Yeah, there’s a dead body on display at the fairgrounds. What’s the big deal?
Visitors to the 1985 Sonoma County Fair found a tent at the far end of the midway announcing a “World of Wonders” exhibit. Admission was a buck.
Inside were cages and stalls with deformed or otherwise unusual looking animals. According to the Press Democrat the menagerie included a hundred lb. water rat (which was probably a capybara), a “five-legged cow, a steer with two noses, a five-legged lamb, a ‘punk rock’ goat and a ‘headless’ chicken.”
In the center of that barnyard freak show was a coffin. Through the plexiglass top you could see the body of an adult man. His skin was leathery and the color of mahogany with sparse hair and beard. A loincloth covered his hips.
Propped against the side of the coffin was a sign: “He is real. Count Demonicus: preserved and petrified by arsenic solution.” The July 31 edition of the PD ran a photo of the coffin with the remains faintly visible.
But wouldn’t you know it, some killjoy didn’t think it was appropriate to have a dead guy laying on the straw covered dirt just a few steps away from the barn with the 4-H bunnies. The cops were called.
Coroner Investigator Tom Siebe thought it was probably fake and told the PD “Yeah, it looks pretty good. But under plastic, things can be deceptive.” To check on it, the county took possession of the body for an x-ray. It was real.
Yet Siebe planned to give it back to the exhibitor. “It’s nothing serious,” he said to the PD. “Our interest is not to go down and confiscate and arrest, but to make sure he complies with the laws as a legitimate businessman who more than likely is ignorant of minor infractions.” Apparently in California you can get permits from the state Department of Public Health to have human remains. Fun to know!
So did Mr. World of Wonders have said permits? Uhhh…no. Wasn’t aware he needed them. For nine years he and Count Demonicus had appeared at carnivals and fairs around the country without a complaint. The previous year they were even at the Sonoma County Fair followed by a Halloween show at Knotts Berry Farm. Never were they hassled by state inspectors when crossing state lines. When questioned about what was in the back of the truck they replied honestly, “oh, just a dead body.” While on the road, exhibitor John Strong used to sleep on top the coffin although he admits today it “kind of scared me.”
Without the paperwork the county wasn’t giving Strong his mummy back. Nobody knew what to do. It was unclear where it originally came from (more about that in a minute) but it certainly wasn’t anyone from Sonoma County and was thought to be about a century old, so no plans for an inquest were mentioned. Strong consulted his Southern California attorney to no avail and tried to negotiate with Siebe that it wasn’t an entire human body. “I told him the mummy was missing a toe. A rat bit off, but that didn’t matter.”
This happened during a sloooooow news cycle (top story: Bump removed from Reagan’s nose) and the UPI wire service caught wind of the doings in Santa Rosa. But instead of the Copy Desk doing its customary rewrite of the Press Democrat’s coverage, it appears they assigned the work to an intern with a yen for creative writing. What appeared in dozens of newspapers nationwide had numerous inventions to make the story more ghoulish.
The syndicate claimed the sheriff had the coffin and body padlocked in a holding cell (what, so the corpse can’t escape?) when it was actually laying in the hallway outside the coroner’s office. Instead of being an estimated 100 years old, UPI wrote that it was about 200 and from Central Europe “but not Transylvania.”
An extended version of that piece offered a paragraph of John Strong making glib quips about losing his star attraction: “He’s the best employee I’ve ever had…he never gave me any back talk and people liked him. You never had to pay him. He always showed up for work on time and never complained like some people do. You know, he’s not like somebody else you can just train.” (Contrary to that, the PD reported he was deeply saddened; “the loss of the mummy is as much sentimental as financial for him.”)
The mutant zoo remained at the fair until it closed. Strong was bitter the “Believe it or Not!” Museum in San Francisco could exhibit shrunken heads but he couldn’t get a permit to let the public gander at an entire corpse (well, at least a nine-toed one). Wasn’t World of Wonders like a museum? He worried his best option might be to donate the body to a university for a tax write-off. But nothing was resolved; the next venue on the carnival circuit beckoned so he left town Demonicusless.
Siebe told the PD he would give Strong a few weeks to see if he could work out the legal problems, but thought the county would probably end up giving the Count a “Christian burial.” In the meantime, Demonicus was moved from the office corridor to the sheriff’s evidence locker at Los Guilucos.
So where did John Strong get the body? Whose was it, and how and when did he die? Straightforward answers were not available; there was no paperwork and what appeared in the paper was mostly hearsay, two or three generations removed.
When he purchased the body and coffin Strong was told it was a man named Jim, an Illinois mortician’s assistant who died in the late 1800s. Since Jim had no family to pay for burial his boss embalmed the body, which then remained at the funeral home for most of a century because.
That doesn’t ring true. Every county in the nation has a Potter’s Field for burying the indigent at public expense; funeral parlors don’t normally keep bodies around like unclaimed luggage. This story also sounds suspiciously like a rehash of what famously happened earlier to outlaw Elmer McCurdy, whose arsenic-preserved remains were put on display by the undertaker who charged admission to see it.
The first post-mortuary sighting of Demonicus dates to April 1972. Texas-based Magus Films – brief history here – mainly produced and repackaged X rated movies such as “Sexual Fantasies U.S.A.” (IN COLOR!) for drive-in and grindhouse theaters, but they also booked horror triple features with the coffin on display near the popcorn popper. A pair of men dressed as monks attended on either side and handed out “anti hex” tokens to ward off evil. The show appeared for several months throughout the South and Midwest.
“Festival of the Undead” ad from the El Paso Times, April 18 1972
Following the horror movie tour Demonicus was in the hands of one of the original Magus partners who ditched showbiz to enter politics, winning election to the Nevada Assembly in 1974. Strong says the politician was using the coffin as a coffee table in a living room.
(Attempts to contact the man presumed to be the Assemblyman were unsuccessful.)
The next chapter in Jim Demonicus’ afterlife began in 1976, when a classified offering a “genuine mummy for sale” appeared in the trade mag “Amusement Business.” John Strong replied and bought the exhibit for $5,500. It was actually sold to his mother, as John was only 17 or 18 years old and had just graduated from high school. (Embalmed bodies are so much more practical than a Starbucks gift card.)
There needs to be a book or biopic about the remarkable Strong family. John is more properly John III as a third generation John Strong, all performers. His grandfather was a vaudeville juggler. John’s mother was a much-respected animal trainer and his dad founded “Big John Strong’s Circus,” which played Santa Rosa almost every year in the 1960s and early 1970s.
For their kids it was a storybook childhood, actively performing soon after they could walk. John’s sister was riding a baby elephant from age four while he was learning fire eating and sword swallowing. He could do a handstand on a single finger. When he was only eleven he began collecting oddities to create a sideshow for the family circus starting with a two-headed calf, which he bought with money from selling cotton candy.
(RIGHT: John Strong’s first sideshow tent from 1977. Note the two posters and main entrance sign promoting Demonicus. Photo courtesy John Strong)
As the circus traveled around the West he would seek out animals with extra legs, heads, or other body parts to add to his collection – which, of course, would include Demonicus. John continued to add animal novelties (including Quacky, the four-legged duck and “Jimmy the Midget Pickpocketing Horse”), ending up with over 600 exhibits. The show later morphed into an old-timey circus sideshow featuring live performers.
But what became of the Count? Enforcing state laws regarding mummified bodies is pretty unprecedented and the coffin was left to gather dust at the sheriff’s warehouse. Failed efforts were made to treat the odd situation somewhat like a regular coroner’s inquiry, with a forensic anthropologist called in to find out when and why he died.
More than three years after the body was seized, Sonoma County finally made the decision to bury it. On October 7, 1988 it was quietly interred in an unmarked grave at the County Cemetery, which is that flat patch of ground east of the Rural Cemetery and next to Poppy Creek. The name on the death certificate is, “Demonicus AKA Jim AKA John Doe.”
