chanticline, the chicken symbol of Petaluma, outside train Depot (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
Petaluma has never been seriously troubled by the question of “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Both made good money during the city’s heyday as the “World’s Egg Basket,” rendering the question locally irrelevant.[1]
Rather, the mystery still plaguing the city is who invented the Petaluma Incubator, the innovative egg hatching machine that gave birth to its good fortune?
That legendary act of animal husbandry is commonly attributed to Lyman Byce, the self-proclaimed “father of chickendom.”[2] Turns out, he was also a cockeyed liar.
Lyman C. Byce (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
The first to peck at cracks in Byce’s story was historian Thea Lowry. In her book Empty Shells: The Story of Petaluma, America’s Chicken City published in 2000, Lowry called Byce’s paternity claims into question, but left the identity of chickendom’s real father a “mystery.”[3]
That speaks in part to Byce’s Machiavellian ability to brand himself with a garage start-up story, long before Steve Jobs made it an archetypal tale.
Byce’s story began on his family’s farm in Canada, where he claimed to have invented his first egg incubator at age 12.[4] In 1878, after overworking himself for two years at medical school in Toronto, he took a health break to visit his younger sister Jennie, who had just wed a Canadian-born farmer in Petaluma.[5]
Lyman C. Byce in his younger days (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
Revived by the area’s Mediterranean sea breezes, Byce stumbled upon a problem that needed solving: San Francisco’s demand for fresh eggs was exceeding what Petaluma farmers could produce. Retreating to a small room above a blacksmith’s carriage garage on Main Street—site of today’s Dunaway Auto Parts—he labored around the clock until he perfected a breakthrough in artificial egg incubators.[6]
Byce unveiled his new invention at the Sonoma and Marin District Agricultural Fair in September 1879.[7]One of his first purchasers was an enterprising Two Rock farmer named Chris Nisson, who used Byce’s incubator to establish America’s first commercial hatchery.[8]Released from their motherly duties, hens were now free to devote themselves to manufacturing eggs on an assembly line.
Flock of Petaluma hens (photo furnished by L.C. Byce in T.J. Gregory’s History of Sonoma County, 1911)
Other local hatcheries quickly followed suit, setting off an egg boom in the 1890s that transformed Petaluma into the “Boss Chicken Town of the Pacific Coast.”[9] All thanks to the city’s cock of the walk, Lyman Byce.
Or so he claimed.
Further investigation of Lowry’s groundbreaking research reveals Byce’s paternity claim to have been a fraud. The real father of chickendom was a 25-year old dentist named Isaac Lopes Dias. His tragic early death three years after inventing the Petaluma Incubator, allowed Byce, his business manager, to shamelessly erase him from the company’s history.[10]
Born to a Sephardic Jewish family in New Orleans in 1856, Dias had something of an itinerate itinerant childhood. His father Abraham Hiram Lopes Dias, a native of Curacao in the West Indies, operated a resort on Lake Pontchartrain.[11] His mother, Rosa Depass Marks, was the daughter of an auctioneer with two daughters from a previous marriage.[12]
In 1860, the family moved to the west coast. They settled first in Placerville, California, where Dias’s father opened a grocery with his brother-in-law, Herman Glouber, before moving to Virginia City, Nevada, where the two men opened another grocery.[13] In 1867, they moved to San Francisco, where Dias’s father established another grocery and served as president of the newly established Jewish Congregation Ohaibai Shalome.[14]
In 1869, Dias’s father and uncle purchased a 48-acre farm two miles north of Petaluma near Cinnabar School. The adjacent farm was owned by Samuel A. Nay, the first farmer in the area to make a success of chicken ranching, which may have had some influence on young Dias.[15] In 1875, they sold the farm and moved into downtown Petaluma.[16]
Site of the Dias & Glouber farm, which they sold to Christof Springer in 1875 , marked by red arrow (1877 Thompson Atlas)
Shortly before his death in 1877, Dias’s father purchased for his 21-year-old son a dental practice in the Derby Building on the southwest corner of Washington and Main streets.[17] Withing a few years, the hardworking and industrious Dr. Dias established himself as “one of Petaluma’s most intelligent and enterprising citizens.” An officer in the Literary and Debating Society, he was also elected an officer in the Masonic Lodge and foreman of the prestigious Petaluma Hook and Ladder Company.[18]
Derby Building at Main and Washington streets, 1875 (Sonoma County Library)
A born tinker, in September 1880 Dias exhibited his first patented invention, an automatic stock feeder, at the Sonoma and Marin District Agricultural Fair. Operated on a timer, it released grain at prescribed times into a feeding trough, allowing Dias, who kept a horse at his house on Liberty Street, to sleep in late.[19]
Dias’s U.S. patent for his Automatic Stock Feeder (U.S. Patent office)
Dias unveiled his next invention, the Petaluma Incubator, at the 1881 district fair. [20] Although artificial egg incubators had been around since the time of the ancient Egyptians, the Industrial Age gave rise to a series of new innovative models.[21] By 1881, more than a half-dozen companies were marketing incubators in California, each claiming to be the best.[22]
What distinguished the Petaluma Incubator was its automatic heat regulator, which maintained a brooding hen’s body temperature at a steady of 103 degrees. Housed in a redwood, octagonal-shaped box, the incubator was heated by a coal lamp with a side vent that automatically admitted fresh air as needed to control the temperature.
