OH, LOATHSOME ME (CHARLIE HOLMES III)

June 10, 2024June 30, 2024 Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Pity Charlie Holmes; his bad luck streak continued as his wife nearly burned to death.

That misplaced sympathy appeared in a 1901 Press Democrat item (transcribed below). Today we find it offensive the PD would cast him as the main victim, but turn of the century Santa Rosa is a far throw away from the here and now. The odd story of Charlie Holmes – and particularly, the troubled history of his relationships – offers a revealing peek at how much of a dark side our ancestors were willing to tolerate from someone they otherwise admired.

As explored in the previous two chapters, Charlie was front and center for every banquet, holiday parade and amateur stage show. He joined every club he could and was an officer in our local National Guard Company E. Charlie was elected City Marshal (same as being a Chief of Police) in 1898 and was easily reelected two years later.

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THE THREE (OR MORE) FACES OF CHARLIE HOLMES

Charles H. Holmes Jr. was surely the most talked about person in Santa Rosa 120 years ago, and that wasn’t always a good thing.

OUR OWN TOM SAWYER
TERRIFIC GUY, TERRIBLE MARSHAL
OH, LOATHSOME ME
BOSS SQUEEDUNK

As Marshal, his duties included being the city tax collector and on November 19, 1901 it was discovered his office had been robbed overnight. Nearly $1,300 – equal to about two years of a worker’s earnings – was gone, but nobody knew at the time how much was missing because Holmes’ wasn’t paying attention to bookkeeping. Worse, the PD article suggested it was an inside job. If that were true, Charlie was the main suspect but regardless, he was on the hook to pay the money back if it was not recovered.

It was two days after the theft that Margaret Holmes had her accident, her clothes catching fire after she fell while carrying a lighted oil lamp. Charles was still at his office but others in the household came to her rescue. “The flames were extinguished, but not before Mrs. Holmes sustained several bad burns,” it was reported.

The PD did not suggest the accident might be related to stress from her husband’s legal woes. The paper observed, “…Mrs. Holmes is subject to sudden spells of illness…one of the attacks spoken of came on and she fell with the lamp.” More about this in a minute.

At the time the Holmes’ had been married thirteen years and were living with his sister and parents. The former Margaret May Ward came to town as a teenager, having a sister and aunt in Santa Rosa.

It’s good she had family here because it appears Margaret had few, if any, friends. Local newspapers from that time padded their pages with every sort of social item – who attended club meetings, who visited someone after dinner, who spent the day in San Francisco – an endless procession of whos. But it’s rare to spot Margaret doing anything.¹ Now contrast her lack of outgoing activities with Charlie’s packed social calendar and a portrait emerges of a couple who were likely estranged for years.

Charlie’s career as a lawman ended in 1902 and he was required to pay back the stolen (?) tax money, as detailed in the previous part of this series. He was back to his old day job of plastering, working mainly in San Francisco. And then came 1904, when he was arrested and charged with statutory rape.

That October it came out Holmes was living in Calistoga with a young woman he said was his wife. The emphasis was on young – although he insisted she was over seventeen (California’s age of consent was then 16), she was not. The “wife” of 40 year-old Charles H. Holmes was actually fourteen.

Holmes was held at the Napa jail for a week as a relative of hers and the Napa District Attorney scrambled to find proof of her age. He was released after posting a $2,000 bond, the girl previously freed the day after their arrests. Near the end of the year the Napa DA dropped charges, mostly on their word and the assurances of her uncle that she was over 17.

What Santa Rosa thought of his adultery/statutory rape is unclear. The Press Democrat suggested it was well-known and had been going on for some time: “Judging from sentiment expressed around town yesterday the arrest of the former marshal did not occasion much surprise among those who knew or had heard of alleged previous familiarity between the man and girl.” The Republican reported the opposite: “The arrest of Holmes on the charge caused great surprise among his friends in this city.”

The girl was Nellie Holmes and both local newspapers were quick to add they were unrelated, the same last name being a coincidence. She and her mother – also named Nellie – lived in Santa Rosa with her aunt, four cousins and her grandmother.² The eight of them were crammed into a tiny house on First Street across from the Grace Brothers brewery warehouse. There can be no dispute this was the poorest part of town.

Nellie Holmes, probably c. 1915. Image courtesy Sonoma County Library which labeled it as "Mrs. Charles Holmes 1903". — Nellie Holmes, probably c. 1915. Image courtesy Sonoma County Library which labeled it as “Mrs. Charles Holmes 1903”.

Charlie kept a low profile and wasn’t seen much around town. He was still working as a plasterer in San Francisco and presumably staying there as well (it’s unknown whether Nellie was with him or not). Margaret, his mom and sister (his father had since died) were now living on Sonoma Avenue because their previous house had burned down – feel free to also wonder whether that might have been the result of another lamp accident.

Exactly a year after his Napa arrest for cohabiting with a child, Holmes was again in the news for another awful incident.

In the middle of the night Sonoma Ave. neighbors were awakened “by a series of shrill cries” from Margaret, who was heard to be shouting, “murder,” “police” and “let me go.” The Santa Rosa Republican further reported they “heard sounds of slaps being administered as if someone was chastising a child.”

The night officer was summoned and told “Mrs. Holmes had made the outcry while in a state of epilepsy.” What the Press Democrat had discreetly called “sudden spells of illness” that caused her to be severely burned must have been an epileptic seizure.

The 1905 Republican item suggested the neighbors believed the Holmes were abusive: “…The woman is an almost helpless invalid and the people of the vicinity where she resides declare the woman is not given proper attention and treatment…It is believed that her condition of epilepsy would be removed if her surroundings were changed. The people of the neighborhood feel that Mrs. Holmes is entitled to the protection of the community…”

After reading that article in the evening Republican newspaper, Charles immediately ran to the PD office where he was certain to find a more sympathetic reporter. He claimed not to be at the family home that night (yet was apparently somewhere else in town?) and what the neighbors thought was slapping was really Margaret “clapping her hands while not responsible for her actions.”

A following issue of the Republican stated “the family declare[d she] had been clapping her hands and talking incoherently” and revealed Margaret had been hospitalized repeatedly: “…[she] has been subject to epilepsy which has gradually progressed until at times she passed from the epileptic state to that condition of insanity in which she is wholly irresponsible for her actions. The lady has been taken to private sanitariums in times past and her case has been pronounced hopeless.”

Let Gentle Reader note the Epilepsy Foundation says a only small number of people with epilepsy also have psychotic disorders, and also that emotional stress can lead to seizures.

Little was written in the papers about the Holmes family over the following two years. We don’t know what any of them were doing as the Great 1906 Earthquake struck. Charlie happened to be on the scene of a 1907 shootout at a downtown restaurant (predictably, he was attending a banquet).

Then in May 1907, Margaret was committed to the Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane near Ukiah. She died there of pneumonia the next year. She was 39 years old and it was a few days past their 20th wedding anniversary.

The widower Charles did not dawdle when it came to burying his wife. She died on a Friday. Her remains arrived in Santa Rosa on the Saturday train. The funeral was early Sunday afternoon. If your family read the Press Democrat over breakfast, you had only a few hours notice should anyone desire to pay their respects. If your family read the evening Republican, she was in the ground before you cracked the paper and knew she was even dead.

Margaret M. Ware Holmes is buried in the Rural Cemetery, but not in the Holmes family plot where Charles’ parents were, and where he and his sister would later be. Her grave is next to the parents of “Bud” Parks, who was the leader of Santa Rosa’s brass band. Charlie almost certainly knew Bud well because they both appeared at the same sort of social functions, but it’s doubtful Margaret knew any of the Parks, who died several years earlier. It was just an empty grave site for sale. Today there is no tombstone and likely she never had one.

Soon after New Year 1910 there was a small notice in the Press Democrat: Charles H. Holmes Jr. had married Nellie Holmes in a quiet ceremony. He was 45, she had recently turned twenty. “Their friends wish them much happiness,” the newspaper said warmly.

NEXT: BOSS SQUEEDUNK

¹ Whenever I found a mention of Mrs. Charles H. Holmes, a closer look revealed it was usually her mother-in-law, the editor being sloppy and not specifying between Mrs. C. H. Holmes Sr. and C. H. Holmes Jr.

² Nellie Olga Holmes was reportedly born December 9, 1889 in San Francisco but an inquiry by the Napa District Attorney in 1904 failed to turn up a birth certificate or other documentation. Her Press Democrat obituary gave her age as someone born in 1889. In the June 1900 census she was listed as born in December 1889. Her grandmother was named as Elizabeth Granque, but other spellings included Giauque and Gaigue.

Mrs. Holmes Badly Burned

Some people seem to have more than their share of trouble. Thursday night Mrs. Holmes, wife of City Marshal Holmes, met with a very painful accident. Unfortunately Mrs. Holmes is subject to sudden spells of illness and while the other members of the household were upstairs, with the exception of her husband, who was still at his office, she started to walk across the floor with a lighted lamp. While doing this one of the attacks spoken of came on and she fell with the lamp. The burning oil set fire to her garments. The fall was heard by those upstairs and they came to her assistance. The flames were extinguished, but not before Mrs. Holmes sustained several bad burns.

