Oyster Shells: Petaluma’s “Secret Sauce”

Gunerius “George” Aanunsen, standing center, in the first Aanunsen Oyster Shell Yard at the southwest corner of the D Street Bridge, with brother Pete seated on wagon, 1906 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

On the evening of September 9, 1909, Gunerius Aanunsen sailed up the Petaluma River on his schooner the Fearless with a cargo of oyster shells, docking at his supply yard beside the D Street Bridge. Returning the next morning, he found the boat submerged. During evening low tide its hull, weighted by the shells, cracked on a hidden silt mound.1

The sinking of the Fearless illustrated the perils of using a tidal estuary as a shipping channel. The genesis of Petaluma’s founding, the waterway came with a congenital birth defect—instead of flowing like a stream, it rose and fell with the ocean tides twice each day, making it prone to silting up.

At the time of the mishap, only the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers exceeded the estuary as a waterway for shipping commercial tonnage in California.2 Two steamers and more than 60 flat-bottomed schooners plied its 18 miles to and from San Pablo Bay with an annual 200,000 tons of goods, including 100 million eggs, Petaluma’s new agent of wealth as the self-proclaimed “Boss Chicken Town of the Pacific Coast.”3

Steamer Gold steamer traveling up the Petaluma River, circa 1900 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

But with economic prosperity came more silt. The expansion of farmlands led to the elimination of wetlands and rechanneling of tributary streams, sending erosion from the plowed fields into the estuary during rainy seasons, where it trapped boats like the Fearless in its muddy grasp. 4

According to local historian Skip Sommer, having a clogged artery at the heart of town raised the perennial question as to whether Petaluma wanted to be known as a river town or a mud town.5 For more than a century, the answer turned on the secret sauce of the Boss Chicken Town—oyster shells.

The arrival of oyster shells coincided with the Army Corps of Engineers’ first dredging of the estuary in 1880. Petaluma previously funded two dredgings of the upper channel north of Haystack Landing in 1859 and 1866, along with cuts made by ferryboat operator Charles Minturn.6 The arrival of the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad in 1870 however made dredging an existential imperative.  

Having bypassed Petaluma, the railroad created its own shipping terminus on the estuary south of town near Lakeville. Fearing a transportation monopoly, local business leaders successfully lobbied Congress in 1880 for $28,000, or $875,000 in today’s currency, to have the Army Corps dredge the estuary and re-channel some of its 80 serpentine bends.7

The dredging coincided with the invention in Petaluma of an efficient egg-hatching incubator in 1881 by Isaac Dias, a dentist from New Orleans. He was later joined in perfecting and marketing it by one of his patients, Lyman Byce.8

Christopher Nisson, a Danish immigrant, was one of the first purchasers one of Dias’ incubators, employing them to launch the country’s first commercial egg hatchery on his ranch in Two Rock.9

Christopher Nisson’s Pioneer Hatchery Ranch in Two Rock (Sonoma County Library)

The one ingredient Nisson lacked in his transformation of the chicken from pastoral farm animal to egg assembly line was calcium. If his hens were to dramatically increase their egg production, they needed many times their natural amount of calcium to avoid brittle bones and soft-shelled eggs. For a calcium supplement, Nisson turned to oyster shells.10

Crushed oyster shells were already being used in feed for backyard chickens, but not on the industrial scale he envisioned. Fortunately for Nisson, large mounds of ancient oyster shells, or middens, had been preserved beneath the waters of the South San Francisco Bay near San Mateo, built up by indigenous tribes over thousands of years.11

Sacks of “Egg Food” with oyster shells being loaded for delivery at George P. McNear’s Oriental Flour Mill on Petlauma Boulevard North across from Penry Park, 1895 (Sonoma County Library)

In 1880, Nisson persuaded Petaluma grain merchant George P. McNear to ship oyster shells up the estuary from the South Bay. The shells enabled him to quickly increase his flock to 2,000 hens, and begin selling incubated baby chicks to his neighbors.12 Within a decade, six additional hatcheries were operating in Petaluma, drawing hundreds of aspiring chicken ranchers to the area.13

Gunerius “George” Aanunsen immigrated to San Francisco from Norway in 1889.14 At the turn of the century, he and his brother Pete opened a supply yard in Petaluma for oyster shells, coal, and wood at the southwest corner of the D Street Bridge. 15

The brothers dissolved their partnership un 1907, with Pete retaining the coal and wood supply business while Gunerius opened the South Bay Shell Company on the southeast side of the D Street Bridge. The site would remain an oyster shell facility for the next 110 years.16

Schooner on Petaluma River just north of D Street Bridge, circa 1900 (Sonoma County Library)

The opening of Aanunsen’s new shell yard coincided with the third major dredging of the estuary by the Army Corps, the second having taken place in 1892.17 In the River and Harbor Act of 1904 Petaluma was provided a $7,500 ongoing annual appropriation for dredging ($234,000 in today’s currency).18 The Army Corps recommended accumulating the annual allocation to fund a thorough dredging of the channel every four or five years.19

Dredger on the Petaluma River, 1920s (Sonoma County Library)

But, as the Fearless’ sinking demonstrated just two years later, Petaluma couldn’t wait that long. After only one or two heavy rain seasons, enough silt filled the estuary’s upper channel to make it a mud trap for vessels at low tide.

As a result, the annual funding allocation was eaten up by regular maintenance dredging. The exception was the River and Harbor Act of 1930, which allocated $200,000, or $4.4 million in today’s currency, to fully dredge and straighten parts of the estuary to Cloudy Bend.20

1930 also saw Aanunsen’s retirement from the oyster shell business. After resurfacing the sunken Fearless, he converted it into a sloop-rigged barge, purchasing a tugboat to pilot it up and down the creek.21 The tugboat had also served as his home, while he helped keep the Boss Chicken Town supplied with shells for its annual egg production, which by 1930 had soared to half a billion eggs.22

Gunerius “George” Aanunsen aboard his tugboat Solano docked in Petaluma, circa 1930 (Sonoma County Library)

At the age of 70, Aanunsen set sail for the San Diego Bay, where he devoted a year to collecting sea shells for museum collections before his body was found floating in the bay, the apparent victim of an unsolved murder.23

Aanunsen’s shell yard beside the D Street Bridge changed hands a few times before being purchased in 1948 by the Pioneer Shell Company, which constructed a processing plant on the site capable of crushing 10 to 12 tons of oyster shell an hour. By then, oyster shells were being used not only for poultry feed, but horse feed, fertilizer, and landscaping.24

Pioneer Shell Company plant, southeast corner of D Street Bridge, 1954 (Sonoma County Library)

Other shipments on the estuary were decreasing however, due to the rise of trucking and the demise of Petaluma’s chicken industry. After World War II, more efficient caged factory farms were springing up around the county, putting the area’s small chicken ranches out of business.25

In an attempt to turn the tide, Petaluma presented Congress with two bold proposals. The first was a name change for the estuary from the Petaluma Creek, which it was commonly called, to the Petaluma River.

Contrary to popular lore, the name change was not required to maintain federal funding for the dredging. Instead, Petaluma believed that “river” would carry more prestige than “creek” in helping the town attract new industries in need of water transportation.26

Site of the oyster shell plant beside the D Street Bridge (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

The second proposal, which carried a price tag of $6.5 million ($58 million in today’s currency), called for a major reengineering of the estuary in hopes of attracting new commercial traffic and also recreational boats.27 Congress quickly passed the name change in 1959, but the reengineering proposal was eventually ruled out as cost prohibitive.28

The city succeeded however in attracting a handful of enterprises that used the river for transporting heavy construction materials like gravel and concrete. Together with the oyster shell plant, then owned by Jerico Products who diversified to also transporting sand for construction, there was sufficient commercial tonnage to qualify for continued dredging by the Army Corps.29

Mitch Lind, owner of Jerico Products (later renamed Lind Marine), at the oyster shell plant beside the D Street Bridge, 1981 (photo courtesy of Murray Rockowitz)

After the Corps’ dredging in 2003, the Petaluma River was classified as a “low use” waterway, placing future dredging in jeopardy. At that time, barge traffic was largely dependent on just two companies, a concrete plant and the oyster shell plant. In 2006, the concrete plant closed, leaving only oyster shells to justify future dredging.30

It wasn’t enough. Lind Marine, the new name of Jerico Products, steadily reduced the tonnage of shells and sand on their barges to navigate the increasingly shallow channel until 2017, when it proved no longer profitable to do so.31

By then, river traffic consisted almost entirely of recreational boats which, while contributing tourism revenues to the city, didn’t figure into the Corps’ criteria for dredging. By 2020, even they were unable to safely navigate the muddy channel. Thanks to local lobbying, the Army Corps returned that year for a $9.7 million dredging of the river, with the understanding that it would be their last.32

By that time, most of the industrial sites on the riverfront that once neighbored Aanunsen’s oyster shell yard had been converted to infill housing, shopping malls, and office space, reflecting Petaluma’s transformation from an agricultural shipping hub to a suburban community.

In 2022, Lind Marine announced plans to replace its historic shell plant with an infill housing development called Oyster Cove.33

Proposed design of new Oyster Cover development at the southeast corner of the D Street Bridge (courtesy of Urban Design Associates)

******

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 20, 2022.

Video of Proposed Oyster Cove Development:

FOOTNOTES

[1] “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Courier, December 1, 1902;“Schooner Fearless Sinks,” Petaluma Argus, September 7, 1909.

[2] Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Scottwall Associates, 1982), p. 78.

[3] 200,000 annual tons is cited in “Saw the Engineers,” Petaluma Argus, January 18, 1908, but 155,000 annual tons in “Official Report of Government Engineer on River Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, November 24, 1909; egg production volume is from an advertisement from the Petaluma Chamber of Commerce, Pacific Rural Press, April 10, 1910; “Boss Chicken Town of the Pacific Coast” was first used in an 1898 issue of the Petaluma Weekly Budget, as cited in Thea  Lowry’s Empty Shells: The Story of Petaluma, American’s Chicken City (Novato, CA: Manifold Press, 2000), p. 27.

[4] Petaluma Valley Historical Hydrology and Ecology Study”. SFEI Contribution No. 861, 2018. https://www.sfei.org/documents/petaluma-valley-historical-hydrology-andecology-study.

[5] “Petaluma River Dredging Due,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 1, 1983.

[6] “Approved,” Sonoma County Journal, April 15, 1859; “Improvement of the Creek,” Sonoma County Journal, October 14, 1859: “Act to Improve the Creek,” Sonoma County Journal, April 13, 1860; “Straightening the Creek,” Petaluma Argus, February 11, 1862; “Notice To Contractors,” Petaluma Argus, August 23, 1866; “Contract Awarded,” Petaluma Argus, August 30, 1866.

[7] “Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Argus, December 4, 1876; “Straighten the Creek,” Petaluma Courier, January 1, 1879; “Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Argus, December 5, 1879; “Of Interest to Us,” Petaluma Courier, March 8, 1880; “Improvement of Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Argus, August 27, 1880; “Work Commenced,” Petaluma Argus, October 8, 1880; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, October 22, 1880; “Important Change,” Petaluma Argus, May 13, 1881; “Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Courier, November 15, 1882; “Petaluma Township,” Petaluma Argus, January 5, 1884. “Petaluma Creek,” Petaluma Argus, August 9, 1884.

[8] Dias invented the Petaluma Incubator in 1881 with a partner Thomas Jacobs, who soon dropped out of the endeavor. In 1882, Lyman Byce partnered with Dias in perfecting and marketing his incubator. After Dias’s death in a mysterious 1884 hunting accident on the Petaluma Slough, Byce wrote him out of the incubator’s origin story; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, July 13, 1881; “An Incubator,” Petaluma Argus, August 4, 1882; Lowry cites Chris Nisson as purchasing his first incubator in 1881 or 1883, p. 53, footnote 7.

[9] Lowry, pp. 49-51; p. 146; “Nisson’s Famous Poultry Yard,” Petaluma Courier, November 11, 1891.

[10] Lowry, p. 156.

[11] N.C. Nelson, “Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region,” University of California Publications in Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 7, No. 4, Berkeley, The University Press, 1909, pgs. 337, 346. https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/anthpubs/ucb/text/ucp007-006-007.pdf; Lydia Lee, “Olympian Dreams,” Alta magazine, January 4, 2022. https://www.altaonline.com/dispatches/a38325907/west-coast-native-oyster-lydia-lee/ Charles H. Townsend, “Report of Observations Respecting the Oyster Resources and Oyster Fishery of the Pacific Coast of the United States,” Report of the Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for 1889 to 1891,United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, 1893. https://penbay.org/cof/cof_1889_91.html;

[12] “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, March 18, 1881; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, August 31, 1881.

[13] Lowry, p. 50; “Nisson’s Famous Poultry Yard,” Petaluma Courier, November 11, 1891.

[14] Ancestry.com: Norway Select Baptism 1634-1927 (Gunerius Aanunsen’s birth: May 10, 1862, Ostre Moland, Aust-Agder, Norway); Hamburg Passenger Lists (Hamburg departure date: May 2, 1889); San Francisco Directory, 1889.

[15] Note: It appears that the Aanunsens formed their first shell yard along the river near Washington Street Bridge by 1902, before moving to the First and D street location a few years later; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Courier, December 1, 1902.

[16] “Briefs,” Petaluma Courier, August 31, 1906; “Has Sued for Accounting,” Petaluma Argus, October 21, 1907; “Opinion in Local Case,” Petaluma Argus, April 24, 1908; The 1914 Petaluma City Directory lists George Aanunsen as owner of the South Bay Company, Petaluma Historical Library & Museum.

[17] “Local News,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 9, 1889; “Local Brevities,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 3, 1891; “Official Report of Government Engineer on River Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, November 24, 1909.

[18] “Official Report of Government Engineer on River Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, November 24, 1909; “Who Got the Money,” Petaluma Argus, October 22, 1914; “City Dredging Woes Date to 1890,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 7, 1983.

[19] “Official Report of Government Engineer on River Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, November 24, 1909.

[20] “Saw the Engineers,” Petaluma Argus, January 18, 1908; “Official Report of Government Engineer on River Improvements,” Petaluma Courier, November 24, 1909; “River & Harbor Committee Reports to the C. of C. Board,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 10, 1930 “Dredging Crew Start $200,000 River Cut Here,” AC, January 24, 1933; “Extensive River Improvements Coming to River Channel,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 4, 1959.

[21] “Schooner Fearless is Now a Sloop Rigged Barge,” Petaluma Argus, April 29, 1910; “Briefs,” Petaluma Argus, October 8, 1908.

[22] Heig, p. 115; “Poultry Industry in Upward Trend,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 4, 1929.

[23] “Has Taken Over Shell Business,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 28, 1930; “George Aanunsen Meets Mysterious Death in San Diego Bay,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 10, 1931; Findagrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/142750468/george-aanunsen

[24] Note: Aaunensen sold his shell yard to William Cartensen. Jerry Hannigan purchased it in 1939, renaming it Jerry’s Shell Yard. In 1945, he moved the yard across the river to 735-741 Third Street. In 1948, Pioneer purchased the yard; Ad, Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 20, 1939; Ad, Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 4, 1945; “City Council,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 5, 1948; “Oyster Shell Processing Plant Opens In Petaluma,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, February 22, 1950.

[25] “Poultry Must Organize,’” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 2, 1959; Lowry, Empty Shells, pp. 229-233.

[26] “Creek Naming and Dredging Supported,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 14, 1959; “Miller Submits Bills, Works on More,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 23, 1959; “River Name Bill Sails To Senate,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 16, 1959.

[27] “Creek Naming and Dredging Supported,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 14, 1959; “Extensive Improvements Coming to River Channel,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 4, 1959.

[28] “Petaluma Might Get River Yet,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 20, 1959; “International Scoop,” So They Tell Me Column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 24, 1959; “River Dredging Should Be Completed by September,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 8, 1964; “River Project Gets a Boost,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 26, 1965; “City records Progress and Problems in 1967,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 30, 1967.

[29] “Oakland Firm Given Contract to Dredge the River,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 4, 1964; “River Project Gets a Boost,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 26, 1965 “City Records Progress and Problems in 1967,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 30, 1967.

[30] “The Ebb and Flow of the River Industry,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 19, 2006:

[31] “Nearly $10 million Petaluma Dredging Project Begins after 13-year Wait,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 5, 2020; “River Dredging Crucial for City,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 27, 1992; Katherine J. Rinehart, “Processing Oyster Shells Along the Petaluma River,” Sonoma County Farm Bureau Newsletter, February 11, 2022. https://sonomafb.org/processing-oyster-shells-along-the-petaluma-river/

[32] “Nearly $10 million Dredging Begins After 13-year Wait,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 5, 2020; John Shribbs, “Dredging,”2021,  Petaluma Wetlands Alliance, petalumawetlands.org. https://petalumawetlands.org/dredging/

[33] “Oyster Cove Project,” a video presentation by UrbanMix Development and Urban Design Associates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTg6JZcx1Ms&list=PLtMVX2ASLE4rwOq9VROofcEcGpFkfnk6e&index=2

Women of the Wheel

Fashion, Sex, and Suffrage During the 1890s Bicycle Craze

Two young Petaluma women with their safety bicycles, circa 1890s (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

On July 4, 1896, Petaluma found itself anointed the new “bicycling Mecca” of the West Coast, as a reported 6,000 people turned out at the city’s new Wheelman Park for the annual divisional meet of the League of American Wheelmen.

