Maida Castelhun Darnton (1872-1940): Translator, Editor, and Cultural Impresario

Maida Castelhun Darnton

Plot 5, Lot 127, W 1/2

Maida Castelhun Darnton was an American translator, editor, and cultural impresario who moved easily between San Francisco, New York, and Paris in the early 20th century. She was the daughter of Dr. F. C. Castelhun of San Francisco, a physician and lecturer, who published occasional verse and essays. 

She married the critic and Broadway columnist Charles Darnton and eventually settled for stretches in Paris, where her bilingual skill turned into a career translating and shaping European literature for U.S. audiences. Publishing under “Maida C. Darnton” or “M. C. Darnton,” she brought continental books to English readers and worked as an editor on cross-Atlantic literary projects that helped introduce “the new spirit” in European writing to American newspaper and magazine audiences. Contemporary notices in 1932 place her in precisely that world of anthologies, translations, and publishing collaborations, identifying her professionally as an editor and literary translator. 

Cartoon of Maida Darnton

Darnton also turned up in American feature pages in the early 1930s, reflecting the period’s appetite for European letters and for interpreters who could bridge languages and scenes. Those same pages show her credited for editorial and translation work that circulated widely beyond New York—evidence that her name (often as M. C. Darnton) had become familiar to general readers well outside the publishing capitals.

She came from a remarkable California family. Her sister, Ella Castelhun, was among the first women licensed as architects in California, an early professional pioneer at a time when few women held technical credentials. [Read about her HERE] The Castelhun brothers were notable as well. Paul Castelhun drew headlines as a standout football player at the University of California, Berkeley, appearing in the Bay Area sports pages during the program’s ascendant years. And in a grim episode that made national briefs during the First World War era, another brother died in a brewery accident—drowning in a vat of beer—a family tragedy recorded in contemporaneous press accounts. 

Darnton’s cosmopolitan marriage, Paris years, and steady work as a translator gave her a vantage point onto both American mass media and European literary modernism. Reviews of the day single out her translations and editorial hand for making continental literature legible to U.S. readers, and notices across the country show the breadth of her reach.

Unfortunately, she is remembered today only on her memorial page and in scattered newspaper articles.

David B. Neagle (1847–1925): Shooting Led to Landmark Supreme Court Ruling

David Butler Neagle lived a life that mirrored the turbulence of the American frontier—by turns heroic, controversial, and deeply human. A man who once shaped national law through his defense of a Supreme Court Justice would later find himself mired in scandal, feuds, and bitterness. His story embodies the uneasy transition between the Wild West’s code of personal honor and the formal rule of federal authority.

Born in Boston to Irish immigrants, Neagle grew up in a period of restless expansion. He ventured west as a young man, finding work in California’s mining camps and learning the rough-edged self-reliance that would define him. By the 1880s, he had become a deputy U.S. marshal in the District of California, known for his courage and quick temper. That temper—at times a mark of bravery, at others a flaw—would shape both his greatest and darkest moments.

Neagle came to national attention in 1889 when he was assigned to protect Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field, who was then hearing cases on circuit in California. The threat to Field was not imaginary. His former colleague, ex–Chief Justice David S. Terry, had once drawn a Bowie knife in court after Field held his wife, Sarah Althea Hill, in contempt during the sensational Sharon v. Hill proceedings. Terry, who decades earlier had killed Senator David C. Broderick in the infamous 1859 duel near Lake Merced, was an imposing figure of both intellect and violence. [Read about the San Francisco mayor who refused to stop the duel HERE].

By 1889, Terry and his wife openly threatened Field’s life. When Field was scheduled to ride circuit in northern California, Attorney General William H. Miller directed the U.S. Marshals Service to ensure his protection. Neagle—already known for his resolve—was assigned as his bodyguard.

On August 14, 1889, as Field and Neagle stopped for breakfast at the Lathrop railroad station, Terry approached from behind and struck Field across the face. Fearing another attack and believing Terry was reaching for his knife, Neagle drew his revolver and fired two shots, killing Terry instantly. The killing triggered an immediate clash between state and federal authorities. California officials arrested Neagle for murder, but the federal government argued that he had acted in the line of duty. The case, In re Neagle (1890), became a constitutional milestone: the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal officers could not be prosecuted under state law for actions taken in the execution of their federal responsibilities.

Though vindicated in law, Neagle’s later life was anything but peaceful. The notoriety of the Lathrop incident followed him for years, alternately praised as a hero and reviled as a killer. His post-marshal years found him working as a private investigator and security man, often skirting the edge of the law. His reputation for volatility and self-importance drew both admiration and enemies.

By the mid-1890s, newspaper accounts depict Neagle as a man embroiled in quarrels with journalists and rivals. In August 1896, The San Francisco Call reported that he had been arrested for assaulting a reporter who had written critically about him, accusing the journalist of libel and threatening him with violence. Days later, the paper ran further accounts describing Neagle’s legal troubles and his growing sense of persecution, claiming he had become “a man soured by the world” who still carried the swagger of his badge long after losing his post.

Perhaps most startling was his public feud with Wyatt Earp, another lawman of national fame. In 1896, newspapers reported that Earp had threatened to kill Neagle during a dispute in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. The quarrel—apparently sparked by accusations of betrayal and conflicting loyalties within the city’s underworld—revealed the combustible pride of two men accustomed to frontier justice. Neagle, though aging and past his prime, still faced his rivals with defiance, insisting that no man would intimidate him.

