The current exhibit at the Kelley House Museum, “Northern Pomo: Mendocino’s First People,” explores the history and rich culture of the local Indigenous people through the oral traditions passed down through generations and with stories still told by tribal elders. Before they were credible sources of their own history, much that was known about it was pieced together by anthropologists and archaeologists who learned about it [...]
While the Mendocino Coast has seen many shipwrecks along its shores, and enjoyed salvaging the cargo that washed up, the sinking of the “SS Dorothy Wintermote” in September of 1938 stands out in the memories of the locals. A veteran of Pacific coastal service, with more than 15 years of traffic on her record, the steamer was carrying a cargo of large appliances, gas cylinders, pharmacy [...]
The Kelley House Museum loves a good history mystery, and recently we had a query about a redwood sculpture named “Kelley’s Girl.” The correspondent said all he knew was that his parents had purchased the statue in Mendocino in the early 1970s. Did Kelley’s Girl have something to do with Mendocino’s Kelley family, or did the museum have other information about it? At first, no one [...]
Nannie Escola, c. 1970. Courtesy of the Kelley House Museum. When the Kelley House Museum was founded 50 years ago, retired teacher Nannie Escola was a self-styled historian who became part of the organization. Directors Dorothy Bear and Beth Stebbins found her a valuable fount of knowledge about Mendocino. Her reputation preceded her: people had been getting answers to their questions from Nannie for [...]
Nannie Escola was a beloved school teacher in the community who was one of the local founding historians aiding the Kelley House Museum when it was created 50 years ago. The woman loved to read the Mendocino Beacon, then excerpt and index topics she was interested in. One of the topics she loved was railroads, and here are some of her tidbits from 10/6/1877 to 12/10/1938. [...]
Because the Kelley House is celebrating 50 years of preserving coastal history, we recently looked at the first item that was “saved” by the founders, Dorothy Bear and Beth Stebbins. The Great Register of 1894 is a reproduced copy of the official voters in Mendocino County at that time. A potential voter provided the following information: name, age, height, color of complexion, hair color, eye color, [...]
Nannie Escola, one of the first chroniclers of Mendocino coast lore, left the Kelley House notebooks full of newspaper clippings and her handwritten notes about local happenings. What follows are some tidbits of interest about Comptche, 12 miles inland, gleaned from those three-ring binders. In the fall of 1884, Newman E. Hoak showed off a gloria mundi apple weighing 29 oz. and a pippin weighing 18 [...]
Did you know that Mendocino City went “dry” ten years before the rest of the USA? In the summer of 1909, the voters (men) of Mendocino decided to eliminate the sale of liquor. It can be said that Mendocino was a small town with a large drinking problem, and the number of voices speaking against the evils of alcohol had increased. While this decision made temperance [...]
Photo: Courtesy of Robert Dominy When Alvin Mendosa’s long-time friend, Buddy Fraser, passed away in 2018, Alvin received a copy of Buddy’s memoir of town life during World War II. Alvin recognized a little gem when he saw it, and he showed it to the curator at the Kelley House Museum. A few years passed before the document could be published, but recently it [...]
To the average browser looking at a shelf of used books on Western Americana at Grassroots Books in Reno it wasn’t much. A weathered old publication called California Journal of Mines and Geology, Volume 49, October 1953 caught my eye because it featured an article by J.C. O’Brien titled “Mines and Mineral Resources of Mendocino County.” For $3.99 I got 50 pages of information on our [...]