And with that, the tale of Count Jim Demonicus ends…probably. Like any good horror movie, there’s always a chance for a sequel, and here it’s actually found on the death certificate. Under cause of the death it reads: “Investigation pending.”
Undated photo of Count Demonicus exhibit courtesy John Strong
Don’t be scared, but there may be strangers in your house.
Anyone lucky enough to inherit their family’s photo album must have wondered about some of the folks in there. Are there unlabeled Victorian-era portraits where people look as stiff as statues? Maybe there are snapshots from a century ago of relatives posing with seemingly close friends – but could they be distant relations you’d like to know about? There may also be missing persons. Why do none of the photos with great-aunt Tilda include her husband Cornelius?
This is a quick trip through a collection of pictures left by a Santa Rosa family from around the turn of the century. Or rather, it’s about forty images that were donated to the Sonoma County Library, which scanned them and placed them online. Not all of the set is interesting – about half are nameless, rigid-necked Victorians – but some are quite unusual and deserve attention. The final section of this article concerns the more serious question about what could be done to restore information missing from thousands of historical photos in our library’s archive and elsewhere.
The first puzzle is figuring out which family we’re looking at. The library’s descriptions usually mention “William H. Hudson” or “part of a collection of Hudson family photographs” but that’s a weak clue, as there were several unrelated Hudson clans in the North Bay at the time and three included a William H. living in Santa Rosa, St. Helena and Petaluma. A few years ago the Sonoma County Historical Society wrote a piece on this and concluded a Santa Rosa businessman was the right guy.1
But in the library collection three different men are identified as William H. Are their photos mislabeled or were these really the trio who shared the same name? And which one is the businessman we seek? Fortunately, he was vain enough to buy an entry in one of the local history “mug books” so we have an accurate reference of what he looked like, at least in his senior years.2
RIGHT: William Hall Hudson (1855-1927)
That history book offers a detailed bio or you can read a condensed version at his entry on Find a Grave (although it presently uses photos of wrong Williams). Here I’m skipping most of the details except for those that apply to the photographs.
Overlooked was that William and his wife Percie had very private lives. Rarely were they mentioned in any of the local newspapers. Aside from a nice announcement in the paper where he once worked as a printer, their marriage was elsewhere a two-line notice in the Vital Statistic columns. There were no birth announcements for their children, even though she was part of a large and prominent Healdsburg family.
Their quiet profile extended to the family album. There’s no wedding photo, nor baby pictures, nor portraits of their son in Army uniform as he went off to fight in WWI, nor picture of the son with his wife or of their children. (Think about that for a moment: Grandparents without a single photograph of their grandkids?!) I want to assume such images did exist and at some point a family member raided the album, but the Hudson’s seeming desire to live behind closed doors does not lend great confidence.
“Portrait of an unidentified couple with their backs to the camera” (Courtesy Sonoma County Library)
The iconic picture in the library’s Hudson set portrays a man and woman with their backs turned. The Sonoma Historian newsletter printed it in 2010 as a “mystery photo” and it can also be spotted on social media, where it’s usually tagged as being funny. It may indeed be a gag photo; we have no information about it or if the couple is Percie and William.
We can date it to around the late 1880s because of the “Souvenir Studio” credit.3 Photographer Jim Piggott seemed to be a light-hearted fellow who might encourage goofiness; his advertising motto was “A man may have A BAD DISPOSITION Nevertheless he may conceal it by having his photos taken at the Souvenir Studio.”
Also in that period the Hudsons lost a child – the mug book biography stated one of their two kids died in infancy. We can guess that happened in 1886 or 1887 because an item in the May 1886 Democrat noted Percie had returned to Santa Rosa from a long visit in the Midwest with her “little daughter” Ethel. Per the Hudson’s pattern of reclusiveness, there was no death notice, as there had been no birth announcement.4
This photo is likely a “mourning portrait” taken to memorialize Ethel’s passing. Americans in the Victorian era were somewhat more restrained than their Brit cousins in taking creepy post-mortem photographs of their dead and poses similar to this were an alternative. The symbolic objective was to conceal faces of the mourners because they could not bear to be seen, as they were wracked with indescribable grief. (Some were quite artistic, with the eyes and upper face hidden in noir-like shadow or the head sharply turned away from the camera.)
“Portrait of Willam H. Hudson, about 1863” (Courtesy Sonoma County Library)
Seven portraits in the library’s Hudson family collection are supposedly William as a child, but like the adult portraits they appear to be two (or more?) boys; colors of the eyes and hair vary and the ears may jut out (or not). In one bizarre offering the boy’s hair is crudely drawn in along with his eyebrows, which were placed so high on his forehead he could pass for a Vulcan.
Live long and prosper, sketchy Earthboy
Another quirky example of Victoriana can be spotted in the portrait that’s assumed to be William at age six or seven. Notice the curtain is unusually draped behind his right arm and over the corner of the chair. That was a typical trick used to conceal a mother or other adult for what’s now called “hidden mother photography.”
As the Wikipedia page explains, it was difficult to keep small children completely still during the long exposure times required by early cameras, yet the Victorians didn’t want the distraction of including an adult in the picture. Their solution was to hide the mother under a blanket or behind something, such as the curtain seen here. Presumably the mother is clutching the boy’s hidden left hand and chanting, “holdstillholdstillholdstill…”. Hidden mothers were most commonly used while photographing infants, but perhaps William was an unusually squirmy child.
“William H. Hudson and daughter, Santa Rosa, California, about 1900” (Courtesy Sonoma County Library)
The library caption on this image is incorrect, as his only daughter died in infancy. We don’t know who she is, but comparing this man to the portrait in the history mug book shows this is indeed William, and is the only bonafide picture of him in the Hudson family collection.
Today we would call William an entrepreneur, as during most of his adult life he owned and operated different businesses at the same time. Trained as a printer he became the proprietor of hotels in Ukiah and Windsor. His main income came from plants that bottled soda pop and mineral water, which he ran in Mendocino and Southern California before buying the Santa Rosa Bottling Works in 1887.
The girl’s fan advertises “Sassafras Sour” which was probably among the brands of root beer he made under license. Other carbonated soft drinks included “Cresta Blanca” (not the wine), “Ly-nola” (described as a ‘fruit beverage’), “Oyster Cocktail” (stored at room temperature for how long?), “Whistle” (maybe the best name ever for a soda) and “Dr. Swett’s” (maybe the worst).
William upgraded his bottling plant on West Third and the Press Democrat ran little items about new state-of-the-art carbonation machines and such. He expanded his territory and opened a branch store in Occidental before selling the business and retiring in 1924.
“Gold Lion whiskey–perfection–the Old Crow whiskey” (Courtesy Sonoma County Library)
“Dear Dr. Freud; please take a look at this photograph. Seriously, WTF? Sincerely, William, Santa Rosa Ca.” [parody]
This advertisement cabinet card is the oddest artifact in the Hudson collection and, I’ll wager, the champion oddity in the library’s entire photo archive. Nothing is known about it except that the back reads, “‘Compliments of Tom Spencer, Livingston & Co.’ for Gold Lion whiskey, 1234 Deer Run”.
William likely had this because of another of his companies. From 1892 to 1901 he had the largest retail and wholesale liquor store in Santa Rosa, first on Exchange Avenue then moved to lower Fourth St. Yet curiously, he later acted as if it never existed – that long-running business went unmentioned in his history book bio and in the obituaries.
“Mrs. A. H. Bates, Capt. M. V. Bates” (Courtesy Sonoma County Library)
The Hudson album also included a souvenir card from a circus sideshow with Anna and Martin Van Buren Bates, the “tallest couple in the world” according to a blurb printed on the back. The man of “ordinary” height next to them was about six feet tall. The Bates were part of the W. W. Cole circus which played Santa Rosa on October 6, 1880.
