Henry Judson Booth (1830-1909): Company built first locomotive in California

Booth Family Plot

PLOT 9

Henry Judson Booth was born in England in 1830. In 1832, his family moved to Ohio where he lived until 1851, when he moved to San Francisco. He was married to Elizabeth Booth with whom he had four children, Edgar, Jessie, Genevieve and Lizzie. They lived on Harrison Street in San Francisco.

Along with his partners George Prescott and Irving Scott, he founded the Union Iron Works in San Francisco which established itself on the West Coast and nationally as a key player in the early days of steel shipbuilding industry. Union Iron Works constructed engines and boilers for iron ships, locomotive equipment and the majority of mining equipment used in the Comstock silver mines. The firm built the first locomotive in California, which debuted on August 30, 1865 with Governor Frederick Low in attendance. The train traveled from the Mission District in San Francisco to San José, California.

Union Iron Works in San Francisco

An ad for Union Iron Works in San Francisco

Union Iron Works also cast the shaft for the steamer John S. McKim, which was the first iron casting in the state  of California. In June 1875, Henry J. Booth retired and the firm name was changed to Prescott, Scott and Company. He also owned a coal mine near Corral Hollow Creek in Alameda County.

The Union Iron Works Historic District still exists in San Francisco east of Illinois Street between 18th and 22nd Streets. It originally stood on what was once a small promontory surrounded by deep waters called Point San Quentin. In the 1850s it was renamed Potrero Point. The firm was located on a 22-acre shipyard situated along the shoreline and consisted of six main buildings and a wharf.

He died in New York City on November 26, 1909, where he lived with his youngest daughter Genevieve..

Sources: Port of San Francisco, New York Times, Ancestry.com, National Park Service, Oakland Tribune

Attorney and Conservationist Allen Chickering (1877-1958) and Julia Morgan designed home

Chickering Gravestone (photo Michael Colbruno) and wedding announcemnt of Alma Sherman & Allen Chickering (The SF Call, 5/20/1903)

PLOT 18

Allen Lawrence Chickering was a noted attorney, whose parents, William and Caroline Pickering,  were early Oakland pioneers. He maintained a keen interest in history with his involvement in the California Historical Society, where he served as President for eight years. He was also a longtime member of the Save-the-Redwoods League and the Sierra Club.

Chickering was born in Oakland on September 20, 1877 and was a descendent of John Chickering who came to America from Suffolk, England in 1659. His father William Chickering came to the Bay Area in 1873 where he founded the Chickering & Thomas Law Firm. Allen Chickering joined the firm in 1903 and became the managing partner when his father died in 1917.

Chickering also had a deep love of botany, especially wild flowers. He was nicknamed "Calochortus Albus" by his friends. The flower is more commonly known as the Fairy Lantern. Chickering wrote a treatise on the flower, which was published. The plant Cleveland Sage is also known as "Salvia x clevelandii Allen Chickering."

Chickering Home (Photo on left from "The Architect and Engineer: Some Examples of the work of Julia Morgan")

Juia Morgan designed twenty homes in Piedmont between 1907 and 1930. In 1911, she designed the Chickering home at 11 Sierra Avenue in the Late Italian Renaissance style. The facade of the house was inspired by the country villas of Italian architect Andrea Pallado. Gail Lombardi's Piedmont historic survey notes, "This home has an elegant entry, large windows and shows Morgan’s delicate use of ironwork in the balconies. Miss Morgan continued to work for the Chickerings, later designing the garage, tennis courts, gardens, and other alterations in the 1920s."

Chickering died on January 6, 1958 after suffering a stroke on Christmas Day. His wife Alma died six months earlier. The couple were married for 54 years. After his death, the State Park Commission headed by Oaklander James Knowland, named a redwood grove in the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in his honor.

Gravestone of William Chickering II (photo by Michael Colbruno)

His son William Chickering II was killed in 1945, while working as a war correspondent for Time magazine. He died during an enemy attack on warships in Luzon, The Philippines.