Among the 18 Northern California teams competing were two comprised entirely of women—San Francisco’s Alpha Cycling Club and Petaluma’s own “women of the wheel,” the Mercury Cyclists.

Their presence embodied perhaps the greatest social disruption of the 1890’s bicycle craze: women were no longer dependent upon men for their transportation.

Women’s cyclist club, 1890s (photo public domain)

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling,” Susan B. Anthony told New York World reporter Nellie Bly in 1896. “I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

Female liberation came thanks to introduction of the “safety bicycle” in the early 1890s. Its predecessor, the high-wheel, had been strictly a masculine pursuit. With its enormous front wheel and small back wheel, both made of rubber-lined wood, the bike was nicknamed the “boneshaker” for its jarring and often dangerous ride.

Men with their highwheelers, 1880s (photo public domain)

The safety, with its two equal-sized wheels and inflated rubber tires, not only provided a smoother ride but was easier to mount, making it accessible to women in dresses, who dubbed it the “freedom machine.”

Petaluma’s first safety bicycles went on sale in 1892 at Joe Steiger’s Gunsmith Shop on Main Street, across from current day Putnam Plaza. The following year, a group of young men led by Frank Lippitt formed a local chapter of the League of American Wheelmen called the Petaluma Wheelmen.

By 1894, the national bicycle craze was in full swing. New dealerships started popping up in hardware stores around town. Lyman Byce, the entrepreneur behind Petaluma’s booming new egg industry, opened one at his Petaluma Incubator Company across from today’s Penry Park. The bikes weren’t cheap. Byce’s popular Erie model sold for $100 ($3,150 in today’s currency).

Lyman Byce’s Petaluma Incubator Company and Eric Bicycle shop, 1896 (photo Sonoma County Library)

A popular novelty among Petaluma’s younger, middle-class set, bicycles also found early adopters among some older residents, including the city’s leading capitalist, 63-year old John A. McNear. After purchasing a bicycle from Byce, McNear was convinced by Petaluma’s “father of chickendome” to build a local velodrome for racing events. With bicycles at Byce’s incubator factory selling as fast as he could stock them, Byce assured McNear he would make his money back within a year.

In 1895, McNear converted an old baseball stadium he owned on the city’s east side (now the site of the Petaluma Public Library) into Wheelman Park. After building a quarter-mile race track with six-foot-high banked curves, he surfaced it with hard-packed decomposed granite, making it conducive to speed. He then doubled the seating capacity of the baseball bleachers to accommodate 2,500, leaving ample room for standing spectators as well as those who wished to watch from their parked carriages.

John McNear on bicycle alongside a Sonoma Express wagon of chickens (photo Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)

Shortly before the track was completed, a group of young women led by Gertrude Hopkins and Florence Mauzy formed the Mercury Cyclists, joining a number of women’s cycling clubs starting up around the country

“The bicycle,” wrote the League of American Wheelmen, “has taken those old-fashioned, slow-going notions of the gentler sex, and replaced them with a new woman, mounted on her steed of steel.”

As the Mercury Cyclists and other wheelwomen took to their steel steeds, they ran into some cultural speed bumps from conservative Victorians, who wanted to know where they were riding to.

When the question was put to women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton by American Wheelman magazine, she succinctly replied: “To suffrage.”

San Francisco’s Liberty Cycling Club, 1895 (photo California Historical Society)

Victorians believed otherwise. For them, women were stationary, and men mobile. Any female intrusion into the outdoor world of travel, athleticism, or free movement threatened their world order. The only place women were riding to, in their opinion, was heavenly disgrace and eternal destruction.

“As a chivalrous gentleman,” a newspaper article asked of Victorian men, “do you tremble at the revolution of bicycling women?”

Actress Mabel Love with bicycle, 1897 (photo public domain)

The answer was complicated, especially for men grappling with conflicted feelings of repulsion and attraction. A man’s poem in the San Francisco Examiner in 1895 conveyed their dilemma.

“The Bicycle Girl, oh, the Bicycle Girl, /with a spinnaker skirt and a sleeve like a furl; / such a freak on the wheel, such a sight on the tire, / I am certain I never will love or admire.”

Within a few lines of this dismissive opening, the poet fell into a head-turning swoon.

“The sound of her bell and the hum of her wheel / Is enough to make any man’s cranium reel . . . And why did she smile as she lightly spun by? . . . The Bicycle Girl, oh, the Bicycle Girl, / she has tangled my heart in her mystical whirl.”

The introduction in 1895 of tandem bicycles for sale at Joe Steiger’s shop created a small sensation in town. As moonlight rides in the countryside began to usurp dates to dances and musical concerts, some men looked to the bicycle as a revealing test of character.

The popular song Daisy Bell, or Bicycle Built for Two, was written by Harry Dacre in 1892 (Illustration in public domain)

“The woman you see is seldom the woman you think you see,” wrote a man in the Petaluma Courier in 1896. “Mounted upon bicycles, most women have to tell the truth about themselves. One can distinguished at a glance the daring, willful beauty from the timid, tender girl. A woman’s health, vigor of mind and body are apparent. I will even go so far as to advise a man not to get married until he has seen the object of his choice disport herself upon a bicycle.”

Victorians disagreed. The only character trait they believed a woman revealed on a bike was a proclivity for sin and fast living. A woman out cycling without male supervision was not only placing herself in danger, she was exposing herself to the temptations of sexual stimulation, caused according to medical professionals by the protruding pommel of bicycle saddles.

The fear of unleashed female sexuality led bicycle manufacturers to introduce special “hygienic” saddles with little or no pommels, along with high seat stems and upright handlebars that supported a more dignified and ladylike riding position than the bent over, “camel back” style, which required women to provocatively lean forward in the saddle.

Ad for bicycle saddle with reduced pommel for women, Ladies Home Journal magazine, April 1896.

The break with tradition most disturbing to Victorians was fashion. At a time when middle-class women rarely challenged fashion’s dictates, the practicality of bicycling offered them an opportunity to rethink their clothing.

Shedding the restrictive Victorian corsets and large, billowy dresses, women wheelers adopted for riding the “divided skirt,” or baggy trouser cinched at the knee. Originally championed in a dress reform movement led by suffragist Amelia Bloomer, the divided skirts were commonly known as “bloomers.” Their appeal rapidly spread beyond the practicalities of bicycling to women who didn’t ride.

Ad for Continental Bicycle Tires (photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

When asked about bloomers in her interview with Nellie Bly, Susan B. Anthony was blunt.

“Dress to suit the occasion. A woman doesn’t want skirts and flimsy lace to catch in the wheel. Safety, as well as modesty, demands bloomers or extremely short skirts. You know women only wear foolish articles of dress to please men’s eyes anyway.”

The male gaze gladly overlooked the bloomers’ practical modesty, as the trousers scandalously exposed a woman’s ankles, raising an outcry form Victorians.

The hotly contested fashion battle that ensued forever altered public perceptions of female athleticism and proper female behavior. Bloomers permitted women cyclists to jettison the heavy, drop-frame bicycles designed for riding in a dress, and jump aboard the much lighter, diamond-framed bicycles ridden by men, making the women viable competitors in races like Petaluma’s meet on Independence Day in 1896.

Women competing in cycling race in Buffalo, NY, 1897 (photo courtesy of BnF–Bibliothèque nationale de France) 

Disappointingly, no records were broken that day at the new Wheelman Park by men or women cyclists. Likewise, while the new safety bicycle technology was liberating for women, it failed to place them on the fast track to suffrage. Their right to vote wasn’t secured in California until 1911, and not on a national scale until 1920.

Bicycling mania itself proved to be short-lived, dying off before the turn of the century, as production improvements dramatically lowered bike prices and the novelty wore off among the younger middle class.

In 1903, Joe Steiger’s Gunsmith Shop sold the first automobile in Petaluma, after which the moral panic over women finding liberation on a bicycle shifted locally to women finding liberation behind the wheel of a car. 

A joke from the time captured the challenge women faced:

Jack and Jill have just climbed a steep hill on their tandem bicycle, with Jill riding in front. “Phew, that was a tough climb,” Jill said, leaning over, breathing hard. “The climb was so hard, and we were going so slow, I thought we were never going to make it.”

“Yeah,” said Jack, “good thing I kept the brakes on, or we would have slid all the way back down!”

Couple riding a tandem bicycle, 1890s (photo in public domain)

*****

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier on March 3, 2022.

SOURCES:

Newspapers

Los Angeles Herald: “Sports of the Day,” February 10, 1895.

Lincoln (Nebraska) Courier: “The Bicycle as a Reformer,” August 17, 1895.

New York World: Nellie Bly, “Champion Of Her Sex: Miss Susan B. Anthony,” February 2, 1896.

Petaluma Argus: “Two New Automobiles for Petaluma People,” October 31, 1903.

Petaluma Courier:  “Bicycling,” April 1, 1893; “Here and There,” August 13, 1893; “The New Track,” April 30, 1894; “The Bicycle Trade,” July 18, 1894; “The Riders,” July 25, 1894; “The New Track,” June 22, 1895; “Out of Door Life for Women,” June 22, 1895; “The Wheel: a Test of Character,” September 12, 1895; “Bicycle Chat,” September 13, 1895; “The Mercury Cyclists,” October 16, 1895; “Local Counsel,” November 15, 1895; “For the Fourth of July,” December 19, 1895; “The League Meet,” January 29, 1896; “Bicycle Notes,” February 12, 1896, June 24, 1896; “Bicycle Races,” May 13, 1896; “Getting Ready,” June 24, 1896; “The Day,” “The League Meet,” July 8, 1896; “Osen Does Some Sprinting,” July 22, 1896.

San Francisco Call: “Wheel Races at Petaluma,” July 5, 1896; “Lady Cyclists Indignant,” August 28, 1896.

San Francisco Chronicle: “Petaluma’s Day to Shine,” June 26, 1896; “Wheelmen Race at Petaluma,” July 5, 1896; Gary Kamiya, “Sex and Cycling,” October 18, 2019.

San Francisco Examiner: “Wheelmen Make Merry,” July 4, 1896; “Greeting the Wheelmen,” July 2, 1890.

Magazines & Websites

Adrienne LaFrance, “How the Bicycle Paved the Way for Women’s Rights,” The Atlantic, June 26, 2014.

Ellen Gruber Garvey, “Reframing the Bicycle: Advertising-Supported Magazines and Scorching Women,” American Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 1 (John Hopkins University Press, March 1995), pp. 66-101.

Liz Murphy, “Women’s (Bike) History: Amelia Bloomer;” Carolyn Szczepanski, “March is Women’s (Bike) History Month!” The League of American Bicyclists. https://bikeleague.org/content/march-womens-bike-history-month

Matt Reicher, “Photography, the Bicycle, and the Women’s Movement of the 1890s,” Medium, February 12, 2020. medium.com.

Michael Taylor, “Rapid Transit to Salvation: American Protestants and the Bicycle in the Era of the Cycling Craze,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 9, No. 3 (July 2010), pp. 337-363.

Petaluma’s Days as a Sundown Town

Yosemite Hotel, East Washington and Copeland streets, 1950 (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)

One Sunday evening in December 1919, two Black men, Arthur Davis and Harry Crosby, entered the Yosemite Soda Fountain Emporium across from the Petaluma railroad yard. Located on the first floor of the Yosemite Hotel, a boarding house for cowhands, hay balers, and railroad workers on the corner of Copeland and East Washington streets, the Emporium was a working man’s soda fountain.[1]

The soda jerk that evening was George Delehanty, an Irish immigrant with a history of assault charges, including a shootout in a Bodega saloon that left two men dead, one of them shot five times in the chest.[2] Delehanty’s recent transition from bartending to soda jerking was dictated by the Wartime Prohibition Act, a temporary measure passed by Congress during World War I to conserve grain used in the making of alcohol.

By the time the act was implemented July 1, 1919, the war had ended, the 18th Amendment indefinitely banning the making and sale of alcohol had been ratified, and Prohibition was set to commence on January 17, 1920.[3] Rather than nullify the temporary act, Congress let it stand as a soft launch of banning alcohol.

“Last call” in Detroit before the Wartime Prohibition Act went into effect on July 1, 1919 (Photo courtesy of Wayne State University)

While most Petaluma’s saloons were forced to close on July 1st, a handful like the Yosemite converted to soda fountains. At least publicly. Privately, many surreptitiously added jackass brandy to the sugary syrup used in making sodas with carbonated water drawn from a spigot, giving birth by necessity to the fizzy cocktail.[4]

But serving booze under the table wasn’t the Yosemite’s only concealed practice—it also had an implicit “whites only” policy, as Crosby and Davis discovered the evening they walked into the soda fountain, when Delehanty grabbed them by their collars and began dragging them to the door.[5]

Davis was relatively new to town, having operated a sidewalk shoeshine stand for three months outside the Ecker Barbershop in the Washington Hotel, which wrapped around either side of the Bank of Sonoma County building on the northwest corner of Main and Washington streets. He boarded at the hotel.

Entrance to Washington Hotel under awning on Washington Street, with the Petaluma Hotel in the background, 1928 (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)

Crosby worked as a chauffeur for Dr. Arthur Lumsden, a prominent physician in town. He and his wife Josie, who worked as a domestic for the doctor and his family, lived in the doctor’s household at 301 Sixth Street.[6]

Davis and the Crosbys were among only 13 Blacks living in Petaluma at the time, out of a total population of more than 6,000.[7] While the city served during the Civil War as Sonoma County’s abolitionist enclave with a small but vibrant Black community, by the turn of the century it had become what was known as a “sundown town,” excluding non-whites through some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, or violence.

Its racial barriers were maintained institutionally through legal covenants inserted in property deeds banning the sale or rental of homes to “persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent,” as well as more informal means, such as the reception Crosby and Davis received the night they entered the Yosemite.[8]

In Delehanty’s effort to eject them, a scuffle ensued that left Delehanty with a deep, eight-inch wound down his left arm. Crosby and Davis promptly fled the soda fountain, with Davis running up East Washington Street toward the Washington Hotel, and Crosby speeding home in Dr. Lumsden’s sedan.

Hillside Hospital, 223 Kentucky Street, 1920s (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)

Delehanty was rushed to Hillside Hospital, a repurposed Italianate-style Victorian house at 223 Kentucky Street across from Penry Park, to be stitched up.

Police Chief Mike Flohr and Officer Otto Rudolph arrived at the scene in a cab, as the police force lacked patrol cars. The two quickly set out after Davis, arresting him in Penry Park across from his hotel.[9]

Taxi fleet outside Prince Building at northwest corner of Kentucky Street and Western Avenue, circa 1920 (Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library)

Charges against Davis and Crosby were dropped a few days later at their arraignment for lack of evidence. Police were unable to locate the knife used in the stabbing, or find anyone in the Yosemite that night willing to testify to having witnessed the incident.[10] As became clear in coming months, when it came to enforcing the town’s racial boundaries, some Petalumans preferred to take a vigilante approach.

Part of that had to do with the high level of national racial tension at the time. The release of Birth of a Nation, a 1915 epic silent film glorifying white supremacism, had spawned a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which grew to more than two million members nationwide. Petaluma’s KKK chapter made its presence known in 1925 with a giant burning cross at a nighttime rally held near the Petaluma Adobe, so large it was visible from the downtown.[11]

The period also saw the beginning of The Great Migration as Blacks left the South for urban areas in the North, seeking to escape the violence and oppression of living under Jim Crow. In a number of Northern cities their arrival was met with attacks, violent riots, and lynchings in what came to be known as The Red Summer of 1919.[12]

The national unrest was relayed to Petaluma that summer by the city’s two newspapers, which depicted America in the midst of a racial war.[13]

Davis and Crosby left Petaluma shortly after their arraignment, no doubt fearing for their safety.[14] Davis’ position at the shoeshine stand outside the Ecker Barbershop was filled by a Black man from San Francisco named Sidney Smith. Like Davis before him, he lodged at the Washington Hotel.

Smith had only been in town a month when rumors began circulating that he was making “slurring remarks” about young white women in town. One night an angry mob assembled in the hall outside his hotel room, violently threatening him. They had just knocked him to the floor when Flohr arrived, and took custody of Smith, escorting him to the police station in City Hall at Fourth and A streets.

Police Chief Mike Flohr sitting behind desk with fellow officers and secretary in police station, 1924 (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)

Smith was detained for half an hour while police searched for someone willing to press charges against him. Finding no one, Flohr had no choice but to release him.

The mob was waiting for Smith outside the police station. They escorted him on foot to the city limits, warning him not to return.

City Hall from intersection of Western & Kentucky streets, 1920 (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library)

The next afternoon, a defiant Smith returned to work at his shoeshine stand. That night, a large mob gathered for him outside the Washington Hotel. Flohr met with the mob’s leaders, requesting they swear out a warrant against Smith, allowing the chief to arrest him. They refused.

At 10 p.m. Flohr and Rudolph rushed Smith out of the hotel and into a waiting taxi. As they sped off, members of the mob secured other taxis and gave chase, raising alarm as they raced through the streets of the city. They failed to overtake the taxi carrying Smith and the police as it headed south into Marin County.