These later episodes painted a picture of a complex, aging lawman haunted by his past. Neagle’s sense of honor remained acute, but his ability to navigate a changing world diminished. The swagger that once served him in dusty saloons or tense railroad depots had become self-destructive in the era of modern courts and newspapers.

Neagle's modest death announcment

When Neagle died in Oakland on November 28, 1925, his obituary noted his role in one of the most important constitutional cases in American history but said little of his final decades. His funeral was modest; his name had largely faded from public memory, overshadowed by the mythic reputations of other lawmen like Earp. Yet the decision in In re Neagle endures as a cornerstone of federal supremacy and judicial protection, invoked whenever state law threatens to encroach upon federal duty.

David B. Neagle remains a paradox: a man of immense personal courage and equally formidable flaws, whose single act of duty reshaped American constitutional law but who spent much of his later life at odds with the very civil order he helped defend. His story captures the uneasy frontier between violence and justice, pride and duty, heroism and hubris.

Sources: San Francisco Call, August 5, 8 & 13, 1896; Oakland Tribune, November 30, 1925; Daily Californian, August 11, 1896; HistoryNet; Federal Judicial Center; U.S. Marshals Service; Wikipedia; Find a Grave; The Tombstone Epitaph

 

Henry Clay McPike (1857-1943): Bay Area Attorney Involved in Headline-Grabbing Legal Cases

HC McPike Crypt in Miller Mausoleum & Photo

Miller Family Mausoleum 

Henry Clay (“H. C.”) McPike was a Bay Area trial and appellate lawyer whose long career bridged the San Francisco and Oakland legal communities and touched some of the most storied courtrooms of his time. Born in San Jose on July 25, 1857, McPike read law in California and was admitted to the state bar in 1879. Over the decades that followed he became known for his steady command of complex litigation and for his occasional proximity to cases that captured national headlines.

McPike’s early prominence grew from his participation on the legal team in In re Neagle (1890), the landmark habeas corpus case that arose from the Lathrop-station shooting in which a U.S. marshal defended Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field. The case established enduring precedent for federal-officer immunity, and McPike’s inclusion among counsel positioned him within one of the defining tests of federal authority in the post-Civil-War era. [Read more about David Neagle here].

Lily Langtry biography

By the mid-1890s, McPike’s name surfaced again in a swirl of celebrity and property litigation. He assisted the famed British-born actress Lily Langtry during her California legal efforts to secure a divorce from her estranged husband, Edward Langtry, and to protect her ranch holdings in Lake County. McPike helped assemble depositions and filings to demonstrate desertion and was part of the California legal team working in concert with Langtry’s advisors abroad. His deft handling of that delicate, high-society matter showed a lawyer comfortable at the intersection of publicity and the finer points of property law.

Book about Stanford White Case

McPike also occupied a small but noteworthy seat in what newspapers quickly christened the “Trial of the Century.” When architect Stanford White was shot and killed in 1906 by millionaire Harry K. Thaw, San Francisco attorney Delphin Delmas led Thaw’s defense. McPike was among the colleagues who joined Delmas on the defense bench during the 1907 proceedings in New York. Although Delmas’s eloquent closing arguments drew the national spotlight, McPike contributed to the behind-the-scenes coordination of witnesses and legal briefs—a steady West Coast hand supporting a trial that riveted the nation and blended law, celebrity, and scandal like no case before it.

In 1906 McPike sought to translate his legal reputation into political influence, running as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives from San Francisco. He lost to Republican Victor Metcalf—soon to join Theodore Roosevelt’s cabinet—but the campaign reflected McPike’s continuing engagement with public life and his belief that lawyers could and should shape civic policy.

Cartoon Parody of Henry C McPike

Through the 1910s and 1920s McPike maintained an active Bay Area practice encompassing civil, commercial, and municipal litigation. Appellate records document his involvement in finance and contract disputes argued before the California Supreme Court. By the mid-1930s he had moved his principal offices to Oakland, where court filings identify him as “of Oakland,” signaling his full integration into the East Bay’s growing legal and business scene.

Henry Clay McPike’s career spanned more than half a century of California’s legal history—from the post-Gold Rush assertion of federal authority, through the Gilded Age of theatrical scandals, to the Depression-era courts of an industrializing Bay Area. He embodied a generation of California lawyers whose reputations were built on craft, adaptability, and discretion—attorneys who could argue constitutional law one year and guide a celebrity through personal turmoil the next. McPike died in 1943, remembered in the legal notices of the day as a respected member of the bar and one of the last surviving links to the formative decades of the state’s legal profession.

Sources (one line): Find A Grave memorial; In re Neagle case records (Supreme Court Historical Society); Historical Society of the New York Courts retrospective on the Thaw trial; California Supreme Court decision Central National Bank of Oakland v. Bell (1936); Lake County archival records on Lily Langtry litigation; 1906 Congressional Directory; Oakland Tribune

Charles Henry King (1844–1910): Oakland Lumber Baron and Namesake of King City, California

Oakland Tribune image of Charles H. King

Millionaire's Row

Tucked away along Mountain View Cemetery’s “Millionaires’ Row” lies the King family plot — a peaceful cluster of gravemarkers without the grand family mausoleums that distinguish other prominent families such as the Crockers, Delgers, or Merritts.