Illustration of the first Petaluma Incubator exhibited in 1881 (Ad in Pacific Rural Press)
Dias developed the revolutionary incubator in partnership with Thomas R. Jacobs, a Wells Fargo clerk. Jacobs, who later became a contractor and architect, most likely contributed to the incubator’s physical design and construction. Their partnership ended shortly after the fair.[23]
The Petaluma Incubator was awarded a ribbon at the fair, beating out the Axford Incubator, a popular model manufactured by the National Incubator Company in Chicago, with a 93% hatch rate.[24] The Axford had been entered into the competition by the company’s local agent, Lyman Byce.
Ad in Pacific Rural Press, December 3, 1881
Earlier that spring, Byce opened a poultry yard in area called Church Grove out on Western Avenue. In addition to selling Axford incubators, he employed them to hatch Plymouth Rock and Brown Leghorn chicks for market.[25] In addition to the Axford, Byce also entered an invention of his own at the fair, a brooder house for newborn chicks called the “Artificial Mother.” It also won a ribbon.[26]
After the fair, Dias launched I.L. Dias & Company to manufacture the incubator.[27]By the spring of 1882, the company had sold 36 incubators and filed for a U.S. patent, which was reportedly granted that summer.[28] He also signed on Byce as a sales agent.[29]
Ad for Byce’s Poultry Yard; first listing of himself as “Agent for the New Petaluma Incubator”(Petaluma Argus, November 4, 1881)
At the Sonoma and Marin District Fair in 1882, Dias again won the top award for incubators. A few weeks later, he received a silver medal for his incubator at the California State Fair in Sacramento.[30] By the spring of 1883, Dias had sold 200 incubators, and was employing ten mechanics. In April, he opened a new factory in a former armory across from his dental office at Main and Washington streets, at the rear of the McCune Building.[31]
Ad in Pacific Rural Press, December 22, 1883
That spring he also married his housekeeper, Mrs. Alzina Rhoades, who had three children from a previous marriage, one of whom still lived with her. She was 39 years old, and Dias 26. A year later, the couple welcomed a daughter of their own.[32]
Byce, meanwhile, continued to operate his poultry yard, now located on Hopper Street near the train depot, filling orders for eggs and chicks from around the country, as well as from Mexico, Japan, and Australia. He also began writing about poultry for the Pacific Rural Press, California’s weekly agricultural journal.
In May 1883, Byce wrote that when it came to incubators, he had found none to equal the Petaluma Incubator, which, “through the kindness of Mr. I. L. Dias, the manufacturer of the machine, I am using.”[33]
At that time, Byce was also listed in Petaluma’s business directory as a “partner in I.L. Dias & Company,” implying he had made a financial investment in the company.[34] That disclosure led to a flurry of acrimonious letters in the Press from competing incubator companies. In addition to chastising Byce for his duplicity, they dismissed both Dias and Byce as ignorant, young upstarts, and Dias’s incubator as unnecessarily complicated.[35]
In responding to his critics, Dias framed his arguments in the Press as though waging a high-minded debate. Byce, on the other hand, got defensive after being denounced as a “Benedict Arnold” for allegedly sabotaging the Axford Incubator he entered into competition against Dias’s incubator at the 1881 Sonoma and Marin Fair.[36]
Byce posing with dog (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
“Deeming the Petaluma (Incubator) a superior machine,” Byce wrote in his defense, “I dropped the Axford, and did not hesitate to identify myself with the manufacturing of the Petaluma Incubator; but as my interest is but a small factor, I invite the gentleman when writing anything intended specifically for the Petaluma Incubator to address his remarks directly to the manufacturer (Dias).”[37]
To settle the cockfight, Dias agreed to participate in a tournament of incubators at the upcoming 1883 State Fair, winner take all. At the highly publicized event, the Petaluma Incubator easily beat out the competition with an 82% hatch rate, earning Dias a gold medal with his name engraved upon it.[38]
Agricultural Hall at 6th and M Streets in Sacramento, site of exhibitions at 1882 State Fair (California State Historical Society)
Shortly after the fair, Dias changed the name of his firm from I.L. Dias & Company to the Petaluma Incubator Company. He also made Byce a co-proprietor, indicating he had received from him a larger investment in the company. Hitting back at the competition, Dias launched an extensive advertising campaign, touting his gold and silver medals and his defeat of the Axford at the 1881 district fair.[39]By the spring of 1884, the company was having trouble meeting demand.[40]
In September 1884, the Petaluma Incubator won its second gold medal at the State Fair.[41]Dias and Byce also submitted a patent request for a more efficient heating regulator they had developed together.[42] By that winter, the company had sold 1,800 incubators.[43]
On Sunday, November 30, 1884, Dias took a rowboat duck hunting in the tidal marshes south of town with his dental assistant John Stone.