A few days later, one of Smith’s customers from Petaluma ran into him outside the Ferry Building in San Francisco, where Smith asked him to buy him a meal, as everything he owned was back at the hotel, which he was unable to return to.[15]

By 1930, Petaluma’s Black population had dropped to just three residents. It would remain in the single digits for the next two decades. In 1960, a federal commission on civil rights found only one home in town owned by a Black family, that of shoeshine operator Henry Chenault and his wife Bessie at 32 West Street. Their daughter Nancy had been the only Black student in Petaluma High School when she graduated in 1950.[16]

Home of Henry and Bessie Chenault, 32 West Street (photo public domain)

Petaluma’s Black population would not increase significantly until after passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, reaching 136 in 1970.[17]

By that time, the Yosemite Hotel was targeted for demolition. Three months after the incident with Crosby and Davis, the soda fountain was shut down by federal marshals, who arrested Delehanty and the Yosemite’s owners after finding liquor on the premises. The establishment operated as a speakeasy throughout Prohibition, and then as an Italian restaurant and bar until 1966, when it was shuttered for good.

In 1971, the entire hotel was demolished for the widening of East Washington Street.[18]

*****

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 10, 2022.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Yosemite Opened,” Argus, April 4, 1905; Bill Soberanes, “Petaluma Loses Well-Known Landmark,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 14, 1971.

[2] “Blood at Bodega,” Petaluma Courier, July 18, 1894; “Delehanty,” Sonoma Democrat, October 13, 1894; “Delehanty Acquitted,” Healdsburg Tribune, October 18, 1894.

[3] Michael A. Lerner, “Going Dry,” Humanities, The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, September/October 2011, Volume 32, Number 5.

[4] “The Great Drought Begins at Midnight,” Petaluma Argus, June 30, 1919; Tristan Donovan, Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014), pp. 89-98.

[5] “Stabbing Affray Sunday,” Petaluma Argus, December 15, 1919; “Man Stabbed by a Negro,” Petaluma Courier, December 16, 1919.

[6] 1920 U.S. Census.

[7] 1920 U.S. Census.

[8] “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864; “Notice,” Petaluma Argus, November 30, 1865; “Flag Presentation,” Petaluma Argus, January 1, 1869; “The Picnic,” Petaluma Argus, July 9 1870; “Uncle Aleck Dead,” Petaluma Argus, August 4, 1886; Moore, Montojo, Mauri, “Roots, Race, and Place,” Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley, October 2019, p. 22; Sharon McGriff-Payne, John Grider’s Century: African Americans in Solano, Napa, and Sonoma Counties from 1845 to 1925 (iUniverse, 2009), p. 58; James E. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New York: Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster, 2006), pp. 3-5; An example of the covenants can be found in the Sonoma Deeds of Record, Book 293, Page 330, April 13, 1931, for the sale of property by Willian and Marie J. Deiss to Clifford B. and Minnie J. Murphy: “FOURTH: That prior to the first day of October, 1990, no persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent shall be permitted to purchase or lease said property, or any part thereof and this restriction shall bind, whether such attempted purchase shall be made at any execution sale, foreclosure sale or in any other manner.”

[9] “Stabbing Affray Sunday,” Petaluma Argus, December 15, 1919; “Man Stabbed by a Negro,” Petaluma Courier, December 16, 1919.

[10] “Dismissed at the Hearing,” Petaluma Argus, December 18, 1919.

[11] “Initiation of KKK Before Guests,” Petaluma Courier, June 2, 1925.

[12] “Racial Violence and the Red Summer,” African American Heritage, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/wwi/red-summer

[13] “Race War in Washington,” Petaluma Argus, July 21, 1919; “More Die in Race War in Chicago,” Petaluma Courier, July 31, 1919;“Race War Deaths Now Total 33,” Petaluma Argus, October 13, 1919.

[14] “Case Dismissed for Lack of Evidence,” Petaluma Courier, December 18, 1919.

[15] “Negro Threatened by Angered Citizens,” Petaluma Courier, June 2, 1920; Brief Item, Petaluma Courier, June 5, 1920.

[16] “Ex-Petaluman Honors King: As a Girl, She Was the Only Black Student,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 19, 1993; U.S. Census; United States Commission on Civil Rights, Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Hearings held in Los Angeles, California, January 25, 1960; San Francisco California, January 27, 1960, January 28, 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 588, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hearings_Before_the_United_States_Commis/fUXVAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

[17] U.S. Census.

[18] “8 Violators of ‘Prohi’ Law Arrested,” Petaluma Courier, December 30, 1925; “Two Are Fined $500 Each and One Case Pending Following Federal Raid,” Petaluma Argus, June 22, 1926; “Abatement Proceedings Against East Petaluma Hotel,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 19, 1927; “Federals Start Abatement Suits Here,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 18, 1931; Bill Soberanes column, “Petaluma Loses Well-Known Landmark,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 14, 1971.

Petaluma’s Black History

Linda Jones, second from right, first Black contestant for Petaluma Dairy Princess, 1971, standing with other contestants outside the Brown mansion at 920 D Street (photo Sonoma County Library)

The successful and persistent efforts of Black people to reach Petaluma, find jobs, combat discrimination, raise families, create positive images, and become a part of the community represent the creative and heroic aspects of Black history.

While Petaluma’s Black population has historically remained below two percent, it doesn’t mean the city lacks in stories of remarkable Black citizens. Even in the face of persistent racism, Black people have thrived, accumulating wealth, property, political clout, and a legacy that has left an indelible mark on Petaluma as we know it today.

Rivertown Era (1852 to 1900)

The Gold Rush

Black miner during Gold Rush era (photo California History Room, California State Library)

The Gold Rush brought Black people, both those free-born and educated in the North and those enslaved in the South, to California in search of economic and social opportunities. While many of those enslaved were able to purchase their freedom working for their owners in the gold mines, others escaped to freedom.

California’s Fugitive Law of 1852 authorized the return of runaway slaves to the South, placing any Black person who lacked clear legal documentation of their freedom at risk of being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Although slaveowners were only briefly allowed to keep their slaves in California, many informally held them until 1864.[1]

While most Black people settled in mining counties or in San Francisco during the 1850s, some chose towns like Petaluma, a small but bustling agricultural river port. Settled largely by Protestant abolitionists from New England, Petaluma was the sole Union outpost in Confederate Sonoma County during the Civil War.[2]

George W. Miller (1825-1873)

Inside a 19th century Black barbershop (photo public domain)

One of the more lucrative occupations for Black men was barbering. Their access to a white clientele provided them with economic and social advantages that conveyed prestige and influence within their communities.[3]

Petaluma’s leading barber was George W. Miller. Born a free man in New Jersey, Miller migrated to San Francisco in 1850, before moving to Petaluma in 1855 and opening a barbershop on Main Street.[4]

Miller continued to commute regularly to San Francisco, where he maintained his membership with prominent Black organizations, including the Olive Branch Lodge of the Black Masons, the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Brannan Guards ceremonial militia. The latter inspired him to establish the Colfax Guard in Petaluma.[5]

Miller was also a contributor to San Francisco’s two Black-owned newspapers, the Pacific Appeal and the Elevator, which provided Black people on the Pacific Coast as sense of community.[6]

He also represented Sonoma County at the four California Colored Conventions held between 1855 and 1865, where members organized to fight for full citizenship rights for Black people, including the right to court testimony, homesteading, publicly-funded schools, and suffrage.[7]

Union African Methodist Episcopal Church

Former Union A.M.E. Church, 109 Howard Street (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

In 1865, the first African Methodist Episcopal church (A.M.E.) in the North Bay was established in Petaluma. Located in a house at 109 Howard Street, the church served as a religious, social, and political center for the town’s small but vibrant Black community, a number of them homeowners.[8]

Reverend Peter Killingsworth, a former slave and A.M.E. circuit preacher, was assigned as founding pastor.[9] In 1865, he accompanied George Miller to the Colored Convention held in Sacramento, serving as the convention’s chaplain. Killingsworth noted in his convention report that Sonoma County had 70 black residents, 58 adults and 12 children. Of the adult men, a dozen were general laborers, ten farmers, seven barbers, two blacksmiths, and two carpenters.[10]

A schism later developed between Killingsworth and the Petaluma church’s more politically cautious trustees—all former slaves—leading to his departure in 1869. That same year, those trustees were among 12 Black residents who signed a petition for woman’s suffrage, on the eve of ratification of the 15th Amendment, which extended voting rights to Black men.[11]

The church operated with visiting preachers before shutting down in 1878 after a large decline in the local Black population.[12]

“Colored School”

“Colored school” in Oakland’s Brooklyn neighborhood, 1870 (photo in the public domain)

In 1864, George Miller spearheaded the opening of a private “colored school,” as it was called at the time. A young Black woman from San Francisco, Mrs. Rachel Coursey, was hired as the school’s first teacher.[13]

Later that year, after the California Supreme Court ruled public school districts were required to provide “separate but equal” schools for Black students, Petaluma’s “colored school” became one of six such schools in the state to be publicly funded.[14]         

In the early 1870s, Miller joined with other members of the Colored Convention’s Education Committee in bringing a case for school integration before the California Supreme Court. Although the court upheld “separate but equal” schooling in Ward v. Flood, committee members convinced most of the cities with “colored schools” to voluntarily integrate.[15]

Petaluma was the lone hold-out, generating national press and serving as a polarizing issue locally.

The city’s “colored school” remained in operation until 1880, at which time the state legislature voted to abolish segregated schools.[16] By that time, the school had only one student, as most Black families had relocated to friendlier communities in Vallejo and Oakland, where jobs were readily available in the shipyards and on the railroads.[17]

Egg Boom Era (1901 to 1945)

Sundown Town

New housing development in Los Angeles, 1950 (photo Irving C. Smith, California Eagle newspaper; California Eagle Photo Collection, Southern California Library, Los Angeles, California)

Having served as an abolitionist, pro-Union enclave during the Civil War, Petaluma became less friendly for Black residents following the end of Reconstruction in 1877.

Abolitionists may have supported the end of slavery, but not all were in favor of providing Black people with equal rights.

Black barbers in town, who had gained wealth, prominence, and influence servicing white clientele, found themselves displaced in the 1880s by German and Swiss-Italian immigrants.[18]

By the beginning of Petaluma’s prosperous egg boom at the turn of the century, the city had become a so-called “sundown town,” intent on excluding non-whites through a combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence.

This was accomplished largely by restricting housing access to Caucasians through both implicit and explicit means. The latter came in the form of institutional racism.[19]

In 1927, the National Association of Real Estate Boards championed the inclusion of legal covenants in property deeds that banned the sale or lease of property to non-whites. The Federal Housing Administration, created in the 1930s to insure home mortgages, also required racial covenants to guarantee loans, a practice better known as “redlining,” referring to the red colored areas on maps they would not insure. [20]

While Petaluma’s population surged with the egg boom in 1920 to 6,226 residents, only 13 of them were Black, and were employed as domestics, porters, chauffeurs, and shoeshine men.[21]

The largest Black presence in town during the 1920s and 30s were traveling Black minstrel troupes and jazz groups performing at the Mystic Theater and Hill Opera House, and Black cowboys at the local rodeos held at the fairgrounds.[22]

Black rodeo champion Jesse Stahl, a frequent visitor to Petaluma (photo public domain)

The 1920s also brought a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, thanks largely to the release of the epic silent film Birth of a Nation, which glorified white supremacism. The local Petaluma KKK chapter staged a recruiting rally in 1925 with a nighttime cross-burning outside the Petaluma Adobe that was visible from the downtown.[23] By 1930, the city’s Black population had dropped to three citizens.[24]

One open-minded group in town was the Men’s Forum of the Congregational Church, led by grain merchant George P. McNear. The forum regularly brought to town Black speakers, including Dr. E.W. Moore, a Baptist preacher and charter member of the NAACP, to educate them on race matters.[25]

Suburban Boom Era (1946 to current)

Housing Discrimination

Chenault House at 32 West Street, only Petaluma home owned by a Black family in 1960 (photo John Sheehy)

The suburban tract housing boom following World War II more than tripled Petaluma’s population to almost 25,000 by 1970. However, the boom however came with restrictive deed covenants redlining by the banks that prevented the sale or resale of homes to “persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent.”[26]

Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such covenants unenforceable in 1948, they were still being used in the North Bay as late as the 1960s, often serving as a means of placing social pressure on white families not wishing to discriminate.[27]

In 1960, a report by a federal commission on civil rights found only one home in Petaluma owned by a Black family, that of Henry and Bessie Chenault. The commission attributed this to a cabal of bankers, realtors, developers, and neighborhood associations who ostracized and financially threatened anyone attempting to sell or rent a home to Black people.[28]

In 1963, the California Fair Housing Act was passed, making it unlawful to discriminate against home buyers and renters. The next year, the California Real Estate Association put forth a successful ballot measure to nullify the Fair Housing Act. The ballot measure was overruled by the U.S Supreme Court in 1967.[29]

Henry Chenault (1895 -1969)

Henry Chenault at his Western Avenue shoeshine stand, 1954 (photo Sonoma County Library)

From the 1940s through the 1960s, Petaluma’s most prominent Blacks were Henry and Bessie Chenault. Actively engaged in politics, they served as officers of Petaluma’s Democratic Club and founding members of the Sonoma County NAACP, where Bessie was elected the chapter’s first treasurer.[30] 

Henry moved to Petaluma in the 1930s, after serving 13 years in Leavenworth Prison for his participation in a deadly uprising of Black soldiers on a Houston army base in 1917.[31]

Keeping his past secret, he operated a sidewalk shoeshine stand at 18 Western Avenue, across from Andresen’s Tavern, until his death in 1969.

Thanks to Henry’s outgoing personality, his stand became a popular downtown crossroads. Among merchants, it served as the city’s “second chamber of commerce.” For local politicians, many of whom relied upon Henry as a trusted advisor, it helped them keep a finger on the pulse of the community.[32]

For many years, Henry was Petaluma’s only Black businessman, and he and Bessie were the city’s sole Black homeowners.[33] Henry was posthumously pardoned in 1972 for his role in the Houston uprising, determined to have been staged by white racists.[34]

Sonoma County NAACP

Sonoma County NAACP leaders meeting in Petaluma, 1970 (photo Sonoma County Library)

The 1950s and 60s marked a period of unprecedented protests against the status of second class citizenship accorded to Black Americans.

The protests took form in civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance, marches, protests, boycotts, “freedom rides,” and rallies. There were also continuing efforts to legally challenge segregation through the courts.[35]

In 1955, Platt Williams and Gilbert Gray of Santa Rosa spearheaded organizing the Sonoma County chapter of the NAACP. Henry and Bessie Chenault represented Petaluma as founding members.

One of the chapter’s first actions was closing down the Montgomery Village Lions Club’ annual minstrel charity show, which harkened back to blackface entertainment.[36]

While the chapter supported the national NAACP movement—for example, picketing and boycotting the F.W. Woolworth department stores in Petaluma and Santa Rosa over the chain’s refusal to serve Black people at lunch counters in the South—their primary focus was securing equal treatment in jobs and housing for the county’s Black residents, who by 1960 totaled 916. [37]

That included successfully lobbying for the California Fair Employment Practice Act of 1959 and the California Fair Housing Act of 1963.[38]

Petaluma Blacks for Community Development

Gloria Robinson, 1982 (photo courtesy of Petaluma Argus-Courier, Brant Ward photographer)

Gloria Robinson moved to Petaluma from San Francisco in 1971 with her husband Herbert and four children, attracted by the affordable real estate. She quickly made friends with civil rights activist Bessie Chenault, and began working with the NAACP and Sonoma County People for Economic Opportunity.[39]

Petaluma’s Black population by that time had grown from 11 in 1960 to more than 100, and was on its way toward reaching almost 500 by 1980.[40]

In 1976, Gerald Ford became the first U.S. president to recognize February as Black History Month, an event started 50 years before by Black historian Carl G. Wooden.[41]

Seeing an opportunity to increase Black visibility and representation in town, in 1978 Robinson formed Petaluma Blacks for Community Development. Serving as president, she was joined by founding board members Faith Ross, Ted Morris, and Nadine Lawson.

The group’s mission has been to share Black history and culture with the Petaluma community and bring Black families together for social and educational activities by sponsoring events, speaking engagements, and exhibits.

Their vision is to help “make the Petaluma community free of hate and get rid of those issues that divide us based on color.”[42]

******

FOOTNOTES

[1] Rudolph M. Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Douglas Henry Daniels, Pioneer Urbanites (University of California Press, 1990), pp. 12-13; Mike McPhate, “California’s Black Slaves and the Myth of Free Soil,” California Sun, January 23, 2019. Californiasun.com.

[2] Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing,1919) p. 42; Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), p. 47.

[3] Douglas W. Bristol, Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015); Sean Trainor, “The Racially Fraught History of the American Beard,” The Atlantic, January 20, 2014.

[4] Advertisements, Sonoma County Journal, August 25, 1855, and September 5, 1856; “Deaths: George Miller,” Pacific Appeal, October 25, 1873.

[5] “Prince Hall Freemasonry,” Freemason Information, freemasoniformation.com; Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing, 1919) p. 146; “Masonic Notice,” The Elevator, December 21, 1872; “Died,” The Elevator, October 25, 1873; “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864; “Flag Presentation,” Petaluma Argus, January 1, 1869; “The Picnic,” Petaluma Argus, July 9 1870.

