Senator William McKendree Gwin (1805–1885); Supporter of Slavery; Bad Shot

William McKendree Gwin was born in Tennessee on October 9, 1805. After graduating from Transylvania University in Kentucky, Gwin practiced medicine in Clinton, Mississippi, for five years. He was elected to Congress as a Democrat from Mississippi, serving for only two years.

Gwin moved to California in 1849 and helped to draft the new state's constitution as a member of the California Constitutional Convention. After California was admitted to the Union, Gwin was elected as the state's first U.S. Senator in 1850.

Although Senator Gwin rose to become Chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, he is best remembered for his actions following his tenure in office. As a transplanted Southerner, he was an outspoken supporter of slavery.

After leaving the Senate, Gwin was arrested twice for disloyalty because of his continued vocal support of the Confederate cause. In 1863, he traveled to France in an attempt to convince Emperor Napoleon III to lend his support to American colonization of the Mexican state of Sonora. Gwin planned to resettle American slave holders in Mexico as a compromise measure to resolve the slavery issue. This proposal generated enormous controversy on both sides of the border.

One of my favorite stories is told by former journalist Robert O'Brien in his book "This is San Francisco." Gwin got into an argument with a gentleman named J.W. McCorkle, which resulted in a challenge to a duel. The two men met near the Santa Clara County line with rifles in hand and thirty paces apart. After three missed shots and a dead mule, the two men decided that if they kept this up, someone might get hurt. They ended up heading to the nearest bar for a round of bourbon and a good laugh.

Gwin later retired to California, where he lived until his death in 1885.

Dr. Henry Daniel Cogswell (1820–1900) - Temperance Leader

[Monument photos by Michael Colbruno]

Plot 7

[Biography from Wikipedia; video shot by Michael Colbruno]

Dr. Henry Daniel Cogswell (March 3, 1820 – July 8, 1900) was a dentist and a crusader in the temperance movement. He and his wife Caroline also founded Cogswell College in Sunnyvale, California. Another campus in Everett, Washington was later dedicated in his honor.

Born in Tolland, Connecticut, Cogswell's family were descendants of Alfred the Great and Charlemagne. As a youth, he worked in the New England cotton mills and studied by night. He became a dentist in Providence, Rhode Island at age 26. When the California Gold Rush started, the Cogswells decided to go west. However, they did not do any mining themselves. Instead, he offered dentistry services to miners and invested in real estate and mining stocks, becoming one of San Francisco's first millionaires. A pioneer in his field, Cogswell designed the vacuum method of securing dental plates and was the first in California to perform a dental operation using chloroform.

Cogswell believed that if people had access to cool drinking water they wouldn't consume alcoholic beverages. It was his dream to construct one drinking fountain for every 100 saloons across the United States and many were built. These drinking fountains were elaborate structures built of granite that Cogswell designed himself. Cogswell's fountains can be found in Washington, D.C., New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Boston, and San Francisco. The D.C. fountain is known as the "Temperance Fountain." The concept of providing drinking fountains as alternatives to saloons was later implemented by the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

These grandiose statues were not well-received by the communities where they were placed. The Temperance Fountain has been called "the city's ugliest statue" and spurred city councils across the country to set up fine arts commissions to screen such gifts. Although the D.C. statue survived mostly unscathed, the San Francisco one was torn down by "a lynch party of self-professed art lovers" and one in Rockville, Connecticut was thrown into Shenipsic Lake. In Dubuque, Iowa a statue of Cogswell that sat in Washington Park was pulled down by a group of vandals in 1900 and buried under the ground of a planned sidewalk. The next day the sidewalk was poured and the object was entombed. However, when new sidewalks were recently laid, the statue was not found.

Cogswell also designed the statue for his own tomb, a 400-ton granite tower, complete with fountains and statues of Hope, Faith, Charity and, Temperance [see photo].