Sources: Gail Lombardi's Piedmont Historic Survey, San Francisco Call, Oakland Tribune, The Architect and Engineer: Some Examples of the work of Julia Morgan, Bancroft Library, City of Oakland (Betty Marvin)

Dr. Noble Martin (1820-1896): Minister, Doctor & Legislator

Dr. Noble Martin (sketch, SF Call; Photo Michael Colbruno)

Dr. Noble Martin was a minister, doctor and a long-time member of the California Legislature.

He was born in Vermont in 1820 as the third of nine boys. As a young man he worked on a farm and as a wagon maker. He came to California in 1852 to mine for gold. After finding only moderate success in the mines at Little York and Red Dog, he studied medicine and was a practicing physician for 25 years in Dutch Flat. The town, which is about 30 miles northeast of Auburn, was once one of the richest mining towns in California. The town is now designated as a "semi-ghost town" and has only 333 residents.

He served in the California State Legislature for 25 years, serving Placer and El Dorado counties. He served on the Assembly Education Committee, where he was an outspoken advocate for creating kindergartens.* He served in the Senate from 1892 until his death.

In 1892, he strongly supported his Republican friend George Perkins* for the United States Senate, despite being a lifelong Democrat. Perkins had served in the State Senate and as Governor of California from 1880-1883. He remained in the U.S. Senate for 22 years.

Dr. Martin died at the home of his daughter in Berkeley after being in failing health.

* Both Emma Marwedel, founder of the kindergarten movement, and Senator George Perkins are buried at Mountain View Cemetery

San Francisco Call, Berkeley Gazette, Oakland Tribune, Journal of the Senate of the State of California

Dean Briggs Lyman (1838-1903): MIning pioneer; Nevada State Senator

Dean Lyman grave

PLOT 35 

Dean Briggs Lyman was born in South Royalton, Vermont in 1838 and came to California in 1856, where he worked in the placer mines. He was married twice, first to the former Nellie Smith and later to Anna Dunlap, with whom he he had two children, Edward and George.

He moved to Nevada and work in the quartz mills in Washoe City. He went on to run the Morgan Mill in Ormsby and the Mexican Mill in Empire City (which was named for the Mexican miner Gabriel Maldonado, who purchased the mine).

Gould and Curry Mine, Virginia City (1874)

In 1880, he became the Superintendent of the famed John Mackay and James Fair silver mining interests. Mackay, Fair and James Flood were known as the Bonanza Kings (aka Silver Kings) who all became multi-millionaires. Lyman became a lifelong friend of Mackay and went on to run a number of mines under his control, including the Ophir, Sierra Nevada, Union Consolidated, Consolidated Virginia, Gould & Curry and other mines. Silver mining in Nevada began in 1858 with the discovery of the Comstock Lode, the first major silver-mining district in the United States. The Comstock Lode has been mostly inactive since the 1920s. The state is now known as the "Silver State."

Lyman also dabbled in politics, being elected to the Nevada State Assembly in 1873 representing Armsby County. From 1885-89, he represented Storey County in the Nevada State Senate.

Myron Winslow Wood (1823-1913): Wrote History of Alameda County

Myron Wood gravestone (photo by Michael Colbruno)

Myron Winslow Wood was born in Vermont, but settled in Wisconsin after marrying Mary Denford in 1846. She died in 1864 and he remarried Pamelia Ada Whitney a year later. He served with the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry during the United States Civil War for the Union Side from October 31, 1861-October 19, 1865, rising from the rank of Private to Major. After his military service, he moved to California

He is remembered today for writing the "History of Alameda County, California" a two volume set of paid biographies published in 1883. The biographies were invariably flattering and generally omitted some important but inconvenient genealogical or biographical data.

Wood's History of Alameda County

The biographies were mostly those of residents of Murray Township, which at that time included the towns of Altamont, Dublin, Livermore, Midway, Pleasanton and Suñol, and their surrounding countryside. A few of the subjects lived elsewhere, but owned land or had business interests in Murray Township.