[6] https://blackvoicenews.com/2008/07/31/mirror-of-the-times-founded-1857/; “Agents,” Pacific Appeal, January 17, 1863.

[7] Herbert G. Ruffin II, “The Conventions of Colored Citizens of the State of California (1855-1865),” February 9, 2009. BlackPast.com.

[8] “Rudolph Lapp, Afro-Americans in California (San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser Publishing Company, 1987); “Santa Rosa,” The Elevator, July 4, 1865, the first newspaper mention of Rev. Killingsworth at the A.M.E. Church in Petaluma; “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864; “Notice,” Petaluma Argus, November 30, 1865; “Campbell’s Chapel,” Petaluma Argus, November 30, 1865.

[9] California State Convention of Colored Citizens, held in Sacramento on the 25, 26, 27, 28 of October 1865. Coloredconventions.org; Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing,1919) p. 158; “The Appointments of the A. M. E. Church for the Conference,” Pacific Appeal, November 8, 1862; “The Appointments of the A. M. E. Church for the Conference,” Pacific Appeal, September 12, 1863; 1860 U.S. Census, Sacramento, California; 1861 Sacramento City Directory.

[10] http://coloredconventions.org/items/show/268, p. 14.

[11] Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing,1919) p. 252-253. “Petaluma,” The Elevator, November 1, 1867; “Correspondence of the Elevator,” The Elevator, February 19, 1869; “Petition for Woman’s Suffrage in Senate, March 2, 1870,” Journals of Senate and Assembly of the 18th Session of the legislature of the State of California, Volume II, pp. 14-18, 23-24; Note: the 12 identified Black residents who signed the 1870 woman’s suffrage petition were Charles and Rebecca Montgomery, Peggy Barnes, Alexander and Malvina McFarland, Thomas and Juliana Johnson,  John and Ellen Looney, E. Cooper and Eliza A. Smith, and Mary Espee.

[12] “Sixteen Volume: A.M.E. Appointments,” Pacific Appeal, August 10, 1878; City of Petaluma Deed Records, Lot 276, Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library, Ref. 979.418.732: Sold on October 3, 1885 by two trustees of the AME, a religious society not incorporated; includes a small frame structure; states it has been many years since any religious services were held, and that but four or five members of the society remain; remains of the sale to be extended to other A.M.E. churches throughout the state. Last service listed in the Petaluma Argus was August 14, 1878, when Bishop Black of Baltimore preached there.

[13] “Correspondence,” Pacific Appeal December 12, 1863; “Married,” Pacific Appeal June 27, 1863; “Arrivals from the Interior,” Pacific Appeal, February 13, 1864; “School for Colored Children,” Petaluma Argus, December 16, 1863; “Opened,” Petaluma Argus, January 13, 1864.

[14] Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), p. 25; “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864.

[15] Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing, 1919) p. 180-182; “Educational Public Meeting at Bethel Church,” The Elevator, April 27, 1872; “Address of the Educational Committee,” The Elevator, May 11, 1872; “1874 Ward V. Flood, Blackpast.org, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/ward-v-flood-1874/

[16] “Educational Items,” Petaluma Argus, August 13, 1875; “A Pennsylvania Opinion,” Petaluma Argus, May 18, 1876; “Our ‘Colored Schools,’” Petaluma Argus, December 22, 1876; “Our Colored School,” Petaluma Argus, August 11, 1876; “The Negro School,” Petaluma Argus, April 5, 1877; “A Pennsylvania Opinion,” Petaluma Argus, May 18, 1877.

[17] Sharon McGriff-Payne, John Grider’s Century: African Americans in Solano, Napa, and Sonoma Counties from 1845 to 1925 (iUniverse, 2009), p. 58; History of Sonoma County, Sonoma County, CA (Archives History – Books …..Petaluma Township, Part 3 1880); Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), 25; John Ford, Journal of the American Association, Volume 6, 1907, p. 84; “The Public Schools,” Petaluma Courier, June 18, 1879.

[18] Douglas Walter Bristol, Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers on Slavery and Freedom (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009).

[19] Moore, Montojo, Mauri, “Roots, Race, and Place,” Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley, October 2019, p. 22.

[20] “Is There Racism in the Deed to Your Home?” New York Times, August 17, 2021.

[21] 1920 U.S. Census; “Negro Attacked Officer; Arrested,” Petaluma Courier, April 24, 1920.

[22] “At the Theaters, California,” Petaluma Courier, June 19, 1927.

[23] “Initiation of K.K.K. Before Guests,” Petaluma Courier, June 2, 1925.

[24] U.S Census.

[25] The Negro and His Outlook,” Petaluma Argus, March 30, 1925; “Negro Lecturer Returns to Congregational Open Forum,” Petaluma Argus, November 18, 1925; “Solve the Race Problem If We Would Avoid War, Says Noted Authority,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 21, 1932; “Dr. Kingsley Addresses Club,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 8, 1933.

[26] An example of the covenants can be found in the Sonoma Deeds of Record, Book 293, Page 330, April 13, 1931, for the sale of property by Willian and Marie J. Deiss to Clifford B. and Minnie J. Murphy: “FOURTH: That prior to the first day of October, 1990, no persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent shall be permitted to purchase or lease said property, or any part thereof and this restriction shall bind, whether such attempted purchase shall be made at any execution sale, foreclosure sale or in any other manner.”

[27] Moore, Montojo, Mauri, pgs. 7, 13; Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation,2017), pgs. 6, 36, 52.

[28] “United States Commission on Civil Rights: Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights.” Hearings held in Los Angeles, California, January 25, 1960; San Francisco California, January 27, 1960, January 28, 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 590.

[29] Moore, Motojo, Mauri, p. 54.

[30] Bill Soberanes, So They Tell Me Column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 24, 1960; “Santa Rosa Unit of NAACP to Receive Charter,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 2, 1955.

[31] “Houston Mutiny and Riot Records: Henry Chenault,” South Texas College of Law Digital Collection, https://cdm16035.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15568coll1/id/1707

[32] Bill Soberanes, “So They Tell Me” column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 19, 1952; Bob Wells, “Everybody Here Knows Henry L. Chenault,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 24, 1954; “A Paragraph for Mr. Chenault,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 29, 1954; Bill Soberanes, “Henry Chenault Was a Petaluma Institution,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 20, 1993.

[33] Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 20, 1993; United States Commission on Civil Rights, Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1960, p. 588.

[34] Jaime Salazar, Mutiny of Rage: The 1917 Camp Logan Riots and Buffalo Soldiers in Houston (Prometheus eBooks, 2021), p. 51.

[35] “The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship,”Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-american-odyssey/abolition.html

[36] “County Negroes are Forming NAACP Unit,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, February 9, 1955; “Santa Rosa Unit of NAACP to Receive Charter,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 2, 1955; “Village Minstrel Show Called Off After Protest,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 16, 1955.

[37] “Picketing by NAACP Continues in County,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 20, 1960; “Negro ‘Test’ Stores Open—Part of the Way,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 9, 1960.

[38] “F.E.P. Bill To Be Discussed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 29, 1955; Michael C. Tobriner, “California FEPC,” Hastings Law Journal, 1965, Vol. 16, issue 3; Moore, Motojo, Mauri, p. 54.

[39] 1970 U.S. census; Ann Gray Byrd, Glimpses: Santa Rosa African Americans (Santa Rosa, CA, 2003),p. 96; “Gloria Robinson: If Not You, Then Who?” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 3, 2013; “Gloria Robinson Still Active, Still Working for Change,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 16, 2019.

[40] U.S. Census.

[41] “Black History Month,” history.com: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-month

[42] Petaluma Blacks for Community Development website: https://pbcd4us.com/about/.

Tall Tales and Rev. Waugh

THE REAL STORY OF WAUGH SCHOOL

Rev. Lorenzo Waugh, circa 1870s (photo by George Ross, courtesy of the Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

The tall tales regarding Reverend Lorenzo Waugh began a month before his death in September 1900, with a story that ran in the Petaluma Argus celebrating his upcoming 92nd birthday.

The Argus reported that Waugh: 1) built the first Methodist Church in Petaluma at Fourth and A streets, hauling lumber from the redwoods north of town with the same team of oxen he used to cross the plains; 2) was gifted with 320 acres by General Vallejo as a reward for his services as a missionary among the Shawnees; and 3) donated the land upon which Waugh School at Corona and Adobe roads was built in 1864.[1]

Over the next century, these and other apocryphal stories grew, fueled by newspaper articles that relied upon twice-told tales. Waugh was credited with not only donating the land for Waugh School, but also with building the 1865 schoolhouse, alleged to be the first country school established in Sonoma County.

Children with their teacher outside Bethel School (later renamed Waugh School), 1908 (photo Sonoma County Library)

The school itself, originally named Bethel, was reported by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in 1991 to have been initially founded as a religious school in accordance with Waugh’s Methodist beliefs. The paper went on to say it was converted to a public school in 1897, three years before Waugh’s death, at which time it was renamed Waugh School.[2]

None of these stories are true, as the facts assembled below demonstrate.

The Founding of Petaluma’s Methodist Episcopal Church

By all accounts, Rev. Waugh was a moral upstanding and admirable man. Most of what is known about his life however comes from the autobiography he wrote and first published in 1883. None of the 19th century historians who wrote books about Sonoma County— Thompson (1877), Munro-Fraser (1880), Cassiday (1889), Gregory (1911)—mention Waugh in any detail in their biographies of prominent early settlers.

As is true for all autobiographies, Waugh’s life story is selectively depicted through his eyes, with omissions and inaccuracies.

Title page of Waugh’s 1883 autobiography, third edition published in 1885 (public domain)

In the book, Waugh writes that he rode across the plains to California in 1852 with his wife and children in a wagon pulled by a team of oxen. He came not for the gold rush, but for his health, having suffered for years from the long-term effects of malaria, possibly contracted during his time as a missionary among the Shawnee and Kaw tribes in pre-terriotorial Kansas. After spending 20 years as an itinerant Methodist preacher in Ohio and Missouri, Waugh came west with the aim of retiring from the being a circuit rider and taking up farming.[3]

Petaluma’s first Methodist Episcopal Church, constructed in 1856 at Fourth and A streets, was not built by Waugh, nor was he ever one of its resident ministers. He did give sermons from time to time, as well as wed couples and perform burials.

In 1859, he took up what would become his main preoccupation for the next 40 years: traveling the state giving temperance lectures to young people. He also launched that year the Sonoma County chapter of the Settlers’ League, in protest of fraudulent land grant claims and the eviction of homesteaders on the land grants denounced as squatters.[4]

The Gift from Vallejo

After arriving in Petaluma, Waugh purchased 160 acres of farm land near the junction of Davis Lane and East Railroad Avenue in current-day Penngrove, planting a fruit orchard and vineyard. The two men Waugh purchased the land from told him it was government owned, and so available for homesteading.[5]

Under the terms of the Preemption Act of 1841, a squatter had the right to purchase up to 160 acres in the public domain, assuming he resided on the land for at least 14 months or made agricultural improvements to it for five years.[6]

Unfortunately, the men who sold Waugh his property lied about it being in the public domain. When Waugh learned he was actually squatting on part of the 66,000-acre Rancho Petaluma land grant owned by Mariano Vallejo, he asked for a meeting with Vallejo.

According Waugh’s account, Vallejo agreed orally to sell him the farm in recognition of his missionary work on the Shawnee and Kaw tribes reservations back in pre-territorial Kansas. But first, Vallejo said, they had to wait for the California Land Commission to survey the boundaries of his land grant as part of their legal review of his claim.[7]

Mariano Vallejo, circa 1870s (photo Sonoma County Library)

Since Vallejo was actively selling off other parcels of Petaluma Rancho without awaiting final claim review from the Land Commission, it’s likely his concern with Waugh’s farm was that it bordered the Rancho Cotate land grant, raising some uncertainty as to its exact boundaries.[8]

In 1856, the commission approved Vallejo’s land grant claim (although, like most of the commission’s decisions, the approval was subjected to years of court appeals), clearing the way for Waugh to purchase his farm. For unknown reasons, Waugh failed to make the purchase.

Instead, on October 25, 1858, two years after the commission’s approval, and six years after Waugh first squatted on the Rancho Petaluma, Vallejo sold Waugh’s farm to two of his sons, Antonio and Jose, as part of a larger 1,039-acre land acquisition.[9]

In his autobiography, Waugh blamed the sale on Vallejo’s lawyer, whom he claimed stealthily exercised his power of attorney during a period in which Vallejo was away in Monterey County, tending to the death of his brother. Vallejo’s brother died in 1856, and while it’s true Vallejo temporarily moved to Watsonville to tend to his brother’s estate, by the fall of 1858 he had returned to his home in Sonoma. His signature, not his lawyer’s, is on the county deed record of the sale.[10]

Three weeks after purchasing the 1,039 acres for $100 from their father, Vallejo’s sons flipped the property for $8,500 to George L. Wratten, the lawyer who served as the notary public on their original deed transaction with their father. A week later, Wratten sold 501 acres of his new purchase at a profit to a real estate agent named George W. Oman. Included in the sale was Waugh’s farm.[11]

A month after acquiring the land, Oman sold off Waugh’s 150-acre farm to a settler named Jacob Adamson for $1,500, and filed a lawsuit to evict Waugh from the property.[12] The property had been reduced from 160 to 150 acres following the Land Commission’s survey of the Petaluma Rancho and Cotate Rancho land grant boundaries).

Waugh’s original farm (circled), lot 376 of Vallejo Township near Penngrove, was sold in 1859 to Jacob Adamson (1877 Thompson Atlas map courtesy of of Sonoma County Library)

Waugh claims he approached Oman with a counter offer, but was turned down. Given that Waugh’s net worth according to the 1860 U.S. census was only $600, it’s possible the terms of his offer came up short.

In the spring of 1859, the California Land Commission disclosed they had uncovered at least 200 fraudulent land grant claims, or a quarter of the claims filed. Waugh led the organization of a Sonoma County chapter of the Settlers’ League, a statewide group of frustrated settlers formed in 1857 to lobby elected official for their rights as homesteaders. Some members formed secret societies devoted to defying government authority and terrorizing land grant claimants. [12a]

Waugh’s group initially protested by pledging not purchase property held in any of the Sonoma County’s 24 land grants until they had ferreted out the crooked land sharks and determined which claims were legally “settled and reliable.”[12b]

That led within a few months to the “Bodega War.”

The claimant of the Bodega Rancho land grant, an ambitious, young San Francisco swindler named Tyler Curtis, requested that the county sheriff, L. Green, evict 48 squatters on his rancho. To assist the sheriff, Curtis sent along 40 armed “hirelings” from San Francisco. They were met in Bodega by 80 armed members of the Settlers’ League. After some mediation by Sheriff Green, Curtis agreed to stand down. The Settlers’ League escorted him and his hirelings back to Petaluma, where a local crowd gathered to send them off on the ferry to San Francisco with a cannon salute.[12c]

In 1860, with the eviction lawsuit still making its way through the courts, Waugh again approached Vallejo. According to Waugh, Vallejo offered him 320 acres of lots 286 and 287 in the Vallejo Township as recompense for selling his farm out from under him.

Waugh claimed Vallejo gifted him the property, however the deed records show a murkier series of transactions.[13]

Vallejo first sold the 320 acres to Hereziah Bisel Wilson, a workingman in San Francisco, for $1. A week later, Wilson sold the land to Waugh for $3,200. Given Waugh’s net worth at the time, it’s possible the land was in fact a gift, and that Vallejo used the intermediary sale to Wilson as a means of hiding that from county officials. The terms of transaction remain a mystery however.[14]

1866 map shows in circle Lots 286 and 287, comprising the 320 acres Waugh received from Vallejo, of which he gifted half, lot 287, to his son John; the arrow points to Bethel School (listed as “Waugh School”) at the southwest corner of Adobe Road and Corona roads (1866 Bowers Map courtesy of Sonoma County Library)

The Founding of Bethel School (Waugh School)

In the early 1850s, American settlers in rural areas outside Petaluma created public school districts as a means of taxing themselves to build country school houses, and also to qualify for county and state school taxes in operating them.

Bethel School was most likely established in 1853 or 1854. While one of Sonoma County’s earliest country schools, it was not the first. That honor goes to Iowa School near Two Rock, established in 1852.[15]

Bethel was originally one of three rural schools established in the Vallejo Township, which extended east from the Petaluma River to Sonoma Mountain, north to current day Cotati, and south to San Pablo Bay, comprising the western portion Vallejo’s Rancho Petaluma and the southeastern portion of Cotate Rancho.

Waugh was appointed one of three school trustees to oversee the Vallejo’s Township’s initial schools, along with Judge Stephen Payran and County Supervisor Alexander Copeland, both of whom lived in the township.