– Press Democrat, November 23 1901

GIRL’S AGE MUST BE ASCERTAINED
CHARLES H. HOLMES WILL REMAIN IN JAIL AT NAPA PENDING INVESTIGATION
Effort Made to Secure a Bail Bond in This City Yesterday If One Should Be Required by Authorities

Inquiry at the office of Sheriff Dunlap of Napa last night elicited the information that nothing had been done in the Holmes case yesterday, beyond an endeavor to ascertain the true age of Nellie Holmes, the girl with whom Charles H. Holmes cohabited at Calistoga. Holmes and the girl were still in jail last night.

District Attorney Benjamin of Napa learned yesterday that he could find the age of the girl by consulting the records of San Francisco, and he at once sent there for the information. If she is found to be over sixteen years of age the charge is reduced as far as the law goes, but if not the consequences are very serious when it comes to punishment after conviction.

Holmes was visited in jail yesterday by a Napa attorney. An effort was made by a relative of the accused man here yesterday to arrange for a bail bond, if one should be required and pending the result of the investigation. It is not thought one was secured.

William Porter, who married an aunt of Nellie Hoimes went over to Napa from this city yesterday, it being thought that he could furnish absolute information as to the girl’s age. This he was not able to do, and then consulting the records in San Francisco was suggested and adopted by District Attorney Benjamin. Judging from sentiment expressed around town yesterday the arrest of the former marshal did not occasion much surprise among those who knew or had heard of alleged previous familiarity between the man and girl.

– Press Democrat, October 20 1904

HOLMES IS IN JAIL GIRL COMES HOME
NELLIE HOMES IS RELEASED FROM DETENTION AT NAPA COUNTY HOSPITAL
Former City Marshal Remains in Custody While Girl’s Age is Being Investigated by the Authorities

Charles H. Holmes was still in jail at Napa last night while the girl with whom he had been living with at Calistoga until the hand of the law was laid on both of them, Nellie Holmes, returned to this city. She was seen and conversed with by a Santa Rosan on the Southern Pacific train last night, and from what she told him, he did not feel very kindly disposed towards the man in jail, made by Holmes’ sister yesterday night and it was learned that District Attorney Benjamin was still investigating as to the girl’s age, and that nothing new had been done in the matter. According to a statement made by Holmes sister yesterday it is likely that bail bond may be furnished her brother today. This is not certain, however.

During her stay in Napa Nellie Holmes was kept in the Napa County Hospital. She was released from there Thursday afternoon on a written order sanctioning her release signed by District Attorney Benjamin. She will have to appear as a witness in the event of the Holmes case coming to trial. What was stated yesterday morning, must be stated again this morning and that is, until District Attorney Benjamin is satisfied as to the correct age of Nellie Holmes, proceedings on the charge of rape will not proceed.

– Press Democrat, October 21 1904

HOLMES RELEASED ON $2,000 BOND
FORMER CITY MARSHAL RETURNS TO TOWN AFTER DETENTION FOR SEVERAL DAYS
What Disposition Will be Made of His Case is Still Undecided But Meanwhile He is a Free Man

Charles H. Holmes, former city marshal is in town from Napa. He secured his release from detention at Napa on furnishing a two thousand dollar bail bond. It is not definitely known what the outcome of the case will be. It will be remembered that the man was arrested a week ago last Tuesday in company with a girl named Nellie Holmes of this city at Calistoga. The charge upon which he was arrested was that of rape.

– Press Democrat, October 26 1904

HOLMES WILL BE RELEASED
District Attorney of Napa County Finds That Girl Was Over Sixteen Years Old

The charge of rape preferred against ex-Marshal Charles H. Holmes in Napa will probable be dismissed shortly. District Attorney Ray Benjamin has made a thorough search of records to ascertain the age of the young woman and is of the opinion that he will have to dismiss the case against Holmes by reason of the fact that the girl is over seventeen years old.

It will be remembered that Holmes was arrested at St. Helena several weeks ago where he had been living with Nellie Holmes a young girl of this city and passing her as his wife. Holmes was following his trade of plastering. They had rented a single room in the residence of Mrs. Collins mother of the county clerk of Napa County and lived in that one apartment.

The arrest of Holmes on the charge caused great surprise among his friends in this city. He was kept in jail several days while relatives here searched for bondsmen. These were finally secured and the accused man came to this city. The girl with whom he had been living was detained by the Napa county officials for several days. She stoutly maintained from the first that she was more than sixteen years of age. Although the name of the parties are the same there is no blood relationship between them.

– Santa Rosa Republican, December 9 1904

WOMEN CAUSE POLICE CALLS
Mrs. Holmes Startled Sonoma Avenue Last Night by Cries of “Murder” — Case Investigated

The police department had two hurried calls last night both of which were responded to by Officer Don McIntosh and in each instance the calls were occasioned by women.

About midnight the residents of Sonoma avenue were alarmed by a series of shrill cries of murder police and fainter cries of “Let me go” emanating from Mrs. Anna Holmes [sic] the wife of Charles H. Holmes. The whole neighborhood was aroused and when the officer arrived it was explained to him that Mrs. Holmes had made the outcry while in a state of epilepsy. The neighbors however had heard sounds of slaps being administered as if someone was chastising a child, this fact also being reported to the police.

The woman is an almost helpless invalid and the people of the vicinity where she resides declare the woman is not given proper attention and treatment. It is more than probable that the case will be called to the attention of the proper authorities and an effort made to have Mrs. Holmes removed to an institution where she can at least receive proper treatment. It is believed that her condition of epilepsy would be removed if her surroundings were changed. The people of the neighborhood feel that Mrs. Holmes is entitled to the protection of the community…

– Santa Rosa Republican, October 20 1905

Mr. Holmes Statement

Charles H. Holmes called at this office last night and stated that his wife was not suffering from epilepsy at the time of the excitement at his residence Thursday night. He says that she was experiencing one of a series of spells she has had lately in which she temporarily loses her reason. He stated further that the noise heard as if some one was being slapped was in reality Mrs. Holmes clapping her hands while not responsible for her actions.

Mr. Holmes was not at home on Thursday night when his wife’s cries awoke the neighborhood. Mrs. Holmes has been an invalid and afflicted with epileptic fits for a long time. The poor woman is deserving of much commiseration.

– Press Democrat, October 21 1905

Feel They Are Doing All in Their Power

Charles H. Holmes and his mother and sister who have the care of the invalid wife of Mr. Holmes feel that they have done and are doing everything for that lady which lies in their power to do. Mrs. Holmes’ condition is at times precarious and for eighteen years she has been subject to epilepsy which has gradually progressed until at times she passed from the epileptic state to that condition of insanity in which she is wholly irresponsible for her actions. The lady has been taken to private sanitariums in times past and her case has been pronounced hopeless. At the present time the mother and sister of Mrs. Holmes are caring for the lady who is practically an invalid and they feel that the lady could probably get better treatment at a proper institution for epileptics and that her removal to such an institution might be advisable. The case is being attended by Dr. J. W. Cline whose prescriptions have always brought her out of the condition of epilepsy and the doctor is giving the patient every attention.

On a recent night when neighbors were called to assist in caring for Mrs. Holmes the lady had a particularly heavy spell and the family declared had been clapping her hands and talking incoherently before assistance came to them. Two strong men were required to hold Mrs. Holmes in her bed for a number of hours until the medicine given her had time to act properly. As Mr. Holmes cannot be away from his employment the care of his invalid wife naturally devolves upon his mother and sister. Residents of the City of Roses have been at the home where the woman was being cared for and have noticed her peculiar mental condition.

– Santa Rosa Republican, October 23 1905

MRS. CHARLES H. HOLMES CALLED BY DEATH

Mrs. Margaret May Holmes, wife of former City Marshal C. H. Holmes, died at Ukiah on Friday, and her remains were brought to this city Saturday morning. Mrs. Holmes had long been a sufferer and death was a happy release to her. She had many friends in Santa Rosa, where she had lived for many years. The funeral will take place this afternoon and the Very Rev. A. L. Burleson will be the officiating priest. The hour of the funeral will be at half past two o’clock this afternoon.

– Press Democrat, June 7 1908

Wife of Charles H. Holmes Passes Away

Charles H Holmes received a telegram Friday afternoon informing him of the death of his wife at Ukiah. The sad message stated that Mrs. Holmes had been taken sick on the day before with acute pneumonia and the disease was too much for her for the following day she passed away.

Her maiden name was Margaret May Ward and she was a niece of Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Bumbaugh of this city and a sister of Mrs. Samuel Brittain. She was born 38 years ago in the state of New Jersey and her parents died while she was quite young. Nineteen years ago she was married to Charles H. Holmes. The remains were brought down on the morning express and the funeral services will be announced later.

– Santa Rosa Republican, June 7 1908

CHARLES H. HOLMES WAS MARRIED MONDAY

A quiet wedding in this city on Monday was that of Miss Nellie Holmes and Charles H. Holmes, former city marshal of Santa Rosa and a prominent labor union man. The Rev. Geo. T. Baker, rector of the Episcopal church, was the officiating priest. The ceremony was performed at the residence of Mrs. Cox, on Hendley street. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes left for San Francisco in the afternoon. Their friends wish them much happiness.

– Press Democrat, January 11 1910

THE DIRTY WATER WARS OF MARK McDONALD

March 13, 2022March 15, 2022 Jeff Elliott 2 Comments

It took Santa Rosa awhile to realize it was under attack, but a no-holds-barred war was being waged against it by the man in the mansion on the grand boulevard.