The diaries of Cogswell and his wife Caroline cover 37 years (1860–1897) and are an unusually long and consistent record of busy personal and financial life in the western United States. They are kept at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Leonard Buck (1834-1895) - Farmer and Politician; Buck Family Trust

[Gravesite photo by Michael Colbruno]

Plot 14B

Born on July 8, 1834, in Cortland County, N.Y., Buck attended the historic Cortland Academy. He married Anna Bellows, daughter of Dr. M. B. Bellows, a physician, on Sept. 10, 1856. Two of their children, Emma L. and Frank H. Buck, were born in Cortland in the ensuing years.

During the Civil War, Leonard joined Company H, 157th New York Volunteer Infantry and soon was promoted to first lieutenant. He was discharged in February of 1863 on account of ill health.

The family then moved westward to Clinton, Iowa, where Leonard was involved in the lumber trade and in the hardware and grocery business. In 1874, Leonard traveled to California and, after a visit to Solano County, decided to move his family out to settle in the Vacaville area. His first land purchase consisted of the Long Ranch, or former Weldon Ranch, 107 acres in Vaca Valley.

Buck threw himself wholeheartedly into the orchard business. Through the advent of the transcontinental railroad, growers finally could reach the East Coast markets. His earlier merchandising background had given him the necessary contacts, and he became one of the first growers to ship his produce to the East Coast. The first carload of grapes ever sent out of Vaca Valley to Chicago was packed by him in 1876.

The Vacaville Reporter named Leonard Buck as one of the richest and most productive farmers of Solano County on August 30, 1884, “adapted to the cultivation of every agricultural product that can be grown, including all the semi-tropic fruits, but just now horticulture and viticulture are so profitable that no cereals are produced, and almost every available spot blossoms with a vine or is rooted with a fruit tree. His residence is very pleasantly located, and commands a pretty view of the valley, ...

“There are 500 almond, 200 peach, 100 pear, 500 plum, 1,500 apricot, 1,000 cherries and 1,000 apples, nectarines and prunes. Besides these, there are 30,000 vines of the Muscat, Tokay, Rose of Peru, Fontaine Bleau (sic) Cornuchon and Emperor varieties (these are all table grapes.) The peaches are mostly of the Susquehanna variety and of a very superior size and flavor. A part of them have already been engaged to a Chicago firm, at a fancy price; ...”

The volume of fruit produced inevitably led Leonard and Frank H. Buck into the packing and shipping business. In 1880, Leonard Buck established the California Fruit Shipping Association with headquarters in San Francisco. In the following year, he founded the L. W. & F. H. Buck company.

During his later years, he also found the energy to serve his community in other functions. In 1886, he was elected to the senate of the California legislature as a member of the Democratic Party. On March 27, 1889, he was appointed as a member of the State Board of Horticulture for the Second Horticultural District, which included Napa, Solano, and Contra Costa counties. He served on this board until his death in 1895.

Glenn Lawrence Burke (1952-1995) - Invented "High FIve"

[From Wikipedia]

Glenn Burke was a Major League Baseball player for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland Athletics from 1976 to 1979. Burke was the first Major League Baseball player to be out to his teammates and team owners during his professional career. He died from AIDS-related causes in 1995.

“They can't ever say now that a gay man can't play in the majors, because I'm a gay man and I made it." - Glenn Burke

Burke was named Northern California's High School Basketball Player of the Year in 1970, and could run the 100 yard dash in 9.7 seconds. He was able to dunk a basketball using both hands - a remarkable accomplishment for someone who was just over six feet tall. He was considered capable of being a professional basketball player, but his first offer came from Major League Baseball. When he started his baseball career, many of the scouts described him as the next Willie Mays.

He is recognized as the player who invented the high five. In 1977 he ran out onto the field to congratulate his Los Angeles Dodgers teammate Dusty Baker for hitting a home run in the last game of the regular season. His celebration has since been imitated by athletes and fans in virtually every sport around the world. The second recorded "high five" came moments later when Baker returned the favor in celebration of Burke's first major league home run.

Glenn was also an accomplished high school basketball star, leading the Berkeley High School, California "Yellow Jackets" to an undefeated season and the 1970 Northern California championships. He was voted to the Tournament of Champions (TOC) and received a Northern California MVP award. After high school, Burke was a highly touted baseball star in the Los Angeles Dodgers minor league system hitting well over .300 before being called up to the major league club.