Because of the township’s large size, the county board of supervisors decided by 1855 to divide it into three school districts, each named after a founding trustee: District No. 1, the Payran District; No. 2, the Waugh District ; and No. 3, the Copeland District.[16]

Bethel School was the only school in Waugh School District during the 19th century and most of the 20th century. From early on, the schoolhouse served as the district’s election precinct as well as a community center for festivals, lectures, elections, political gatherings, and fraternal groups.[17]

Men outside Bethel School on election day, circa 1890s (photo Sonoma County Library)

The location of the Bethel Schoolhouse in the 1850s and early 1860s is uncertain, as no property transaction could be found in the county’s deed records. It most likely wasn’t located on Waugh’s original farm, lot 386 of the Vallejo Township, as country school houses were usually centrally located within school districts for commuting purposes.

Waugh’s farm resided at the far western edge of the Waugh School District, bordering both the Eagle School District in current-day Penngrove to the west and the Copeland School District to the north.

1877 map of the Waugh School District (in tan), with a star marking location of Bethel School and an arrow pointing to Waugh’s first farm at the edge of the district, adjacent to the Eagle School District of Penngrove (map Sonoma County Library)

Bethel School most likely sat originally at the same place it occupied throughout the 19th century—the southwest corner of Adobe and Corona roads, which served as the main crossroad of the Waugh School District, Corona Road being its primary thoroughfare to Petaluma.

The property the school sat on was originally part of a 160-acre parcel purchased in 1853 from Mariano Vallejo by Judge Philip R. Thompson, an elected associate county judge.[18]

Born into a prominent Virginia family in 1797, Thompson came to California during the gold rush. He was soon joined by his step-brother, former Virginia congressman Robert Augustus Thompson, who took a job on the three-man U.S. Land Commission assessing the legal claims of California’s Mexican land grants. [19]

Robert also came with two of his sons, Robert A. Thompson, Jr. and Thomas L. Thompson. Thomas launched the county’s first newspaper, the Petaluma Journal, in 1855, selling it a year later. In 1860, he purchased the Sonoma Democrat, which his brother Robert joined him in editing in 1871. Robert also wrote the first published history of Sonoma County in 1877.[19a]

Judge Philip R. Thompson, along with two other elected county judges, served as the initial judicial body of Sonoma County, whose population in 1851 numbered only 561. Along with their judicial powers, the three were responsible for dividing the county into townships and school districts, and establishing county-owned buildings.[20]

Despite Bethel School’s lack of deed records, it appears likely Thompson donated a small portion of his property for the Bethel School soon after purchasing it in 1853.

As the school-age population in Waugh School District grew, by the early 1860s a larger school house was needed. Waugh’s term as trustee apparently ended sometime in the mid-1850s. The district’s subsequent three trustees—Lorenzo Jackson, John Hardin, and George W. Frick—held a successful tax election in March 1863 to raise $1,650 to construct a schoolhouse that would accommodate 60 to 70 students.[21]

Judge Thompson, who became a real estate agent in Petaluma after retiring from the bench in the mid-1850s, sold his farm due to failing health in September 1864 to an English immigrant named Mark Carr, who had originally settled in California during the gold rush. A month after the sale, Thompson died.[22]The new Bethel schoolhouse opened that fall.[23]

Arrow points to Bethel School (listed here as “Waugh Dist. Schl.”) at the corner of Adobe and Corona roads in 1877 map, directly across from Waugh’s 40-acre farm (1877 Thompson Atlas map courtesy of Sonoma County Library)

The 320-acre ranch Rev. Waugh acquired from Vallejo in 1860 sat directly across the street from the Bethel School property, on the southeast corner of Adobe Road and Hardin Lane.[24]No deed records have been found of Waugh having owned the property the school sat on, nor of his donating it to the school district.

In the 1860s, Waugh gave or sold all but 40 of his 320 acres to his three children, building a home for himself and his wife on remaining acreage at 1515 Adobe Road. In 1890, three years after his wife died, he sold his 40 acres and moved to San Francisco to live with his granddaughter.[25]

The boarded up remains for Waugh’s 1860s house at 1515 Adobe Road (photo public domain)

The Bethel School was often referred to in the newspapers during the 19th century as the “Waugh School.” In 1925, the school was formally renamed the Waugh School, after residents of the Waugh School District approved a $10,000 school bond to erect a new schoolhouse.[26]

Waugh School, 1925-1991 (photo in public domain)

The old Bethel schoolhouse was divided into two structures, and moved to the nearby chicken ranch of Thomas King at 1055 Adobe Road, where it was repurposed as an egg house and a shop.[27]

The new school Waugh School remained in operation until 1991, after which it was sold as a private residence, which it remains today.[28]

******

Thanks to Simone Kremkau of the Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library for her research assistance.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Lorenzo Waugh Visits Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, August 3, 1900.

[2] “Pioneers Bought Vallejo’s Land,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955; “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963; “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 13, 1963; “Mumbly peg’ and ‘Giant Stride,’” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 7, 1991; “Waugh School the Way it Was,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 27, 1991; “Larry Reed and Cinda Gilliland Have Converted the Former Waugh School into Their Residence,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, February 19, 2011.

[3] Lorenzo Waugh, Autobiography of Lorenzo Waugh (Oakland, Calif.: Pacific Press, 1883), pgs. 135, 189; “A Long Life: Short Historical Sketch of Rev. Lorenzo Waugh,” Daily Commonwealth, August 27, 1884.

[4] J.P. Munro-Fraser, “Methodist Episcopal Church,” History of Sonoma County (Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880), pp. 311-12; Waugh autobiography, pp. 218-220; “The Temperance Cause,” Marysville Daily Appeal, June 1, 1860; “M.E. Church in Windsor,” Russian River Flag, June 10, 1869; “Settlers’ Meeting,” Sonoma Democrat, March 24, 1859.

[5] Waugh, pp. 208-209; According to deed records, Waugh’s farm was lot 276 in Vallejo Township of Bower’s 1866 map of Sonoma County.

[6] The Preemption Act of 1841, 27th Congress, Ch. 16, 5 Stat. 453 (1841), accessed from www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org; Paul W. Gates, The California Land Act of 1851, California Historical Society, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 1971), pp. 395–430.

[7] Waugh, p. 212.

[8] Note: Waugh’s ranch was originally 160 acres. It sat on lot 376 of the Vallejo Township. The sale of lot 376 at 150 acres by Vallejo to his sons is listed as a partial sale, implying the additional 10 acres may have extended into the adjacent Cotate Rancho, and hence were cut from the lot in Rancho Petaluma.

[9] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 7, page 763, index image 390, October 25, 1858,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[10] Killed,” Sacramento Daily Union, May 29, 1857; Allan Rosenus, General M.G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), pp. 215-218; Waugh autobiography, p. 213. Note: Waugh also erroneously states he lived on the land for 9 years, not the actual 6 years (1852-58), before Vallejo sold the farm.

[11] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 7, page 764, index image 390, November 19, 1858”; November 24, 1858; Book 7, page 795-6, index image 407; Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[12] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 9, page 123, index image 840,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[12a] “Settlers’ League,” Sonoma County Journal, May 15, 1857; Colonel L. A. Norton, “The Squatter Wars,” Life and Adventures of Colonel Norton (Big Byte Books, 2014),pp. 258-275; Paul W. Gates, Land and Law in California: Essays on Land Policies (Iowa State University Press, 1991), pp. 307-308.

[12b] Daily Commonwealth: “A Long Life: Short Historical Sketch of Rev. Lorenzo Waugh,” August 27, 1884.

[12c] “Gaye LeBaron,” column, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 7, 1981.

[13] Waugh autobiography, p. 216.

[14] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 10, page 583, index image 428, September 29, 1860,” and “Book 10, page 604, index image 4439, October 11, 1860,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[15] “Iowa School Built Way Back in 1852,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955; Note: the report that Bethel was the first country school house built in Sonoma County most likely goes back to an erroneous news item in the July 17, 1863, edition of the Sonoma County Journal entitled “Laudable Enterprise,” reporting on the initiative of the Waugh School District to pass a tax to build a new schoolhouse for Bethel School.

[16] “Schools in Vallejo (Township),” Sonoma County Journal, February 26, 1858; “Our Public Schools,” Sonoma County Journal, December 19, 1856; “County School Funds,” Sonoma Democrat, January 28, 1858; “Apportionment,” Sonoma Democrat, July 14, 1859; “County School Funds,” Sonoma Democrat, January 28, 1858; “Apportionment,” Sonoma Democrat, July 14, 1859.

[17] “Sonoma County Elections, Sonoma County Journal, August 18, 1855; “Union Meeting at Bethel School House,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, October 13, 1864; “Bethel League,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, February 9, 1865; “May Day Festival,” Sonoma Democrat, May 13, 1865.

[18] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book K, pages 176-77, index image 138,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; Note: Unfortunately, Book K is not included in the digitized database of deeds previously on microfilm, so this is an assumption that Thompson, who located to the Vallejo Township at that time, purchased lot #269 from Vallejo, and that it totaled 160 acres. This assumption is reinforced by newspaper ads from the 1850s that cite Judge Thompson’s ranch as a landmark in the Vallejo Township.

[19] “The Late Judge Thompson,” Sonoma Democrat, September 9, 1876: After serving on the Board of Land Commissioners in California from 1853 to 1856, Judge R.A. Thompson, Sr. was appointed reporter of the decisions of the California Supreme Court, before being elected to the Justices’ Court of San Francisco.

[19a] Thomas was elected California’s Secretary of State, and then a U.S. congressman, before being appointed ambassador to Brazil. Robert Jr. was elected as Sonoma County’s clerk, and also wrote Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877).(Sources: “Thomas L. Thompson,” Petaluma Courier, February 1, 1898; “R.A. Thompson,” Petaluma Courier, August 4, 1903).

[20] Robert A. Thompson, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877), p. 47.

[21] “To the Electors of the Waugh School District,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, March 11, 1863; “Enterprising,” Sonoma County Journal, March 27, 1863.

[22] “Deaths,” The Sacramento Daily Bee, October 28, 1864; “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 15, page 254, index image 180,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org; “Pioneers Bought Vallejo’s Land,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955: this article states that Mark Carr donated the land for Bernal School from his property, but no records of that donation or sale was found in the Sonoma County database of deed transfers; The deed of sale lists the property—lot 289 in the Vallejo Township— at 145 acres, which is also how it is also reflected on the 1866 A.B. Bowers map of Sonoma County. At some point not found in the deed records, Thompson reduced his property by 15 acres from the original 160 acres he purchased from Vallejo.

[23] “To the Electors of Waugh School District,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, April 20, 1865; “May Day Festival,” Sonoma Democrat, May 13, 1865.

[24] “Index to Grantees, Vols. 1-7, 1835 to 1888, Book 10, page 604, index image 439,” Deeds of Sonoma County 1847-1901, familysearch.org.

[25]Index to Grantors, Vols. 8-12, 1888-1901: March 14, 1890, Book 125, page 330, image 418, Lorenzo Waugh, grantor, John Caltoft, grantee; San Francisco Directory, 1891 to 1892: Rev. Lorenzo Waugh, 1605 Mission Street, along with Edwin and Franklin Waugh; “Peggy’s Pencilings,” Courier, October 1, 1890: Waugh returned to his property on Adobe Road to remove the remains of his young son who died 20 years before, and move the body to Cypress Hill Cemetery; Source of boarded up Waugh home photo at 1515 Adobe Road: “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963.

[26] “Contract for School at Waugh is Let for $8,114,” Petaluma Courier, June 26, 1925; “New Waugh School to Open November 1,” Petaluma Courier, October 16, 1925; “Waugh P.T.A. Plans Old Fashioned Dance, Petaluma Courier, October 15, 1925.

[27] “Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1963.

[28] “New Use for Old Waugh School,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 13, 1991.

Yoneda and the “Red Angel”

The Love Story of Two Penngrove Social Justice Activists

By John Patrick Sheehy and Jack Withington

Karl Yoneda and Elaine Black, 1933 (photo public domain)

As if poultry farming wasn’t hard enough, being questioned by the FBI while vaccinating hens in a chicken coop seems an unnecessary strain for most.

But not Penngrove rancher Karl Yoneda.

A longtime political activist, he was used to living under surveillance, including during his military service in World War II, for which he was awarded a Gold Star.

Karl enlisted in the U.S. Army on December 7, 1942, a year to the date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At the time, he was incarcerated along with his wife and three-year-old son in Manzanar, one of ten concentration camps holding 110,000 Japanese Americans during the war. Located in the high desert of Owens Valley close to Mount Whitney, the camp was 200 miles north of Los Angeles, where Karl, the son of Japanese immigrants, was born in 1906.

Manzanar War Relocation Center, 1943-44 (photo by Ansel Adams, Library of Congress)

When he was seven, his family decided to move back to their native village near Hiroshima after his father was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Karl spent his formative years in Japan, during which the country was transitioning into a modern, industrialized colonial empire. By the early 1920s, labor unions and a variety of socialist, communist, and anarchist activists, were mounting public demonstrations for economic and democratic reforms, as well as protesting Japan’s rising militarism.

Idealistic and headstrong, Karl organized his first strike while still in high school, staging a walkout of  Hiroshima’s newspaper delivery boys over low pay. At 16, he made his way to Beijing, where he studied for two months with the blind Ukrainian anarchist and Esperanto teacher, Vasili Eroshenko.

Returning to Japan, he committed himself to a life of fighting social injustice, participating in several major Japanese labor strikes and publishing a journal for impoverished farmers.

Karl Yoneda (photo by Dorothea Lange, Library of Congress)

In 1926, to avoid being drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army, he boarded a freighter for San Francisco. Upon arriving, immigration officials classified him a kibei-nisei—born in the United States and educated in Japan—and locked him up at the Immigration Detention Center on Angel Island for two months. After his release, he went to Los Angeles, where he found work as a dishwasher and window washer.

As the American Federation of Labor (AFL) excluded people of color at the time, he joined the Japanese Workers’ Association, serving as their publication director. Changing his first name from Goso to Karl in honor of Karl Marx, he also began working with the communist-affiliated Trade Union Educational League, organizing migrant field workers in the Central Valley and Fresno.

In 1931, while at a Los Angeles demonstration calling for unemployment insurance in the midst of the Depression, Karl was severely beaten and thrown into jail by the police department’s notorious “Red Squad.”

Yoneda (with arrow in first photo) be beaten by the undercover Red Guard, LA Unemployment Protest, February 1931 (photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times)

Not wanting a dead corpse on their hands, the police called the International Labor Defense—which billed itself as “the legal department of the working class”—to bail him out.

Elaine Black, a young woman who had started working for the ILD just the day before, paid Karl’s bail and rushed him to the hospital. Sparks clearly flew during their initial encounter. A year later, after Elaine was assigned to the ILD offices in San Francisco, Karl showed up at her office, having taken a job in the city as editor of Rodo Shimbun, a Communist Party Japanese-language publication. Defying California’s “Anti-Miscegenation Law” against mixed race couples, the couple moved in together in the city’s Japantown.

A firebrand who mixed her moral fury at injustice with a sense of fashion, Elaine grew up on New York City’s Lower East Side, the daughter of Jewish immigrants, Mollie and Nathan Buchman. Marxist activists, the Buchmans fled their native Russia after Nathan was drafted into the Czar’s army. In 1920, the family relocated from New York to Southern California.

After being accidently caught up in a brutal sweep by the Red Squad, an outraged Elaine took a job with the ILD and joined the Communist Party, adopting the last name Black, initially as an alias when questioned by police. Conservative newspapers labeled her “The Tiger Woman.” Fellow activists dubbed her “The Red Angel” for her tireless work among striking workers, providing them with food, lodging, and bail money.

Elaine Black with “Free the Scottsboro Boys” activists in 1934 (photo People World Archives)

In 1934, Elaine and Karl became involved in the West Coast Longshoremen’s Strike, with Elaine serving as the only woman on the strike committee, and Karl leading the effort to dissuade Japanese laborers from crossing the picket line. Both were jailed—Elaine four times, including for seditious utterances and vagrancy when she went to court to bail out other activists. The strike ultimately resulted in the unionization of all of the ports on the West Coast.

In the fall of 1934, Karl made California history as the first Japanese American to campaign for the state Assembly, running unsuccessfully on a platform of racial equality, unemployment insurance, and a living wage. Shortly before election day, the Red Squad arrested him during a campaign speech, charging him with vagrancy and making sure the newspapers highlighted his immoral living arrangement with the Tiger Woman.

In 1935, concerned their “shacking up” together was a political liability, Karl and Elaine boarded a train for Seattle, where they could be legally wed. To avoid being charged with violating the Mann Act, which criminalized transporting someone across state lines for immoral behavior, they rode in separate train cars. 

For the remainder of the 1930s, Karl and Elaine pursued their political activism, with Karl forming a union for cannery workers in Alaska, and the two of them picketing Japanese cargo ships on the San Francisco docks that were being loaded with scrap iron for making Japanese military armaments.

In need of a steady income during the Depression, Karl became a longshoreman. In 1939, Elaine gave birth to their son Tom. A few months later, she made an unsuccessful run for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, calling for low-cost housing, free childcare for working women, and civil rights.

Then came Pearl Harbor. Two months after the attack, President Roosevelt, bowing to xenophobia, racism, and baseless fears of spies, signed Executive Order 9066, leading to the incarceration of 110,000 people of Japanese descent, both American citizens and immigrants, living on the west coast.

Surprisingly, Karl and Elaine initially joined others—many of them Japanese Americans—in publicly supporting Roosevelt’s order. As Communists, they felt that the need to fight fascism outweighed other concerns.