Wood's book was typical of county histories published in the late 19th century. The books were commercial ventures and not scholarly works. They included biographies of only male citizens. In derisive reference to the portraits included with the biographies, the publications became known as "mug books." Wood's two-volume, 1001page set has become a valuable reference source for the early history of Alameda County, as well as an important resource for genealogists. 

Sheriff Frank Barnet (1867-1935): Suspect in Nurse's Death; Defeated by KKK member

Sheriff Frank Barnet

Frank Barnett (1867-1935) was the Alameda County Sheriff from 1905-1927. His grave remained unmarked in the family plot at Mountain View Cemetery until current Sheriff Greg Ahern and the Deputy Sheriff's Association placed a marker on his grave.

Despite having a colorful and arguably successful career, he is best remembered for being a suspect in the case of Elizabeth "Bessie" Ferguson, a nurse whose dismembered body was found in 1925, which led to him being defeated by a member of the KKK.

Ferguson disappeared after telling her mother that she was headed from San Francisco to Oakland to meet Barnett. Ferguson was a known blackmailer, who tried to pass off her sister's infant as the child of at least eleven prominent men in the community, including Barnet. Allegedly, her mother had warned her to leave the Sheriff alone, as he was too powerful to handle. Bessie replied, "Don't worry Mother, he will pay like all the rest of them." She went missing that night.

Ferguson was known to have used a number of aliases over the years, including checking into to her hotel as Bessie Loren the night she disappeared. A March 5, 1926 account in the Oakland Tribune described her as, "A buxom blonde, attractive, with a certain charm of manner..." She allegedly used the blackmail money to care for her family.

Parts of her body were found in a sack floating in the estuary between Oakland and Alameda near Bay Farm Island and more in the tules by the bay in El Cerrito. The case became known as the "Tule Murder Case." Her skin had been stripped from her bones with acid and some of her flesh had been cooked and fed to dogs. The prime suspect became a veterinary surgeon who it was believed was the only person who had the skills to perform such a detailed dismemberment.

Bessie Ferguson Loren

Despite the involvement of then-District Attorney Earl Warren and a number of leading criminologists, the case was never solved and Barnet was eventually cleared of wrongdoing. Years later, Mary Shaw a reporter in the East Bay, revealed to the Earl Warren Oral History Project at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley that she had interviewed Sheriff Barnet. He revealed to her that he was at a party with Ferguson where everyone was pretty drunk. He admitted that he hit her causing her to fall and hit her head on some fireplace irons. Rather than use this in her story, she told her editors that Barnet refused to talk.

Barnet was originally appointed to his post by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors after the death of Sheriff John Bishop. He was easily reelected until the Ferguson murder when Piedmont Police Chief Burton F. Becker challenged him and beat him my 13,000 votes. Becker was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but hid behind a "Christian morality" platform of cleaning up problems related to "liquor and dope." Barnet was known to be vocally supportive of many so-called vices including drinking, gambling and prostitution. Upon taking office, Becker appointment fellow Klansmen as undersheriff and county jailer. In 1930, Becker was investigated and charged on corruption charges by Earl Warren and sent to San Quentin Prison. Ironically, he was accused of taking bribes from bootleggers and slot-machine operators.

Sources: Oakland Tribune, Wikipedia,  Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren by Ed Cray, Ancestry.com, Bancroft Library, San Mateo Times

Professor Diogenes Angelakos (1919-1997): Survived Unabomber attack

Diogenes Angelakos (Photoson left by Peg Skorpinski-; photo of right by Michael Colbruno)

Diogenes Angelakos, was a professor emeritus of electronic engineering at the University of California at Berkeley who survived an attack by the Unabomber. Angelakos was recognized one of world's foremost experts on the complex nature of the scattering of electromagnetic waves, microwaves and antennas.