As a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland A's Burke had 523 at-bats over his four seasons in the big leagues and had a career batting average of .237. He stole 35 bases.

Burke's association with the Dodgers was a difficult one. According to his autobiography Out at Home, the Los Angeles Dodgers offered to pay for a lavish honeymoon if Burke agreed to get married. Burke refused to participate in the sham. He also angered Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda by befriending the manager's estranged gay son, Tommy Lasorda, Jr. The Dodgers eventually dealt Burke to the Oakland A's.
Faced with mounting difficulties, Burke eventually quit baseball. He stated in his autobiography that "prejudice just won out." He returned for spring training with Oakland in 1980. Billy Martin, the newly hired manager of the Athletics made public statements about not wanting a gay man in his clubhouse. When Burke injured his knee before the season began, the A's sent him to the minors in Utah. Burke then left professional sports for good at age 27.

In his 225 games in the majors, Burke batted .237 with two home runs, 38 RBI and 35 stolen bases.

"My mission as a gay ballplayer was to break a stereotype . . . I think it worked." Glenn Burke in People ~ November 1994

Burke continued his athletic endeavors after retiring from baseball. He competed in the 1986 Gay Games in basketball, and won medals in the 100 and 220 meter sprints in the first Gay Games in 1982. His jersey number at Berkeley High School was retired in his honor.

Burke's homosexuality became public knowledge in a 1982 article published by "Inside Sports" magazine. Although he remained active in amateur competition, Burke turned to drugs to fill the void in his life when his career ended. An addiction to cocaine destroyed him both physically and financially. In 1987 his leg and foot were crushed when he was hit by a car in San Francisco. After the accident his life went into physical and financial decline. He was arrested and jailed for drugs and for a time was homeless. His final months were spent with his sister in Oakland. He died of AIDS complications at age 42.

When news of his battle with AIDS became public knowledge in 1994, he received the support of his former teammates and the Oakland Athletics organization. In interviews given while he was fighting AIDS, he expressed little in the way of grudges, and only one big regret - that he never had the opportunity to pursue a second professional sports career in basketball.

Frederick Delger (1822-1898) - Millionaire Shoe Salesman

[Family mausoleum photo by Michael Colbruno]

Millionaire's Row

Frederick Delger was one of the best known Alameda County pioneers of his day. He lived in New York from 1848-1852 and came to California via a ship journey 'round the Horn,' in the early 1860s.

Delger is often considered to be Oakland's first millionaire.

After amassing a sizable fortune in the 1860s and '70s from investing his earnings as a shoe and leather goods merchant into Oakland real estate, Delger bought 10 acres between 17th and 20th Streets, and Telegraph and San Pablo Avenue (near the Sears store). He turned the plot of rolling grasslands, then north of downtown, into a lucrative subdivision of upscale homes. His growing family were comfortably accommodated in his own rambling mansion, considered at the time to be one of Oakland's most impressive estates. The property contained an aviary, water tower, greenhouse and a "honeymoon cottage."

One of the residents of the house was Lillian Moller Gilbreth, who was the inspiration for the book and movie Cheaper by the Dozen.

He and his family rest in and around a grand Gothic Revival aediculum -- one of two Fulgenzio Seregni-designed aedicula in the cemetery -- right next door to Charles Crocker on Mountain View Cemetery's Millionaire's Row.

Freda Ehmann (1839–1932) - Mother of Olive Oil Industry

"...not how much, nor how inexpensive 
but how good a product can we produce?"


This early mission statement was the slogan for Freda Ehmann, considered
by many as the "Mother of the California Olive Industry".

[Family mausoleum photo by Michael Colbruno; picture of Freda from company website]

Plot 48

In 1895, at the age of 56, Freda Ehmann found herself penniless and a widow. Her savings depleted, her sole tangible asset was a 20-acre olive orchard of dubious value. While her son, friends and a few lawyers urged her to file bankruptcy, Freda reminded her son that the family had always paid its debts. Thus began what a society at the end of the 1800’s would have seen as impossible steps of faith for a woman.