Yoneda family, Elaine, Tom, and Karl, at Manzanar War Relocation Center, 1942 (photo California Historical Society)

Karl and his two year-old son Tommy were sent to the camp at Manzanar. Elaine had to fight her way in, becoming one of only seven Caucasians interned there. Karl initiated a petition at the camp to permit young Nisei—men born in the U.S. to immigrant parents—to volunteer for military service. After eight months at Manzanar—during which they received regular death threats from a small group of pro-Japan fascists known as the Black Dragons—Karl was accepted into the army, and Elaine and Tommy were allowed to return to San Francisco.

Karl was assigned with other Nisei to the psychological warfare team of Military Intelligence Service, whose motto was “Go For Broke.” Deployed to India, Burma, and China, he drafted and edited propaganda to be scattered among Japanese troops and transmitted over radios, often deep behind enemy lines. Karl was usually accompanied by Caucasian soldiers, not only to ensure his protection, but also to keep him from falling into enemy hands by shooting him if necessary.

Karl Yoneda, 2nd from right, with the Military Intelligence Service in Burma, 1944 (photo California Historical Society)

At the war’s end, Karl reunited with Elaine and Tommy, and returned briefly to working on the San Francisco docks before a health issue put him out of work. A group of Jewish chicken ranchers in Petaluma, who knew Karl and Elaine from their socialist circles, urged them to try raising poultry. With financial help from Elaine’s family and a GI loan, the couple were able to buy a six-acre ranch on the Petaluma Hill Road in Penngrove. Elaine’s parents soon joined them from Los Angeles.

Devoting themselves to the hard work of raising meat birds, Karl and Elaine also found time to become engaged in the local community, with Karl joining the board of the Petaluma Cooperative Hatchery, and Elaine serving as county president of the Civil Rights Congress. During the Red Scare of the McCarthy Era, they were routinely kept under observation by the FBI, who even found it necessary to question Karl while he was vaccinating his chickens.

Their son Tom graduated from Petaluma High in 1957. A straight-A student, he lettered in basketball, football, and track, and was elected student body president, winning the Petaluma B’nai B’rith Frankel-Rosenbaum Award for outstanding scholarship, and an academic scholarship to Stanford.

By 1960, Petaluma’s role as the Egg Basket of the World was in serious decline due to the rise of factory farms elsewhere. Karl and Elaine sold their chicken ranch and moved back to San Francisco, where Karl returned to working as a casual longshoreman, and Elaine went to work in the office of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Elaine and Karl Yoneda, 1980s (photo courtesy of Jack Withington)

They remained engaged activists, traveling to Tokyo as delegates at a nuclear disarmament conference, participating in numerous anti-Vietnam protests, and writing articles and lecturing on labor history. In recognition of their 50th anniversary together in 1983, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors saluted them for dedicating their lives to fighting for the betterment of other people’s lives.

Elaine died in 1988, a day after taking part in a San Francisco demonstration for peace in Nicaragua with Jesse Jackson. Karl died eleven years later.

In 2011, members of Karl’s all-Japanese Military Intelligence Service unit were honored with the nation’s highest civilian award, the Congressional Gold Medal.

******

C0-author Jack Withington is the author of Historical Buildings of Sonoma County. A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier.

SOURCES:

Books, Journals, Websites

Displaced: Manzanar 1942-1945, edited by Evan Backes (T. Adler Books, 2018).

Vivian McGuckin Raineri, The Red Angel: The Life and Times of Elaine Black Yoneda, 1906-1988 (New York: International Publishers, 1991).

Rachel Schreiber, Elaine Black Yoneda (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2022).

Tim Wheeler, “Karl Yoneda and Elaine Black—star-crossed lovers in a class war,” People’s World, November 19, 2020; https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/karl-yoneda-and-elaine-black-star-crossed-lovers-in-a-class-war/

Bill Yenne, Rising Sons: The Japanese American GIs Who Fought for the United States in World War II (New York: Macmillan, 2007).

Karl G. Yoneda, Ganbatte: Sixty-Year Struggle of a Kibei Worker (University of California Los Angeles, Asian American, Studies Center, 1983).

“Military Intelligence, Densho Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Military%20Intelligence%20Service/

“Congressional Gold Medal Presented to Nisei Soldiers of World War II,” United States Mint, November 2, 2011.  https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/20111102-congressional-gold-medal-presented-to-nisei-soldiers-of-world-war-ii

“Japanese American Soldiers Will Receive Congressional Gold Medal,” Army.mil, November 4, 2011.https://www.army.mil/article/66904/japanese_american_soldiers_will_receive_congressional_gold_medal

Newspapers

Los Angeles Times: “Riots Mark Nationwide Red Demonstrations,” February 11, 1931; “Elaine Black Yoneda, 81; ‘The Red Angel’ of the 1930s,” May 29, 1988.

San Francisco Examiner: “Couple Battled the Prejudices of Politics and Race,” August 2, 1978; “Friends Salute Labor Activist,” May 21, 1988; “Labor and Socialist Activist Yoneda,” May 14, 1999.

The Los Angeles Mirror: Les Wagner, “The Mirror Daily” column, August 21, 1950.

The Miami Herald (AP): “‘War Forces’ Hit by Leftists,” August 3, 1960.

Oral Histories

“Oral History with Karl Yoneda,” CSU Fullerton Center for Oral and Public History, March 3, 1974;

https://cdm16855.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16855coll4/id/38194

A Champagne Toast to Topsy

The wedding of Topsy Hicks and Jim Agius, 1946. My father, Bob Sheehy is standing third from the right (photo courtesy of the Agius family)

While attending the funeral of my beloved godmother, Topsy Agius—a powerhouse of a woman and a Petaluma legend—I found myself reflecting on how much alike birth and death seem to be—indeed, as the writer Isabelle Allende noted, they are made of the same fabric.

A lot of that reflection was Topsy’s doing.

Her funeral was held at St. Vincent’s Catholic Church, where, on the same date 75 years before, she wed Jim Agius, the childhood best friend of my father, Robert Sheehy (he is the tall fellow standing third from the right in Jim and Topsy’s wedding photo above). Topsy was 18 at the time, having recently graduated from Petaluma High.

St. Vincent’s Church (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

Eight years later, in that same church, I was baptized in the loving arms of Jim and Topsy as my godparents.

A few months later, Jim and Topsy went into business with Jim’s brother Frank and Frank’s wife Chick, taking over Mickelsen’s Grocery on the corner of Bodega and Eucalyptus avenues in the country, with an adjoining beer and wine tavern, and a pair of gas pumps out front. Jim and Frank operated the grocery, while Topsy and Chick oversaw the bar.

The gas pumps were handled by Jimmy Terribilini, a short, colorful man who wore bib overalls with a pocket full of pens and pencils in the top pocket. Fondly known as “The Sheriff,” Terribilini lived in a small room at the back of the store.

Blessed with the gift of gab, Topsy helped to make the mom-and-pop store a friendly crossroads for the ranching families between Petaluma and Two Rock, engaging with people stopping in to pick up a quart of milk or loaf of bread, or maybe stop off for a beer and catch up on news of the area.

The store was also a popular stop for people headed to and from Tomales Bay, Dillon’s Beach, or Bodega Bay on the Sonoma Coast. The two Agius couples operated the store until they all retired in 1992.

A week before Topsy died, I received an envelope from her in the mail. There was no note inside, merely an old newspaper clipping of a column written by Petaluma’s illustrious three-dot journalist, Bill Soberanes, who had attended St. Vincent’s High School with my father and Jim.

In the first part of the clipping, Soberanes describes himself wandering around town on a Tuesday morning between 1 and 2 a.m., in search of news for his column the next day. Among the sources he meets is Jim Agius, who advises him to “Have a glass of champagne”—a veiled reference to a large champagne party that had been underway for a good seven hours.

The second part of the clipping is what Soberanes used to fill his column the next day: an announcement of my birth at Petaluma General Hospital, and the all-night champagne celebration party that followed.

Clipping sent by Topsy of Bill Soberanes Column, December 1, 1954

This clipping was the last communication I received from Topsy. A few days later, she slipped and fell, and within two days was gone.

I am toasting the sad passing of this wonderful woman at 93 in the same manner she toasted my joyous arrival so many years ago—with a glass of champagne. RIP.

The Making of Mr. Petaluma, Bill Soberanes

Soberanes and his pipe, 1940s (photo courtesy of Soberanes Archives)

My mother first met Billy Soberanes in the summer of 1944, while he was home on leave from the Merchant Marine. Single, her fiancé having been killed while fighting in the Pacific, she was working behind the soda fountain at Pete Fundas’ Candy Store beside the Mystic Theater. She thought he was handsome and good-hearted, but somewhat jittery, speaking in such excited bursts she had trouble following what he was saying. That wasn’t unusual, as a number of men home on leave from the war seemed rattled.

After striking up a conversation, Soberanes invited her out for dinner and a movie. She accepted, thinking it was the least she could do before he returned to sea. Following the movie, he took her to the top of the hill west of town to view the stars above the evening fog layer. He drove like he talked—fast and skittish. They were still shrouded in fog when they reached the top of the hill. He parked the car and awkwardly leaned over to kiss her. She slapped him across the face, and ordered him to drive her home.

A few weeks later, Soberanes smashed up the family car before returning to sea.[1] He never drove again. Neither did he ever date my mother again, although they became lifelong friends, bonding over a shared love of local gossip.

Soberanes in his 1943 Merchant Marine photo; author’s parents, Bob and Marian Sheehy at the Redwood Room, late 1940s (photos courtesy of Soberanes Archives and Sheehy Collection)

Soberanes was, by most measures, an odd duck. My father, a classmate of his at St. Vincent’s Academy, regarded him as something of a buzzing fly, firing off stray ideas and offbeat jokes with the rapidity of a machine gun. My aunt, who also attended school with him, said he was a mischievous prankster who nervously ate through a pencil a day at school. As a grown man, Soberanes traded in his pencils for a briar pipe, although he often smoked more matches than tobacco, incessantly tamping down and relighting his pipe.[2]

Born in 1921, William Caulfield Soberanes grew up in Petaluma’s Old East neighborhood extending from the railroad tracks to Payran Street, among an enclave of Irish relatives orbiting around the home of his grandfather, Thomas A. Caulfield, on East Washington Street between Wilson and Lakeville streets. Caulfield, who immigrated to California from Ireland in 1876, was Petaluma’s top cattle dealer, with a 32-acre stockyard operation that extended along Lakeville Street from Wilson Street to Caulfield Lane.[3]

In 1900, one of Caulfield’s three daughters, Maggie, married Ed Soberanes, an accountant for a shoe manufacturer that had recently relocated a new factory from Oakland to the Old East.[4] A native of St. Helena, Soberanes descended from a family of early 19th century Californios with ties to General Mariano Vallejo, who built the Petaluma Adobe in 1836.[5]

Ed and Maggie purchased a house at 421 East Washington Street, two doors down from Thomas Caulfield’s home. The Old East was then a working-class neighborhood, populated largely by Italian and German immigrants, many of whom worked in Petaluma’s eastside factory district, the railroad yard, the grain mills, and the shipping docks of McNear Canal. On the corner across the street from the Soberanes house sat the Tivoli Hotel, whose restaurant, bar, and backlot bocce ball court served as an Italian hub in the neighborhood.

The Soberanes home at 421 East Washington Street (Photo Sonoma County Library)

Ed Soberanes eventually became manager of the shoe factory. He and Maggie had five children, of which Bill was fourth in the birth order, born ten years after their third child. After the shoe factory closed in 1927, Ed went to work for his two brothers-in-laws, Will and Tom Caulfield, Jr., who had taken over their father’s cattle trade business and also opened a chain of local meat markets, one of which sat beside the Tivoli, directly across from the Soberanes house.

Ed died when his son Billy was 15. He was looked after by his uncles on the block, in particular Tom Caulfield, who, in addition to trading cattle, was one of the town’s preeminent storytellers and vaudeville performers. He also judged rodeos and refereed boxing matches throughout the state, both of which Soberanes engaged in as a young man.

After graduating from high school in 1941, Soberanes briefly followed his two older brothers and cousins into the family cattle business. Then came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. After initially enlisting in the National Guard, in 1943 Soberanes joined the U.S. Merchant Marine, whose ships kept overseas troops armed and fed during the war.[6]

Soberanes (at top) with Merchant Marine crew (Photo courtesy of Soberanes Archives)

It was undoubtedly a colorful experience for the young Soberanes. With most able-bodied men enlisted in the military, the Merchant Marine was forced to lower their standards, filling out their civilian crews with drunks, idlers, thieves, brawlers, and card sharps who went by nicknames like Low Life McCormick, No Pants Jones, Screwball McCarthy, Foghorn Russell, and Soapbox Smitty.[7]

Following the war, Soberanes tried his hand at a variety of jobs around Petaluma, including buying and selling hay, and working for his uncles in the cattle business. But nothing caught his fancy. “The trouble with work,” he told a friend, “is that it stops a fellow from talking.”[8]

That wasn’t the case at Gilardi’s Corner, the town’s swanky cocktail lounge at the northeast corner of Washington and Kentucky streets where talking was the primary pastime, when one wasn’t rolling bar dice or placing discreet bets on horse races and boxing matches in the back room. The atmosphere in Gilardi’s was relaxed, playful, and open to possibilities. Men wore fitted suits and narrow ties, while women were dressed in high heels and cocktail dresses.

Gilardi’s Corner, circa 1950 (Photo Sonoma County Library)

Together with the Hotel Petaluma’s Redwood Room across the street, Gilardi’s comprised Petaluma’s “night club row,” where the post-war “smart set” gathered to listen to jazz, dance, and imbibe highballs served by mixologists like “Happy” Merango, “Red” Cockrill, and “The Sheik” Sheehy, my father.[9]

“Diamond Mike” Gilardi opened the lounge in 1937, looking to bring a touch of class to the cluster of local bars and taverns opening up after Prohibition. Having refashioned himself from the son of a Swiss-Italian dairy rancher in Hicks Valley into one of the town’s preeminent Dapper Dans, Gilardi became a mentor to the young Soberanes.[10]

The bar at Gilardi’s Corner, late 1940s (Photo Sonoma County Library)

But while Soberanes was naturally drawn to the glamour and excitement of night club row, his quirky nature and awkwardness with women left him somewhat on the periphery. That is, until he found his way to the inside through the camera.

As a boy, Soberanes redeemed a bunch of cereal box tops through the mail to help purchase his first Brownie camera.[11] Photography soon became not just a hobby but an obsession, the attraction not in the aesthetics of what he captured on film, but in the charged excitement of people he caught in the spotlight.

With the predatory instincts of a paparazzo, Soberanes began covering sporting competitions, political rallies, theatrical events, music performances, parades, and even fires, coaxing his way into some events, sneaking into others.[12] As a charm offensive, he employed his natural sense of curiosity, learning a little about practically everything, just enough to ask seemingly informed questions of boxers, baseball players, rodeo cowboys, politicians, movie stars, labor leaders, poets, policemen, gamblers, and outlaws.

Soberanes with camera, 1950s (Photo courtesy Soberanes Archives)

Once he photographed them, he posed to be photographed with them, like a hunter showing off his trophy kill. Those who refused his cameo request, he photobombed.[13]

By 1950, Soberanes was ready to turn his avocation into a full-time profession. Assisted by his cousin Nettie Rose Caulfield, a freelancer who wrote for rodeo and motorcycle racing publications, as well as Cat Fancy magazine, he began writing a weekly column for the Petaluma News, a local newspaper.[14]

Called  “So They Tell Me,” the column featured Soberanes’ photographs paired with short, snappy items readers could quickly skim. A cornucopia of scoops, sightings, sports, social events, politics, personalities, and historical trivia, it bristled with as many names as he could squeeze in, having learned that readers scanned for either their name or the name of someone they knew for a bit of gossip to share with friends over lunch.

Logo for Soberanes’ column in the Petaluma News (courtesy of Petaluma Argus-Courier Archives)

As his model, Soberanes turned to popular San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, whose rapid-fire “three-dot journalism”—named for the ellipses separating his column’s short items—was itself a blatant imitation of Walter Winchell, the syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator known for having turned journalism into a form of entertainment.

Soberanes used his new column as a launch pad for his first big public campaign: building a second firehouse in town on the east side. A new, postwar suburban housing boom had descended upon Petaluma, beginning with subdivisions along Payran and Madison streets, inundating the Old East neighborhood with new young families. That created an access issue for the fire department located on the west side of the Petaluma River, which was sometimes hampered by raised drawbridges at D and Washington streets due to riverboat traffic.

For Soberanes, the campaign held personal meaning, as his father had been a long-serving fire commissioner. After the bond issue passed in June 1951 for constructing a new firehouse at Payran and D streets, the 29-year-old Soberanes was honored by town leaders at a special banquet dinner. He was now in the spotlight himself.[15]

Petaluma Fire Station No. 2, Payran & D streets (Photo Sonoma County Library)

A few months later, the Petaluma News closed down. Soberanes’s weekly column was quickly picked up by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, who expanded it to three times a week.[16] He now had a profession, but not a lucrative one, as he was paid no more than $5 a column.[17] To get by, he continued living at home with his mother and older sister Margaret, a teacher at McKinley School.