You could say the conflict began in May 1893, when voters approved a bond to build a water plant. At the time Santa Rosa was getting its water from a private company owned by Mark L. McDonald; the water came from Lake Ralphine, which the Board of Health said was so fetid that his company was “criminally negligent and indifferent to our welfare as a city.” McDonald offered to sell his waterworks to the city at such a ridiculously inflated price it would be cheaper to start from scratch, even though it meant laying another set of water mains beneath every street. All of those doings were covered in “THE McDONALDS vs SANTA ROSA.”

Stepping up to buy Santa Rosa’s bonds was Robert Effey, a modest investor who happened to be mayor of Santa Cruz. While deciding whether to put the water bond on the ballot, Santa Rosa’s mayor and city attorney had visited that town’s very successful municipal water plant and met him. He offered to buy our bond for $161,000, being the lowest of only two bidders.¹

A few days later, a lawsuit seeking to block Santa Rosa from making a deal with Effey was filed by a retired farmer named John D. Cooper. Most unusual about the case was that besides the city, he also sued the City Council as individuals plus the city clerk.²

Another suit to stop the city’s deal with Effey followed shortly. This time a retired rancher named John M. Jones was upset because construction plans had been updated since the bond measure passed. Mr. Jones likewise sued the city and Council members personally.

That was hardly the end of the anti-waterworks lawyering. Less than a month later, William Guisbert Skinner went after the city, the Council, the assessor, treasurer, and tax collector along with Robert Effey. His gripe was the terms of the bond had been slightly changed, and the city was increasing property taxes by 25¢ per $100 to pay for the bonds – although they hadn’t actually been yet sold. (As further explained below, the bond sale was delayed by both these lawsuits and the nation’s economic problems.)

Three different lawsuits over about six weeks is a lot of suin’ for little Santa Rosa. Who were these guys who were so upset about construction of a water plant they wanted to drag everyone into court? It appeared they must be well off, as they were represented by some of the top legal talent in the county: A. B. Ware, Calvin S. Farquar and the infamous Gil P. Hall.³

But Cooper, Jones and Skinner were hardly wealthy Sonoma County movers and shakers; one has to scour the old newspapers to find any mention of them at all, and then it was almost always for some small scale real estate transaction. There can be little doubt, however, they were acting as part of a coordinated attack on building the waterworks by the “Tax Payers’ Protective Union.”

The supposed grassroots organization was formed at the time of the Cooper suit but few members were ever named (usually just A. P. Overton, H. W. Byington and A. B. Ware). The Democrat wrote only it was “composed of well-known and reputable citizens of Santa Rosa” and “members comprise many of the heaviest taxpayers in this city.” Judging from signatures on a later petition, my guess is there were under fifty members, split between the investor class and elderly anti-tax cranks like our litigious trio. Skinner, by the way, didn’t even own property in Santa Rosa, although his suit was the one to complain about the increase in property taxes.

The Taxpayers’ placed an ad in the Democrat to trumpet their manifesto, which is a Thing to Read. It painted the City Council as recklessly draining the city treasury on “official extravagance” such as testing the safety of well water and buying a rock-crusher for street gravel, the Council meanwhile conspiring with Effey to screw over taxpayers because there was no intention to actually sell bonds or build the waterworks. Nice to know (I guess) a faction of our ancestors were just as paranoid and irrational as some wacky loudmouths today.

A later item in the Democrat reprinted a Taxpayers’ resolution revealing the group’s single real objective – demanding the city buy McDonald’s water company. Among their points was that “a water system supplied by gravitation” (meaning a higher source of surface water such as Lake Ralphine, not a water tower) is always better than using water pumped from the ground. Also, the city was to be blamed for “factional strife and expensive litigation” because they hadn’t made a deal with McDonald to take over his service and pay for long overdue upgrades and maintenance. Some brain-busting logic, there.

At this point Gentle Reader might be pondering whether Mark McDonald had something to do with the Taxpayers’ Union – and was he also paying for the lawyers in those many lawsuits?

We get a peek behind the curtain after attorney Farquar filed a lawsuit because he believed he had been shortchanged for his services. But he didn’t sue the litigant he represented: He sued Mark McDonald. The response from McDonald was that the lawyer was mistaken; legal bills were being paid by the Taxpayers’ Union, and Mark knew this because he said he had the receipts – which revealed he had control over their bank account.

This is an important (yet neglected) chapter in Santa Rosa’s history. It’s somewhat tricky to tell, in part because it sprawls over a decade. Also making research difficult: A question raised in a lawsuit sometimes wasn’t resolved until a court hearing for another suit years later; there were six different suits and some were so entangled with each other it can be unclear whether the plaintiff’s original complaint was modified, merged, minimized or dropped entirely. There’s enough material here to write a book but I advise any future scribe to keep a bottle of aspirin handy. Maybe a bottle of scotch as well. Maybe two.

Historians face a further obstacle because newspaper coverage was unusually slanted. Most of the events in and out of the courtrooms were covered only by the Democrat, and the problem wasn’t just that the paper showed heavy editorial bias (which it absolutely did, favoring the McDonald faction) but that it also selectively reported what was happening at City Council meetings. As a result, the overall picture is simply impossible to understand from reading the newspapers alone, making some key actions by the Council seem impulsive and reckless. Fortunately, we now have available thorough coverage of what was said at those meetings to fill in blanks. ⁴

The last big piece of the puzzle was the national recession, which is discussed in the section below. The banking world had turned upside down in the months between the bond vote and when the city was ready to actually sell those bonds. At one point the city found itself in the odd position of having to rewrite ordinances because there was no longer an agreement on what constituted “legal tender.” The economic system was in complete disarray, forcing our elected officials to navigate a volatile situation which had tripped up even professional bond traders.

For these reasons and more, few historians have even mentioned those events, and what little has been written portray it as a roadbump in the town’s otherwise steady progress towards the future. But I’ll argue the story isn’t about the lawsuits or even the water supply – the crux of it concerns the character of Mark L. McDonald.

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DOWNLOAD
52-page PDF file of newspaper articles related to the McDonald water lawsuits

Often during that ten year span Santa Rosa was scurrying to respond to the latest edict from a judge overseeing a particular lawsuit and sometimes there was a crisis because money was simply not to be had. And throughout it all McDonald and his cabal were in the background, hoping the turmoil would steer the city into such great financial peril they would come begging to buy his troubled company – or perhaps the goal was to have the city sell the municipal waterworks to him, cheap. Either turn of events would have proven ruinous to Santa Rosa yet he not only didn’t seem to care a whit, but it appeared that was a key part of his strategy. It was all about money, or power, or whatever else it was that motivated him to wage a dirty war against his own community.

In no way is this article intended to present the whole narrative, but should provide enough detail to follow what really happened. In the SOURCES section below a chronological index is provided, and selected newspaper transcripts can be downloaded in a separate PDF file as shown to the right.

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THE HARROWING ’90s

The “Panic of 1893” was a economic crisis in the United States which became a major recession that lasted five years. As summarized on Wikipedia there were several causes behind those woes, among them the crash of overvalued railroad stocks and the collapse of crop prices. As a result there were widespread farm foreclosures, hundreds of banks failed and unemployment lingered at double-digits. The Western U.S. was hit the hardest.

What initiated the panic in April and May of 1893 was fear President Grover Cleveland, who had spoken about wanting a more “flexible currency,” might seek to resolve the growing array of problems by abandoning the gold standard. This started ongoing bank runs as people sought to cash in their paper dollars for hard money and foreign investors sold their stocks and bonds only for payment in gold.

By early 1895 the stockpile of gold held by the Treasury was nearing exhaustion. With only days (maybe hours) to spare before the nation slipped into default, President Cleveland made an emergency deal with financiers to privately buy $62 million of treasury bills at four percent.

Cleveland and his cabinet, who only had been considering the usual sort of advertised bond sale open to the public, were hesitant at first because they weren’t sure it was legal. Financier J. P. Morgan – whose banking career began during the Civil War – assured them Lincoln had signed a statue allowing private bond sales in times of emergency. The attorney general fetched a book of Revised Statutes which proved Morgan’s memory of this long-forgotten rule was accurate. (I encourage you to read the entire account of this episode, as it is a quite remarkable story.)

So far we’ve covered about a year of the story between Oct. 1894 and the following August. It had been a rough ride; aside from the usual court hearings grinding away on the three ongoing lawsuits, part of the Skinner case even reached the California Supreme Court.⁵

It was now September 1895 and construction was about to start on the new municipal water plant. Santa Rosa mayor Woodward and the attorney for Effey took the train to New York with the mission to resell Effey’s bonds on the bond market. With the economy still very much in a wobbly state, bond traders were not fighting a bidding war over a low-yield muni bond from a pipsqueak farmtown few could probably find on a map. Effey had to sell them for less than the $161k he had paid, losing about $21,000 on the deal.⁶

No sooner had work began on the new water system that autumn when a fourth aggrieved taxpayer decided he was so darn mad over the water issue that he had to file a lawsuit of his very own. Like the other guys, this fellow was elderly, a retired farmer/rancher, and didn’t seem likely to have deep enough pockets to hire top attorneys.

(RIGHT: Wesley Mock. Drawing from Sonoma Democrat, June 19, 1897)

And here, ladies and gentlemen, we now commence the entertainment portion of our program. The Wesley Mock lawsuit and court hearings were – to use highly technical legal terminology – bonkers.