Charles Henry King, the namesake of King City, California, was one of those rare 19th-century figures whose ambition spanned lumber camps, wheat fields, and city halls. Born on May 3, 1844, near Hemlock Lake in Ontario County, New York, King grew up in a rural family of modest means. His early life alternated between teaching and farming, but his restless energy soon drew him westward to California, where he became one of Oakland’s most prominent pioneers and later transformed a stretch of the Salinas Valley into what would become King City.

King Family Plot (photo Michael Colbruno)

After a brief sojourn teaching school in the Hawaiian Islands, King returned to California in the 1860s. He initially worked as a schoolmaster before realizing there was more opportunity in lumber. By the 1870s, he had become a formidable figure in the redwood timber industry, establishing mills, shipping operations, and railway connections. Known as one of the state’s earliest lumber dealers, King was among the first to recognize the commercial potential of California’s redwood forests. His holdings—eventually valued in the millions—helped supply the explosive urban growth of the Bay Area and beyond. At the height of his lumber career, he chaired the California Rivers and Harbors League and was a driving force behind Oakland’s waterfront development, promoting projects that would modernize the city’s port and infrastructure.

Charles H. King's modest gravemarker (photo Michael Colbruno)

 King’s wealth and vision found architectural expression in his Oakland mansion, built in 1884 at Sixth Avenue and East 11th Street. What began as a grand but moderate home grew “like Topsy,” as one of his descendants later said, expanding to 38 rooms and dominating the neighborhood. Its ornate façade, pictured in early photographs, symbolized both his success and his era’s exuberant confidence. The mansion became a local landmark, a gathering place for civic leaders and a point of fascination to later generations as it fell into genteel decay.

King home in Oakland (Oakland Tribune)

By the early 1880s, King had set his sights beyond the timber industry. In 1884, he purchased 13,000 acres of Rancho San Lorenzo in southern Monterey County—land that skeptics dismissed as too dry and sandy for farming. King saw potential where others saw barrenness. He planted 6,000 acres of wheat, proving that the soil and climate could sustain large-scale agriculture. His success drew the attention of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which extended a line to his ranch in 1886. Around the new rail stop, a settlement emerged that locals first called “King’s Station” and later King City. The town was officially incorporated in 1911, a year after his death, and its name remains his enduring memorial.

King’s personal life blended triumph with tragedy. He married Kate King, and together they had several children, though not all survived to adulthood. Two died young, and a daughter, Mildred, succumbed to illness in Arizona at just 22. Surviving children included Joseph, Pearl, and Charles Jr., who each carried aspects of their father’s ambition into new fields.

• Joseph H. King became a civic leader and businessman in Oakland, serving as president of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, the California Nile Club, and the Oakland Property Owners’ Association.

  

  Pearl King Tanner

  
  

• Pearl King Tanner, known professionally as Mother Sherwood, achieved national fame as one of radio’s first women personalities on KGO Radio in Oakland. Her broadcasts in the 1920s and ’30s made her a household name across the Pacific Coast.

• The King descendants continued to shape civic, cultural, and media life long after Charles King’s death, sustaining the family’s prominence for decades.

Despite his business success, King retained an educator’s curiosity and a reformer’s civic spirit. He championed Oakland’s urban beautification, promoted harbor improvements, and advocated for building a major hotel to attract visitors to the city. His peers described him as a man of foresight who “never made a mistake in his forecasts.” Even in his seventies, he remained energetic, visiting his offices daily and attending public meetings.

King’s sudden death on August 20, 1910, at his Oakland mansion, shocked the community. The Oakland Tribune reported that “all Oakland mourns,” noting that he had remained vigorous until his final hours despite months of declining health. His estate—built from timber, land, and grain—was estimated to be worth many millions, though he was remembered as much for his civic devotion as for his fortune.

Today, little remains of his once-grand Oakland home, which lingered into the mid-20th century before being demolished. Yet his impact endures tangibly in King City, a thriving agricultural hub that evolved from his early wheat fields, and symbolically in the legacy of public service, entrepreneurship, and cultural achievement carried on by his descendants.

Charles Henry King’s story embodies the restless ambition of 19th-century California: a schoolteacher turned timber baron, an Oakland visionary who carved prosperity from redwood forests and wheat fields, and a patriarch whose family helped shape both the physical and cultural landscape of the Golden State.

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Sources:
Oakland Tribune archives (“Memories Haunt Fading Mansion,” “Charles H. King Dies Suddenly of Apoplexy and All Oakland Mourns,” August 1910); Monterey County Historical Society, King City Historical Overview (mchsmuseum.com); City of King, History of King City; King City Rustler historical retrospectives; Find A Grave

Peter Voiss (1862-1946): Bearded Wanderer Involved in Killing for a Quarter

"Official" Peter Voiss photo with Golden Gate Bridge

Stranger's Plot

Peter Voiss was one of the Bay Area’s most eccentric and tragic wanderers—a bearded old prospector whose life on California’s highways became a strange blend of folklore and infamy. Born near Cologne, Germany, around 1862, Voiss immigrated to the United States as a young man, chasing the same dreams of fortune that lured thousands of Europeans westward. Like many before him, he took to the Sierra Nevadas as a miner and prospector, living for decades on hope and hardpan dust. By his own later reckoning, he spent three-quarters of his life in that solitary pursuit but never struck it rich.