In 1954, the “So They Tell Me” column moved to the Petaluma Argus-Courier. In his first column on June 2nd, Soberanes announced his intentions: “We will tell you about local happenings, about the many people we chance to meet from all walks of life, the famous, near famous, the characters, and the everyday citizen.”[18]

Soberanes on on his beat, 1954 (Photo Sonoma County Library)

Since he no longer drove, Soberanes made his daily rounds around town on foot. Nattily dressed in suit and tie, a camera bag slung over his shoulder, coat pockets filled with pens and spiral-bound notebooks, a pipe held between his teeth or left smoldering in his coat pocket, he covered an average 20 miles a day, checking in with his network of tipsters.[19]

Able to get by on little sleep, Soberanes devoted the wee hours of the morning to sitting down at his Royal typewriter and, with two fingers, pounding out his column from a pocketful of notes.[20] Although he was careful to avoid expressing malice toward anyone, his column was largely hearsay, and not fact-checked. He relied on readers to set him straight, happily publishing their letters, in the belief that a complaining reader was better than no reader at all.

He also regularly featured reports in his column from anonymous “correspondents,” using pennames like Desert Dan Delaney, The Dreamer, Turkeylegs Thomas, and Fast Walking Charley.[21] To help keep Petaluma tangentially connected to the national stage, he took regular trips to San Francisco, returning with first-hand gossip and trophy pictures of himself with high-profile actors, athletes, politicians, and other celebrities.[22]

Soberanes and Jayne Mansfield at the Flamingo Hotel, 1950s (Photo courtesy of Pierre Ehret, Flamingo Hotel)

In 1954, he began hosting a weekly 15-minute show on KAFP, the local radio station located at the south end of town, whose call letters were anecdotally said to stand for “Krowing Always For Petaluma.”[23] He interviewed sports figures and colorful local characters like Pop Pickle, an old woodsman who responded to his questions with a variety of bird calls.[24] Soberanes himself was often introduced as the “man who talks faster than the speed of sound.”[25]

Soberanes interviewing Pop Pickle at KAFP radio station, 1954 (Photo Sonoma County Library)

On good days, Soberanes’ column offered everything one might expect from an entire newspaper—only in 1,100 words. Much as John Steinbeck said about Herb Caen, Soberanes made a many-faceted character of Petaluma.[26] It wasn’t long before people were calling him the “Walter Winchell of Petaluma.”

That proved a valuable service during the 1950s and 1960s, as Petaluma transformed from an agriculturally based town of 8,000, into a sprawling suburb of more than 30,000. The poultry and dairy industries that had powered the city’s prosperity for half a century were declining due to the rise of factory farms elsewhere, and the downtown business district was being decimated by new shopping malls erected on the east side of town.

A city used to proudly punching above its weight, first as the third busiest river port in the state, and then as the Egg Basket of the World, Petaluma suddenly found itself facing an existential crisis. For Soberanes, that spelled opportunity. Despite his love of old-time Petaluma, he wasn’t interested in living in a museum, he relished the excitement of the new too much.

To help stave off the city’s fear of becoming ordinary, he devoted his column to celebrating all that was eccentric, wonderful, and unique about Petaluma. In doing so, he provided long-time residents with reassurance that their small-town values remained intact, and offered newcomers an introduction to the town’s idiosyncratic nature as well as a path to local acceptance—to be mentioned in Soberanes’ column was to have arrived in the clubby city.

Soberanes playing bocce ball behind the Tivoli Hotel, 1950s (Photo courtesy of the Petaluma Argus-Courier)

The one thing missing for him was excitement, the sort local promoter Bert Kerrigan had brought to town following World War I, when he put the city’s chicken industry on the map nationally.[27] Kerrigan advised Soberanes not to “put all his eggs in one basket”—while reminiscing about the past was fun, one couldn’t base one’s future on it, as change was inevitable.[28]  

One evening in the fall of 1954, Soberanes dropped by Gilardi’s Corner to find two men preparing to engage in a common barroom bout of wristwrestling. As he watched customers lay down their bets and cheer on the two competitors, he had an idea.

Jack Homel, a trainer for the Detroit Tigers baseball team, wintered in Boyes Hot Springs during the off-season and was a frequent Gilardi’s patron. Soberanes had heard him boast many times of having never lost a wristwrestling match, despite having faced hundreds of opponents, including football players, boxers, steel workers, and longshoremen. The same claim was made by Lakeville rancher Oliver Kullberg who, at two-hundred-and-something-pounds, was reputedly the strongest man in Petaluma.

Soberanes proposed to Gilardi they pit Homel and Kullberg against each other in a fundraising match during the annual Sports Show that raised money for the March of Dimes.

On the evening of January 27, 1955, Homel and Kullberg sat down for their match at a round table in the back room of Gilardi’s Corner and clasped hands. For almost three minutes, the two men struggled to best one another before the table reportedly collapsed beneath them. The referee declared the match a draw.

Oliver Kullberg, left, and Jack Homel, right, compete in first wristwrestling match at Gilardi’s Corner, as Soberanes (behind Kullberg) and Mike Gilardi (behind Homel) look on, 1955
(Photo Steve Farley, courtesy of the Petaluma Argus-Courier)

In the days following, wristwrestling became the most talked about sporting event in town. People clamored for more. Happy to oblige, Soberanes, Gilardi, and Homel formed a three-man committee to create an annual wristwrestling tournament, with Soberanes’ cousin, Nettie Rose Caulfield serving the tournament’s secretary.

Within a few years the tournament’s popularity outgrew Gilardi’s Corner, moving first to Hermann Sons Hall and then to the Petaluma Veterans Memorial Building, where it played to thousands of attendees, including a variety of movie stars, public officials, and celebrity athletes recruited by Soberanes.[29] In 1969, ABC’s Wide World of Sports began televising it.[30]

Wristwrestling, Petaluma’s answer to the Calaveras frog jumping contest, became the biggest thing to happen to the town since Bert Kerrigan declared it the Egg Basket of the World.[31]

Its success spawned a more annual events for Soberanes—the Walkathon from Sonoma to Petaluma, the Whiskerino Contest, Petaluma River Rowboat Contest, the Table Tennis Championship Tournament, the Ugly Dog Contest, and the Harry Houdini Séance—but none of them matched the worldwide appeal of the Wristwrestling Tournament.[32]

Left to right: Ross Smith, Jim Withington, and Soberanes at Old Adobe Fiesta Boat Race, 1970 (Photo Sonoma County Library)

In 1964, at the age of 42, Soberanes married his longtime girlfriend, 39-year-old Jane Edgerton Turner, and began dividing his time between Jane’s house in Santa Rosa and his mother’s house on East Washington Street.[33]

Like many others, my mother would always stop to give him a lift when she spotted him shuffling along the street. He would climb into the car with his camera bag and pipe, the two of them engaged in a breakneck exchange of gossip as we rode along.

Soberanes was a regular guest at my parents’ cocktail parties, his rapid-fire voice carrying throughout the house to my bedroom. Some nights he would showed up unannounced at the family dinner table, regaling us with a scattershot of news he’d gathered that day mixed with memories of people and places from the old days in Petaluma.

After dinner, my parents retired to the living room to watch television, leaving my sister and me to clean up in the kitchen while Soberanes smoked his pipe and rambled on. Growing up in an Irish family, I was used to colorful raconteurs, but nothing prepared me for his erratic, pinball manner of storytelling—except perhaps watching a Marx brothers movie.

Soberanes photo-bombing Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford at Lake Tahoe, 1950s (Photo courtesy of Petaluma Argus-Courier)

The 1970s marked a turning point in Soberanes’ reporting. After two decades on the beat, many of his reliable tipsters had aged into retirement or the grave. A number of his old haunts were likewise gone, including Gilardi’s Corner, torn down in 1967 to make way for a new bank’s parking lot.[34]

In 1971, he changed the name of his column from “So They Tell Me” to simply “Bill Soberanes,” and increasingly turned his focus to local history and nostalgia, creating a new running feature called “My Fascinating World of People,” which featured a personality profile of someone he had interviewed in the past, along with a photo taken of himself with the subject.[35]

Bill Soberanes with “Diamond Mike” Gilardi at the Soberanes Room in the Hideaway Bar, 1971 (photo courtesy of Anthony Tustler, Sonoma County Bugle)

Commonly referred to as “Mr. Petaluma” by this time, he sought to distinguish himself from other columnists by coining the term “peopleologist,” which he defined as a person who studies people from all walks of life. Unlike a traditional journalist who tries to remain invisible behind the camera, a peopleoglogist liked to be in front of the lens, taking part in the action.[36] To underscore the point, he began laying claim to having been photographed with “more famous, infamous, usual and unusual people than anyone in the world.”[37]

Soberanes photo-bombing the Beatles at San Francisco press conference, 1966 (Photo Sonoma County Library)

In his own way, Soberanes was rebranding himself with the times, which was seeing the rise of a “new journalism” practiced by writers such as Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, who placed themselves in the stories they reported.

In 1983, he moved back to town with his wife, taking up residency in a house his father had built beside the family home at 421 East Washington Street, which was now occupied by just his sister Margaret, his mother having died a decade before.

Much had changed. East Washington Street was now a four-lane artery connecting the east and west sides of town. The Tivoli Hotel was gone, as was Caulfield’s Meat Market and Thomas Caulfield’s house on the corner. The old block Soberanes had grown up on was now host to a gas station, a carpet store, and a couple of fast food restaurants.

Soberanes on the porch of 423 East Washington Street, 1999 (Photo by Leena Hintsanen, courtesy of the Petaluma Argus-Courier)

When not making his rounds around town, Soberanes spent his days sitting on the front porch of his house with his pipe and typewriter, entertaining visitors and waving to people as they honked their horns while driving past. When with my mother and I visited him, he was much the same as I remembered him as a boy, jumping around from topic to topic like a pinball. Having created a many-faceted character of Petaluma, I realized he had also created a character of himself. At the end of the day, I wondered if anyone could say they actually knew him beneath the mask.

On January 27, 2003, my mother unexpectedly died of a sudden heart attack. In his column that week noting her passing, Soberanes recalled her working behind the soda fountain at Pete Fundas’ Candy Store, whose slogan was “We hire the prettiest girls in town.”[38]

Four months later, on June 2, 2003, Soberanes died of congestive heart failure. It was 49 years to the date that he published his first column in the Petaluma Argus-Courier. In all those years, he never missed a deadline, including for his final column, a remembrance of his meeting with the comedian Bob Hope.[39] The column’s title, “Thanks for the Memories,” was a fitting farewell for the man known as Mr. Petaluma.

Soberanes on the beat along Kentucky Street, 1980s (Photo Sonoma County Library)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “News of Our Men and Women in Uniform,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 13, 1944;

“Personal Items,” Petaluma Argus-Courier July 15, 1944.

[2] DFL Miller, “Sixteen Years of Columns,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 15, 1970.

[3] “A Son Arrived at the Ed Soberanes Home, Petaluma Argus, October 20, 1921; “T.A. Caulfield Called by Death,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 19, 1928.

[4] “Shoe Factory to Pass into History,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 16, 1927.

[5] “Searching for the Elusive Howes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 25, 1997.

[6] “E.T. Soberanes Claimed by Death,” P, January 3, 1938; “St. Vincent High School Graduation,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 4, 1941; “Billy Soberanes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 7, 1943; “California State Assembly Resolution by the Honorable Bill Filantes, M.D., 9th Assembly District; Relative to commending Bill Soberanes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 7, 1988.

[7] William Geroux, “The Merchant Marine Were the Unsung Heroes of World War II,” Smithsonian Magazine, May 28, 2016.

[8] “Soberanes ‘Best Known’ Citizen,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 26, 1968.

[9] Bill Soberanes, “Petaluma Landmark Closes Doors,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 1, 1967; Bill Soberanes, “Colorful Fifties in Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 22, 1969.

[10] “People You Should Know,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 30, 1937;

[11] “Bill Soberanes: Columnist, Petaluma Booster,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 7, 1988.

[12] “Soberanes ‘Best Known’ Citizen,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 26, 1968.

[13] “Soberanes ‘Best Known’ Citizen,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 26, 1968.

[14] Bill Soberanes, “Colorful Fifties in Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 22, 1969; Bill Soberanes, “Nettie Rose’s Writing Boosted Morale of WWII Servicemen,” AC, July 2, 1986; “Soberanes ‘Best Known’ Citizen,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 26, 1968.

[15] “Thanks Given to Bill Soberanes in Promoting Fire Sub-Station,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 30, 1951.

[16] “Soberanes’ Column Now Three Times a Week,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, January 6, 1952.

[17] Interview with Lee Torliatt, fellow Press-Democrat columnist in 1954, September 2021; Torliatt reported they were paid 20 cents an inch.

[18] “So They Tell Me” column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 2, 1954.

[19] DFL Miller, “Sixteen Years of Columns,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 15, 1970; Prescott Sullivan sports column, San Francisco Examiner, January 30, 1963.

[20] “Soberanes ‘Best Known’ Citizen,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 26, 1968; “Bill Soberanes” column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 31, 1996; “About Bill: Facts and Trivia,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 25, 2003.

[21] Prescott Sullivan sports column, San Francisco Examiner, January 26, 1966.

[22] “How Does Soberanes Manage to Get All Those Photos?” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 7, 1988.

[23] “Sunday Column is Missed,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, October 9, 1951; “KAFP Program—1490,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 23, 1954.

[24] Bob Wells, “Pop Is 70 but Spry as a Cricket,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 23, 1954.

[25] DFL Miller, “Sixteen Years of Columns,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 15, 1970.

[26] “Cool Gray City Found its Voice in Herb Caen,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 2, 2002.

[27] “1925 Egg Day Festival,” Petaluma Argus, August 8, 1925.

[28] “Bill Soberanes” column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1984.

[29] “Dimes Parade, Sports Show, Kick Off Tonight,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 13, 1954; Bill Soberanes, “So They Tell Me” column, Petaluma Argus-Courier: October 23, 1954, December 11, 1954, December 15, 1954, January 30, 1962, March 29, 1967, September 28, 1977; “The Early Days of Wristwrestling in Petaluma: How a Game Became a Sport,” ArmwrestlersOnly.com, December 5, 2013; “Dimes parade, Sports Show, Kick Off Tonight,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 13, 1954;

[30] “Big Show’s Tonight,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 2, 1969.

[31] “The City,” Dick Nolan column, San Francisco Examiner, January 22, 1959.

[32] “Remembering Bill Soberanes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 18, 2003.

[33] “Marriage Licenses,” San Francisco Examiner, March 13, 1964; DFL Miller, “Sixteen Years of Columns,” Petaluma Argus-Courier,  June 15, 1970

[34] Bill Soberanes, “Petaluma Landmark Closes Doors,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 1, 1967.

[35] “Bill Soberanes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 29, 1971; “Bill Soberanes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 16, 1972, February 14, 1973.

[36] Carl Nolte, “Big Put Down at Petaluma,” San Francisco Examiner, February 12, 1967; Bill Soberanes, “A Columnist Reflects,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 20, 1971.

[37] “Bill Soberanes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 6, 1973.

[38] Bill Soberanes, “Go Fly a Kite,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 19, 2003; “Sweet Memories of Pete Fundas,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 19, 2000; “Bill Sobernes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 2, 1995.

[39] Katie Watts, “Bill ‘Mr. Petaluma’ Soberanes Dies,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 4, 2003; “Thanks for the Memories,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 4, 2003.

Petaluma’s Spooky House

The High Life and Low Times of a 19th Century Victorian Mansion

By John Patrick Sheehy & Katherine Rinehart

Clark Mansion,11 Hill Drive, 1977 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In 1967, attendees of Petaluma’s second annual Beauty Conference were treated to a bus tour around town, looking for areas in need of a facelift. The major blemishes they identified were dozens of abandoned chicken houses, decrepit remains of Petaluma’s heyday as Egg Basket of the World.1

But old chicken shacks weren’t the only eyesores marring the city’s good looks. The west side was pockmarked with timeworn Victorians, many of them carved into apartments during the Depression and World War II.

Following the tour, the city’s Beautification Committee, appointed by Mayor Helen Putnam to help spruce up the town, began a vigorous campaign to burn down the dilapidated chicken houses. By Christmas, 25 had been torched.2

Dilapidated Petaluma chicken house (photo public domain)

The committee then turned its attention to the aging Victorians.

Facing decades of deferred maintenance, many Victorian landlords found it stylish—and less costly—to encase the houses in stucco, aluminum, or asbestos siding. Others merely covered up the polychromatic palettes of their ornamental houses with a single color of paint, commonly white with green trim.

During Petaluma’s suburban housing boom in the fifties and sixties, developers began bulldozing the Victorians and replacing them with modern ranch style homes. With their open floor plans and long, close-to-the-ground profiles, ranch houses offered a more informal and casual living style than the ornate, multi-floored Victorians, which struck many people as creepy and old-fashioned.

That was, until the sixties counterculture rediscovered their beauty.