Man in rowboat in marshes of the Petaluma River, circa 1900 (Sonoma County Library)
After dropping Stone off near a duck pond, Dias rowed himself to another landing. Climbing out of the boat while carrying his double-barreled shotgun, he apparently slipped in the mud, letting go of the gun. As it fell back into the boat, one of the trigger hammers evidently caught on the seat, discharging a blast that killed him instantly. He was 28 years old.[44]
After burying Dias in Petaluma’s Jewish cemetery, Dias’s widow Alzina submitted a patent request with Byce for a more efficient incubator heating regulator Dias and Byce had developed together. She filed a court request to sell the half interest in the Petaluma Incubator Company bequeathed to her in his estate. According to the filing, Byce, who was still operating his poultry yard, was reluctant to devote more time or money to the business. Instead, she sold Dias’s stake to a local carriage maker, William Magee.[45]
Byce apparently soon had a change of heart. It might have had something to do with ostriches. The rising demand for ostrich feathers in ladies’ plumes, boas, fans, and bonnets, had given rise to a number of ostrich ranches in Southern California. A few months after Dias’s death, the ranchers contacted Byce about developing an incubator large enough to hatch ostrich eggs. Byce presumably bought out Magee’s stake in the company, and got to work.[46]By the late 1880s, he had established a monopoly on ostrich egg incubators.[47]
Ostrich hatching inside Petaluma Incubator (Sonoma County Library)
Along with the sudden growth of chicken hatcheries, the ostrich market helped Byce to scale up his business.[48] In 1889, he moved his factory into a larger building on Main Street across from today’s Penry Park. In 1902, he purchased an adjacent lot and constructed what he claimed to be the largest incubator factory in the world.[49]
1902 fire that burned down G.P. McNear’s Oriental Mill beside the Petauma Incubator Company in Main Street (Sonoma County Library)Byce’s new incubator factory that replaced it, Main Street, 1912 (Sonoma County Library)
That same year, he incorporated the Petaluma Incubator Company for $100,000 in capital stock ($3.7 million in today’s currency), and built a showplace mansion for his family at 226 Liberty Street.[50]
The Byce mansion at 226 Liberty Street (Sonoma County Library)
But with increasing success came increasing competition. To maintain his market position, Byce decided he needed to promote the Petaluma Incubator not only as the best, but also as the oldest operating incubator firm.[51]That required a new founder’s story.
Up through the mid-1890s, published accounts attributed the Petaluma Incubator’s invention to Dias and Jacobs in 1881, with Byce joining the company in 1882.[52]Byce launched his new founder’s story in 1898 with a profile in The Illustrated Atlas of Sonoma County, which described him as “thegenius who originated and constructed” the incubator.[53]
In announcing the company’s stock sale in 1902, Byce took the opportunity to assert himself as the sole founder of the company in 1879, soon after he first arrived in Petaluma. He informed reporters that “the Petaluma Incubator’s introduction and use antedates that of any other incubator on the market.”[54]
Workers at the Petaluma Incubator Company, 1913 (Sonoma County Library)
In 1904, he sought to strengthen the bogus 1879 launch date by staging an elaborate 25th silver anniversary for the company.[55] Rehashing his fictitious garage start-up story, he also offered the press a new explanation of Dias’s role.
“A Mr. I.L. Dias,” the Courier reported, “who had acquired certain plans for an incubator, entered into a co-partnership with Byce. Dias soon died however, after which Byce abandoned the plans upon which they had been working on together, and pursued entirely his own ideas for inventing what became the Petaluma Incubator.”[56]
In 1909, for what he proclaimed to be the company’s 30th anniversary, Byce issued a brochure entitled “How It All Came About.” A hagiography of Byce’s early years leading up to the invention of the Petaluma Incubator, the brochure included testimonials from Canadian friends and prominent Petaluma businessmen confirming his fabricated version of events.”[57]
Cover of 1909 Petaluma Incubator brochure “How it All Came About” (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
As the years passed, Byce continued to dismiss Dias’s involvement in the incubator, arrogantly describing himself as having “succeeded in accomplishing what no other man had.”[58] In 1934, a poultry teacher named Andrew Stodel wrote him to ask why the records of the 1882 California State Fair listed Isaac L. Dias as the Petaluma Incubator’s sole inventor and gold medal winner.[59]
In his response to Stodel dated November 30, 1934—ironically, the 50th anniversary of Dias’s tragic death, Byce hatched one of his most cock-a-doodle-doo yarns. He wrote that after first meeting Dias for some dental work, the two of them hit it off as fellow tinkers, Byce with his incubator, and Dias with his automatic stock feeder. While Dias frequently came to the garage to watch Byce’s incubator hatch eggs, Byce assured Stodel “he had nothing to do with my invention.”[60]
As for the mix-up at the State Fair in 1882, Byce explained that he and Dias decided to jointly exhibit their machines in the same shared booth at the fair. While Byce traveled to Sacramento by boat with two of his incubators, Dias transported his automatic stock feeder there by train. Arriving before Byce, Dias registered their respective entries for the shared booth under his name. That was why the gold medal awarded to Byce’s incubator was incorrectly inscribed with Dias’s name. He said a regretful Dias turned the medal over to him, which he still kept with him.[61]
At the time he wrote Stodel, Byce was 80 years old. Fate had not been kind. In 1919, overexpansion and increased competition, compounded by distressed sales during World War I, forced the Petaluma Incubator Company to declare bankruptcy.[62]Shortly after, Byce and his son Elwood launched a much smaller plant on East Washington Street called the Petaluma Electric Incubator Company.[63]
Byce’s new Petaluma Electric Incubator Company, 1927 (Sonoma County Library)
Plagued by further financial troubles during the Depression, Byce was forced to sell his Liberty Street mansion in 1938. He spent his final years living with Elwood’s family in a small rented cottage on Sixth Street, sharing a bedroom with Elwood’s infirm father-in-law until his death in 1944 at the age of 91.[64]Elwood continued to operate the Petaluma Electric Incubator Company until his own death in 1955, after which the company was shut down.[65]
Byce in 1909 (Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)
Byce did however seal his own legacy as the father of chickendom by erasing Dias from the Petaluma Incubator founder’s story.[66] As for the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, biologists all agree—it was the evolution inside the silent egg, not the crowing rooster.[67]
Special thanks to Terry Park for his research assistance.