It was not uncommon to include such photos in a family album. My own family’s collection had a portrait from about that same time of an adult couple with dwarfism, but no caption explaining who they were or if they were relations. (This caused high anxiety in my cousin when we were kids, as she was slightly shorter than her schoolmates and convinced herself she had stopped growing.)
This keepsake cabinet card and the whiskey ad above make the point the albums weren’t just archives of dead ancestor portraits. They were storybooks. Particularly in the age before radio and TV, the family album was an important source of entertainment – a display of assorted interesting people to talk about. Other identified (and presumably unrelated) portraits connected to the Hudsons included a Petaluma minister and the vice president of the United States under Grover Cleveland.
An album might be pulled from the shelf when relatives or old friends stopped by to visit and the pictures unlocked memories: Perhaps someone would say, “Oh, here’s grandma Gus. Remember how blue were her eyes?” The visitors might chip in with their own stories and for a few nostalgic moments the clock turned back as she was recalled tenderly (or not). And then everyone had a good laugh over the card of the girl with riding crop in her teeth on the next page.
“Unidentified male member of the Hudson family, about 1880” (Courtesy Sonoma County Library)
The photo of this unknown workman is (in my opinion) the most intriguing of the Hudson set. There must be quite a tale behind it; Victorian-American tradition was to wear somber “burial clothes” and pose in the style of formal classical painted portraits. Everyone else in the Hudson album was a model of respectability to be honored for a life well lived.
It’s not just that he’s dressed as a heavy laborer and looks like he’s taking a break from ditch digging. His hands are rough, dirty and he’s holding them in a way to draw attention to them. Having that big cigar clenched in his teeth makes him seem all the more defiant over having to sit for a portrait. “Ya’ nagged me for a damned picture and here it is. Hope yer’ happy.”
Some other unknown portraits from the Hudson collection in the Sonoma County Library
We don’t know the name of our stogie-chompin’ pal, nor do we know when he was photographed. Among the Hudson set there are eighteen others of unknown people from the family or supposedly connected to them. Of the 31,000+ images in the Sonoma County Library Photograph Collection, I imagine there are easily a thousand with one or more unidentified figures. And that’s just for our little slice of heaven – multiply that by all the holdings in university and library archives and posts on social media nationally. A truly staggering number of pictures show people who have no names and likewise no stories.
With a family album like the Hudsons where nearly half of the entries have no-names, the temptation to speculate can be difficult to resist, even for experienced genealogists. That middle-aged couple photographed in Iowa, where the Hudsons lived when William was a child – it must be safe to assume they are his parents, right? Well, no; they could easily be relatives from far-flung branches on the family tree or just friends.
Is there a solution to this identification problem? I believe there is – or at least, a means to ID lots of these mystery people.
It should come as no surprise that late 19th century studio photographers made their real money on selling copies, not taking the picture itself. Customers were sold packs of cabinet cards like the ones seen above to be given away to family and friends (prices ranged around 4/$1.00 and 12/$2.00). This means there could be surviving duplicates of these cards floating around in other online collections. And some of those surely have details about who’s in them.
Much has been written about AI companies scraping the internet for text that could be reused for apps such as ChatGPT. Lesser known is that they also collect image data on the web and reverse image search apps, such as Google Lens, can find other copies of the same portrait. In theory.
For better or worse you can’t do that, but not for any technical reasons. In Google Lens any image search for a person comes with an alert which reads, “results for people are limited”. Experiments using images from the Hudson collection results in no exact matches but plenty of lookalike portraits, almost all from commercial sources such as eBay, Etsy and antique vendors where they are available for purchase. Yet we know Google has indexed the Sonoma County Library pages because it finds the captions from the photos. What’s going on here?
Google and its ilk are justly concerned image search tools can be used to easily violate privacy – there’s no foolproof way to determine whether the picture of someone’s face came from a century-old source or was taken sans permission using a phone five minutes ago. The risk of all manner of wrongdoing is indefensibly high.
But as you can probably imagine, there’s also plenty of complaining on social media that this approach is overbroad. Not only does it restrict legit research such as genealogy, it also can enable crime by helping identity thieves keep themselves concealed.
Unless I’m missing some fine legal hairsplitting, it seems to me the solution to the researcher’s dilemma is to recognize that exact matches for images now in the public domain are fair game. That’s how Google and Internet Archive handle books; currently anything produced before 1929 (the 95 year limit of copyright) is available for full download without restrictions. Similarly, you should be able to find other copies of your ancestor’s Victorian era portrait if Google et. al. know where they are. Or to put it another way, the search engines with this particular information do not have a legitimate reason to hide it from you.
There’s no dispute Google Lens is the 800 lb. gorilla in the world of reverse image search, so this is an issue only that company can solve. Perhaps they should split off (what surely is) the small niche of historic image searching to a different body, such as an academic institution or Ancestry. They could even drop the facial recognition module – ain’t nobody’s going to use a portrait of your g-grandma to catfish lonely men on dating sites.
Linking all the image archives on the internet with simple matching could be an incredibly powerful tool. Historians may discover photos which were described at the time but have been long considered lost; genealogists could find unknown branches of their family. And we even might learn that all the strange business packed into that whisky ad was just symbolism connected to silly rituals performed by a group like the Elks’ club in the day.
1 “Lots of Names, Few Photo IDs” Sonoma Historian 2010 #4, pg. 14-15
2 Honoria Tuomey, History of Sonoma County, California Vol. II, 1926, pg. 548-549
J. K. Piggott’s studio at the corner of Fourth and B street first advertised in 1888 and he sold it a year later, then repurchased it in 1890 before selling it again the next year. So the photo had to be taken 1888-1891 except for a gap between Nov. 1889 and Aug. 1890.
4 Confusing matters further, there was another Santa Rosa girl named Ethel Hudson, born in 1879. She was the daughter of daughter of Henry W. Hudson and on at least one occasion the Democrat confused H. W. Hudson with our W. H. Hudson. It appears there might be a link between those two Hudson families. The mother (Mrs. H. W. Hudson) of 1879 Ethel was part of the Northcutt family. Percie was the aunt of a Miss Lou Northcutt – see reference in sources below. Tracing it further, however, is beyond my genealogical skill set.
All images above from the Sonoma County Library Photograph Collection have been slightly modified, usually to brighten the photo and improve contrast. The entry with Hudson and the girl was flipped horizontally so the text on her fan would be legible
MARRIED. PALMER-HUDSON — In Healdsburg, July 10, 1881, at the residence of the bride’s parents, by Rev. S. A. Taft, Miss Percie Palmer of Healdsburg to Wm. H. Hudson of Ukiah. With the above happy announcement came the largest package of the best-made wedding cake, and we join the many friends in wishing the young couple much joy. The groom is a nephew of T. W. Hudson, Esq., of this city. Arriving in this State a few years ago in his teens, he aided us a few times in printing the Flag; bis course since then has been characterized by enterprise and industry till now, by his own exertiona he has become a partner in a good business in Ukiah, as well as the possessor of one of the fair young ladies of Healdsburg. How many of our young men have made a better record? We congratulate both of the young people and have unbounded confidence in their success and happiness.
– Russian River Flag, July 14 1881
Mrs. W. H. Hudson and little daughter Ethel returned from Columbia, Missouri, where they been visting for some time past. Mrs. Hudson’s niece, Miss Lou Northcut, accompanied them, and will spend the summer with her aunt in this city.
– Daily Democrat, May 14 1886
HEART ATTACK HELD CAUSE OF HUDSON DEATH
Retired Businessman, 71, Drops Dead in Street; Final Rites Thursday
William H. Hudson, 71, for 40 years a resident here and founder of the Santa Rosa Bottling Works, dropped dead in Third street within two blocks of his home yesterday morning while on his way uptown. Heart trouble is blamed for his sudden death, although he is said to have been in good health and is reported to have remarked to members of his family before leaving home how well he was feeling. He was picked up by passersby, who saw him fall near the cannery. Although Coroner Fred Young could not be reached last night, it is probable there will be a formal investigation, the date for which has not been set.