By the 1930s, age and disappointment had turned him into a roadside fixture. His long gray beard, sun-creased face, and pair of small burros—Trixie, Jimmie, and Dock—made him instantly recognizable along the byways between Los Angeles and Seattle. He lived in a two-wheeled covered cart that carried all his possessions, including the camera equipment and props he used to earn what little money he could. Amateur photographers and tourists were fascinated by the sight of the “hermit of the highways,” and Voiss made them pay for the privilege of taking his picture—usually a quarter or fifty cents. It was, he said, his only livelihood.

Bio of Voiss and Newspaper Clipping of Trial

That business arrangement turned deadly in 1936 on a stretch of Monterey Highway outside San Jose. Dr. Jasper Gattucci, a young dentist, stopped to photograph Voiss and his burros but refused to pay. When Gattucci snapped the picture anyway, Voiss raised his shotgun. The doctor fell dead. Newspapers quickly dubbed the killing the “snapshot slaying,” and the gray-bearded drifter became front-page news across California.

At trial, Voiss, then 73, testified tearfully that he “didn’t mean to kill him”—that he only meant to protect himself and his frightened animals. His attorney, J.D. Foley, argued that Gattucci and a friend had conspired to taunt the old man, deliberately driving toward him to scare his burros. “Angered when Gattucci drove in such a manner as to frighten his burros—in effect denying him the free use of the highways—Voiss shot,” Foley told the court. The defense portrayed the act as one of self-defense, not malice.

Reporters described the scene in the San Jose courtroom as both pitiful and riveting: Voiss sobbing uncontrollably, turning his back to the room as he insisted that he “didn’t intend to hurt anyone.” After days of testimony and a dramatic viewing of his battered cart and the bullet-riddled car window, the Santa Clara County jury acquitted him. He was simply too old, too feeble, and too pitiable to be judged a murderer.

Freed from jail, Voiss returned to his wandering life, once again steering his burro cart up and down the state highways. He remained adamant that no one could take his picture without paying him—a rule he continued to enforce through shouting matches and, occasionally, courtroom appearances. He was arrested several times for assaulting people who photographed him without permission, and his cart was once struck by a truck, leaving him injured but unbroken.

As he aged, his travels became more confined, limited mostly to Alameda County. Locals grew used to the sight of the white-bearded hermit trudging beside his burros, a relic from another century. He wrote eccentric “wills” on scraps of paper, bequeathing his three animals to anyone who happened to show him kindness. These informal documents later caused a minor legal tangle: when two different “beneficiaries” came forward with Voiss’s handwritten notes, officials discovered that he had scattered such papers up and down the coast like a wandering Johnny Appleseed. In one version, the will doubled as an advance bill of sale.

"Official" Peter Voiss photos with his beloved mules

By August 1946, Voiss was living out his final days in Oakland. His health failed as he sat in his little wagon, his faithful burros tethered nearby. Authorities found him critically ill in the cart and brought him to Fairmont Hospital, where he died on September 13, 1946, at the age of 84.

When news of his death spread, it sparked a small wave of fascination and melancholy. Newspapers described him as “bewhiskered Peter Voiss, amateur photographers’ model,” the man who once “expressed deeper fear for his burros than for himself.” His only known relative, a nephew named William E. Voiss in Portland, Oregon, was notified to make funeral arrangements. Whether any were ever carried out is unclear—accounts suggest that his body went unclaimed for a time, while his three burros were temporarily sheltered by Oakland’s pound master.

Peter Voiss’s story stands as a strange, sorrowful vignette of California’s frontier afterglow: a man born in Germany who crossed oceans and deserts in pursuit of gold, only to become famous for guarding his right to a fifty-cent photograph. He died as he lived—poor, proud, and fiercely protective of the humble animals that were his only family.

Sources: Oakland Tribune, July 1 1936; The Bakersfield Californian, August 10 1946; San Mateo Times, September 13 1946; Oakland Tribune, September 13 1946; Associated Press wire stories; and Find a Grave

Robert Neelly Bellah (1927 – 2013): Cal Berkeley Sociologist who "Mapped the American Soul"

 

Plot 75

Robert Neelly Bellah was born on February 23, 1927, in Altus, Oklahoma. But the boy from Oklahoma would grow into one of America’s most thoughtful interpreters of the nation’s moral and spiritual life. His family moved soon to Los Angeles, where Bellah attended high school and later entered Harvard. The arc of his life would lead him to deep questions about what holds society together—especially in a country rooted in individualism.

After serving briefly in the U.S. Army, Bellah earned his bachelor’s and doctorate at Harvard. He began his academic career studying Japan, publishing his early work, Tokugawa Religion in 1957, which traced values in pre-industrial Japan. His intellectual curiosity ranged widely: culture, religion, modernity, community. Over time, he settled at the University of California, Berkeley, where for decades he held the Elliott Professorship of Sociology. 

Biography of Robert Bellah

What made Bellah truly distinctive was his insistence that religion—broadly understood—was central to the American story, not just as a set of church activities but as a public, civic force. His 1967 essay “Civil Religion in America” argued that the United States has its own kind of religion of the republic—God and country imagery, national ritual, shared moral commitments—even outside formal churches.
From that point, Bellah’s reputation grew: he turned sociology of religion into a lively conversation about American identity, community, and meaning.