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 4, 2025.
******
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Petaluma, the World’s Egg Basket,” Petaluma Courier, June 25, 1918.
[2] “Another Contest,” Petaluma Courier, September 2, 1896.
[3] Thea Lowry, Empty Shells: The Story of Petaluma, America’s Chicken City (Novato, CA: Manifold Press, 2000) pp. 31-37, 186-188.
[4] Byce’s unpublished autobiographical essay, believed to be written in 1914, Lorraine Skoog Collection, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum.
[5] Byce’s unpublished autobiographical essay; Note: Jennie Byce didn’t marry John Flannagan in Petaluma until August 1879. Prior to that she was living, according to her obituary, with the family of Ezekiel Denman in town (“Married,” Petaluma Argus, August 22, 1879; “A Good Woman Called Home,” Petaluma Argus, January 2, 1926). The 1880 U.S. Census registered Lyman Byce as age 26, birthplace Canada, occupation medical student, living with his brother-in-law and sister, Thos. Flannagan and Jane Flannagan, at 211 Howard Street, Petaluma.
[7] Byce’s unpublished autobiographical essay, Skoog Collection. Note: there is no Petaluma business listing for Byce listed in McKenney’s District Directory for 1878-79 Yolo, Solano, Napa, Lake, and Sonoma Counties, Sonoma County Library.
[8] Byce claims that Nisson purchased his first incubator in 1880 (Byce’s unpublished autobiographical essay; Petaluma Incubator timeline by Elwood Byce, 1927, Lorraine Skoog Collection, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum). However, Chris Nisson’s son Eric claims his father purchased his first incubator in 1883 (“The Poultry Industry in Petaluma,” Pacific Rural Press, June 25, 1910). That corresponds with the first Petaluma newspaper mention of Nisson’s operation in 1885 (“Tales from Two Rock,” Petaluma Courier, November 11, 1885).
[10] “The Axford Agent Replies to the Business Manager of the Petaluma,” Pacific Rural Press, June 21, 1884.
[11] Hotel at Madisonville,” New Orleans Daily Delta, June 15, 1855; “Death of A.H. L. Dias,” Petaluma Argus, January 4, 1878; “Death Of I. L. Dias,” Pacific Rural Press, December 6, 1884; “A.H.L. Dias, Died 1877, U.S. Will and Probate Records; Note: A.H.L. had a sister, Rachel Lopez Dias, who married Herman Glouber, who became A.H.L. Dias’s business partner in California and Nevada. Dias married Rosa Depass Marks, a widow, in New Orleans in 1854 (“A.H.L. Dias, findagrave.com, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/74049327/abraham_hiram-dias)
[12] Rosa Dias was born in 1816 in Charleston, South Carolina to Joseph M. Depass, an auctioneer, who moved the family to New Orleans sometime in the 1820s. He auctioned estates as well as slaves on occasion (New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 26, 1838, February 1, 1853; Ad for auction of Family Slaves by J.M. Depass, New Orleans Cresent, December 22, 1849). Depass had many children. His paternity of Rosa is confirmed by her documented sister, Louisanna E. Depass, who married an Adolphe Hecht (“Married,” Times-Picayune, October 19, 1845). She then moved with her second husband, a Mitchales, to France, where she died in 1886 (“Died,” Petaluma Argus, December 18, 1886). Rosa’s first husband, Henry Marks, was a newspaper publisher and grocer in New Orleans. He died in 1849 of consumption, leaving Rosa with two daughters, Blanch Cora and M.E. Marks. M.E. later married Thomas Golden of Sacramento, and Blanche Cora later married a man named Ward in El Dorado County (“Died,” New Orleans Crecsent, April 30, 1849; 1860 S.S. Census: Placerville, CA, A.H.L. and Rosa Dias living with three children, M.E. Marks, B.C. Marks, and I.L. Dias). Rosa spent her final days with Golden in Sacramento: “Polly Larkin’s Pot-Pourri,” Petaluma Courier, May 19, 1886; “Died,” Petaluma Argus, May 22, 1886; “Social and Personal,” Pacific Bee, Augus 20, 1886; “Blanche Ward, Nevada Pioneer, Dies in California,” Reno Evening Gazette, November 1, 1935.
[13] “New Store,” Placerville Mountain Democrat, June 30, 1860; U.S. Census 1860: A.H.L and Rosa Dias, age 50 and 42, living in Placerville, with three children, daughters M.E. and B.C. Marks from Rosa’s first marriage to Henry Marks, and son I.L.Dias; Dias’s partner in both his groceries was his brother-in-law, Herman Glouber, a native of Austria and the husband of his sister Rachel Lopez Dias, who is listed in his California will and probate filing in December, 1877. The Gloubers had a son in New Orleans in 1856, and were living in Placerville, California, by 1858. It’s possible they moved to San Francisco as well with the Dias family. Herman Glouber purchased the 48-acre farm in Petaluma with A.H.L. Dias (“Petaluma Road District,” Sonoma Democrat, February 7, 1874).