Among Mock’s many allegations, both criminal and civil: The entire city administration was engaged in “illegality and fraud” in the sale of the bonds; the bonds were never actually sold; Robert Effey was colluding with the only other bidder, who he would hire to actually construct the waterworks; the city was negligent because the bond offer only attracted two bidders; that Effey’s bid was at least $31,000 (later increased to $41,000) higher than the estimated cost to build the project, and the city knew it; Effey was actually broke, as was the city treasury. Whew!

Once in the courtroom, Mock’s case wandered even farther out into the weeds. There was a day devoted to handwriting analysis intended to show Effey had written the other bid as well as his own (the results were inconclusive). Effey’s lawyer was brow-beaten by the judge into testifying about the New York trip, quite possibly violating attorney-client privilege (he deftly seemed to have forgotten nearly all details). And Mock’s lawyer tried to get the Republican publisher Allan Lemmon held in contempt for writing a “contemptible and scurrilous” editorial which pointed out everyone trying to block the municipal waterworks curiously happened to be a member of the Democratic party, even though it was apparently (?) written tongue-in-cheek.

These were all efforts to gin up controversy and make everything about the water project appear suspicious – if not downright sinister. There was testimony about mysterious sealed envelopes and a late night meeting at a bank where documents changed hands several times. Witnesses were called to the stand but couldn’t be found in the courthouse. There was so much dirt to reveal the Democrat didn’t even attempt to write it up as a regular news article but instead just published the court reporter’s raw notes, something I have never seen in a newspaper from that era.

Representing Mock at these court hearings was a heretofore uninvolved gunslinger: Edward Lynch, a famous San Francisco criminal defense attorney. Lynch also represented Mark McDonald in related water lawsuit matters, including that dustup over whether the money to pay the local lawyers should come from the Taxpayers’ or McDonald, and would also be McDonald’s attorney in yet another lawsuit discussed below.

But never, ever, suggest that someone else was behind Mock hiring such an expensive San Francisco litigator, or the 69 year-old would give you a sound thrashing. “I am acting in my private capacity as a citizen for the good of the community and am not the tool of a corporation,” he insisted to the SF Call. Yeah, sure: Dude, you’re living in a little 10th street cottage near the railroad tracks.

The Wesley Mock hearings went on for over two months in early 1896. Besides hinting darkly at covert skullduggery by Effey et. al. his lawsuit was amended during the hearings to ask the judge to hold the City Council in contempt of court. Angering him this time was the Council passed a motion to accept the waterworks even though the project wasn’t completed.

Of all the charges made by Mock’s lawyer, this accusation seemed to deserve scrutiny. Why the devil would the city pay for unfinished work? Maybe there was something shifty going on, after all.

But it was actually a key example of the Democrat revealing its bias via omission of facts. In the City Council minutes it showed they were concerned about sabotage by “some evil disposed persons” and the construction site needed to be under city control and guarded by a policeman. (This and other cites from City Council minutes come from John Cummings’ study available under SOURCES.) Readers of the Democrat – and modern historians who rely only upon what appeared in that paper – didn’t know there were now threats of violence being made.

The general election two weeks later saw turnover of nearly half of the City Council seats.⁷ Mayor Woodward’s final remarks regarded “utmost vigilance” will be needed to deter “those that are trying to destroy the efficiency of the new water system.” The new Council was even more determined to fight McDonald’s shills in court and vowed to “combat every suit.”

They wouldn’t have long to wait for that combat. Soon after that the judge in the Mock case approved an injunction to block the city from taking possession of the water plant. To do that, the court required Mock to put up a $4,000 bond which he obviously couldn’t afford – so McDonald and a banker from Santa Rosa Bank put up a surety bond for him. Ironically, this was announced in the same edition of the Democrat where Mock insisted (again) he had no ties to McDonald or his water company.

The municipal waterworks had been partially operational since the start of 1896, and there were still the concerns over someone trying to monkey-wrench the operation. The Council’s end run around the injunction was to pay the guy who built the pump system $400 per month to keep the water flowing.

That was an astonishing monthly salary for then (over $13k today), particularly because it came at a time the city treasury was bleeding dry. Santa Rosa had to hire outside legal counsel to help defend itself in the four lawsuits, especially because the judge allowed Mock’s hyper-aggressive attorney Edward Lynch to turn court hearings into a ten week fishing expedition. As a result, the city found itself borrowing from Santa Rosa Bank to stay afloat.

And then there were five: The same week the Council made the deal to keep the waterworks going during the injunction, Mark L. McDonald stepped out of the shadows as his water company filed its own lawsuit against Santa Rosa. It was mostly a greatest hits rehash of the Cooper-Jones-Skinner-Mock complaints, but it ran on for 125 paragraphs. The Democrat printed every word (of course) with a full month required to dump the whole thing on its readers, the newspaper filling up most of a full page per week. New to this suit was a Donald Trump-like whine that no one respected how much money Mark had spent building his waterworks and that there were dark forces within the government conspiring to hurt him.

(LEFT: Judge William R. Daingerfield of San Francisco presided over the Wesley Mock hearings and trial because Sonoma county Superior Court judges recused themselves for conflict of interest. Drawing from Sonoma Democrat, Dec. 19, 1896)

The Mock trial began in mid-December and took three weeks. It covered much the same ground as the March hearings with new accusations that the city’s contractors were all fumblebums and chiselers. To refresh everyone’s memory on the background of the case the Democrat published an updated version of the Taxpayers’ Union manifesto on the front page, in all its conspiratorial glory. And as before, the paper printed every detail of the plaintiff’s arguments and little to nothing from the defense – but you can, however, read their coverage and be able to stun guests at a dinner party with your comprehensive knowledge of 19th century pipefitting. The Democrat did at least share the opening statement from the recently elected City Attorney.⁸

In an extraordinarily forthright courtroom speech, attorney Webber said his primary obligation was to find out for the citizens of Santa Rosa whether or not there was fraud – but regardless of the verdict, all of the litigation must end. We ought to cancel any portion of the water bonds should it be possible, as it would be better to cut the losses than spending another 2-3 years fighting lawsuits.

Equally remarkable were Webber’s subtexts aimed directly at the Taxpayers’ Union: “Hey, don’t you jokers realize that taxpayers are footing the bill for the city’s legal defense in all these nonsense suits coming from your group? And do you really know what you want? For the city to be forced into bankruptcy? For Santa Rosa to abandon the nearly completed waterworks?” (Considering the Taxpayers’ had earlier demanded the city acquire McDonald’s company, their true goals certainly seemed obvious.)

(RIGHT: Mark McDonald attorney Edward Lynch. Drawing from Sonoma Democrat, June 26, 1897)

Judge Daingerfield spent five months musing over the case before issuing his 44-page decision, which “created a great deal of surprise and considerable excitement and comment on the streets,” according to the Democrat. And the winner was… Wesley Mock. Sort of.

By letting Effey modify the plans to hold down construction costs after they had been approved by the voters, the City Council had committed fraud. This meant that while the bonds were valid, they had been unlawfully sold. The judge ruled members of the Council were personally liable for the difference between the actual value of the waterworks and how much was due to repay the bond. The city was to keep operating the system and hold it in receivership until its worth could be determined. All of the the Taxpayers’ wild-eyed nonsense about the bonds not actually being sold, secret meetings and the like were not even given consideration.

The court’s later judgement held that Santa Rosa could keep the waterworks if the defendants coughed up what was due between actual vs. bond value. Otherwise, the sheriff was ordered to sell the water plant to the highest bidder.

And we all know who that would be.

Nearly two years passed before the California Supreme Court ruled on the city’s appeal. During that time the national economy mostly recovered yet in Santa Rosa the outlook remained cloudy.

The city was still relying on its credit line to operate, particularly during the lean weeks before property tax payments were due. Thus the City Council minutes reflects their alarm when bankers suddenly demanded payment of the city’s $5,000 note along with interest. The bank in question was Santa Rosa Bank, which you might remember was the co-signer with Mark L. McDonald of the bond for Wesley Mock.

And still, McDonald continued plowing ahead with his Ahab-like determination to kill (or own?) the municipal water system. This new round of trouble began in 1896 shortly before the Wesley Mock trial with a notice the Fountain Water Company had been formed. Yes, in addition to the McDonald waterworks and the city’s own, Santa Rosa was now to have a third water supply – supposedly.

The water for this project was to be from Peter’s Spring, which at the time was mistakenly believed to be the source of adjacent Spring Creek. (Peter Springs Park is still there.) It was so named because it was on the old Jesse Peter ranch which was now owned by Mark McDonald’s brother James, who also had several stone quarries in the area.⁹

All was quiet on that front for nearly two years until August 1898, when the McDonalds put up a dam across Spring Creek just upstream from one of the city’s water pumps. Even if the source was actually Peter’s Spring on private property, it was clearly illegal to obstruct such a public waterway.

The newcomer Press Democrat, which did not inherit the old Democrat’s bountiful love for the McDonalds, remarked “…there has been an opinion pretty freely expressed in this city that the action of the Fountain Water company at this time was done so as to diminish the city’s water supply.” That was proven when it was discovered the McDonalds hadn’t just constructed a simple dam; they had made a deal with other property owners to let them dig a ditch to divert the creek around the city pump before rejoining its natural watercourse.

