The Kelley House Museum in Mendocino is pleased to announce the publication of its latest book, Look Tin Eli – The Mendocino-Born Visionary Who Helped Shape the Chinese-American Experience.  With almost fifty historic images, the 114-page publication is the first to present a comprehensive life history of the innovative Look Tin Eli (LTE). Bringing together Look family memorabilia, government documents and extensive research, authors Jane Tillis and Robert Becker have told a remarkable story. As a teenager returning home from learn more…

The Kelleys were in the town of Mendocino at its founding in 1852. And over these last many years, we thought we had come to know a lot about them.  However, new research has shed more light on the interesting lives of this pioneer family. Using internet search capabilities not available to earlier scholars, coupled with fresh materials recently brought to the Kelley House Museum from family descendants, volunteer Carol Dominy and curator Karen McGrath have assembled information that expands learn more…

This week we celebrate the bicentennial of William Henry Kelley’s birth. And who is this W. H. Kelley? That is a question many people visiting the Kelley House Museum want answered when they walk through the door. He was a remarkable man, and his tale is worth telling. William Kelley was born at Morell, Prince Edward Island, Canada, November 2nd, 1821, to Peter and Elizabeth (Webster) Kelley. As the oldest in a family of eight, he began his working life learn more…

The Kelley House Museum could use your help in identifying this group of intriguing women. As the original paper matt frame indicates, the photograph was taken by the Fitch and King photography studio in Fort Bragg. We estimate the date between 1904 to 1914. Could this be your great grandmother and her friends? Why are they gathered together at the studio? How are they related? Please contact Karen McGrath at curator@kelleyhousemuseum.org with any clues you might have.

William Wetherbee Gibbs, whose nickname was “Sam Slick,” operated a saloon out of the front of his Main Street home in the 1870s. Originally, built about 1866, Sam Slick’s Saloon was located just west of the Mendocino Hotel, in the space now occupied by its restaurant. When Mr. Gibbs died, his widow, Petta Van Treat, leased the saloon in 1883 to Jacob Hanson, who named it the Buffalo Saloon. In his advertisements, he invited his friends and the general public learn more…

The Kelley House Museum is on the lookout for a local stamp collector who can help them evaluate three albums of First Day Stamp Covers. An inquiring mind might ask, “What is a First Day Cover?”  With the debut of new U.S. postage stamp designs, people can, for one single day, go to a post office and buy an envelope and on it would be the new stamp cancelled (postmarked) with the day’s date. Some enthusiasts never missed the issuing learn more…