Funeral services will be held Thursday afternoon at 2 o’clock from the Welti chapel on Fourth street, with the Rev. J. Allan Price of the Baptist Church officiating. Burial services will be held in Odd Fellow’s cemetery by Santa Rosa Eagles, of which Hudson member. Hudson was born in Missouri on December 24, 1885 [sic], and when a child went to Iowa and then to Nebraska with his parents, where he learned the printer’s trade. On first coming to California in 1882 he entered the hotel business at Ukiah, later establishing a bottling works in Mendocino.
Five years later he transferred the business to Visalia and in 1887 he moved to Santa Rosa, where resumed business. He retired in 1924 and since that time has not been actively engaged in business. He married Miss Percie Palmer. daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. S. Palmer, Healdsburg pioneers, on June 10, 1881. Clyde V. Hudson is the only surviving son of the two children born to the couple.
Besides his son is survived by two sisters, Mrs. Theodicia Schroder and Mrs. Allie Tolson of Long Beach.
Once upon a time Santa Rosa had a rival village next door named Franklin Town.
Or not.
The often-told story goes something like this: In the early 1850s, before there was a place called Santa Rosa, Oliver Beaulieu founded a village somewhere near the Carrillo adobe. He named it Franklin after his brother. A church was built and there were a handful of businesses (tavern/inn, blacksmith, etc.) plus a like number of houses. In 1853 Julio Carrillo, along with three other men, laid out a street plan about a mile to the west for a town they called Santa Rosa.1 After it was declared the new county seat the following year, the denizens of Franklin began rolling their buildings to Santa Rosa on wheels. By 1855 or so, all of them – including the church – had been moved. There was nary a trace of Franklin left.
Twenty years passed before any of that Franklin history was told, although that’s not particularly surprising. When it faded away there was only a single weekly newspaper in the area (the Sonoma County Journal in Petaluma) and even Santa Rosa was scarcely mentioned in its pages – why waste ink on a defunct settlement? But once local area histories began being written in the mid 1870s, there was always a passage about Franklin. As the years went on those mentions kept getting longer as historians cribbed from their predecessors and tossed in more details. If you added up all the varied claims (transcribed below) there were up to three stores, a couple of taverns, a hotel, a blacksmith or two, the church, a wagon shop and a saddle tree factory.
None of the historians cited where they got their information, and only one could have possibly visited the short-lived Franklin (Robert A. Thompson, who began living near Petaluma in 1852). At the same time, that lack of a firm narrative also lends the story an air of mystery – which is why we’re still talking about it today.
Questions abound: What appeal did Santa Rosa have that Franklin lacked? Why were the residents quick to abandon it? Did Beaulieu actually intend to establish an incorporated town? And what’s the deal with the name “Franklin Town?” That’s just the top of the list.
We know some answers and can make reasonable guesses at others, but there are also blind alleys. Beaulieu supposedly had about half a square mile surveyed, but the map is lost (if it ever existed). He moved to Santa Clara County and years later a lengthy profile appeared in that county’s history book. Subjects paid a good deal of money to get their bio and picture in those “mug books,” so it’s a sure thing it tells his lifestory as he wanted – and it didn’t mention Franklin at all. As for the story it was named in honor of his brother, that didn’t appear until 1880 and came from a non-local historian who cranked out a book for a different county every year.2
Oliver Beaulieu, Oliver Jr., and a woman believed to be his second wife, Elise Pinard Beaulieu c. 1860. Image courtesy Sonoma County Library
Come the 20th century, the story of Franklin became further muddled. One historian said most of the buildings were “small split redwood shanty-style” dumps without doors or windows.3 (Henry Beaver, who had a two-story brick house would like to have a word about that.)
Assumptions about its general location grew fuzzy; one historian placed it a mile east of the Carrillo Adobe. Hunting for clues as to where it was, SSU grad student Kim Diehl chopped through a tangle of deeds with cryptic landmarks such as a “fir red oak” and “where the road formerly crossed the creek.”4
Even rough map identifiers such as the locations of roads aren’t always helpful. Unmarked trails became roads and some of those roads took more than one name over time. The earliest historical description put Franklin at the “junction of the Sonoma road with the Fulkerson lane.” Okay, so it’s an easy assumption that “Sonoma road” is the road to the town of Sonoma – but where was “Fulkerson lane?” Was it the same as the “road to Mark West’s farm?”
Without ranking those historians by their hits and misses, let me just repeat that the internet has brought researchers an age of miracles and wonders. Rare maps are just a click or tap away, and the power to completely search heritage newspapers turns up references where no one would otherwise look. Thus with the aid of the three annotated map segments below, here’s the Executive Summary of Frankin’s location:
Franklin Town was close to the present site of the Flamingo Hotel and Hillside Inn, catty-corner from the Carrillo Adobe and across Santa Rosa Creek. This was near the intersection of three major roads/trails leading east, west, and north. The Sonoma Road is roughly the same as Highway 12. What they called the Bodega Road is now Fourth St. Fulkerson Lane – AKA Russian River Road and Cemetery Lane – is known today as Bryden Lane, which then passed the Rural Cemetery on its way towards the Old Redwood Highway.5
1877 map from Historical atlas map of Sonoma County, California (SOURCE) 1877 map from Historical atlas map of Sonoma County, California (SOURCE)
1866 map from Map Of Sonoma County California (SOURCE) 1866 map from Map Of Sonoma County California (SOURCE)
A high number of cartography errors are obvious, such as the distance between the Sonoma Road and Santa Rosa Creek. But we can still situate the Carrillo adobe with some accuracy. We can narrow down the approximate location of Franklin Town as being consistently described on property later owned by Lucas and Simms. (The Carrillo adobe is represented by the icon and is not pictorially accurate to what it looked like).
The name has a more complex explanation, but one key to the puzzle is that it was referred to as Franklin Town and not simply Franklin. Yes, it’s possible it was in honor of Beaulieu’s brother who had a name which was sort of similar (see fn. 2) but it’s more likely that Beaulieu wasn’t the person who named it. Evidence suggests it was actually called that because of a guy named…Franklin.
A quick refresher in 1850s Sonoma County will be helpful. The area was sparsely populated yet steadily filling up with settlers who were homesteading farms and cattle ranches, but only a lucky few had legal title to their places. Some leased acreage or had other deals with the landowners but most were squatters, possibly unaware who actually owned the land. (Here’s an excellent contemporary summary of the “squatter difficulties” at the time, plus an account of visiting the Carrillo’s at their adobe.) The squatters were in turn scammed and exploited. Charles Justi – who we’ll meet again in a few moments – thought he owned 500 acres near Glen Ellen but ended up with just 40. Violence was not unheard of; a deputy sheriff was killed near Healdsburg and a confrontation at Bodega Bay came close to a shooting war.
All of that meant plenty of ongoing legal doings. And since the county courthouse was then in the town of Sonoma while most of the squatters lived north of there, the Sonoma Road was one very busy thoroughfare. It was a time-consuming trip by buggy or horseback; two hours between (future) Santa Rosa and Sonoma was considered good. Should your land claim be further north – say, near Geyserville – add a couple more hours to that.
Along that entire length of road there were only three places for a traveler to stop – remember: no Santa Rosa yet. Part of the Carrillo adobe was used as a tavern called “Santa Rosa House,” which lasted until sometime in 1853. About three miles further along modern Hwy. 12, near the turnoff for St. Francis Road, was Bear Flag House. Owned by Bear Flagger W. B. Elliott (absolutely no relation to this author) this was a tavern and a very significant place in early county history. Even before official statehood the Democratic party hob-nobbed there to decide how they would administer the county and who was to run for office. Any researcher looking into pre-Civil War politics in Northern California should beeline to learning about what went on there.