In 1985 he co-authored the best-selling Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. There he explored the tension that many Americans feel—on one hand, a robust individualism; on the other, a longing for connection and belonging. His insight was that a culture encouraged to “go it alone” still needs the ties and commitments that only community can supply. 

Bellah's "Habits of the Heart"

In recognition of his influence, Bellah received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton in 2000, honored for “his efforts to illuminate the importance of community in American society.” The phrase “mapping the American soul” was used in his obituary in The New York Times, marking how he charted the spiritual contours of the nation. 

Bellah combined serious scholarship with a clear style and a genuine sense of purpose. He looked not just at religious belief, but at meaning, moral life, and what holds people together. He argued that unchecked individualism threatens the very bonds that make democratic society work—yet he didn’t dismiss individuality either. His was a call to balance: freedom paired with responsibility, rights matched by commitments.

In his later years, Bellah wrote Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (2011), a sweeping work that asked how religion evolved in human history and what it means for our shared future.

On July 30, 2013, Bellah died at age 86 in Oakland, California, from complications following heart surgery. Colleagues remembered him not just as a towering intellect, but as someone warm, generous, down-to-earth—someone who bridged the gap between scholarly rigor and moral concern.

Robert Bellah set out to understand how Americans live together—how we imagine ourselves as individuals and yet as part of something larger. His legacy invites us to ask: what kind of community do we want? What holds us together when old certainties fade? And how do we live responsibly in a society that values liberty so highly?

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Sources: Wikipedia; Los Angeles Times obituary; NY Times obituary; UC Berkeley press release; Hartford Seminary brief bio; Encyclopaedia Britannica; UC Academic Senate in memoriam; Find a Grave

Jane Vivian Kelton (Gans): 1878-1912: Notable Stock Company Actress Who Died Following Surgery

Jane Kelton glamour headshot

Plot 45, Grave 715

Jane "Jenny" Kelton was a popular West Coast stage actress of the early 20th century, best known for her leading roles in the repertory circuits of California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. A “stock actress” — meaning a performer who was part of a permanent theater company that presented a rotating schedule of plays — Kelton was celebrated for her versatility and emotional range in major dramatic roles of her era, including Zaza, A Doll’s House, and Sapho.

Jane Kelton Gravestone

Kelton began her theatrical career in California, where she quickly won audiences with her expressive performances and powerful stage presence. She appeared as the leading lady at prominent venues such as Ye Liberty Theatre in Oakland and the Alisky Theatre in Sacramento. In 1905, she performed with distinction in The Light Eternal and appeared in a charity vaudeville production in Berkeley titled The Evolution of an Advertisement, in which she played both a French opera singer and a Geisha girl — showcasing the versatility that would become her hallmark.

Known for her sincerity and grace, Kelton’s portrayals of emotionally demanding characters made her one of the most respected actresses in the West Coast stock circuit. Stock companies, like those she joined, were resident troupes that performed a new play every week or two, relying on a stable of well-rehearsed actors capable of switching rapidly between leading and supporting roles.

Jane Kelton from Lyceum Theater production

In 1909, Kelton made national headlines when she married fellow actor Del Lawrence (Gans), her stage partner and leading man in the Del Lawrence Stock Company. The couple’s romantic partnership had flourished on stage, but their real-life union was overshadowed by legal complications. Just days after their June 13 wedding in Portland, Oregon, it emerged that Kelton’s divorce from her first husband, Arthur Guerin, had not yet received its final decree.

Under California law, a divorce was not final until a specific waiting period had elapsed — meaning that Kelton’s remarriage technically rendered her a bigamist. Newspapers across the Western United States, including The San Francisco Call, covered the scandal in sensational detail, dubbing her a “technical bigamist.” Both Kelton and Lawrence insisted they had relied on mistaken legal advice and acted in good faith. The district attorney declined to prosecute, accepting that the marriage had been entered into “unknowingly and without malice.” Lawrence publicly vowed to remarry Kelton once the decree was official, and the couple continued their theatrical partnership.

Ad for Jane Kelton performance

Following the controversy, the couple continued performing together, moving northward with their company to engagements in Vancouver and other Pacific Coast cities. Kelton’s acting was praised for its emotional depth — especially in French dramas like Sapho, where critics noted her ability to project passion and pathos without artifice.

Tragically, Jane Kelton’s career was cut short when she died in Vancouver, British Columbia, in January 1912. According to reports from the Bakersfield Californian and the Bonners Ferry Herald, she underwent surgery for the removal of a tumor and succumbed to complications a week later. She was remembered as “one of the best known stock actresses on the Pacific Coast.”

Newspaper Death Announcement

Her brother Edward Kelton was also and actor, leading troupe of vaudeville performers. Her mother, Jennie Kelton, often defended her daughter publicly during the press attention surrounding her first marriage. 

Sources: University of Washington - Special Collections; Seattle Star; San Francisco Call; Walla Walla Evening Statesman; Bakersfield Californian; Los Angeles Herald; Salt Lake Telegram; Tacoma Times; Spokane Press; Find a Grave; Ancestry.com 

Dorothy Toy (1917-2019): Dancer Who Broke Racial Barriers

Dorothy Toy and Paul Wing

Plot 72

If you had asked Dorothy Toy late in life how she’d like to be remembered, she might have simply said, “as a dancer.” But what she accomplished—alongside her stage partner Paul Wing—was far more than dance. Together, the duo known as Toy & Wing broke racial barriers, dazzled audiences across America, and paved the way for Asian American artists on the national stage.