The city waterworks were not dependent upon Spring Creek water at the time so this irksome stunt had no real impact. But some on the City Council may have considered this dummy corporation as the last straw; according to their minutes, there was a discussion about suing Mark McDonald for all he and his gang had done to obstruct the city water project.

But come a year later, the city’s water supply was nearly maxed out and they needed to tap Spring Creek again.¹⁰ The mayor and city attorney went to the Fountain Water company in San Francisco (it was not mentioned who they met) to offer to buy the spring and surrounding ten acres. They were told the price would be $100,000. Back in Santa Rosa they countered with a written offer of $6k, but there was no response. So the City Council voted unanimously to pay a fair appraised price and take the land via eminent domain.

Mark McDonald’s response: Total War against Santa Rosa, and damn the expense.

The McDonald water company sued the city again, but this effort was quite unlike their suit from three years earlier (which was apparently still ongoing). This time Mark was represented by Jefferson Chandler, a famed Washington D.C. attorney who had argued and won cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. And this time he was filing suit in federal court in San Francisco. There were three points in his complaint:

ENTITLED TO MONOPOLY In 1874 Santa Rosa had signed a 50 year contract with the water company he acquired. McDonald argued that gave him the exclusive right to provide the city with water until 1924 and the city must immediately cease and desist operating its waterworks, while paying $100,000 in damages. (This part of the suit also rehashed his familiar moaning over how much he spent on construction.)

TAKING PRIVATE PROPERTY If the city used eminent domain to buy Peter’s Spring it would violate McDonald’s company rights by losing its access to a critical resource (although the company was not yet using the spring and there was no obvious way to pipe the water over to Lake Ralphine).

UNFAIR COMPETITION The city was unfairly providing residents with “free” water. (Santa Rosa did not have water meters at the time, but anticipated each resident used 115 gallons per day. Instead of charging directly for water, there was an assessment and monthly fee for every water fixture in your home or business, the size of your lawn and garden, etc. See this article for more.)

At the City Council the Mayor urged they file a countersuit to revoke McDonald’s water franchise, according the Cummings review of the Council minutes. “[F]ight to the bitter end,” Mayor Sweet said, “with a view of ascertaining whether the majority should rule or whether a few Capitalists should manipulate the fair City of Santa Rosa.” The Council unanimously agreed.

That moment in early October, 1899, was the nadir of McDonald’s dirty water campaign; it had been five very long years since the launch of his first proxy lawsuit and fighting back had drained the city coffers. Besides the incident when Santa Rosa Bank demanded repayment on the $5,000 credit line, there was also a period in 1897 when the city completely ran out of money and couldn’t borrow any more.

But all that was about to change. Surprisingly, our story has a happy ending – for almost everyone except Mark McDonald.

The new McDonald suit was the greatest threat yet to Santa Rosa. A protracted battle in federal courts – which Mark would probably appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, should he lose initially – could be ruinously expensive and might even force the city into bankruptcy. But whatever might happen there was of less immediate concern than the final ruling on the Wesley Mock lawsuit, as members of the City Council and administrators were to be held personally responsible to pay back any excessive debt on the water bond.

Word from the state Supreme Court came down later that October. There was bad news: The Court upheld Judge Daingerfield’s overall ruling. There was good news: The city, not the individual officials – was to be held liable for the debt. Other parts of the decision allowed the city to take control of the waterworks (which presumably meant they could stop paying that engineer $400/mo to run it) until its value could be determined. Once that was known, the city had the option of paying the difference from the bond price; otherwise, the sheriff would auction off the waterworks (with the proviso that the city couldn’t make an offer). It was considered around town as quite a fair decision.

Next was holding an advisory jury trial to set the value of the waterworks. This was to be held in Santa Rosa with Daingerfield presiding, and those who thought he showed bias against the city during the Mock trial were concerned because he said this jury could only consider the worth of the water plant itself, and not the land it used.

The trial began in January 1900 and took exactly a month. The jury wasted no time and returned with a unanimous verdict after only twenty minutes: The waterworks were not worth the $161,000 amount of the bonds – it was worth far more, valuated at $190,000.

“When the verdict was read the courtroom was crowded and the crowd applauded vociferously. The local papers issued extras and the streets were crowded until a late hour by citizens who discussed the verdict and congratulated the defendants upon the outcome,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

Now the city’s attention turned back to Peter’s Spring, and it began condemnation proceedings against the Fountain Water Company and James McDonald. Court hearings and a trial consumed the rest of the year 1900. The McDonalds again tried to claim the ten acres were worth $100k while Santa Rosa argued the market value was no more than $50/acre. The city won again, and Spring Creek water was finally being pumped into the city’s reservoir, but the case would drag on until 1904 as the McDonalds sought a new trial. It was eventually settled they were to be paid only $4,515.55.¹¹

And also in 1904, McDonald’s last-gasp federal lawsuit was laughed out of court – a private corporation claiming it could dictate the shutdown of a public utility wasn’t even worth consideration. Sweetening the decision, McDonald was further ordered to pay Santa Rosa’s court costs.

So endeth Mark McDonald’s long and often underhanded fight against Santa Rosa’s water system. A couple of takeaways:

Aside from the scale and relentlessness of McDonald’s legal assaults, what he was trying to do was not unique in that era. In 1899 a letter writer to the SF Examiner noted Palo Alto and other cities had faced costly lawsuits from private water companies seeking to block municipal water works.

It’s worth taking a step back and looking over what had really happened here. As I wrote earlier, this story is really about the character of Mark L. McDonald. Over a quarter century, he had lurched from being Santa Rosa’s champion to becoming the town’s pariah, all in his obsessive drive to control what came out of our faucets. Why a man of such wealth and influence would throw away most of the goodwill in the town where his family lived we can only wonder.

¹ Robert Effey was mayor of Santa Cruz 1884-1888 and again 1894-96. He was a watchmaker and jeweler by trade. In the 1890s he was a bidder on several California muni bonds but aside from the Santa Rosa water system, the only bonds he seemed to hold were for Stockton’s sewer. His Dec. 1930 obituaries did not identify him as an investor, but mentioned he was the last surviving member of the “Bango club,” which was a ten member hiking and drinking club that regularly walked from Santa Cruz to San Jose or Watsonville. At a prearranged location they would be met by as many as 300 of their friends to engage in “conviviality.”

² Believe-it-or-not! There were three, maybe four John D. Coopers living in or around Santa Rosa in the late 1890s, all unrelated. This farmer died in 1917 and was buried in the Rural Cemetery; another died in 1925 and was Windsor’s Justice of the Peace; another spent his last years at the County Poor Farm and died in 1909. The most well-known J.D.C. at the time had a Fourth street wine and liquor store along with a saloon. Was he the fellow who died at the poorhouse, or individual #4?

³ In 1895, the year following these events, Gil P. Hall would be indicted for felony embezzlement over $4.6k that went missing during his term as County Recorder.

⁴ Ample and Pure Water for Santa Rosa, 1867-1926 by John Cummings; Prepared for the Department of Utilities, City of Santa Rosa, 2002

⁵ Skinner v. Santa Rosa concerned how the city was to make interest payments on the water bond. In Nov. 1894 the Council had changed the terms of the bond to make payments in gold only, semi-annually instead of annually, and payable in New York City. The California Supreme Court ruled the Council couldn’t do that unless they issued new bonds, which the city did in Sept. 1895.

⁶ Robert Effey had planned to use Coffin & Stanton, the New York bankers who had handled the bonds for the Santa Cruz water system. But that firm failed in Oct. 1894, so Effey approached Seligman & Company, one of the largest investment banks in New York City. After buying the bonds at a discount of $144,601.87, the bank tendered them for sale at 5³⁄₈ percent.

⁷ Two City Council members (both Republicans) lost by a narrow margin and two didn’t run for reelection, but Mock’s attorney Edward Lynch insisted the election results showed public belief of malfeasance.

⁸ Partial transcript of statement by City Attorney O. O. Webber at the Mock trial, December 18, 1896: “…The complaint on file in this action alleges fraud. I want to say right here if there is any fraud, or any has been committed by the Council or anyone else during all the leading up to, or the construction of the waterworks, or disposition of the bonds, I, as city attorney, representing the taxpayers of the city, want my clients to know the truth of the charge in this case. I am the attorney of the city, which I interpret to be the taxpayers and the city officials, but I believe my first duty lies to that people that had the confidence to place me in that position. I am not forsaking the officials who are the defendants in this action. I have consulted part of them and asked them to tell me if there was anything wrong done by them, or anything that should be covered. They informed me that everything is perfectly straight. I therefore have no alternative but to believe them and I therefore will do all in my power to lay this case before the taxpayers of this city as plainly as I can. The truth is the whole expense of this litigation regardless of who wins or who loses the suit must be borne by the taxpayers of Santa Rosa. The attorneys employed in this litigation must be paid by the taxpayers of Santa Rosa and I believe it is now time that we should begin to realise the true status of this whole affair. This litigation should be stopped. If the bonds can be brought back we can do it today cheaper than we can by litigating two or three years. If they cannot be recovered and the proceedings have all been legal and according to law I want the citizens to know that fact so that they may act intelligently as a community in this whole affair…”

⁹ The rancher was Jesse Peter Sr., not his same-named son Jesse who became an archeologist and taught at SRJC.