But those taverns were just a room in someone’s house and it’s not clear whether Elliott’s was even open most of the time, as he also had a cattle ranch near Mark West. Until he reached the town of Sonoma, the only chance for our weary traveler to rest came when he reached Half-Way House, about two miles south of today’s Kenwood.6 Here was an actual hotel where you could stay the night, have a hot meal and likely a hot bath. It would soon be a main stagecoach stop, in part because there was a barn where the drivers would board horses.
The owner and operator of Half-Way House was William F. Franklin.
Is he the Franklin in Franklin Town? The strongest evidence comes from a primary source: His son, William Jr., who lived here at the time and returned for a visit in 1925, when he gave an interview to the Press Democrat. He was adamant it was named after his dad.7
While Franklin Town and Half-Way House were a few miles apart, it’s easy to see how there could have been a connection. William Franklin was well known because of the hotel and in the 19th c. unincorporated spaces often became associated with the name of an early settler. Many are still in use today: Dillon Beach, Eldridge, Schellville, Marshall, Stewarts Point, etc.
Nor was there much distinction in the early 1850s between (what we call today) the Valley of the Moon and Santa Rosa Valley. The countryside all looked about the same and was used the same – a patchwork of small family operations aimed at producing things to feed San Francisco. Given that Franklin’s hotel was a rare landmark, it’s not completely surprising people might have associated a swath of eastern and central Sonoma County as being an unofficial district known as Franklin.
That would go far to explain why the earliest references to the settlement were Franklin Town and not just simply Franklin – it’s the same way we use today “the town of Sonoma” or “Sonoma City” to distinguish it from the overall county.
Pondering what they called the village in those days is like a parlor game; it’s fun, but really doesn’t mean much. The question of why Franklin Town was abandoned isn’t so trivial, in major part because generations of historians have mused it offered serious competition to Santa Rosa emerging as the dominant community in the area. One historian even went so far as to (irresponsibly) suggest there was an untold “Dark Tale of a Lost City.”
Yes, the residents of Franklin Town did migrate to Santa Rosa, but it wasn’t because the Franklinites were seeking the ceaseless joy of living near the jail and courthouse. Santa Rosa’s gravitational pull began even before the vote to make it the county seat. There were a combination of factors why it happened; Santa Rosa did have features that made it a more desirable place to live, while at the same time Franklin Town began facing setbacks that made it harder to remain there.
We credit the founding of Santa Rosa to Julio Carrillo and three ambitious shopkeepers turned real estate developers. True enough, but Franklin Town couldn’t compete because it had nearly reached its limits for growth – the area where Beaulieu and others expected Franklin Town to grow was prone to flooding.
In her last will, Doña María Carrillo referred to the land above Santa Rosa Creek as “the swamp.” Sold to Beaulieu after her death, he in turn sold it to John Lucas.8 When Lucas died and the farm was subdivided and sold off years later, an overview printed in the Democrat described more than half as “bottom land.” The crossroads may have stayed reasonably dry but more at risk was the section around today’s Proctor Terrace. Concerns about its flooding can be found when the deal was made to accept the adjacent Rural Cemetery to be the local graveyard. The citizen’s committee top concern for that specific location was “not subject to overflow in time of high water.”
The year 1853 was pivotal in the conflicting futures of Santa Rosa and Franklin Town. In the latter’s favor the church was built (the first one in the area) and the nearby trading post at the old Carrillo adobe was busier than ever. Over in Santa Rosa, Carrillo and the other three began laying out streets for their possible future town.
There are no local newspapers from that year, so we don’t get to eavesdrop on the arguments being made for one location over the other. But we do know the winter of 1852-1853 had been extremely wet (according to San Francisco weather stations), with Nov-Dec setting close to the all-time record. If the swamp/bottom land was indeed underwater, that had to influence plans to continue development around Franklin Town.
Meanwhile, Santa Rosa was forging ahead with new construction. In early 1854 a small hotel opened along with a general store. A Masonic Lodge was chartered, which was quite a big deal considering the village only had three houses. (Petaluma wouldn’t establish their Lodge until the following year, despite being far larger with several hundred residents.) Most importantly, Santa Rosa had a livery stable and Franklin Town didn’t. In that horsey age when nearly everyone rented horses and buggies to travel, having a stable nearby gave Santa Rosa a major advantage.9
Few seemed to recognize it at the time, but the scales tipped decisively towards Santa Rosa later in 1854, when the Board of Supervisors made it the county seat. Gentle Reader might assume that would be a net advantage for Franklin Town, as it was now “closer to the action” (as it were). Not so. Traffic on the Sonoma Road dropped sharply. No more squatters en route to the Recorder’s office stopping somewhere to wet their whistle. Gone were plaintiffs heading to court when their horse threw a shoe and needed attention from a blacksmith.
The first to cut his losses was Elliott, owner of the Bear Flag House. The tavern stayed around (it’s shown on the 1866 map) but he and his family resettled in Lake County sometime in 1854. The next major landowner to go was Beaulieu, who moved to San Jose in 1856. That same year the church was taken to Santa Rosa “on wheels and hauled there by six yoke of oxen.”
Sadly, the history books don’t always tell those parts of the story accurately. Instead you’ll find the writers compress the timeline and portray events happening closer to 1854 than they often did. The worst offender was Robert A. Thompson, who offered the first account about Franklin Town and claimed “within the year [1855] all the houses in Franklin were moved to the new county seat.” There was no parade of buildings trundling their way westward; the church and a couple of houses may have been the only structures that were moved and it happened later.
Nor did business and development in Franklin Town abruptly cease. Ads in the Democrat show Henry Beaver continued operating his brickyard there until at least 1858. Sterling T. Coulter (AKA “Squire Coulter”) built a home in 1854, though sometime later he did roll the place to Santa Rosa, where it first stood on Exchange Avenue and then another location for over fifty years – so much for the town being nothing but shacks.10
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THE FORGOTTEN MR. FRANKLIN
William Francis Franklin was born in England in 1817 or 1818. He came to the area from Australia in 1852 and built Half-Way House, although the census and a for-sale ad suggest it was 1851.
William Sr. became a naturalized U.S. citizen at Sonoma in 1858, just a few days after he first advertised to sell the hotel. As he continued efforts to find a buyer, he became secretary of the Sonoma Quicksilver Mining Company which had a mine at Pine Flat near the Geysers. In 1861 the company held monthly meetings at Half-Way House and was eventually sold to New York investors.
When Ann attempted to divorce William in 1869 they were no longer living together. In the 1880s they both became indigents, with him at the Sonoma County Poor Farm and she receiving a county stipend in Petaluma. William found work as some sort of engineer in San Rafael, but died in 1890 as a resident of the Marin County Poor Farm. He is buried in an unmarked grave at the cemetery there while Ann has a proper tombstone at Petaluma’s Cypress Hill.
But the worst shortcoming in those histories was failure to write anything about the village’s (supposed) namesake, William Franklin. Even if the place really was an anglicized version of one of Beaulieu’s many Canadian brothers – which seems like a stretch – Half-Way House was still an important landmark in early county history and deserved a nod.
Half-Way House remained open as the other early settlers moved on, but it wasn’t by choice. Franklin first placed an ad in the Democrat listing it for sale in 1858 and kept running the classified intermittently for years, becoming more desperate (“…will sell the above place VERY CHEAP FOR CASH!”) as time went on.
Apparently William and Ann separated in the mid 1860s, with her continuing to operate the hotel after it was leased to neighbor Charles Justi.11 William still owned it until 1868 when the county auctioned it off because of an unpaid tax bill of $8.18 (less than $200 today).
By then, Franklin Town was certainly gone. Beaulieu sold most of the property ID’d as the village to John Lucas in 1857, although Coulter, Beaver and possibly others still owned parts of the dwindling settlement.
So what should obituaries for Franklin Town say? To my mind there are three takeaways:
It was never a “rival” or in any way a challenger to Santa Rosa’s emergence. As discussed above, the first Santa Rosa area settlers invested in core businesses – store, stable, hotel, etc. No one in early Franklin Town seemed to have such ambitions, perhaps because potential flooding limited opportunities for development.