He served as director of the Electronics Research Laboratory at Berkeley from 1964 to 1985 and was credited with building the small departmental research group into one of the university's largest research laboratories, with a yearly budget of some $35 million. 

On the morning of July 2, 1982 while lounging in a room near his laboratory he noticed an oddly shaped silver cylinder that looked like a turpentine can, studded with gauges and dials. After grabbing the handle a pipe bomb placed inside the cylinder exploded, sending shrapnel through his right hand and into his face. His injuries required surgery to repair the tendons in his hand and he retained permanent powder burns on his fingers as a reminder of the explosion. He avoided more serious injuries, or even death, when a gasoline component of the bomb failed to ignite. 

Ted Kaczynski while a UC Berkeley professor (left) and during his arrest (right)

The bomb was later determined by Federal law-enforcement officials to have been designed by Theodore Kaczynski, the serial bomber known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski engaged in a nationwide bombing campaign against people involved with modern technology, planting or mailing numerous homemade bombs, ultimately killing a total of three people and injuring 23 others. He also is known for his wide-ranging social critiques, which opposed industrialization and modern technology while advancing a nature-centered form of anarchism.

Dr. Angelakos's life was touched by the Unabomber's violence again three years later when a 26-year-old Berkeley graduate student, Air Force Captain John Hauser, was badly maimed by another bomb left in his laboratory's building. Angelakos, who was working nearby at the time, was one of the first on the scene after the explosion. Hauser lost the use of his right hand and arm and his sight in his left eye.

In an 1993 interview with The New York Times, he said he blamed injuries he received in the bombing for robbing him of precious time with his wife, Helen, who died of cancer shortly after the explosion. He died of prostate cancer 15 years after the attack.



Sources: NY Times, Univ of California Berkeley, Wikipedia

Evan Williams (1845-1901); Mining/Banking magnate & Nevada politician

Senator Evan Williams (Univ. of Nevada-Reno archives)

 PLOT 6 Family Mausoleum

Evan Williams was a Nevada political leader and prominent figure in Nevada mining and milling for 35 years.

Born in Wales and came to Nevada as a young man where he opened a butcher shop. He married Dora Foster in Virginia City, Nevada in 1868 and they had three children, Mabel, Enid and Evan Jr.

He worked as an accountant at the Crown Point Gold & Silver Mining Company. Superintendent of the Mexican Mill, Superintendent of the Nevada Mill & Mining Company and President of the Bullion Exchange Bank in Carson, Nevada.

The Bullion & Exchange Bank acted as a clearing house for other banks in Nevada for bullion, coin, scrip, drafts, checks, bills of exchange and other valuables. Williams was embroiled in a major investigation when a shortage of $60,000 in mining money was discovered. The Bullion Bank was accused of secretly depositing bars of bullion stolen from the shareholders of mines in the Comstock Lode.

Williams Family Mausoleum at Plot 6

He was  business partners with United States Senator John Percival "J.P." Jones (Republican- NV) in the Comstock Mill & Mining Company. Williams later sued Jones over a series of business transactions. 

He was elected to the Nevada State Senate in 1885 and in 1889 became the body's President pro Tempore. He served until 1891. His name was bandied about in 1889 to be a candidate for Governor, but he declined to run.

He died in San Francisco while being treated for cancer.

Make sure to read my posts on Nevada Governors C.C. Stevenson and Henry Blasdel, both of whom are buried at Mountain View Cemetery.

His daughter Enid was an accomplished pianist, who was killed in a stage coach accident at age 31. She was vacationing in Blairsden, Nevada with her mother when the horses of her coach were frightened, hurling her from the coach onto the rocky roadway where she fractured her skull. She is also buried in the family mausoleum. 