[14] Dias & Co. listing, The Hebrew (San Francisco), September 29, 1871; “Local Intelligence,” Alta California, September 16, 1867; “Elected,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 12, 1868. Note: Dias’s two older sisters, Blanche Cora Marks and M.E. Marks, both married while the family was living in Nevada, Blanche to Robert D. Ward (“Marriages,” Sacramento Bee, November 2, 1863), and M.E. to a Thomas Golden (“Died,” Petaluma Argus, May 22, 1886).
[15] Sonoma County Records, Volume 27, page 435: On April 1, 1869, Abraham H.L. Dias and Herman Glouber of San Francisco purchased for $5,000 lots 5 and 6 of Rancho Roblar de la Miseria. The last year they paid property taxes on the farm was 1874: “Petaluma Road District,” Sonoma Democrat, February 7, 1874. The 1873 San Francisco Directory lists A.H.L. Dias as a merchant, and I.L Dias as a student, living at 1209 Post Street in San Francisco, indicating that was their primary residence; Tom Gregory, “Samuel D. Nay,” History of Sonoma County (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1911), p. 856-857.
[16] Real Estate Transactions,” Petaluma Argus, December 10, 1875; Note: A.H.L. Dias and his brother-in-law Herman Glouber sold the farm in December 1875 to Christopher Springer. Springer is listed as the property owner in Thompson’s 1877 Sonoma County Atlas. Both Dias and the Glouber families, along with the Glouber’s son Milliard, a dentist, then moved to what appears to have been the same residence on Keller Street in Petaluma (McKenney’s District Directory for 1878-79 Yolo, Solano, Napa, Lake, and Sonoma Counties, pgs. 266, 268).
[17] “Death of A.H.L. Dias,” Petaluma Argus, January 4, 1878; “Notice,” Petaluma Argus, March 16, 1877; “Court Proceedings,” Sonoma Democrat, April 5, 1879; “Santa Rosa Notes,” Petaluma Courier, May 3, 1880. Note: Dr. G.M. Phillips, who sold the dental practice to Dias, later reneged on his agreement to refrain from practicing dentistry in town for five years, leading to a lawsuit by Isaac Dias, which was ultimately settled in his favor.
[18] “Sunday School Anniversary,” Petaluma Argus, April 2, 1880; “Officers Elected,” Petaluma Argus, January 21, 1881; “Married,” Petaluma Argus, February 10, 1883; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, December 22, 1883; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, December 22, 1883.
[19] “Automatic Stock Feeder,” Petaluma Argus, September 10, 1880; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, September 2, 1881; Patent #245,795, issued by U.S. Patent Office August 16, 1881; 1880 U.S. Census: I.L. Dias, 26, living at 108 Liberty Street with his mother, Rosa Dias, 64, a 12-year old niece Ida Ward and 14-year nephew, Joseph Ward children of Rosa’s daughter B.C. Marks Ward; McKenney’s Sonoma, Napa, Lake, Mendocino, Humboldt, Yolo, Solano, and Marin Counties, 1882-1883, p. 15, Sonoma County Library: Dias’s personal address is listed as 108 Liberty Street; McKenney’s District Directory for 1878-79 Yolo, Solano, Napa, Lake, and Sonoma Counties, p. 266, Sonoma County Library: Dr. I.L.Dias’s personal address is listed on Keller Street, no address.
[20] “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, July 13, 1881; “New Incubator,” Petaluma Argus, September 2, 1881; “Pavilion Notes,” Petaluma Argus, September 9, 1881; “The Incubator,” Petaluma Argus, September 16, 1881; “Jacobs & Dias’s Incubator,” Petaluma Argus, September 21, 1881.
[21] “The Egyptian Egg Ovens Considered More Wondrous Than the Pyramids,” Atlasobscura.com, March 29, 2019. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/egypt-egg-ovens; Page Smith and Charles Daniel, The Chicken Book (San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1982), pp. 13-14; 232-233.
[22] The California State Fair in 1879 featured an exhibit of the Axford Incubator from Chicago by one of its agents, W.H.H. Lee & Co., and the Eclipse Incubator from Massachusetts by one of its agents, H.W. Caldwell. In 1880, a G.G. Nickson won two ribbons at the state fair for an incubator and a brooder: “Prospects for Upcoming Fair,” Sacramento Bee, September 6, 1879; “State Fair,” Sacramento Bee, September 20, 1879; “State Fair,” Sacramento Union, September 28, 1880; “The Incubator Contest,” Pacific Rural Press, May 21, 1884. The most publicized was the Centennial Incubator, invented in 1876 by A.M Halstead in New York. Their California sales agent, Manuel Eyre, operated a 116-acre poultry yard of Brown Leghorn and Plymouth Rock chickens in Napa. He began running the first ads for incubators in Petaluma newspapers in 1879. “The Maryland Poultry and Poultry Fanciers Association,” Baltimore Sun, October 6, 1876; Eyre’s ads featured in: Santa Barbara Independent, February 8, 1878; Fresno Expositor, November 20, 1878; Ferndale Enterprise, November 22, 1878; Stanislaus County Weekly News, November 22, 1878; Anaheim Gazette, November 23, 1878; Cloverdale News, December 7, 1878; Santa Cruz Weekly, November 30, 1878; His first ad in the Petaluma Argus, was in the November 28, 1879 edition.