¹⁰ The city water works initially had an intake on Spring Creek, but it was disconnected in July 1896 because the volume of water provided by the wells was sufficient.

¹¹ In a surprising turn of events, the city sold Peter’s Spring to McDonald’s waterworks in 1909, with his company intending to pump “water from the spring to an elevated point between it and the present reservoir of the company,” according to a 1911 Press Democrat item.

Besides contemporary newspaper articles, references to the City Council minutes are drawn from Ample and Pure Water for Santa Rosa, 1867-1926 by John Cummings. The chronology below covers most of the key events discussed in this chapter, but there are over 200 items related to this topic just in the Sonoma Democrat/Press Democrat. Transcriptions of selected newspaper articles mentioned there are available for download in a 52-page PDF file
.

CHRONOLOGY OF KEY EVENTS IN McDONALD WATERWORKS LAWSUITS
(Dates reflect publication and may lag event by 1-6 days)

6 October 1894 Effey bid accepted

13 October 1894 Cooper suit vs city – not enough money to pay bonds

13 October 1894 Taxpayers’ Union formed
(C. S. Farquar and Gil P. Hall, Attorneys for taxpayers)

27 October 1894 Jones suit vs council – Effey plans are different

3 November 1894 Taxpayers’ manifesto

24 November 1894 council changes terms of bond to payable in gold

1 December 1894 Cooper, Jones and others file amicus to Skinner
(William F. Russell atty for Skinner AB Ware and Farquar for others)

8 December 1894 Skinner case only on validity of bonds

15 December 1894 Skinner not in good faith

22 December 1894 change in bond terms valid (Cooper vs. Steadman)

29 June 1895 change in bond terms invalid

6 July 1895 Taxpayers’ resolution for city to buy McDonald’s works

27 July 1895 ordinance 162 adopted: annual interest payment

5 October 1895 Effey contracts with Perkins to begin work

19 October 1895 Mock suit collusion between city and Effey
(A. B. Ware, C. S. Farquar and Gil P. Hall attorneys)

19 October 1895 construction underway

16 November 1895 J. M Jones dropped

4 January 1896 city accepts unfinished waterworks

25 January 1896 Democrat printed entire Effey testimony

1 February 1896 Mock wants council held in contempt for accepting works

2 February 1896 Mock will thrash

22 February 1896 court hearing: council shouldn’t be held in contempt

29 February 1896 court ruling: council not in contempt

18 March 1896 Lemmon contempt threat

21 March 1896 court hearing: handwriting questions

21 March 1896 court hearing: trip to NYC for bonds – Effey lost money

28 March 1896 court hearing: bonds sold in NYC for $144.6k

4 April 1896 Mock hearing closes
(election: Woodward, Collins out; Harris and Tupper didn’t run)

30 April 1896 Farquar sues McDonald

16 May 1896 Mock letter: I am not a shill

16 May 1896 restrain orders Perkins to stop city not to accept

20 May 1896 McDonald says Farquar was paid by taxpayer union

12 June 1896 contract with Perkins to maintain and supply water

13 June 1896 McDonald first suit against city

18 July 1896 amended to seek tax refund for illegal tax

14 November 1896 Fountain water company incorporated

28 November 1896 Democrat claims city is running a deficit of $1000-1200/mo

19 December 1896 Mock trial begins

2 January 1897 lengthy account by Taxpayers’ Union

9 January 1897 Mock trial ends

5 June 1897 Cooper v. Steadman suit thrown out

19 June 1897 Mock wins

20 June 1897 Examiner: Mock wins (includes history)

18 December 1897 judgement (city contract with Effey void, bonds were unlawfully disposed of)

17 August 1898 Fountain builds dam on Spring creek

20 August 1898 Fountain dam intended to hurt city

17 September 1898 Fountain diverts water around city pump

6 September 1899 McDonald wants $100k for Spring creek

4 October 1899 McDonald sues city to stop free water for 25 years

21 October 1899 Supreme Court: City cannot buy, Council not liable

10 January 1900 advisory jury trial begins

10 February 1900 Mock overturned – value of work proper – celebration

17 February 1900 fundraising for council defendants

17 March 1900 city sues Fountain to condemn land

13 December 1900 start of condemnation suit

11 March 1902 Fountain land only worth $4k

3 June 1904 court throws out 1899 McDonald suit

15 September 1904 city drops Fountain suit

22 July 1911 McDonald buys Fountain

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OUR OLD SCHOOLS WERE MISERABLE

January 5, 2022January 6, 2022 Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Pity any ancestor who went to Santa Rosa grade schools around the turn of the century. Besides readin’ writin’ and ‘rithmetic, there was also plenty of squintin’ and crowdin’ and freezin’ by the kids. Classrooms were heated by a single potbelly stove; there often weren’t enough desks and lighting was poor (no electricity). One school didn’t even have indoor plumbing.

Those were some of the shocking details found in a 1904 expose of conditions in Santa Rosa’s three elementary schools. Or perhaps we should say there were six, because each was so overcrowded some students were taught in outbuildings not intended for human occupancy.

Fourth st. school, 1880. Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library

The flagship of the town’s public school system was the Fourth street school, currently the location known as Fremont Park. (It was renamed Fremont school in early 1906, following a popular trend to rename schools after people rather than a location.)

Built in 1874 and meant to hold 600 students, it was soon packed to the brim; in 1878 – when it was first used as a combined grammar and high school – there were over a thousand. That number dropped by about half after the high school was built on Humboldt street (1895), but the Board of Education was still regularly told the place was overcrowded. Classrooms were intended to hold about forty desks, and a particular class could be smaller or far larger. One year they had to split seventh and eighth grades into morning and afternoon sessions to accommodate all the students.

The 1904 expose found school children still enduring mid-Victorian era conditions. Lighting in the rooms was described as “very dark,” “very bad,” “little short of criminal,” and “vile.” Half of the second graders – fifty kids – were being taught in a “temporary one story building with a low thin roof.” (The reporter probably meant “tin roof,” as the article also says there was no ceiling.)

(RIGHT: Enhanced photo of 6^th grade classroom at the Fourth street/Fremont school. Santa Rosa Republican, Dec 9 1904)

All classrooms were cramped, but the worst was the one for sixth grade, where there were 62 students squeezed together so tightly the aisles were “almost impassable.” Some had to share a desk and a few had no desks at all, sitting on chairs and stools. The Republican reporter took a photo of this room but as seen to the right, it appears nearly black on the microfilm copy of the image.

It doesn’t appear the reporter visited the Davis street school (later renamed Lincoln school and at the corner of Davis and Eighth) which was the other main elementary school in Santa Rosa and built about a decade after Fourth street/Fremont.^* The two schoolhouses were roughly the same size but Davis st. rarely was overcrowded, its student population usually no more than two-thirds as large. It had an outbuilding classroom as well.

There was also a “small one room cottage” on Third street in the early 1900s used for the overflow of first graders from all schools. From the description in the 1904 article it was in a backyard or behind commercial buildings (it’s not identified on the Sanborn fire map of the same year). References in the papers show it always exceeded its capacity of forty, which was already around twice the average size of a 1^st grade classroom today.

But the crème de la crap of the Santa Rosa school system was South Park. Built cheaply in 1887 at the corner of Ware and South Main (today it’s the intersection of Petaluma Hill Road and Ware Ave) it was just outside of city limits, which meant there was no fire protection or sewer hookup. It had no plumbing except for a sink that drained into a culvert in front of the school; 90+ pupils and their teachers shared an outhouse.

(RIGHT: South Park school. Source: Portfolio of Santa Rosa and Vicinity, 1908)

South Park initially taught grades 1-8, but by 1904 kids went to Davis or Fourth street schools after third grade. Still, classrooms were overcrowded as badly as those found at Fourth street, having the additional problem of the place being poorly maintained with evidence of heavy water damage.

That lengthy article on school conditions served two purposes: It announced there was new blood publishing the Santa Rosa Republican, and they weren’t afraid to poke around some of the city’s problems (more about that below). It also helped promote a school bond proposition, which was coming up for a vote in a couple of weeks.

The school bond was to pay for various building improvements and construction of two new grade schools, at 10^th and B streets, and at Ellis and South A st. The bond was for $75,000 which was a stretch for 1904 Santa Rosa (it’s the equivalent of nearly $2.3M today).

While the Republican editorialized that it would be money well spent the Press Democrat railed against the bond, saying it was just too expensive. Letters appeared in the PD arguing the overcrowding could be solved cheaply (“let us build a couple of small school houses in the suburban districts”) or didn’t exist at all – why, if you take the maximum capacity for all schools and compare it to the total number of students in the district, we were merely eleven seats short.

Despite the vote happening just a few days before Christmas, voter turnout was high. “The friends of the movement were out in force, six or seven rigs being employed, from most of which the High School colors fluttered in the breeze,” the PD reported. That article continued:

Considerable comment was occasioned by reason of the manner in which the election was conducted. There was little if any secrecy preserved, the “yes” and “no” ballots being arranged on a table in front of the City Hall, where the polls were located, and as voters came up and picked up the ticket they desired to vote, the bystanders had no difficulty in determining their leanings.

The bond lost by 81 votes, 544:381 (a two-thirds majority was required). As a result, the Board of Education met a couple of days later and decreed there would be no new students enrolled unless a seat was available in the classroom.

