Louise Eddy Taber (1884–1946): Chronicler of California’s Past

Louise Taber (California State Library)

Plot 14B, Lot 116, Grave 4

Louise Eddy Taber was born in Oakland in 1884, the daughter of famed photographer Isaiah West Taber and Annie Taber. Her father’s San Francisco studio was among the most renowned on the West Coast in the late 19th century, producing some of the finest portraits and landscape images of early California. (You can read more about her father on the Lives of the Dead blog here.)

While Isaiah captured California through the camera lens, Louise chronicled it through words and voice. Beginning in 1915, she worked as a writer for the San Francisco Examiner and later the San Francisco Chronicle, where she produced vivid sketches and nostalgic essays about early San Francisco life. Her pieces combined careful historical detail with the warmth of personal memory, preserving a vanishing city that had been forever changed by the 1906 earthquake and fire.

The Taber Family

By the 1930s, Taber had brought her gift for storytelling to the airwaves. She began producing and hosting a popular series of radio programs, including California Memories and Gold Rush Days, which aired throughout Northern California. These programs brought listeners back to the pioneer era, reanimating the voices and adventures of California’s early settlers. Her skillful blend of historical narrative and dramatization made her one of the few women of her time to find success as both a historian and a broadcaster.

Two Louise Taber books

A 1936 Oakland Tribune profile described her as a “historian of California who brings the old days vividly before her audiences,” noting that she often drew from her own family’s deep roots in the state and her father’s visual archive to enrich her storytelling. She also appeared at civic clubs and museums, where she lectured on Gold Rush lore and the evolution of San Francisco’s cultural scene.

Louise Eddy Taber’s work bridged eras and mediums, linking California’s frontier past to its modern identity through the power of story. She died in 1946, leaving behind a body of work that helped preserve the memory of early San Francisco for generations who would never know it firsthand.

---

Sources: Oakland Tribune, November 28, 1911, p. 4; Oakland Tribune, January 20, 1936, p. 16; Berkeley Daily Gazette, September 22, 1941, p. 4; California State Library archives; Bancroft Library