Stick Style Victorian, 908 Steiner Street, San Francisco, painted by Maija Gegeris, 1967 (photo courtesy of San Francisco Heritage)

Among the most striking visual icons of San Francisco’s legendary “Summer of Love” in 1967 were the old Victorians. A band of artists known as “the colorist movement” proudly reasserted their ornamentation and design in a dazzling array of hues as “Painted Ladies,” rekindling a love of Victorian architecture.3

That love soon spread to Petaluma. In February 1968, a group of local women, inspired by Mayor Putnam’s call to beauty, formed an advocacy group for the preservation and restoration of Victorians. They called themselves the Heritage Homes Club.4

Shirley Butti, center, with Lillian Fratini and Kay Stack, at Heritage Home meeting, Petaluma Woman’s Club (photo courtesy of Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 18, 196

The club held its second meeting at the Victorian home of their newly elected president, Shirley Butti.5 A fourth-generation Petaluman, Butti and her husband Plinio were in the process of restoring the long neglected Queen Anne mansion they had purchased at 11 Hill Drive. Locally known as “The Spooky House,” it was originally built in 1886 for Michigan lumber baron Melvin Clark and his wife Emily.6

Clark Mansion, 11 Hill Drive, 1979 (photo Sonoma County Library)

The Clarks began wintering in Petaluma in 1874, after Mrs. Clark’s father and stepmother, Edward and Sarah Ann Jewell, moved out from Michigan with their four children for Edward’s health. The Jewells apparently chose Petaluma because a nearby relative, Omar Jewell, owned a 680-acre dairy ranch in Olema.7

Melvin Clark operated a large wholesale grocery business in Grand Rapids with his brother. Planning to escape to Petaluma during Michigan’s snowy winters, Clark and his wife purchased a large Victorian for the family at the northwest corner of Liberty Street and Western Avenue.8

For reasons unknown, they sold the house after a year, and returned with the Jewells to Grand Rapids, where Melvin Clark ventured into the lumber business, soon becoming one of the largest lumber barons in the country, with thousands of acres of timber and mineral land, and a series of mills in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Puget Sound area.9

Emily Jewell Clark and Melvin J. Clark, ca. 1880 (photos courtesy of Grand Rapid History & Special Collections)

After Edward Jewell’s health took a turn for the worse in 1880, he returned with his family to Petaluma. The Clarks also returned, purchasing house on D Street.10 In 1885, they decided to build their own home, purchasing John McGrath’s 87-acre ranch extending across Petaluma’s west hills from Western Avenue to near Hayes Lane. The next year they erected a 14-room, three-story Victorian mansion—the future “Spooky House”—at the top of Western Avenue overlooking Petaluma.11

The house’s two and half storeys had irregular roof forms, with windowed gablets and two corner towers. The upper story was clad in fish scale shingles, and the lower in shiplap siding. The windows were long and tall, with colored squares of “flash glass” around the upper sashes. The veranda over the entrance included a small impediment with the letter “C” for Clark.

Clark Mansion turret, colored flash glass attic window, and triangle gable above portico with “C” for Clark (photo courtesy of Ken Butti)

The features were similar to other Queen Anne Victorians designed that same year in town by a young local architect named Ed Hedges, the A.L Whitney home on Sixth Street and the David Tibbitts home on Post Street, which indicate that Hedges may have been the architect.12

Two Queen Anne Victorians designed by Ed Hedges in 1886: the Whitney House, 312 Sixth Street, and the Tibbitts House, 322 Post Street (photos Sonoma County Library)

For 14 years, the Clark family wintered at the ranch, while the Jewells lived there year round, growing oats and barley.13 After Edward Jewell’s death in 1900, his widow and children relocated to Oakland, and the Clarks’ visits from Grand Rapids became less frequent.14 In 1905, they sold the mansion and ranch to the Hillside Land Company, a local development group headed by Alexander B. Hill.15

A scion of William Hill, one of Petaluma’s early bankers, “Allie” Hill joined his father’s banking firm in 1886. After his father’s death in 1902, he inherited a great fortune that reputedly made him the wealthiest man in Sonoma County. He also faced a period of personal turmoil, when in 1903, his wife Hattie, daughter of Hiram Fairbanks, another wealthy local banker, and the mother of his three children, divorced him in a very public court case.

A year later, in a surprising turn of events, Hill married Hattie’s sister Elizabeth, and soon after moved into the 8,500 square foot Victorian mansion of his in-laws, the Fairbanks, at 758 D Street.16

Alexander B. Hill and Hattie Fairbanks Hill (photos in public domain)

In the fall of 1904, he assisted his widowed mother, Josie Hill, in erecting the Hill Opera House on Keller and Washington streets—site of today’s Phoenix Theater—as a tribute to his father.17

A few months later, Hill and his partners purchased the Clark Ranch, and set about subdividing it into small lots for into small lots for “hillside villas, to be anchored by street named Hill Boulevard that stretched from Western Avenue to D Street. 18Hill selected a spot at the top of Bassett Street upon which to build a mansion for himself and his new bride.19

1910 Sanborn map of Hill’s street layout for Hillside Tract in section of map not colored, extending south from Western Avenue along Webster Street to B Street (map courtesy of Library of Congress)

Directly behind the Clark Mansion, Hill opened a quarry to provide crushed rock for the development’s roads and sidewalks. He left the mansion itself vacant, renting out a small white house beside it to the quarry’s foreman, German immigrant Louis Neilsen and his family.20

Aside from its unfortunate fate of residing upon a formation of valuable basalt, the mansion’s abandonment may have also been related to changing tastes. The egg boom overtaking Petaluma at the turn of the century gave rise to a professional class of doctors, lawyers, and merchants, who had little interest in the stylistic excesses of the Victorian era.

While Queen Anne style houses still held some appeal—especially those designed with large rooms and round turrets—buyers were drawn to the new Tudor and Colonial Revival homes, as well as the Craftsman and Shingle Style houses of the Arts & Crafts movement, with their emphasis on natural woodwork, large rooms in a horizontal orientation, and logical floor plans.

Early 1900s homes: Tudor Revival, 700 D Street; Shingle Style, 617 C Street ; Craftsman, 1197 E. Washington Street, (photos Sonoma County Library and Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

Sales for Hillside Tract were slow to manifest. Lots in the flats along Webster Street quickly sold out, but those on the hillside failed to attract buyers, despite Hill’s significant investment in roads and water and sewer mains. A discouraged Hill never built his dream mansion, instead remaining at his in-laws’ mansion on D Street.

Finally, in 1919, Hill asked the city council to abandon the proposed street layout for the hillside they had approved earlier, and allow him to reconfigure the area into 5-acre farms, which, given the egg boom, were in high demand.21 He sold the Clark Mansion and 20 adjoining acres to the Neilsens for $10,350 ($163,000 in today’s currency).22

Hilma and Louis Neilsen outside Clark Mansion,1920s (photo courtesy of Shirley Neilsen Blum)

Three years later, Hill died, leaving an estate of $22 million in today’s currency. The remaining undeveloped parts of the Hillside Tract development were sold off to speculators.23

It wasn’t until after World War II that his vision for the development became a reality. With Petaluma’s egg boom in decline following the rise of factory farms in the Central Valley, the city began transforming into a housing suburb of San Francisco. One of the first suburban tracts built after the war was on Melvin Street (named for one of Neilsen’s sons), between Dana and English streets, by Blackwell Brothers in 1947.24

Two of the Neilsen’s sons, Elmer and Leo, on south side of Clark Mansion with a cow (photo courtesy of Ken Butti)

After purchasing the abandoned Clark Mansion in 1920, Louis and Hilma Neilsen set about restoring it with the help of their four sons. To help pay the mortgage, they converted the upstairs into a five-room apartment rental, and sold dairy cows, hens, kale for chicken feed, and goldfish they raised in a pond that had formed in the abandoned quarry. Hilma Neilsen also took in young children for day care.

In the mid-20s, they began subdividing their 20 acres into lots for sale, extending from the road to the mansion they now called Hill Drive, presumably in honor of Alexander Hill, down to Webster Street and across to Dana Street.25

After Louis Neilsen died in 1929, Hilma divided the downstairs of the Clark Mansion into two apartment units, living in one of the units until her death in 1943. Her sons Carl and Leo lived in the other unit. Her son Melvin, who became a doctor in town, built a house for his family at the top of Dana Street in 1941.26

Hilma Neilsen with son Leo on front porch of Clark Mansion, c. 1920 (photo courtesy of Shirley Neilsen Blum)

In the mid-50s, the family sold the house to Aloysius W. Boron and his wife. By that time it was well known as “The Spooky House,” which the Borons attempted to lay to rest, saying the ghosts were now guardian angels of the place. 27

Carl Neilsen claimed the rumor stemmed from the ghostly rattling of chains in the quarry, which lulled him to sleep at night as a boy.28 Eleanor Welch Ameral, who lived in the upstairs apartment in the 1940s, said the rumor started when Melvin Neilsen began studying late nights in the attic, leaving a light shining through the colored glass window, while the rest of the house was dark.29

In 1963, Shirley and Plinio Butti purchased the Clark Mansion for $13,000, or $116,000 in today’s currency, and reunited it into a single home. By that time, the mansion’s lot had been reduced to one-third of an acre, leaving it cheek-by-jowl with other homes on Hill Drive and Melvin Street.30

Shirley, a homemaker who would later open an antique store on Kentucky Street, and Plinio, a lumberman who soon became foreman of the Petaluma Co-operative Creamery, restored the exterior of the house in an array of colors, as well as the upstairs, where they lived with their three sons. They put off restoring the downstairs, which Shirley used for storing her vast collection of antiques.31

The Clark Mansion 1979 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In the spring of 1968, Shirley Butti assumed leadership of the Heritage Homes Club. A year later, one of Petaluma’s most prominent Queen Anne style homes, the Healey Mansion at the corner of Washington and Keokuk streets, designed by J. Cather Newsom, was torn down and replaced with a gas station. Built in 1903 by Petaluma merchant and city councilman Dennis J. Healey, it was converted in 1919 into a funeral parlor, which it remained until its destruction.32

The demolition of the Healey Mansion became a rallying cry that ignited the local preservation movement, eventually transforming Butti’s club into Heritage Homes of Petaluma. Over subsequent decades the organization helped to bring a number of Victorians—and their pretty colors—back to life, documenting and branding homes of historical significance with “Heritage Home” brass plaques, issuing preservation recognition awards, and hosting home tours.33

Healey Mansion at Washington and Keokuk streets, in the eve of its destruction, 1969 (photo Sonoma County Library)

The Buttis’ restoration of the Clark Mansion came to a halt after Plinio died in 1981. In 1987, Shirley moved into the house of her recently deceased mother on Eighth Street, and ten years later into a local senior living center. For 30 years the Clark Mansion sat vacant, except for Shirley’s antiques. After her death in 2018, her family sold the house for $949,550 to Karen Maxwell of San Francisco, who has since begun its next restoration.34

Clark Mansion interior, 2018 (photo courtesy of realtor.com)

Shirley’s antiques collection was another matter. While she was alive, she guarded it closely, not allowing anyone to touch it. Despite fears of being cursed for doing so, her family sold the collection in bulk to J.W. McGrath Auctions of Sebastopol. Within weeks of moving the collection to their store and warehouse, the McGrath Auctions building caught fire and burned down.35

The Spooky House had spoken.

*****

Thanks to Ken Butti, Shirley Neilsen Blum, and Amy Hogan for their assistance with the research for this story.

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

Footnotes:

[1] Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Beautification Plan Will Not Up Taxes,” September 28, 1967; “Assessor Clouds Issue on Chicken Houses,” October 23, 1967.

[2] “Cleaning Up Area Must Come First,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 18, 1967.

[3]Victoria Maw, “Restoration of San Francisco’s Victorian ‘Painted Lady’ Houses,” The Financial Times, October 11, 2013; “Rainbow Victorians and The Colorist Era,” S.F. Heritage, April 17, 2020. https://www.sfheritage.org/features/colorfully-painted-victorians/

[4] “Heritage Homes Meeting Friday,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 11, 1968.

[5] “So They Tell Me Column,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 1, 1968.

[6] Emails from Ken Butti to John Sheehy, August 2021; Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Lillian Tobin Claimed by Death,” February 9, 1950; “So They Tell Me Column,” June 4, 1958; “Obituaries: Lillian Helman Tobin,” October 20, 1977; “Obituaries: Plinio Butti,” April 22, 1981.

[7] Petaluma Weekly Argus, “Farms in Marin County,” November 17, 1873; “Frightful Accident,” July 16, 1875; “From Michigan,” December 1, 1876; Findagrave.com: Omar Jewell died January 1, 1875 at age 53, buried at Cypress Hill.

[8] Petaluma Weekly Argus: “Real Estate Sale,” August 14, 1874; “Petaluma Cheese Factory” February 27, 1874; “Petaluma Cheese,” June 19, 1874; “From Michigan,” December 1, 1876.

[9] Petaluma Weekly Argus: “Local Brevities,” February 25, 1875, April 9, 1875; “M.J. Clark is Summoned,” November 26, 1909; Ernest B. Fisher, Grand Rapids and Kent County, Volume 2 (Robert O. Law Company, 1918), pp. 84-85; Biography of Melvin J. Clark, http://www.migenweb.org/kent/white1924/personal/clarkmj.html

[10] “Personal,” Petaluma Argus, June 11, 1880; “Real Estate Transactions,” Petaluma Courier, February 25, 1888; “M.J. Clark is Summoned,” Petaluma Argus, November 26, 1909. Note: they sold the house at 920 D Street to Catherine Farley Brown in 1888, who then built the current Queen Anne Victorian on the property in 1893.

[11] Petaluma Courier: Real Estate Transactions,” March 18, 1885; “Fine House,” March 13, 1886.

[12] Dan Petersen, Petaluma’s Architectural Heritage” (Santa Rosa, CA: Architectural Preservation Associates, 1978), p. 52; Information on Ed Hedges homes built in 1886 provided by Katherine Rinehart.

[13] Petaluma Courier: “Courierlets,” February 10, 1882, May 1, 1889 May 22, 1897, April 18, 1898.

[14] “M.J. Clark is Summoned,” Petaluma Argus, November 26, 1909; Petaluma Courier: “A Good Man Gone,” June 12, 1900; “Courierlets,” July 28, 1900; “About People,” February 19, 1897, April 23, 1902, May 15, 1902, November 4, 1904.

[15] “Hillside Villa,” Petaluma Courier, March 3, 1905; “Ties Are Severed,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, April 2, 1903.

[16] Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “Ties Are Severed,” April 2, 1903; “Betrothal Causes Surprise,” May 26, 1904. Note: Hill was living at his parents’ house at 106 7th Street until 1906, when he moved into the Fairbanks Mansion.

[17] “A.B. Hill is Taken by Death at His Home,” Petaluma Courier, June 14, 1922.

[18] “Clark Place Sold,” Petaluma Courier, February 11, 1905.

[19] “Hillside Tract to Aid Our Greater Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, March 3, 1905.

[20] “Hillside Tract to Aid Our Greater Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, March 3, 1905; 1910 U.S. Census, Petaluma, Louis William Neilsen; Interview with Shirley Neilsen Blum, August 27, 2021; “Hilma Marie Neilsen,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 11, 1943; Ad for L. Neilsen, chicken houses for sale, Petaluma Argus, June 9, 1909; Ad for L.W. Nielsen, hens and roosters for sale, inquire at hillside rock crusher, Petaluma Courier, May 11, 1912; Anna Keyes Neilsen, The Book of Anna, privately published memoir, 1999, pp. 31-35, courtesy of Shirley Neilsen Blum; Petition for Naturalization, U.S Department of Labor: Louis William Neilsen, no. 1502, November 13, 1928; Interview with Shirley Neilsen Blum, August 27, 2021.

[21] “To Abandon Hillside Tract,” Petaluma Argus, May 13, 1919; “The Action Will be Regretted,” Petaluma Argus, May 13, 1919; Ad by realtor D.W. Batchelor for Hill subdivision tracts, Petaluma Courier, August 8, 1919.

[22] Signed receipt for down payment and purchase terms, signed by realtor D.W. Bachelor, dated May 5, 1919; “Record of Survey: Being a Portion of the Lands of Jason Ferus Blum as Described by Deed Recorded Under Document No. 2002-101193, Sonoma County Records, 2017.

[23] “A.B. Hill is Taken by Death at His Home,” Petaluma Courier, June 14, 1922.

[24] “18 New Homes to Be Built In Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 11, 1947.

[25] Ads placed by the Neilsens, Petaluma Courier: September 20, 1920, April 7, 1925, May 10, 1927, March 22, 1922, May 11, 1927.

[26] Interview with Shirly Neilsen Blum, August 27, 2021; Interview with Ken Butti, August 2021; Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Hilma Marie Neilsen,” October 11, 1943.

[27] “So They Tell Me Column,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 31, 1958.

[28] “So They Tell Me Column,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 4, 1958.

[29] Email to Katherine Rinehart from Eleanor Welch Ameral, July 28, 2008.

[30] Emails from Ken Butti to John Sheehy, August 2021.

[31] Emails from Ken Butti to John Sheehy, August 2021.

[32] Petaluma Courier: “Left for San Francisco,” June 4, 1903; “Certificate of Use of Fictitious Name,” June 14,1919.

[33] “Heritage Homes,” Petaluma Historical Library & Museum. https://www.petalumamuseum.com/heritage-homes/

[34] Interview with Ken Butti, August 2021.

[35] “Sebastopol Business Fire Causes Chaos, Damage,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, May 10, 2018; Emails from Ken Butti to John Sheehy, 2021.