At a later meeting the Board decided to float the school bond again, this time slashing it to $35,000 – more than half. In March 1905 this version passed easily, 1036 to 108. But it was only enough for additional outbuilding classrooms and the construction of the Luther Burbank elementary school.

Editors of the town’s two newspapers disagreed over the first bond proposal but they kept the tone civil, even respectful. That would soon end; over the following months hostilities escalated and the Press Democrat and Republican were clawing at each other almost daily (see “THE NEWSPAPER FEUD OF 1905“). The progressive Republican paper continued muckraking and exposed serious corruption, while PD editor Ernest Finley denounced his rivals as city-slickers who didn’t understand “country ways” and shouldn’t criticize how Santa Rosa was run.

(RIGHT: A classroom at the Lytton Springs Orphanage in 1909. Note the precarious stovepipe flue. Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library)

As for the old school buildings, they would stay in use for many years to come, although even the PD came to agree the Fremont and Lincoln schools were unsafe firetraps. In 1921 one of the old stoves at Fremont simply fell apart dumping coals on the floorboards; fortunately the embers were almost cold so the old wooden heap didn’t burn down.

Former county schools superintendent Frances McG. Martin said “The Fremont school house has been the lurking place of contagious diseases for more than 20 years, and should fire break out on the lower floor, the faulty construction of this relic of the dark ages would surely cause the loss of many precious lives.”

The original Lincoln school was demolished in 1923, followed by a larger version being built at the same location of Davis and Eighth. There was talk of moving the South Park school “to a point convenient for the pupils of the Roseland tract” but that didn’t happen; the building was sold in 1930 after a new South Park was built at the corner of Bennett Valley and Main.

As for Fourth street/Fremont, the new Fremont school – now Santa Rosa Middle School – opened on September 23, 1924. There was a bit of debate in the following months about what to do with the old building and grounds. It was proposed to sell the building and let a buyer move it elsewhere and the Boy Scouts wanted to take it over as their HQ (it’s unclear whether they were offering to buy it). The Santa Rosa Republican editorialized the city should build a 3,000 seat auditorium there and the PD argued it should remain an open lot to be used for carnivals, religious tent revivals, Rose Festival doings and such.

After the little kids moved into their new digs the district stuffed high school students in there for one last semester as the SRHS building was being finished. The old school was dismantled May-June 1925 and the lumber was sold by the city.

^* The Davis street/Lincoln school was built in 1885, but was preceded at that location by a primary school in an existing building. Although “primary school” usually meant just grades 1-3, an article in an 1883 Democrat revealed there were students up to grade 8. There was also a College Avenue primary (location unknown) in the 1880s which similarly went to eighth grade.

Overcrowded School-Rooms.

The seventh and eighth grades of the Fourth-street school and the eighth grade of the Davis-street school, are so crowded that it has been decided that in order to do justice to the teachers and pupils it is necessary to divide the session and have a morning and afternoon session. For instance, if there are sixty scholars in a grade, thirty will attend morning session and the balance the afternoon session. It is thought that this is better than to hire extra teachers to commence now in the middle of the term.

– Sonoma Democrat, February 27 1886

The Exact Condition of Some of Santa Rosa’s Schools Today

One of the Republican reporters spent a little time yesterday in visiting the various schools of Santa Rosa for the purpose of gathering first-hand data concerning actual conditions. In one or two places matters were not so bad but they could be worse, but in others things could hardly be more unendurable. Following are some of the reporter’s observations:

There is no sewerage at the South Park School building. The water and waste from the sink drain into an open ditch which runs in front of the building. It is through this ditch which passes by the school that the drain from Bennett Valley comes. There is absolutely no plumbing and the old fashioned outside closet is still in use here. There is also no fire protection as it is outside the City limits. A boneyard where the bones of dead animals are ground for fertilizing is less than a block distant. In the summer time especially the place wreaks [sic] with nauseating odors. The walls show signs of leakage where plastering has fallen and been patched. There are 47 children in the first grade and 44 in the second and third grades, making 91 in all.

All children in this part of the city who have passed the third grade are compelled to attend the Fourth and Davis street schools as only the first, second and third grades are taught here. The country is sparsely settled as compared with the city that lies between the school house and the business district. The children have to go from inside the city limits outside to attend school when the reverse should be the case. The building now standing is old and delapidated [sic] and quite unfit for use. Conditions point very plainly for the need of a large building on that side of the creek.

A small one room cottage on Third street has been pressed into service for the overflow of the first grades from all the schools and children living in all parts of the city attend here. The house is located on the rear of a lot with other buildings heavy foliage on all sides. There are 41 children here and the teacher experiences endless difficulty in placing the lessons on the black boards so that they can be read as the lighting is very inefficient. Most of the light comes through two west windows and the children face east. In the afternoon the strong light shines on the blackboard and reflects into the children’s eyes so they can read the blackboard lessons with great difficulty. Their own shadows fall across their desks and render it almost impossible to study.

At the Fourth street school will be found half of the second grade occupying a temporary one story building with a low thin roof. There is no ceiling to keep out the heat and in hot weather the children suffer greatly from the weather. There are fifty children crowded into this temporary structure which is unfit for school purposes. It is very difficult for the teachers to place the blackboard lessons so they can be read in this room. In the high first grade there are 48 children occupying a room whose natural seating capacity is 43. Extra desks and tables have been improvised here to accommodate the surplus. The room is very dark and reading from the blackboards is very difficult. It is very hard to write a lesson on any particular board so all can read. There are three east windows and one north window which admits the light. In another room the other half of the second grade is located in the main building. There are fifty-one children in this room whose natural seating capacity is but 46. Improvised tables and chairs serve as desks and seats for the surplus pupils. The lighting in this room is poor also.

Half of the third grade occupies a room whose natural seating capacity is 42 and there are 47 children crowded in here. There are three west windows. Reflections here are so bad it requires three blackboards used interchangeably to supply a proper light for the lessons.

The other half of the third grade occupy a room whose lighting is very bad the children’s own shadows being cast so heavily on the desk in front of them and it is with great difficulty they study. Reading blackboard lessons is very difficult here also.

In the room occupied by half of the fourth grade there is a natural seating capacity of forty-eight and there are fifty pupils here. The seats are the the old fashioned double ones and there are only three small east windows. The lighting here is vile.

The other half of the fourth grade occupies a small room with very poor lighting.

The fifth grade is located in a small room on the top floor whose seating capacity is forty-eight and there are fifty pupils crowded into this room. Most of the light comes from two north windows and the room is very dark.

Very bad conditions obtain in the small room on the top floor occupied by the sixth and seventh grades. There is a natural seating capacity here of but forty-six and fifty-four pupils are crowded into it and they are very much cramped. An extra row of desks has been placed in front. Four extra double seats have been placed in a space heretofore occupied by a single desk. The aisles in this room are almost impassable and the lighting is very bad.

The worst conditions in the Fourth street school obtain in the little room on the top floor where the sixth grade is located. This room has a natural seating capacity of but forty-six and there are sixty-two pupils crowded into it. The light is extremely poor. There are seven pupils occupying improvised desks and seats on and around the teacher’s desk. Extra chairs and tables have been placed along in front to accommodate the pupils.

– Santa Rosa Republican, December 7 1904

The Actual Condition in One of Santa Rosa’s School Rooms

The accompanying picture is of the sixth grade at the Fourth street school in this city and was taken as a sample of the congested conditions which now obtain in the Santa Rosa school department. This room is on the top floor of the building and is so crowded that were another pupil admitted he would have to take the teacher’s seat at her desk.

The photograph speaks for itself. The room, which by the way, is a miserably small one for the number of seats in it, has a natural capacity for forty-six pupils. There are sixty-two enrolled.

In the foreground can be seen the unfortunate students who have chairs on the platform grouped around the outside of the teacher’s desk. There are seven of these students — seven to write or study on one side of a desk about six feet in length. They are so situated that their shadows fall across their books or papers and cause them eye-trouble. Moreover, some of them have to double up when studying for they have no desks to lay books and papers on.

Two or three others in the room are seated on stools They are not dunces. They are some of the brightest youngsters in the land, but must perforce because of the failure to provide them with other accommodations, sit on stools and kick and squirm all day long in uncomfortable attitudes.

In the rear of the room, as can be seen by the photograph, are a number of so-called double desks occupied by two pupils. Discipline and order, to say nothing of progress in study, is next to impossible with double desks.

The rows of seats are so closely put together that one has to squeeze in order to get from one end of the room to the other. Were a fire to occur and the children in this room to be taken with a panic, there would surely be many hurt or perhaps killed in the mad rush to get to the door shown at the right side of the picture.

The lighting arrangements in this room are little short of criminal, for the children, as well as the teacher, have to endure all kinds of cross lights and shadows, which have a tendency to strain the optic nerve and bring on serious eye complaints.

We submit the picture and the facts as found by a Republican reporter for the sober thoughtful consideration of the voters of Court House school district. If bonds are defeated on December 20th these conditions will be maintained.

– Santa Rosa Republican, December 9 1904

THE CAMERA SPEAKS TRUTH

On another page is published a photograph taken several days since of one of Santa Rosa’s school rooms showing the crowded conditions which the school trustees are seeking to relieve by being authorized to issue bonds to the amount of $75000 for new buildings and equipment.

Facts stated in cold print may not always appeal to everybody as strongly as they should. But there is no escape from a photograph. The camera tells the truth. Its testimony is unassailable. He who sees must believe whether he wants to or not.