Mountain View Cemetery docent Peg Stone discusses Freda Ehmann:


"In looking back over these first pages of our business history, one might truthfully say that I did not know the enormity of the task which was before me." - Freda Ehmann, 1911

In the spring of 1898 Freda Ehmann got together enough money to take a marketing trip. First heading by boat to Vancouver, the year of the Klondike Gold Rush, she then traveled east with huge success in Philadelphia. By trips end, she had contracts for 10,000 gallons of olives though her orchard produced only a 1000 gallons. Her faith never allowed her to question whether she could pull it off. In 1898, the Ehmann Olive Company in Oroville, California was incorporated. 
Known around town as a compassionate, caring woman and boss, she not only gave this town and state a multi-million dollar industry, but used her influence to fight for the ability of others to better themselves, from worker's rights to women's suffrage. As a testament to her business and social stature in the early 20th Century, she counted Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt as her admirers. [From the Lodestar Olive Oil Company]

Her son, Edwin was the mayor of Oroville, California from 1919 to 1923.

Frank Norris (1870-1902) - Noted Author

[Gravesite photo by Michael Colbruno]

Plot 12

“No art that is not in the end understood by the People can live or ever did live a single generation.” – Frank Norris

Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870, and moved to San Francisco at the age of fourteen. He later became a member of San Francisco's artistic Bohemian Club, which included such literary notables as Jack London and Ambrose Bierce. He studied painting in Paris for two years, where he was exposed to the naturalist novels of Emile Zola. He attended the University of California, Berkeley between 1890 and 1894 and then spent a year at Harvard University. Norris travelled to South Africa where he attempted to establish himself as a travel writer. He wrote about the Boer War for the San Francisco Chronicle but was deported from the country after being captured by the Boer Army. He worked as a news correspondent in South Africa in 1895–96, and then an editorial assistant on the San Francisco Wave (1896–97). He worked for McClure's Magazine as a war correspondent in Cuba during the Spanish-American war in 1898. He joined the New York City publishing firm of Doubleday & Page in 1899.

In 1900 Frank Norris married Jeanette Black. They had a child in 1901. Norris died in 1902 of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, leaving his young wife and baby and leaving The Epic of Wheat trilogy unfinished. He was only 32.

Norris' McTeague has been filmed repeatedly, most famously as a 1924 film called Greed by director Erich von Stroheim, which is today considered a classic of silent cinema. An opera by William Bolcolm, based loosely on this 1899 novel, was premiered by Chicago's Lyric Opera in 1992. The work is in two acts, with libretto by Arnold Weinstein and Robert Altman. The Lyric Opera's presentation featured Ben Heppner in the title role and Catherine Malfitano as Trina, the dentist's wife.

Francis Marion "Borax" Smith (1846-1931) - King of Borax

[Family Mausoleum photo from Michael Colbruno]

Plot 12

[From Wikipedia]

Francis Marion Smith was an American business magnate and civic builder of Oakland, California. Smith Mountain in Death Valley is named after him.

Smith was born in Richmond, Wisconsin in 1846. At the age of 21, he left Wisconsin to prospect for mineral wealth in the American West.

In 1872, while working as a woodcutter, he discovered a rich supply of ulexite at Teel's Marsh, Nevada. He staked a claim, started a company with his brother Julius, and established a borax works at the edge of the marsh to convert ulexite into borax. In 1877, Scientific American reported that the Smith Brothers shipped their product in a 30-ton load using two large wagons with a third wagon for food and water drawn by a 24-mule team over a 160-mile stretch of desert between Teel's Marsh and Wadsworth, Nevada, some six years before similar twenty mule teams were introduced into Death Valley, California.

In 1884, Smith bought out his brother. He then gained control of all major borax production in western Nevada. In 1890, he acquired William Tell Coleman's borax holdings in Death Valley and consolidated them with his own to form the Pacific Coast Borax Company. Smith's company then established and aggressively promoted the 20-Mule-Team Borax trademark, which was named after the twenty mule teams that had been used to transport borax out of Death Valley by Coleman's company. He also formed the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad to ship his borax.