Aside from the brickyard and the saddle tree maker, Franklin Town’s commerce centered on servicing travelers going to and from the town of Sonoma. It was like a laissez-faire version of a modern highway truck stop – a place where you could knock on a door to buy a quick snack or flagon of cider, have a guy grease your squeaky wagon wheel, visit a proper outhouse. Once Sonoma was no longer the county seat that traffic dried up. After that happened in 1854 those residents and their little businesses drifted away with none to take their place.
The church filled an important social function as a gathering place for settlers all over central Sonoma County, being at such a well-known crossroads. When it moved to Santa Rosa in 1856 Franklin Town lost its final excuse to exist.
Franklin Town came and went quickly; anyone wanting to bookend it can summarize the years 1851-1859 as pretty likely. There were scarcely more than a handful of buildings counting the church. For a settlement so short-lived and tiny it may seem unusual that historians kept its memory alive, but the novelty of moving a “town” makes for a good story.
Perhaps, too, the historians spoke to former residents who can be forgiven for waxing nostalgic about what it was like. Although just a mile or so from where Santa Rosa would claw its way into existence, Franklin Town was still an untamed place. William Franklin’s son told the Press Democrat deer and antelope were then plentiful, and “a few minutes of fishing would suffice to catch a bag full of trout.”
Small though it was, there was also a sense of community. When the Coulters celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1904 the PD printed a notice they hoped the event would be also a reunion with their old friends who remembered Franklin Town:
Fifty years ago on that date in the old Santa Rosa, then known as the town of Franklin, Mr. and Mrs. Coulter were married, and it is hoped that when they celebrate the important occasion the honored pioneers will have the pleasure of having as their guests several of those who were among those present at their wedding day in the old town, in 1854.
2 Although there are easier explanations for the name, among his eleven siblings Oliver had an older brother, François Xavier Beaulieu, b. 1805 Quebec, d. 1875 Detroit, who had no known association with California and was not mentioned by Oliver in the Santa Clara mug book profile. Oliver Beaulieu could neither read nor write according to the 1860 census, which might explain why his name was also spelled as Boulieu, Boleau, Boliew, Boulieu and Bolio
3 Gaye LeBaron et. al., Santa Rosa: A Twentieth Century Town, 1985
4 Kim Diehl, Oliver Beaulieu and the town of Franklin, unpublished, 1999 and 2006 errata
5 Confusing everything further, the city thought it would be a swell idea to rename part of Cemetery Lane to Franklin Avenue in 1893, although it’s nearly a mile away.
6 “Half-Way House” was a common name for a roadhouse at the time. There was another on the road between Santa Rosa and Petaluma, which appears to be the original name for Washoe House between 1859-1861.
7 The timeline in the PD article is confusing because it doesn’t mention his parents separated in the 1860s, with William moving to Santa Rosa and the family going to Glen Ellen.
8 Diehl op. cit. pg. 19
9 As noted here previously, James P. Clark bought Julio Carrillo’s “stall and buggy shed” and turned it into the Fashion Livery Stable – an operation so big it would take up the entire city block where the Roxy movie theater complex is today.
10 Sterling Coulter’s house was moved again in 1872, this time to lower Fourth Street midpoint Wilson and A streets, where it continued to be used until 1925 and was demolished to make room for a new office building.
11 Charles Justi (1806-1885) was the retired captain of the Georgiana, a Sonoma Creek-San Francisco sidewheeler. For reasons unclear, editors had trouble getting his name right; Half-Way House appears on the 1866 map as “Justin’s Hotel,” and the Democrat newspaper took to calling the vicinity as “Justa Station.”
THE CITY OF SANTA ROSA. HISTORICAL SKETCH.
Origin of the Name – What it Contains and How it is Supported.
…In the year 1852 A. Meacham and Barney Hoen had a store at the old adobe. They sold goods and purchased Spanish cattle for the San Francisco market. F. G. Hahman purchased the interest of Meacham and carried on the business at the old adobe. Mr. Meacham had bought of Julio Carrillo seventy acres of land, on a portion of which Santa Rosa stands. In 1853 Hartman, Hahman and Hoen purchased this tract of 70 acres from Meacham for $1,600, and with Carrillo, laid off the town. The line between them ran through C street and the center of the plaza. The firm donated the east half and Carrillo the west half of the plaza to the town. Meanwhile a few houses were built at the junction of the Sonoma road with the Fulkerson lane. This was called the town of Franklin. S. T. Coulter had a store, and Dr. J. P. Boyce was the architect and builder of one of its redwood houses. In the meantime Santa Rosa was growing. Hahman put up a store here, and slowly but surely Franklin town gravitated from its base to Santa Rosa. Among the buildings which changed location was the old Baptist church on Third street, which was the first, and for a long time, the only church in town.
– Sonoma Democrat, January 2 1875
SANTA ROSA–CONDENSED SKETCH OF ITS EARLY HISTORY
In the summer of 1853, the question of the removal of the county seat from the town of Sonoma to a more central locality was agitated. A town was laid off at what was then the junction of the Bodega, Russian river and Sonoma roads, just where the cemetery lane unites with the Sonoma road, near the eastern boundary of the city. Dr. J. F. Boyce and S. G. Clark built and opened a store there. Soon after, J. W. Ball built a tavern and a small store. H. Beaver opened a blacksmith shop, C. C. Morehouse, a wagon shop, W. B. Birch, a saddle-tree factory.
In September, 1853, S. T. Coulter and W. H. McClure bought out the business of Boyce and Clark. The same year the Baptist church was built, free for all denominations. Thus early was liberality in religious matters established on the borders of Santa Rosa, and happily it continues down to this day. The only two dwellings were owned by S. T. Coulter and H. Beaver.
Franklin town had now touched the high tide of its prosperity, and was destined to fall before a more promising rival which, up to this time had cut no figure in the possibilities of the future…
– Sonoma Democrat, July 8, 1876
…Early in 1853 J. W. Ball came into the valley; he first located on the Farmer place, on the south side of Santa Rosa Creek. There a number of his family died of small-pox; he then moved over to the Boleau place, where Dr. Simms now lives, and kept there a sort of tavern and store. He bought ten acres of land at the junction of the Russian river, Bodega and Sonoma roads, where the cemetery land now intersects the Sonoma road, and laid off a town there, which was called Franklin-town. S. G. Clark and Dr. Boyce, who had bought out Ball, built and opened a store in Franklin. Ball had a tavern there; H. Beaver a blacksmith shop, and W. B. Birch a saddle-tree factory. In September, 1853, S. T. Coulter and W. H. McClure bought out Boyce & Clark.
The same fall the Baptist church, free to all denominations, was built. For a short time Franklin divided the attention of new comers with Santa Rosa and the “old adobe” [the former Carrillo family home]. The selection of Santa Rosa as the county seat, in the fall of 1854, put an end to rivalry. Within the year following all the houses in Franklin were moved to the new county seat, including the church, which still stands on Third street, between E and D streets. In 1875 it was sold and converted into two tenement houses…
– Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California by Robert A. Thompson, 1877
…In the Spring of 1853, there arrived in the Santa Rosa valley one John W. Ball, who located on the south side of the Santa Rosa creek, but losing several children here from small-pox, which was epidemic in this year, removed to certain land, about three-fourths of a mile from the present city, the property of Oliver Boleau, a French Canadian, a part of whose house (now in the occupation of Dr. Simms) he rented, at one hundred and fifty dollars per month, and opened a small store and public house. The then direct road from the Russian river, the districts to the north of it, and Bodega country, to Sonoma, at that time the only place of export from the county, met at this point, therefore Boleau conceived the idea of here establishing a town. He had about half a mile square surveyed, and named it Franklin, after a brother in Canada; it was placed at the junction of the Sonoma road with the Fulkerson lane. That Spring, S. G. Clark, Dr. J. F. Boyce and Nute McClure bought out Ball and erected a small dry goods store of split redwoods, in size, twenty-four by thirty-six feet, where they continued business until the Fall, when the firm of Clark, Boyce & McClure was bought out by McCluer and Coulter. In the same season John Ball erected a wooden hotel, there being then in town H. Beaver, who kept a blacksmith shop, and W. B. Birch, a saddle-tree manufacturer, while in the early part of 1854 S. T. Coulter erected a dwelling house.