SOURCES: University of Nevada-Reno archives; Reno Evening Gazette; Journal of Nevada Senate; Engineering and Mining Journal; The San Francisco Call; Ancestry.com

Edward Tompkins (1815–1872): Attorney, UC Regent, State Senator

UC Regent & Senator Edward Tompkins (photo on left by Michael Colbruno)

PLOT 9

Edward Tompkins was an attorney, University of California Regent and State Senator.

Tompkins was born in 1815 in rural Paris Hill, New York. Tompkins enrolled in Union University in Schenectady, NY in 1831 and joined the Sigma-Phi Society. Tompkins graduated, earned a law degree at Hamilton College, and practiced law in New York City and later Binghamton, NY as a partner to Daniel S. Dickinson. Tompkins married a Quaker woman, Mary Cook, from Bridgeport, Connecticut. She died several years later.

Tompkins moved to San Francisco, California in 1859. Standing atop Telegraph Hill, he looked around at the beautiful panorama and declared, "This shall be my home!"  He soon found employment at the law firm of Halleck, Peacy & Billings, before being a co-partner with the firm Havens & Belknap. He later formed his own firm with his son.

In 1861, Tompkins married Sarah Haight, the half-sister of future California Governor Henry Huntly Haight.  She was twenty years younger than Tompkins's. They built a home on the banks of Lake Merritt in Oakland. 

In 1868, he purchased what became the Dunsmuir Estate in Oakland. The property was once part of one the largest land grants in California, issued to Luis Maria Peralta. When Tompkins died in 1872 he left the estate to his son, Gilbert Tompkins, an editor of the San Leandro Reporter.  Josephine Wallace (Alexander Dunsmuir's future wife) was a cousin of the Tompkins family and often visited the estate as a child.

Tompkins was elected in 1869 to represent Alameda County in the California State Senate and became Chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee. In 1870 Tompkins, a self-described Constitutional Democrat, spoke in favor of ratification of the 15th Amendment and voted against a California Senate resolution opposing California's proposed ratification. The Fifteenth Amendment  to the United States Constitution prohibited the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

He is remembered today for endowing the Louis Agassiz Chair for Oriental Languages and Literature at the University of California where he had been elected to the board of regents. As a state senator Tompkins argued for the creation of the University of California as recommended by the previous governor, Frederick Low. The charter creating the university (then only an agricultural school) passed on March 23, 1868 and Tompkins was elected to a four-year term on the Board of Regents of the University of California later that same year.

Tompkins endowed the school's chair on September 18, 1872 only months before he died. His initial gift of 47 acres of land, which sold for $50,000 ($984,306 in 2015), was evaluated on June 30, 2008 at more than $5,700,000. Abraham Lincoln established the first University of California endowment when he signed the Morrill Act on July 2, 1862, thereby establishing the land-grant colleges and universities—including the University of California.

Tompkins said that he felt "deeply the humiliation" of seeing Asian students go to the East Coast "in search of that intellectual hospitality that we are not yet enlightened enough to extend to them. Tompkins's interest in Oriental studies grew out of his anticipation of expanded trans-Pacific commerce.

Upon Tompkins's death, his position on the board of regents was filled by his brother-in-law, former Governor H.H. Haight. Some of Tompkins's letters are archived with papers of his relatives at Bancroft Library.

Tompkins also had a role in the creation of Mountain View Cemetery. Along with Rev. Isaac Brayton and  businessman Peter Thompson, Tompkns had acquired ownership and responsibility for Oakland Cemetery, which was located near Lake Merritt. Brayton owned land well out of town, which he believed to be a perfect place for new cemetery.  The three men turned to Samuel Merritt, who lived on Madison  Street, just a few blocks south of Oakland Cemetery.  On December 26, 1863, Merritt called  a pair of meetings that led to Brayton's property becoming Mountain View Cemetery.

Sources: Wikipedia, University of California at Berkeley archives (Bancroft Library), Historic American Landscapes Survey of the National Park Service, History of Alameda County: Volume 2.