Dorothy Toy was born Shigeko Takahashi in San Francisco on May 28, 1917, to Japanese immigrant parents. When her family later moved to Los Angeles, they opened a small café near a vaudeville theater in Little Tokyo. There, young Dorothy caught the attention of a theater manager who noticed her dancing and encouraged formal lessons. She soon trained in ballet, tap, jazz, and even Cossack dance—an eclectic foundation that would define her versatile stage style.

Performing first with her sister Helen and Chinese American dancer Paul Wing Jew, the trio became known as The Three Mahjongs. When Helen pursued her own path, Dorothy and Paul continued as Toy & Wing—a sleek, high-energy dance act that combined precision tap with ballroom flair.  

Dorothy Toy and Paul Wing

By the mid-1930s, Toy & Wing were performing nationwide in vaudeville theaters, on Broadway stages, and in nightclubs. They appeared in films such as Deviled Ham and headlined at San Francisco’s legendary Forbidden City, the most famous of the “Chop Suey Circuit” nightclubs that showcased Asian American talent to mainstream audiences.

Promoters billed them as “The Chinese Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers”—a catchy, if inaccurate, label that ignored Dorothy’s Japanese heritage but reflected the racial marketing of the era. Their dancing, however, needed no gimmick. Toy & Wing’s routines blended tap, swing, and acrobatic lifts with dazzling synchronization, earning praise for both technical skill and charisma.  

The outbreak of World War II changed everything. After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Dorothy’s ancestry suddenly made her a target of suspicion. Her parents and relatives were sent to the Topaz internment camp in Utah under Executive Order 9066. Dorothy herself avoided incarceration because she was touring on the East Coast, but prejudice followed her. At least one rival performer “outed” her as Japanese, costing her film opportunities.

Meanwhile, Paul Wing was drafted into the U.S. Army and took part in the Normandy landings in 1944. The war temporarily ended their act, but they reunited in the postwar years and continued performing across the country, earning admiration for both their artistry and resilience. 

In later decades, Dorothy settled in Oakland, California, where she transitioned from performer to teacher. She ran a studio in her Oakland home—known locally as Studio 653—where she taught ballet and tap to generations of young dancers. Even in her later years, she remained active in the Bay Area performing arts community, mentoring troupes like the Grant Avenue Follies, an Asian American dance ensemble that continues to honor her legacy. 

Dorothy Toy's gravemarker

Dorothy Toy passed away in Oakland on July 10, 2019, at the remarkable age of 102.  

Dorothy Toy and Paul Wing hold a unique place in American entertainment history. They were among the first Asian Americans to be recognized nationally as serious dancers rather than exotic novelties. Their performances defied stereotypes and demonstrated that Asian Americans could command the same stages as their white contemporaries—on pure talent and artistry.

Dorothy’s papers, now archived at Stanford University, reveal a life of relentless creativity—filled with choreography notes, tour itineraries, and costume sketches. Her story has been preserved through documentaries like Dancing Through Life: The Dorothy Toy Story (2017) and celebrated in retrospectives about the “Chop Suey Circuit.” 

Sources: Encyclopedia Densho, Wikipedia, Smithsonian Magazine, Rafu Shimpo, StoryCorps, Stanford University Library, JoySauce, Asian American Theatre Revue.

Thomas Nocke (1873-1906) & Sadie West (1872-1906): Vaudeville Team Killed in 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

Only known photos of Thomas Nocke & Sadie West

STRANGER'S PLOT - #1136

When the great San Francisco earthquake struck at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, thousands of lives were instantly altered or lost. Among the victims were two traveling vaudevillians—Thomas L. P. Nocke and Sadie West, known on stage as “The Marneys.” Their story, preserved in scattered newspaper accounts, offers a poignant glimpse into the fragile life of itinerant entertainers at the turn of the 20th century.

Thomas L. P. Nocke was a Newark, New Jersey–based actor who performed under several stage names, including Louis Marney and Louis Parvo. Before his Western tour, he lived with his wife and four children in Newark, N.J. earning modest fame on the vaudeville circuit for light comic sketches and musical routines. His stage partner was Miss Sadie West, an actress and singer who frequently toured with him as the female half of The Marneys.

"The Marneys" on Destroyed Marquee of Empire Theater (photo Thomas Estey, Oakland Public Library)

The pair’s Western trip seemed cursed from the start. According to reports in the Los Angeles Herald and East Coast papers, Nocke narrowly escaped death in a train tunnel collapse during the journey west. Later, a fire destroyed a boat carrying the troupe’s costumes and stage props, delaying their tour for weeks. Yet, ever resilient, Nocke and West pressed on, finally booking an engagement at Oakland’s Empire Theatre at 12th & Broadway, beginning April 17, 1906—just one day before the earthquake. [Some accounts incorrectly list the Empire Theatre in San Francisco].

The early-morning quake and ensuing fire destroyed much of downtown San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area. Telegrams sent back East reported that both performers were killed in the catastrophe when the roof of the theatre collapsed. The Newark Evening News noted that Nocke’s brother-in-law, Edwin Musselman—also an actor touring in California—sent word confirming the tragedy. 