[23] Note: Prior to becoming a contractor and architect, in 1883, Jacobs left Wells Fargo to purchase a grocery in town. He designed, among other things, the Pepper Free Kindergarten Building at Liberty and Washington streets, and his own stylish home at 419 D Street. “Petaluma Pickings,” Petaluma Argus, May 5, 1883; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, December 8, 1883; Ad, Petaluma Courier, December 12, 1883; “About Completed: The William Pepper Kinder-School Building,” Petaluma Courier, August 23, 1894; “County Hospital Suicide Was a Well-known Former Local Man,” Petaluma Argus, December 26 1917; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/242042606/thomas-robert-jacobs.
[24] “Jacobs & Dias Incubator,” Petaluma Courier, September 21, 1881.
[25] “The Feathered World,” Buffalo Courier Express, January 28, 1879; “New Poultry Yards,” Petaluma Argus, March 4, 1881; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, May 6, 1881; “Our District Fair,” Petaluma Argus, September 9, 1881. Note: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: W.W. Axford’s early U.S. patents for his incubators were issued in 1876 (#183,526) and 1880 (#232,325).
[26] “Our District Fair,” Petaluma Argus, September 9, 1881; “List of Premiums Awarded,” Petaluma Argus, September 16, 1881; Ad for the Petaluma Incubator, citing having beaten out the Axford National at the fair, Pacific Rural Press, December 3, 1881.
[27] By December 1881, Dias was listed as the sole proprietor and manufacturer of the Petaluma Incubator at I.L. Dias & Company: Ad for Petaluma Incubator, Pacific Rural Press, December 3, 1881.
[28] “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, March 22, 1882; Note: Beginning in August 1882, Dias’s incubator began to be referred to in the press as the “patent incubator.” The Petaluma Courier reported in February 1883, that the patent had been received in 1882: “Our Fair,” Petaluma Courier, August 30, 1882; “Artificial Chicken Hatching,” Sacramento Bee, September 11, 1882; “Poultry and Incubators,” Petaluma Courier, February 7, 1883.
[29] Ads for “I.L. Dias & Co.” began appearing in the spring of 1882 (Petaluma Courier, March 1, 1882); Ad for L.C. Byce, Petaluma Argus, November 4, 1881; “Byce’s Poultry Yards,” Petaluma Courier, March 8, 1882. Note: by March 1882, Byce had moved his poultry yard to Hopper Street in East Petaluma, “Byce’s Poultry Yards,” Petaluma Courier, March 8, 1882.
[30] Note: Dias and Byce were cited in a newspaper report (“An Incubator,” Petaluma Argus, August 4, 1882) as having “just perfected an incubator which is very near perfection.” There is no supporting documentation for this at the time. “Our Fair,” Petaluma Courier, August 30, 1882; “Our Fair,” Petaluma Argus, September 1, 1882; “The Petaluma Incubator,” Petaluma Argus, September 8, 1882; “Sonoma at the State Fair,” Petaluma Argus, September 20, 1882.
[31] “Poultry and Incubators,” Petaluma Courier, February 7, 1883; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, April 25, 1883.
[32] U.S. Census 1880; “Superior Court,” Petaluma Argus,” October 7, 1880 “Legal Post,” San Francisco Examiner, July 24, 1882; “Divorce,” San Francisco Examiner, December 31, 1882; “Married,” Petaluma Argus, February 10, 1883; “Married,” Oakland Tribune,” January 24, 1884; “Born,” Petaluma Courier, May 28, 1884; “Obituary,” Hood River Glacier, July 19, 1906. Note: Alzina Rhoades was married in 1861 in Minnesota before to Louis S. Rhoades, who worked on railway bridges. They had three children, Eva, Alberta, and Orson Rhoades. In 1874, they moved to California, and apparently separated when Louis moved to Oregon in 1877. The U.S. Census of 1880 lists Alzina as “divorced” and living at Dias’s house at 108 Liberty Street as a housekeeper with her daughter Alberta, age 9. Her age is listed as 35. Dias was 24. Alzina’s divorce from Rhoades was made official in 1882 on grounds of desertion. Alzina was awarded custody of their daughter Alberta. She and Dias married in Santa Rosa in February 1883, and then again, for reasons unknown, in San Francisco in December 1883.
[33] “Artificial Rear of Fowls,” Pacific Rural Press, May 12, 1883.
[34] “Poultry and Incubators,” Petaluma Courier, February 7, 1883; “The Incubator Contest,” Pacific Rural Press, June 16, 1883; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, June 20, 1883; McKenney District Directory of Sonoma, Napa, Lake, Mendocino, Humboldt, Yolo, Solano, and Marin Counties, 1882-1883, p. 15, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum.
[35] “Still More about Incubators,” Pacific Rural Press, June 10, 1882; “The Incubator Contest,” Pacific Rural Press, June 16, 1883; “The Proposed Tournament,” Pacific Rural Press, June 16, 1883; “At the Late Incubator ‘Contest,’” Pacific Rural Press, November 24, 1883; “Petaluma Incubator Replies to the Agent of the Axford,” Pacific Rural Press, June 7, 1884; “The Axford Agent Replies to the Business Manager of the Petaluma (Incubator),” Pacific Rural Press, June 21, 1884.
[36] “Experience with Incubators,” Pacific Rural Press, June 2, 1883; “The Incubator Contest,” Pacific Rural Press, May 21, 1884.
[37] “The Incubator Contest,” Pacific Rural Press, June 16, 1883.
[38] “Experience with Incubators,” Pacific Rural Press, June 2, 1883; “The Incubator Contest,” Pacific Rural Press, June 16, 1883; “The Proposed Tournament,” Pacific Rural Press, June 16, 1883; “State Fair Notes,” Pacific Rural Press, September 22, 1883; “The Result of the Incubator Test at the State Fair,” Pacific Rural Press, September 22, 1883; “At the Late Incubator ‘Contest,’” Pacific Rural Press, November 24, 1883.