Louis Thors (1841-1910): Famous San Francisco Photographer

Louis Thors (from Oakland Tribune); Gravesite photo by Michael Colbruno

PLOT 26, LOT 162 
Buried 

Louis Thors was one of the most famous photographers at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. He is one of many prominent photographers buried at Mountain View Cemetery, including daguerreotpists George Dornin and William Shew, bas-relief specialist Isaiah Taber and Edgar Cohen, who documented much of the 1906 earthquake. He also took one of the most famous pictures of fellow Mountain View Cemetery denizen, Ina Coolbrith, California's first Poet Laureate.

Thors was born in Amsterdam, Holland in 1845. He claimed to be of both French descent and a descendant of Dutch Golden Age painter Gerrit Lundens. He studied engineering, draughtsmanship, and cartography in France and served as a Merchant Marine.

After his family suffered a financial crisis in 1866 he decided to come to California a few years later. After dabbling in real estate and renching, he landed work as a retoucher with the aforementioned Isaiah Taber in 1872-73. He later worked for Thomas Houseworth's studio in 1874, and Bradley and Rulofson Photography in 1875-78, the major photographic studios in the city at the time. He set up the Thors Photographic Company in San Francisco at 1025 Larkin Street, where it operated from 1880-89. His studio later moved to 14 Grant Street and eventually to the Phelan Building on Market Street.

Composer Amy Beach (left) who he photographed on her visit to San Francisco in 1878;  Ina Coolbrith in 1871 (right)

His first wife Katherine "Katie" worked at his studio until her death in 1889 from complications related to neck surgery. He later married Gertrude Thors, who was a noted photographer in her own right.

His studio in the Phelan Building, which included 12 "apartments," was considered one of the most beautiful offices in the city, prompting the San Francisco Call (August 17, 1898) to write:

"The apartments, specially built after original designs by Mr. Thors, are perhaps the most complete and the most elaborate this side of the Rockies, or, in fact, In the entire country- Everything from the magnificent reception room down to the minutest detail of the adjoining rooms is perfect and far and beyond the Slightest fault.  On the lower or main floor of the new gallery are situated the reception room, directly connected with the street below by a special elevator erected for the purpose; five dressing rooms, each provided with every facility for which It has been designed; two dark rooms, an office, an artist's room, a finishing room, a fire proof negative vault in which are stored over 120,000 negatives, and a retouching room. All of these apartments are spacious, and contain every requirement for perfect work. The reception room is probably the most elaborate of its kind ever designed. It is over a hundred feet square, twenty feet high, with an artstained glass dome directly in the center over twenty feet in diameter. The decorations consist of a magnificent contrast of Egyptian red and black, the wall frescoing being of the former tint, and the heavy woodwork of the latter. On the upper floor are situated the print or fixing room, a tone room, a silver room, a special room for producing enlargements, and the main printing room, which extends a distance of thirty-eight feet, being covered overhead entirely of glass."

Thors became well known for using the Nadar process, which was an application of photogravure to portraiture in photography and is noted for its softness and tone. Thors was awarded the bronze prize at the Paris Exhibition in 1889 for mastering this technique. He became particularly noted for his photographs of women and specifically famous actresses of the day. He was known for viewing an actresses performance before shooting her portrait and prohibited the use of makeup. He was highly sought after by the elite ladies of high society to sit for their portraits.

Photos of Nance O'Neil, W.H. Carlton and Lulu Glaser by Louis Thors

He was elected Vice-President of Benjamin Falk's Copyright League, the national lobbying organization on behalf of photographers' property rights, and in 1904 was elected president of the California Professional Photographers Association.

After the devastating earthquake of 1906, Thors left the city and worked in St. Louis for two years as a traveling salesman in the western United States for the Artura Paper Company before returning to California in 1908. He reopened his studio but died of cancer two years later. He was buried in the Plot 26 at Mountain View Cemetery, which he bought for his first wife Katie.

Sources: Sacramento Daily Union, San Francisco Call, California Historical Society, University of New Hampshire archives, Oakland Tribune.