Smith married and settled in Oakland, California in 1881 where he had an estate constructed across the street from what is today the site of Oakland High School. In nearby Alameda, he built America’s first reinforced concrete building for his Pacific Coast Borax Company's refinery. He also created the Key System, a commuter train, ferry and streetcar system serving the East Bay, with a significant sideline in real estate. He also built Idora Park in Oakland to attract riders to the trolleys on weekends. With his fortune, Smith also purchased an estate on Shelter Island in New York.

Francis Marion Smith died in Oakland in 1931 at the age of 85. He is buried along "Millionaires Row"

The Western Railway Museum's library is named for "Borax" Smith.

A public park in Oakland is also named for him. It occupies a portion of his former estate.

"Borax" Smith is a character in the historical fiction novel Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

Sara Plummer Lemmon (1836-1923) - Made Poppy the State Flower

She and her husband John were both botanists who discovered a number of plant species. In California, she is best remembered for spearheading the effort to make the poppy the State’s official flower. On her honeymoon in 1881 she climbed what would later become Mt. Lemmon, located 25 miles from Tucson.

Yee Ah Tye (died 1896) - Inspiration for "Bury My Bones in America"

[Tye gravesite photo by Michael Colbruno]

Plot 5 NE

Yee Ah Tye came to California from China in 1852 to find the “Gold Mountain” and reap the financial rewards to take care of his family. He worked hard to learn English and became a miner and respected Chinatown merchant, although he never found that elusive “mountain of gold.” Along the way he had to overcome incredible racial prejudice and oppressive laws against the Chinese.

Despite this prejudice, Yee Ah Tye was proud to call himself “Chinese American” and, bucking Chinese tradition that his bones should be laid to rest in his native China, he insisted that be buried in America. His story became the book “Bury My Bones in America” written by his great-grandaughter Lani Ah Tye Farkas. His other great-grandaughter, Rachelle Chong, was appointed to the California Public Utilities Commission by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in January 2005 over the objection of consumer groups.

Mountain View Docent Barbara Smith found this tidbit on the PBS website under "Chinese Immigrants and the Gold Rush," which provides a different perspective on Yee Ah Tye's life:

In August 1852, the Alta California exposed a brewing court battle. San Francisco's most renowned Chinese madam planned to sue a notorious Chinese leader for extortion. The beautiful Miss Ah Toy claimed that Yee Ah Tye had demanded her Dupont Street prostitutes pay him a tax. She promptly outsmarted him by doing something she never could have done in China -- threatening to take him to court.

Plaintiff and Defendant
"Miss Atoy knows a thing or two, having lived under the folds of the Star-spangled Banner for three years and breathed the air of Republicanism, and she cannot be easily humbugged into any such measures. Besides she lives near the Police Office and knows where to seek protection, having been before the Recorder as a defendant at least fifty times herself. A-Thai had better be particular as to the powers he assumes, or he may find his dignity wiped away, he being dumped in the lock-up," wrote a gleeful reporter.

Leadership Role
A year later Yee Ah Tye was indeed dumped in the lock-up, this time for assault and grand larceny. Originally from Guangdong, the man one newspaper called a "petty despot" had sailed to San Francisco on a Chinese junk just before the gold rush, when he was approximately 20 years old. He spent the first night on the streets, huddled in a doorway. Yee Ah Tye had learned English in Hong Kong and before long he rose to a position of leadership in the powerful Sze Yup Association.

Dark Side
Sze Yup, and other such Chinese organizations, met Chinese newcomers to the gold rush at the docks, gave them a place to stay, found them jobs, or outfitted them for the mines. They provided an important service for a group of people who spoke little English. But Sze Yup had dark sides too, like the use of brute force. The San Francisco Herald alleged Yee Ah Tye "inflicted severe corporeal punishment upon many of his more humble countrymen ... cutting off their ears, flogging them and keeping them chained for hours together."

The complete article can be found at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldrush/peopleevents/p_chinese.html