[39] First ad for Petaluma Incubator Company, Pacific Rural Press, August 30, 1884; “A Gold Medal,” Petaluma Argus, November 22, 1884; McKenney’s Sonoma, Napa, Lake, Mendocino, Humboldt, Yolo, Solano, and Marin Counties, 1884-1885, p. 265, Sonoma County Library: I.L. Dias & Company lists Isaac L. Dias and Lyman C. Byce as manufacturers at the corner of Main and Washington streets.
[40] “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, October 3, 1883;“Large Shipments,” Petaluma Argus, March 29, 1884.
[41] “Petaluma Incubator,” Pacific Rural Press, October 4, 1884; “The Incubator Gold Medal,” Pacific Rural Press, October 18, 1884.
[42] It is not known when exactly they filed the patent. It was approved as patent #319,064, issued by U.S. Patent Office on June 2, 1885.
[43] “Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, February 7, 1885.
[44] “Particulars of the Fatal Accident at Petaluma,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 2, 1884; “Dr. Isaac Lopes Dias Dies,” Petaluma Argus, December 6, 1884.
[45] “Polly Larkin’s Pot-Pourri,” Petaluma Courier, December 3, 1884; Patent #319,064, issued by U.S. Patent Office on June 2, 1885, for heat regulator filed by Lyman C. Byce and Alzina Dias and February 3, 1885, and approved June 2, 1884. It is not known whether this was a patent for an improved version of Dias’s original heat regulation developed by Dias and Byce, or whether Dias’s widow and Byce were tying up loose ends by filing a patent for the original heat incubator that Dias never received, even though he advertised his incubator beginning in 1882 as having been patented. No record of the 1882 incubator patent by Dias has been located in the U.S. Patent files; Alzina Dias’s legal request to sell her deceased husband’s half ownership in the Petaluma Incubator is featured in Lowry’s book, p. 36. Note: Lowry states she sourced the decree in Sonoma County court documents that show Alzina Dias sold her half-interest in the Petaluma Incubator to William J. Magee on May 18, 1885. Magee had recently opened a new blacksmith and carriage shop that March with Andrew Spotswood, called Spotswood & Magee (“Certificate of Copartnership,” Petaluma Courier, March 18, 1885). Magee was also a master of the Masons at the time (“Public Installation,” Petaluma Courier, December 29, 1886). Note: Alzina Dias and her children moved to San Francisco, while Dias’s mother Rosa, who was living with Alzina and Isaac, and who had lost her eyesight, moved to Sacramento to live with one of her two daughters (“Polly Larkin’s Pot-Pourri,” Petaluma Courier, May 19, 1886: Petaluma Courier, September 5, 1900).
[46] No record can be found of Magee’s sale of his interest in the company to Byce; he is not listed in McKenney’s District Directory of 1884-85, nor 1885-86, as a partner in the Petaluma Incubator Company. Byce is continually referred to in the press in 1885 as the manager of the Petaluma Incubator Company (“Practical Artificial Rearing of Chicks,” Petaluma Argus, February 21, 1885; “Hunting Story,” Petaluma Argus, July 25, 1885).
[47] “The Largest Yet,” Petaluma Argus, April 4, 1885; “Good Machine,” Petaluma Argus, July 18, 1885; “Petaluma Incubator,” Pacific Rural Press, September 1, 1888; “Petaluma Incubator,” Pacific Rural Press, November 9, 1889; “Ostrich Farming in California,” Pacific Rural Press, May 21, 1892; “The Great Victorian Feather Craze,” The Collector.com, https://www.thecollector.com/victorian-great-feather-craze-ecological-impact/
[48] Ad, Petaluma Courier, August 25, 1888; “A Happy New Year,” Petaluma Argus, December 28, 1888; “Petaluma Industries,” Petaluma Courier, May 29, 1889; “Petaluma Incubator,” Pacific Rural Press, December 7, 1889; “A Large Business,” Pacific Rural Press, March 25, 1893; “Poultry in Sonoma County,” Pacific Rural Press, April 22, 1893.
[49] “Petaluma Incubator Factory,” Pacific Rural Press, January 19, 1889; “Petaluma Incubator Factory,” Pacific Rural Press, April 13, 1889; “A Midnight Blaze,” Petaluma Courier, June 11, 1902; “A Business Deal,” Petaluma Courier, August 29, 1902; “Petaluma Incubator Factory the Largest in the World,” Petaluma Argus, June 11, 1907.
[50] “Now Incorporated,” Petaluma Courier, May 10, 1902; “Petaluma Incubator Company Files Incorporation Articles,” Petaluma Argus, May 10, 1902; “A House Warming,” Petaluma Courier, June 4, 1902.
[51] “How It All Came About” brochure, Petaluma Incubator Company, 1909, Lorraine Skoog Collection, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum.