The selection of Santa Rosa as the capital of the county, put an end to all rivalry which may have existed between Franklin, the old adobe, and it. One by one the buildings erected in Franklin were transferred to Santa Rosa, until in 1855 their entire removal was effected; the first house in that short-lived city being now located on Eighth, between Wilson and Davis streets, occupied by J. T. Campbell, while that erected by Coulter is now the Boston saloon, on Fourth street. A Baptist Church, free to all denominations, which had been there constructed in the Fall of 1853, was also moved, and after serving the purpose for which it was originally built, on Third, between E and D streets, was, in 1875, sold and converted into two tenement houses. This was the first church built in the township and city…
– History of Sonoma County by J. P. Munro-Fraser, 1880
…Mr. Meacham had purchased from Julio Carrillo eighty acres of land, just west of the Bolio [Boleau] tract, it being that portion of the present city [Santa Rosa] lying east of the late Plaza. The firm of Hoen & Co., purchased this tract of Mr. Meacham August 9th, 1853 — “Say 70 1/2 acres, opposite Julio Carrillo’s, for the sum of $1,600.” About this time — the Summer of 1853 — it began to be very evident that there was going to be a town somewhere in the neighborhood of the Santa Rosa House [the old Carrillo adobe]. W. P. Ball, a blacksmith, had a shop and small house on the Bolio place. A town was laid out on the land of Bolio, just where what is known as Cemetery lane intersects the Sonoma road.
This was the point of junction of the Sonoma, Bodega and Russian River roads. It was a good town site one would think, and beautifully located. Dr. J. F. Boyce and S. G. Clark built a store there; Ball built another and an inn; H. Beaver started a blacksmith shop; C. Morehouse a wagon shop, and W. B. Brush a saddle-tree factory. The town took the name of Franklin Town — a good name a town of “free men.” But it did not survive. Why, it is difficult now to say. W. H. McClure and S. T. Coulter, present Master of the State Grange of the State of California, bought out Boyce & Clark. The Baptist Church was built. Mr. Coulter and Mr. Beaver had dwellings in Franklin Town. All this was in the year 1853. When the residents of Franklin Town heard of their having a formidable rival close at hand they smiled at the idea…
…A grand joint celebration and electioneering high-jinks feast was held on the 4th of July, 1854, to show up the new town and to get votes for the proposed new seat…After this Fourth of July celebration Franklin Town collapsed; one by one the houses gravitated to Santa Rosa, some on rollers, some on wheels, some otherwise, but all came. The next Spring the purple lockspur and the yellow cupped poppy contended for supremacy on the site fo the hopeful cross-road village of the previous Spring…
– Central Sonoma: A Brief Description of the Township and Town of Santa Rosa, 1884 (SAME AS Resources of Santa Rosa Valley and the Town of Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California by R. A. Thompson, 1884)
OUR OWN HOME
ITS PAST PROSPERITY AND PROMISING FUTURE.
…The next house was built just across the creek from the “old adobe”, on what is now the Dalglish place, by Oliver Bolio. David Mallagh, who married one of the Carrillo girls, kept the first store in the oid adobe. In 1852 he sold out to A. Meacham, who is now residing on Mark West creek, an honored and highly respected pioneer citizen. there was a junction of the Russian River, Bodega and Sonoma roads at the corner of Capt. Grosse’s hop yard, just where the cemetery lane comes into the main road. Quite a cluster of houses gathered about the corners. Bolio, who owned the land, laid out a town there which had the name of Franklin. Dr. J. F. Boyce and S. G. Clark had a store there, and W. B. Brush a saddle tree factory. A good saddle tree maker, in those days, had fortune by the forelock…
– Sonoma Democrat, January 2 1892
RISE AND FALL OF FRANKLIN TOWN.
While Santa Rosa –floral city of the plain–was in early bud, a near-city was growing up–in the night, as it were. Its forefathers called it Franklin Town. Why “Town” and with a big T, has never been told. Only a few of the old guard yet this side of the cemetery gates really remember Franklin Town. As it came, it passed away in the night, or rather, in the morning of its first-day-after.
Its site is just without the present city line on the east, near the reservoir hill. Some day, perhaps, the extension of the boundaries will take in the old place, and then Franklin Town will awake to life–becoming an addition to the Santa Rosa it sought to blight in tender flower. Chiefs of the city in embryo were Dr. J. F. Boyce–venerable “Doc Boyce” who medicined and surgeoned the later Santa Rosans for many a year and eccentric to the point of profanity, which often drove his patients to recover quickly and get him out of the sickroom; also S. T. Coulter — good old “Squire Coulter,” Pioneer Patron of Husbandry, Lord of the Sonoma Grange, and who didn’t believe that the grass and herbs and the trees that bore fruit in their season were first sprouted on the Third Day of Creation, and said even Luther Burbank couldn’t grow things that speedy. Now, deep under the turf these “old forefathers of the hamlet sleep,” and heaven speed their run to the saints.
One feature that shines like a star through this dark Tale of a Lost City, is Franklin Town had a church, then the only church in the county except the Mission Solano at Sonoma. Its faith was Baptist, though all shades of the “two and seventy jarring sects,” as Omar Khayyam phrases them, were welcomed to use that sanctuary for the uplift of any possible sinful citizen of Franklin Town. The willow-bank creek consecrated by Parson Juan Amoroso when he baptized the Indian girl and called her La Rosa — spiritual daughter of Santa Rosa de Lima — splashed and bubbled pure as the Jordan when John came preaching in the wilderness, but it is not positively known that Doc Boyce or Squire Coulter ever availed themselves of the lustral waters flowing by Franklin Town, unless to wash a shirt.
But the finger of doom was writing on the clap-board walls of Franklin Town, Hoen, Hahmann and Hartman — the triple H-builders of Santa Rosa, were housing up C — now Main — street. The diplomatic dads of the coming place got up a Welcome-To-Our-City barbecue, and when the Franklinites saw the hosts of all-invited guests gathering around the Santa Rosa flesh-pots, they also saw the finish of Franklin Town. Soon it was in transit, the Baptist church, on four wheels, led the way like the Ark of the Covenant before the immigrant Israelites herding to the Promised Land, and it afterwards was the pioneer tabernacle, upholding the doctrine of close-communion and total immersion in Santa Rosa, and fitting the aging citizens for another immigration — into Eternity.
– History of Sonoma California by Tom Gregory, 1911:
WILLIAM FRANKLIN AND HALF-WAY HOUSE
HALF WAY HOUSE For Sale.
THE subscriber wishing to leave the State, offers his place, known as the Half Way House between Santa Rosa and Sonoma, for sale. The House is too well known, and too long established to need any recommendation. Apply on the premises, to WILLIAM F. FRANKLIN.
– Sonoma Democrat June 17 1858
Half-Way House For Sale
THE SUBSCRIBER, wishing to leave the State, offers for sale his place, known as the “HALF-WAY HOUSE,” between Santa Rosa and Sonoma. The House has been eight years established, and is too well known to need any recommendation. For particulars, apply premises. W. F. FRANKLIN, Prop’r
– Sonoma Democrat July 21 1859
Fire. —The stable of the Half-way house, W. F. Franklin, proprietor, situated on the road leading from Santa Rosa to Sonoma, was destroyed by fire on Sunday night at eleven o’clock, together with its contents, which consisted of two stage horses belonging to Linihen & Co., proprietors of the Healdsburg and Sonoma line of stages, a horse belonging to a peddler, a quantity of hay and a horse belonging to Mr. Franklin. Through the greatest exertions the hotel was prevented from taking fire. The loss is not less than $1,000. The fire is supposed to be the work of an incendiary.