On December 20th the voters of Court House school district will have a chance to wipe that picture out. Is there a voter who can conscientiously say that he thinks it right to continue for another day such conditions as are presented in the photograph? Remember, unless a two-thirds majority be registered in favor of the proposition nearly every room in the department will within a few months present a spectacle as bad or perhaps worse.

A VERY DEAR SCHOOL

Some unknown correspondent, who hides under the convenient nom de plume of “Citizen,” writes a brief communication to our esteemed contemporary on the school bond question in answer to an editorial which recently appeared in the Republican. This correspondent argues as follows: “Let the trustees ask for one-half the amount and build two schools — frame buildings — which will answer all purposes until such time that we can afford to build of stone or brick.”

There is but one reply to that kind of an argument. No city of any size which has any pride or any business foresight puts up frame structures now-a-days, least of all for schools. Of course frame buildings would do, so far as the actual room is concerned. We have a fair sample now of such a building right here in Santa Rosa — the Fourth street school, which something like thirty years old and is rotten enough to be torn down and used for kindling wood. Had Santa Rosa put up a brick or stone building thirty years ago instead of a flimsy wooden structure, the present generation of tax payers, some of whom appear to be more solicitous about their fat pocketbooks than about the education of their children, would not be confronted with the early necessity of bending the city for a structure with which to replace it.

We repeat that it is poor business foresight, left-handed economy to sink the taxpayer’s coin into wooden school buildings here a very little more money will provide a durable, permanent structure of brick or stone that will stand for generations.

However, there is another side to this question. A frame building always stands in danger of being destroyed by fire. Santa Rosa is fortunate in not having had any fires. But other cities have not fared so well. The city of Oakland some years ago had a magnificent wooden high school building. Fire razed it almost to the ground. It was rebuilt in a substantial manner of wood and architecturally was a nice appearing structure. Scarcely a year afterward another fire occurred and again the building was nearly destroyed. A second time was the high school rebuilt, but the second building involved an outlay which would more than have paid for a permanent substantial brick structure. Oakland, however, profited by the lesson of the fires and now her high school students are housed in one of the largest brick school houses in the west.

San Francisco, the largest city on the coast, possessed of some of the finest fire proof buildings in the country, hides her head for very shame when visitors point at her grammar schools — disgraceful tumbled-down rattle-trap wooden buildings where the children are menaced every hour of the day by the dread perils of fire and panic. And San Francisco is paying today for her unwise policy of thirty years ago. She has a collection of decaying buildings on her hands which must all be replaced at the same time and the burden laid upon her shoulders by the past generation falls heavily upon the tax payers of today.

Mr. Citizen’s argument is a specious one, but it is absolutely disproved by experience, and as everybody knows experience is a dear school. In the long run the city will waste money by erecting wooden school houses. It will really be cheaper to build of brick or stone.

– Santa Rosa Republican, December 10 1904

THE SCHOOL BOND ISSUE

Editor Press Democrat: In discussing the $75,000 school bond question, why is it that the friends of the bond issue seem so disposed to exaggerate the condition and magnify the needs of our public schools? Exaggeration has the tendency to weaken a cause advocated. A writer in the Republican speaks of “the several hundred pupils now without adequate facilities,” and again “in fact they need enough more room to fill eleven rooms.” Is not this gross exaggeration? I take from Principal Cox’s report for this month the following, giving the number of pupils enrolled and the number of seats of the different schools: “High School, pupils enrolled 355, seats 350; Fourth street, pupils 627, seats 599; Davis street, pupils 476 seats 495; South Park, pupils 90, seats 91; Third street, pupils 43, seats 40,” making a total of pupils 1,592, and seats 1,581, or a lack of seats of only 11 for all the schools. I am in sympathy with our public schools and am in favor of voting all the means necessary to put the schools in first class condition, but I do think, taking into consideration the condition of our streets, our sewers and inadequate water supply that $75,000 at this time is drawing the thing pretty strong. I believe that public business should be conducted just as we would conduct our private affairs. Seventy-five thousand dollars would be equal to over $4O for every school child in the district. As a business proposition do we need school room that will cost $75,000? Some of my readers will accuse me of opposing our public schools. It we had been called upon to vote a bond of $20,000 or $30,000 to improve our school facilities none would be more willing to vote the bonds than Wesley Mock.

– Press Democrat, December 17 1904

1904

OH, LOATHSOME ME (CHARLIE HOLMES III)

THE THREE (OR MORE) FACES OF CHARLIE HOLMES

Charles H. Holmes Jr. was surely the most talked about person in Santa Rosa 120 years ago, and that wasn’t always a good thing.

OUR OWN TOM SAWYER
TERRIFIC GUY, TERRIBLE MARSHAL
OH, LOATHSOME ME
BOSS SQUEEDUNK

Mrs. Holmes Badly Burned

GIRL’S AGE MUST BE ASCERTAINED
CHARLES H. HOLMES WILL REMAIN IN JAIL AT NAPA PENDING INVESTIGATION
Effort Made to Secure a Bail Bond in This City Yesterday If One Should Be Required by Authorities

HOLMES IS IN JAIL GIRL COMES HOME
NELLIE HOMES IS RELEASED FROM DETENTION AT NAPA COUNTY HOSPITAL
Former City Marshal Remains in Custody While Girl’s Age is Being Investigated by the Authorities

HOLMES RELEASED ON $2,000 BOND
FORMER CITY MARSHAL RETURNS TO TOWN AFTER DETENTION FOR SEVERAL DAYS
What Disposition Will be Made of His Case is Still Undecided But Meanwhile He is a Free Man

HOLMES WILL BE RELEASED
District Attorney of Napa County Finds That Girl Was Over Sixteen Years Old

WOMEN CAUSE POLICE CALLS
Mrs. Holmes Startled Sonoma Avenue Last Night by Cries of “Murder” — Case Investigated

Mr. Holmes Statement

Feel They Are Doing All in Their Power

MRS. CHARLES H. HOLMES CALLED BY DEATH

Wife of Charles H. Holmes Passes Away

CHARLES H. HOLMES WAS MARRIED MONDAY

THE DIRTY WATER WARS OF MARK McDONALD

OUR OLD SCHOOLS WERE MISERABLE

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THE THREE (OR MORE) FACES OF CHARLIE HOLMES Charles H. Holmes Jr. was surely the most talked about person in Santa Rosa 120 years ago, and that wasn’t always a good thing. OUR OWN TOM SAWYER TERRIFIC GUY, TERRIBLE MARSHAL OH, LOATHSOME ME BOSS SQUEEDUNK

Mrs. Holmes Badly Burned

GIRL’S AGE MUST BE ASCERTAINED CHARLES H. HOLMES WILL REMAIN IN JAIL AT NAPA PENDING INVESTIGATION Effort Made to Secure a Bail Bond in This City Yesterday If One Should Be Required by Authorities

HOLMES IS IN JAIL GIRL COMES HOME NELLIE HOMES IS RELEASED FROM DETENTION AT NAPA COUNTY HOSPITAL Former City Marshal Remains in Custody While Girl’s Age is Being Investigated by the Authorities

HOLMES RELEASED ON $2,000 BOND FORMER CITY MARSHAL RETURNS TO TOWN AFTER DETENTION FOR SEVERAL DAYS What Disposition Will be Made of His Case is Still Undecided But Meanwhile He is a Free Man

HOLMES WILL BE RELEASED District Attorney of Napa County Finds That Girl Was Over Sixteen Years Old

WOMEN CAUSE POLICE CALLS Mrs. Holmes Startled Sonoma Avenue Last Night by Cries of “Murder” — Case Investigated

Mr. Holmes Statement

Feel They Are Doing All in Their Power

MRS. CHARLES H. HOLMES CALLED BY DEATH

Wife of Charles H. Holmes Passes Away

CHARLES H. HOLMES WAS MARRIED MONDAY

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Subscribe to SantaRosaHistory.com blog via Email

THE THREE (OR MORE) FACES OF CHARLIE HOLMES

Charles H. Holmes Jr. was surely the most talked about person in Santa Rosa 120 years ago, and that wasn’t always a good thing.

OUR OWN TOM SAWYER
TERRIFIC GUY, TERRIBLE MARSHAL
OH, LOATHSOME ME
BOSS SQUEEDUNK

GIRL’S AGE MUST BE ASCERTAINED
CHARLES H. HOLMES WILL REMAIN IN JAIL AT NAPA PENDING INVESTIGATION
Effort Made to Secure a Bail Bond in This City Yesterday If One Should Be Required by Authorities

HOLMES IS IN JAIL GIRL COMES HOME
NELLIE HOMES IS RELEASED FROM DETENTION AT NAPA COUNTY HOSPITAL
Former City Marshal Remains in Custody While Girl’s Age is Being Investigated by the Authorities

HOLMES RELEASED ON $2,000 BOND
FORMER CITY MARSHAL RETURNS TO TOWN AFTER DETENTION FOR SEVERAL DAYS
What Disposition Will be Made of His Case is Still Undecided But Meanwhile He is a Free Man

HOLMES WILL BE RELEASED
District Attorney of Napa County Finds That Girl Was Over Sixteen Years Old

WOMEN CAUSE POLICE CALLS
Mrs. Holmes Startled Sonoma Avenue Last Night by Cries of “Murder” — Case Investigated