[52] “Poultry in Sonoma County,” Pacific Rural Press, April 22, 1893; Samuel Cassiday, An Illustrated History of Sonoma County (Chicago, IL: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1889), pp. 263, 548. Note: Cassiday, who apparently interviewed Byce for his biographical sketch in the book, wrote that Byce first came to Petaluma in the fall of 1879. That time frame corresponds with Byce’s written claim that he had come to Petaluma to stay with his recently married sister Jennie, who newspaper records show was wed in August 1879 (“Married,” Petaluma Argus, August 22, 1879). The only record found of Byce’s presence found in California in either 1878 or 1879 was as a registered hotel guest at San Francisco’s Ruff House in December 1879 (“Hotel Arrivals,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 3, 1879). Cassiday also writes that as a young man Byce worked in his father’s sawmill. After his father’s death, he went into the business of manufacturing potato starch in a mill near Toronto for two years, after which he abandoned the business. This corresponds with a bankruptcy filing by Byce in 1877 (“Bankrupt Notices – Ontario,” Montreal Gazette, October 25, 1877). Cassiday says Byce then entered medical school in Toronto for two years, until his failing health led him to make a trip to Petaluma in the fall of 1879. Lowry (p.38) found there were no records of Byce’s enrollment at any of Toronto’s three medical schools at the time.
[53] Reynolds and Proctor, Illustrated Atlas of Sonoma County (Santa Rosa, CA: Reynolds and Proctor, 1898), p. 32; “Gaye LeBaron,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, May 16, 1876.
[54] “Now Incorporated,” Petaluma Courier, May 10, 1902; “Petaluma Incubator Company Files Incorporation Articles,” Petaluma Argus, May 10, 1902. Note: Both front-page articles are a word-for-word match, indicating they were likely reprints of Byce’s press release.
[55] “Petaluma Incubator Banquets,” Petaluma Courier, November 22, 1904; “First Incubator by Lyman Byce,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955. Note: At the anniversary jubilee dinner, the backs of the place cards on the tables were inscribed “Born 1879, at the Petaluma Incubator Factory, Petaluma, California.”
[56] “Petaluma Incubator Banquets,” Petaluma Courier, November 22, 1904.
[57] Lorraine Skoog Collection, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum; Note: One of the testimonials is from Art S. Newburgh, an editor at the Petaluma Argus, who describes being ten years old and visiting Byce’s poultry yard with the owner of the local freight company, B.F. Cox (also included in the testimonials), who allowed him to ride with him on his wagon after school. They went to Byce’s place to pick up one of his newly invented incubators, and transport it full of eggs and in full operation, to the fairgrounds for the September 1879 Sonoma and Marin District Agricultural Fair. At the fair, the chicks successfully hatched and the machine became a big attraction. While that might have in fact happened, it probably wasn’t in 1879, but rather in 1881 when Cox and Newburgh transported from Byce’s poultry yard the Axford Incubator he entered at the fair to compete with the incubator of Dias and Jacobs.
[58] “Petaluma Incubator Factory the Largest in the World,” Petaluma Argus, June 11, 1907; Unpublished autobiographical essay, believed to have been written by Byce in 1914, Lorraine Skoog Collection, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum.
[59] Letter from Byce to Andrew Stodel, dated November 30, 1934, Lorraine Skoog Collection, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum; “Famous Judges Will Award Trophies,” Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, January 9, 1936; “Andrew Stodel Named Grand Historian by Native Sons,” Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, June 14, 1956.
[61] Letter from Byce to Andrew Sodel; Note: Byce’s granddaughter, Lorraine Skoog, claimed to still be in possession of the gold medal, but apparently she did not donate it to the Petaluma Historical Library & Museum with Byce’s other artifacts and papers. A museum volunteer, Leif Ortegen, reported that Skoog showed him the gold medal before she died, and that winner’s name on the back had been chiseled off (email from Leif Ortegen to John Sheehy, July, 4, 2025).
[62] “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.
[63] “Will Open Electric Incubator Factory,” Petaluma Courier, September 4, 1919; “Electric Incubator Co. Buy Land for New Home,” Petaluma Courier, May 13, 1923; Legal post, Petaluma Argus, June 11, 1924; Note: The company first leased a building from the Golden Eagle Mill at 2 East Washington Street “Electric Incubator Co. Buy Land for New Home,” Petaluma Courier, May 13, 1923, before purchasing a building at 307 Third Street (Petaluma Boulevard South) in 1923 (“Electric Incubator Co. Buy Land for New Home,” Petaluma Courier, May 13, 1923). In 1938, they purchased a new building at 416 East D Street (“Incubator Co. Moves Plant,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 10, 1938).
[64] “Work Starts on New Medical Building at Fourth and D Streets,” Petaluma Argus, July 26, 1938; “Mr. and Mrs. H. Reynaud to Occupy New Home,” Petaluma Argus Courier, October 3, 1938; “Mr. and Mrs. E. Byce Rent Mrs. Bauer’s House,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 15, 1938 (the address of the two-bedroom house is 404 Sixth Street,); “E.J. Cameron Claimed By Death,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 16, 1942; “Lyman Byce is Called to Rest at Age 91,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 8, 1944.
[65] “Byce,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 19, 1955; Ad for Frank Maus who purchased the Petaluma Electric Incubator Company’s inventory, Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 3, 1955.
[66] Examples include: “First Incubator by Lyman Byce,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955; “Lyman Byce Developed First Practical Poultry Incubator,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 24, 1958; “The Incubator Was Perfected in Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 15, 1980; Ed Mannion and Lewis Barber, “Petaluma Was First Explored in 1776,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 21, 1993; “Lyman Byce, Inventor of Chicken Incubator,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 24, 2015.
[67] “Which came first: The chicken or the egg?” Livescience.com, February 6, 2023. https://www.livescience.com/which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg
