January 13, 1908 - Tragedy struck the Kent family on their 270-acre ranch in Little River. About 6am, 16-year-old Ralph Kent, second oldest son of rancher Nathaniel W. Kent, went into the family barn to complete his morning chores. A few minutes later, his father found Ralph unconscious on the barn floor, due to an electrical shock. A transformer on a nearby pole had malfunctioned, causing [...]
This article was originally published in the Mendocino Beacon on September 11, 1975. We reprint it here to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kelley House. To catch up on a few of the daily events in the life of Kelley House, the recent past has brought numbers of interesting and thoughtful donations. Where to begin? Artist Frank Wight, of Hayward, designed a bookplate for the [...]
Elevated view of Mendocino buildings and the intersection of Lansing and Albion Streets, looking northeast. This photo was likely taken from the water tower at the Kelley House between 1912 and 1922. The barn-like building on the far left, located on the northwest corner of the intersection, is the livery stable built by William H. Kelley, later owned by Switzer & Boyd, then by Boyd & [...]
Studio Portrait of Edith Nichols Heeser, c. 1905. In 1948, Auggie Heeser married for the first time at the age of 71. His bride was his childhood sweetheart Edith Nichols. She was 65. They had grown up across Albion Street from each other; she lived in the apartments above her father’s Jarvis & Nichols store (today’s Gallery Bookshop), and his family lived in the Heeser House. [...]
January 1, 1938 - Grace Maxwell became the bride of Emil LaVerne “Buck” Haglund at her mother’s home on Kasten Street. Grace was the daughter of Elsie (Tobin) Maxwell and the late Perley Maxwell, a well-known Mendocino building contractor and photographer. High School friends posing in a car at Camp E - Boyle's Camp on July 4, 1930. L - R: Albert Lemos, Merna Brown, [...]
December 30, 1887 - Rev. J. P. Rich of the Mendocino Presbyterian Church officiated at the funeral of church member Christina Perry. Christina had died the day before at the Howard Street home of her stepson Ira after a months-long illness. She was 78. Following the funeral, which was held at the Perry house, she was buried in Evergreen Cemetery. Christina was born in Pennsylvania, [...]
These two images, taken 66 years apart, look west down Albion Street in Mendocino. Albion Street, 1957. Photo by Robert Duke. (Gift of Bette Duke) Albion Street, 2023. Photo by Robert Dominy. In the foreground on the right side of both photos is a unique apple shed designed and built in the 1860s by Erick Albertson, architect and builder of Mendocino’s Masonic [...]
Beth Stebbins and Dorothy Bear, with "Kelley" the cat, 1979. Photo by Ray Brooks. This article was originally published in the Mendocino Beacon on July 31, 1975. We reprint it here to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kelley House. Once it was known as the Kelley Farm. There was no Albion Street—that was just part of the farm. When it received the house, [...]
December 17, 1930 - Fire destroyed the laboratory in Dr. C. V. Whited’s dental office, located on the north side of Main Street in the building that currently houses the Mendocino Chocolate Company. Flames erupted around 2 pm, while no one was inside the building. The dentist had been working in his office earlier in the afternoon, but had stepped across the street to the fire [...]
Johnny Granskog scraping paint off the Kelley House in 1975. (Photographer: Michael MacDonald) Many of the people who had a hand in the restoration of the Kelley House 50 years ago are no longer with us. However, some were barely out of their teens when they got involved in sanding, scraping, stripping, and clipping, and they are still around. They have wonderful stories about [...]