Amalia Wicher

Most of the surviving account of their final moments only mention that three other people were killed who were traveling with the couple when the roof of the theatre collapsed. However, a May 12, 1906 issue of the New York Clipper mentions that The Three Wichers, a performing troupe who traveled with Nocke were also killed. They included Otto Wicher, his 13-year-old daughter Amalia (aka Edith) and a third unidentified person (presumably his wife). They were buried in the Stranger's Plot along with Thomas Nocke and Sadie West.

Oakland also sustained significant damage during the 1906 earthquake, including brick structures and water mains. Among the destroyed buildings was the Macdonough Theatre, located two blocks away at14th & Broadway, as well as the Albany Hotel, First Baptist Church, Prescott School and the 12th Street Dam.

Interior Damage of Empire Theatre (photo: Huntington Library)

Back home in Newark, Nocke’s family awaited news that never brought comfort. The Arlington Advertiser reported that the family initially refused to believe the telegram’s grim contents, hoping against hope that the actor might have escaped the flames. Sadly, later confirmations from an Oakland undertaker ended that hope. The same reports describe Nocke as “a man of good humor and courage, whose luck had run tragically out.”

With their deaths, The Marneys became two of countless anonymous artists who perished in one of America’s greatest natural disasters. Little remains of their work, but the few lines in old newspapers still testify to the vitality of a pair of performers who brought laughter to small-town stages across the country before meeting their fate on the biggest stage of all: the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Little is known of Sadie West. 

Famously, the legendary Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, who was staying at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco when the quake struck escaped the disaster. The night before the quake, Caruso performed the role of Don José in Bizet’s Carmen at the Grand Opera House in San Francisco. 

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Sources: Los Angeles Herald, April 29 1906; Newark Evening News, April 1906; Arlington Advertiser, April 1906; contemporary wire dispatches preserved in newspaper archives; New York Times; Oakland Public Library; Huntington Library; Find a Grave; Ancestry.com; New York Clipper

Francisco Gonzales (1937–1964): 1960 Olympian who caused fatal plane crash killing 44 people

Born in Manila in 1937, Francisco Paula Gonzales once carried the promise of an accomplished seaman and even Olympian: he represented the Philippines in the 1960 Summer Olympics’ Dragon sailing event. But by 1964, he had morphed into the perpetrator of one of the most grim chapters in American aviation history.

On May 7, 1964, Gonzales boarded Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 en route from Reno to San Francisco, seated just behind the cockpit. During the flight, he drew a .357 Magnum revolver and shot both the captain and first officer, leaving the aircraft uncontrollable. He then turned the weapon on himself, ending his life midair. On a final cockpit recording, pilot Ernest Clark can be heard saying, "I've been shot! Oh my God, help."

Flight 773 crashed into a rural hillside in southern Contra Costa County, roughly five miles east of what is now the city of San Ramon. 

Headline from the Billings Gazette

The resulting crash claimed the lives of all 44 aboard—passengers and crew alike—making it one of the deadliest acts of mass murder on California soil, and one of the earliest known cases of a passenger executing a cockpit attack in U.S. commercial aviation. 

In the years since, the incident has been held up as a chilling early warning that passenger violence could bring down an airliner, spurring subsequent changes to cockpit security procedures. Civil air regulation amendments became effective on August 6, 1964, that required that doors separating the passenger cabin from the crew compartment on all scheduled air carrier and commercial aircraft must be kept locked in flight. 

Gonzales’s trajectory—from Olympic sailor to mass murderer—is a stark reminder that behind public achievements can lie hidden turmoil: he had reportedly been under severe financial strain, faced marital dissolution, and had in prior days brandished his weapon to acquaintances while intimating an intention to die. His family said that he has making frequent trip to Reno where he had accrued large gambling debts. 

Gonzalez was living in San Francisco and working at a department store warehouse at the time of the incident. 

He is buried in a crypt in Receiving Vault #2 behind the Main Mausoleum. His name has never been engraved on the crypt and all that remains is the original paper name card from 1964! 

Sources: Phoenix Daily Gazette, Find a Grave, Wikipedia, Billings Gazette, Civil Aeronautics Board accident report on Pacific Air Lines Flight 773, Humboldt Times, Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives

Horace Seaton (1842-1889): Protégé of a Railroad Baron; Struck Down in His Prime

Seaton Grave and Death Notice

Plot 28, Lot 13

When Horace Seaton died suddenly in Oakland in October 1889 at only forty-six years old, he left behind one of the largest fortunes in the city—an estate valued between $350,000 and $1 million at the time. In 2025 dollars, that is the equivalent of $12–35 million, a staggering sum that marked him as one of Oakland’s wealthiest citizens. His rise from a young clerk in Sacramento to a “capitalist” whose name was synonymous with landed wealth was fueled by a family connection to one of the most powerful men in California history: Collis P. Huntington.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1842, Seaton was still in his early twenties when he came west. He had a powerful ally waiting: his aunt had been the first wife of Collis Potter Huntington, one of the famed “Big Four” who built the Central Pacific Railroad (along with Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker). Huntington was not only a railroad tycoon but also a political deal-maker, and his patronage gave Seaton entrée into circles of power that few young men could have imagined.

House of Huntington, Hopkins Co. in San Francisco and Sacramento

Seaton began his California career with Huntington, Hopkins & Co., the mercantile firm in Sacramento that outfitted miners and settlers. Ambitious and clever, he rose from clerk to partner before cashing out his share and turning to real estate speculation. That pivot proved shrewd: over the next two decades he amassed holdings across California and in West Virginia, with vast tracts of land and a mansion in Oakland that had once belonged to Dr. H. S. Glenn, a wealthy land baron.

Glenn’s house had a curious reputation in Oakland lore. After Glenn’s murder in 1883, neighbors whispered that the mansion was haunted—strange noises and unexplained occurrences reportedly plagued the property. By the time Seaton bought it, the house was already tinged with a sense of foreboding, making his own early death all the more chilling in retrospect. Two other owners also met early demises. 

Seaton married and had three children—Willard, Scott, and Etta May (later Mrs. R. P. Hoe of Cincinnati). He was active in civic life, a Mason, an Odd Fellow, and a Knight Templar. But in the summer of 1889, his health collapsed. A paralytic stroke left him weakened, and within weeks, rheumatic gout carried him off.

His estate was divided between his widow and children, his fortune transformed into trusts and real estate holdings.

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Sources: Oakland Tribune (Oct. 24, 1889); Sacramento Daily Record-Union (Dec. 5, 1885; Oct. 26 & 28, 1889); newspaper obituaries and estate notices; Find a Grave; Grave photo by Michael Colbruno; LocalWiki

 

Lloyd Sampsel (1900-1952): "The Yacht Bandit" Who Topped FBI's "Most Wanted" List

Booking photo with name misspelled

He was once described in society pages as a "charming, debonair yachtsman" — until the headlines darkened, and Lloyd Edison Sampsel became one of America’s most notorious criminals. Known to the press as the “Yacht Bandit,” Sampsel’s crime spree, prison scandals, and final gas-chamber fate made him a legend of infamy on both coasts.

Sampsel’s first foray into crime came in the late 1920s, when he began a series of audacious robberies that quickly distinguished him from ordinary thieves. His exploits gained national attention when he and his gang targeted the floating gambling dens that dotted the California coast. These “gambling ships” lay in international waters off Los Angeles, beyond the reach of state law, and attracted wealthy patrons looking for high-stakes games and free-flowing liquor.

Oakland Tribune

Sampsel and his crew not only robbed the ships but cleverly used a yacht as their base of operations. Newspapers dubbed him the “Yacht Bandit,” and the name stuck, branding him with a mix of glamour and menace that followed him for decades. At a time when America thrilled to stories of gangsters like John Dillinger and “Machine Gun” Kelly, Sampsel carved out his own West Coast legend.

The law eventually caught up with Sampsel, and by the early 1930s he found himself serving time in Folsom Prison. But confinement only added to his notoriety. In 1943, while supposedly serving a life sentence, Sampsel managed to arrange a series of illicit conjugal visits with his wife in San Francisco, aided by bribed guards. When the scandal broke, it triggered a major investigation into corruption at Folsom, further cementing his reputation as both cunning and dangerous.

Prison Photo and New Article

Even prison walls could not contain the myth of the “Yacht Bandit.” He cultivated a debonair image that contrasted sharply with the violence of his crimes, a contradiction that fascinated reporters and the public alike.

Released on parole after years in prison, Sampsel wasted no time in returning to crime. In 1948, during a bank robbery in Chula Vista, near San Diego, he killed a man. The act elevated him from an infamous robber to a convicted murderer, and law enforcement now regarded him as one of the most dangerous men in America.

Headline in Brainerd Daily Dispatch

 By 1949, the FBI placed him on its “Most Wanted” list, calling him “the West’s No. 1 bandit.” The man once described as a charming yachtsman had become a symbol of unrepentant criminality.

Sampsel’s luck finally ran out when he was captured and brought to trial for the Chula Vista killing. The proceedings drew wide attention, with the press relishing every detail of the once-glamorous outlaw brought low. He was convicted and sentenced to death.

 In his book, "The San Quentin Story,"  Warden Clinton Duffy wrote:

At his trial Sampsel dumfounded the prosecutor and his own attorney with an extraordinary monologue in which he recounted all the sordid facets of his life, his various prison terms, and all his crimes. It was a suicidal oration, and the jury had no choice. “It appears to the court,” the trial judge said, “that the defendant, in testifying on his own behalf, was somewhat of an egotist, and in his desire to tell of his past exploits testified to things that would not have been shown against him.” He was convicted and sentenced to death—a penalty he must have wanted for himself. 

On April 25, 1952, Lloyd Edison Sampsel was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison. He was 52 years old. The “Yacht Bandit,” who had spent most of his adult life behind bars or on the run, died as he had lived—surrounded by headlines.

Before his death, Sampsel wrote a 36-page manuscript entitled "Thirty Day to Live," which he mailed to his then 75-year-old father. There is no evidence that it was ever published or made public.

Despite his life of crime, Sampsel’s family remained connected to him to the end. His father, then a retired restaurateur, arranged for funeral services.

Sources: Los Angeles Times (May 3, 1952; Apr. 21, 2002); California Death Records; Washington Birth Index; World War I Draft Registration Card (1918); California Prison and Correctional Records; Find a Grave; Oakland Tribune; Richmond Record Herald; Berkeley Daily Gazette; Brainerd Daily Dispatch; "The San Quentin Story"  by Warden Clinton Duffy