– Sonoma Democrat, August 8 1861
FOR SALE. FRANKLIN’S HALF-WAY HOUSE!
Situated on the Road from Santa Rosa to Sonoma.
The place is so well known that a lengthy description is deemed unnecessary.
As urgent business calls me to England, I am obliged indispose of my property, and will sell the above place
VERY CHEAP FOR CASH!
W F. FRANKLIN.
All persons indebted to me by note or book account will save expense by settling on or before the 1st December next. W. F. FRANKLIN.
– Sonoma Democrat, October 17 1861
Many of our readers no doubt have observed when passing over the road to Sonoma, from this place, when near the Half-way House, a range of hills lying to the East, and bordering along the Guilicos Rancho, which, with their reddish soil and barren surface do not present a fertile aspect. Well, on these apparently barren hills are to be found a number of enterprising German wine growers, who are busily engaged in cultivating the grape…
– Sonoma Democrat, March 21 1863
Half-Way House. —W. F. Franklin, on the Sonoma Road, keeps a good country hotel. We speak from experience, when we say that Mrs. Franklin, the obliging landlady of that establishment, can prepare as good a meal for the weary traveler, in as short a time, as could be desired by any one.
– Sonoma Democrat, June 10 1865
Against W. F. Franklin and improvements on land bounded Krom [sic: Crone, Kron or Krone] and Williams, east by Napa mountain, south by Warfield, and west by Justi, Sonoma county, California, for taxes $8.18 and costs of suit $16.50.
– Sonoma Democrat legal notice, August 22 1868
Last Sunday, in company with a few friends, we paid a flying visit to the new silver mines on Sonoma mountain. Taking the Sonoma road from Santa Rosa, we drove through the Guilicos Valley to the Half-way House, kept by our old friend Captain Justa…
– Sonoma Democrat, April 10 1869
…[Charles Justi] was captain of the steamer Georgiana, running between San Francisco and Embarcadero in the early fifties, whence he obtained the title Captain. He bought and owned 500 acres of land near Glen Ellen but lost all but 40 acres through litigation and defective titles. For many years the Captain [Justi] and his estimable wife conducted the Half-way house at the old homestead near Glen Ellen, and before the advent of railroads, while the stages were still running to Santa Rosa, did a thriving business.
– Sonoma Valley Expositor, June 9 1899
VISITOR HERE RECALLS DAYS 70 YEARS AGO
Pioneer Tells of Time When Santa Rosa Was Known as Franklin
The earliest history of Santa Rosa, when the village was called Franklin Town, was recalled here yesterday by the visit of William Franklin. Jr., of San Francisco, son of the pioneer after which the first settlement was named.
William Franklin and his wife came to Santa Rosa from Australia in 1852, after having been shipwrecked on the Hawaiian Islands, when his sailing vessel stopped there to secure water. A year was spent in the islands before another vessel could be secured to complete the voyage to California, and during this year the child who came here yesterday, a man of 73, was born.
The elder Franklin settled on the Sonoma-Santa Rosa road, just east of the present city, and with the arrival of others the village of Franklin Town came into being. The subsequent settlement and growth of Santa Rosa finally did away with the old village. Franklin worked for William Hood in his flour mill, first in Rincon Valley, and later in Franklin Town; built one of the first wooden houses in the city on what is now upper Fourth street; and helped build the old Colgan hotel on First street.
The Franklin family later moved to Glen Ellen, residing in the Dunbar district, where William Franklin. Jr., attended school with Nicholas Dunbar, father of Charles O. Dunbar, present mayor of Santa Rosa. John Dunbar, uncle of the mayor, now of San Luis Obispo, and Franklin are the only survivors of the class which Franklin attended, as far as he knows, he said yesterday.
Children of the Dunbar, Box, Justi and Simons families were in the class, as was the late George Guerne and his wife, Eliza Gibson.
Franklin bemoaned the condition of Santa Rosa creek, where, he said, splendid fishing conditions have been destroyed by the dumping of sawdust, tan bark and other debris. In his day, Franklin said, a few minutes of fishing would suffice to catch a bag full of trout. Grizzly bear were then plentiful within a few miles of the city, and deer, antelope and other game could be secured with little difficulty. he said.
– Press Democrat, July 21 1925
PROPERTIES
Another new building of brick will be commenced immediately, weather permitting, by Messrs. Melville Johnson and Jackson Temple, for a law office. It will occupy the site of the old Coulter House, next door south of the bank. This old landmark which long years ago voyaged from Franklin Town to this place, will be removed to a quiet locality more suited to its age and long services. The new building will be 18 feet front by sixty feet deep, one story, divided into three large offices.
– Sonoma Democrat, December 14 1872
Sale of Noted Farm. – The Lucas farm, near Santa Rosa, containing four hundred acres, has been subdivided and sold during this month by Dr. J. R. Sims, acting as agent for the owner. The subdivision nearest the town — within half a mile of the corporation limits containing forty-eight and one-half acres, was purchased by James Seawell, of this place, and Dr. Rupe, of Healdsburg, for $160 per acre. This left two hundred acres of bottom land, fronting on the Sonoma and Cemetery roads, and one hundred acres on the ridge back of the farm. This was sold out in six plats, to suit purchasers, each one taking a strip of hill land as wide as their frontage on the bottom. Richard Fulkerson purchased eighty-two acres, Including the land which lies north and back of the cemetery. Next, Frank Straney bought fifty-nine acres — thirty-two of bottom land. Next, L. B. Murdock, forty-five acres — forty of bottom land. Two parties from Yolo took the next one hundred acres. Dr. Simms purchases the home place, with the rest of the land, between thirty and forty acres in the bottom. The whole tract will net $41,500, which is the largest and best sale of land ever made in the vicinity of Santa Rosa. The Lucas farm was the first settled in this vicinity. On it was the site of the once rival of Santa Rosa, the town of Franklin.
– Sonoma Democrat, December 27 1873
HISTORIC LOCAL BUILDING RAZED – One of the first store buildings to be erected in Santa Rosa, or rather in old Franklin Town, was razed last week on lower Fourth street to prepare for the new Rosenberg building. Few people realized that the little wooden structure had such a history. It was the building in which the late Squire Coulter ran a store in Franklin Town in the ’50s. Later, when Santa Rosa was founded, it was moved to where the Hahman drug store now stands in Exchange avenue, where Squire Coulter occupied it as his business house. Later it was sold and was again moved to lower Fourth street, where for nearly 70 years it has been occupied by various businesses.
– Press Democrat, July 26 1925
MISC
Sonoma County Democratic Convention. At a meeting of the democratic delegates of Sonoma county, held at Franklin, Santa Rosa Valley, on the 8th inst., Wm. Ross was elected President.
– The Placer Herald, July 15, 1854
THE BAPTIST GOLDEN JUBILEE …In 1856 the primitive little church building was moved from Franklin to the Santa Rosa that was springing into existence. It was put on wheels and hauled there by six yoke of oxen. On Third street the oxen halted and the church occupied a site west of where the People’s Church now stands.
– Press Democrat, March 21 1902
The distinction of living to celebrate their golden wedding falls to the lot of comparatively few married couples. But when it comes to being married fifty years and living the half century of married life in the same community makes the distinction very unique. If both are spared to see February 21 come round such a novelty will be enjoyed by Mr. and Mrs. Sterling Taylor Coulter of Santa Rosa. Fifty years ago on that date in the old Santa Rosa, then known as the town of Franklin, Mr. and Mrs. Coulter were married, and it is hoped that when they celebrate the important occasion the honored pioneers will have the pleasure of having as their guests several of those who were among those present at their wedding day in the old town, in 1854.
(RIGHT: John Strong’s first sideshow tent from 1977. Note the two posters and main entrance sign promoting Demonicus. Photo courtesy John Strong)
