1908

THE LAWSUIT THAT WOULDN’T DIE

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Quiz time: What’s more absurd than a lawsuit over the ownership of a dead dog?

You should read the earlier articles to relish the profound craziness of this feud over Queen, “a valuable varmint dog.” The case began in 1905 (1904?) and rumbled through the courts even after the pooch was killed in the Great Earthquake. Judge Seawell finally ruled in 1907 on who owned Queen, ordering Mr. Peterson to pay Mr. Frese $25.00 (heaven knows what all the legal bills were by this time). But even though the question of ownership of a deceased dog was settled, the courtroom combat began again in 1908 over a new crucial legal issue: Who owned her puppies? “There is a whole lot of principle as well as dogs mixed up in this case,” a wag remarked to the Press Democrat court reporter.

‘QUEEN’ IS DEAD BUT OFFSPRING LIVES
“The Dog Suit” Still on the Tapis and “The Pup Suit” Is Yet to Figure in Legal Annals

The end is not yet. The dead “Queen” is to be resurrected and her good points extolled once more in legal oratory in Judge Seawell’s department on the Superior Court. Not only that but the recovery of her progeny is to figure in another battle in the hall of justice. The latter consists of two well developed pups.

“Queen,” it will be remembered, has been dead nearly two years now. About the time of the earthquake this now celebrated canine expired from shock, leaving two little puppies to shift for themselves. “Queen” — the dead one–was alive when the litigation started, in which J. H. Frese figures as plaintiff and U. G. Peterson is defendant.

It was for the recovery of the dog that the first suit was brought. It started in the Justice Court some three years ago and from there went on appeal to the Superior Court, where it has been on trial and in many other phases since. Last Monday the suit of Frese vs. Peterson came up on a motion for a change of judgment and was set down for hearing next Monday by Judge Seawell.

Attorney Thomas J. Butts, who is counsel for the plaintiff, stated yesterday that he is going to bring another suit against the defendant for the recovery of the offspring of the deceased “Queen.” They are said to be very valuable dogs. “There is a whole lot of principle as well as dogs mixed up in this case,” someone ventured yesterday. It might be added that it costs something, too.

– Press Democrat, February 8, 1908

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FIRST BEATEN, THEN SILENCED

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Here was the justice system, Santa Rosa, 1908: A man’s arrested for allegedly beating his wife and infant child. Yet when everyone appeared in court, the case was closed – because the husband told the judge he wouldn’t allow his wife to testify against him. Um, was that even legal?

Probably so, amazingly. Like other states, California had inherited from common law the notion that a spouse couldn’t testify for or against the other without permission. Many exceptions were added during the first decades of statehood, and it was clear by 1872 that it didn’t apply when the testimony concerned a “crime committed by one against the other.” (Legal scholars can find a history of the state’s “for and against” laws here.)

But in this era, wife beating and child beating were considered morally reprehensible, yet not necessarily a crime. Partly this attitude was rooted in the common law principle of “chastisement” – that the master of a house actually had a right to physically “punish” members of the family as he saw fit (as long as there were no deaths or permanent injuries). Also, courts nationwide repeatedly ruled domestic violence was a private matter; in a 1874 decision by the North Carolina Supreme Court that was widely quoted by other jurists in following years, “…it is better to draw the curtain, shut out the public gaze, and leave the parties to forget and forgive.” it wasn’t until 1945 (!) that California declared it was a felony to inflict “cruel and inhumane corporal punishments or injury” to a wife or child.

With his wife unable to tell the court why “both she and the child were terribly bruised about the body and face,” the husband called witnesses that testified that their 9 month-old baby was clumsy and always falling against chairs or the stove. Mr. Joseph Vagas was acquitted.

Then to add insult to very real injury, a relative of the husband visited the Press Democrat to attack the mother for the baby’s condition (and her own, presumably) and to suggest “she did not produce evidence was because she had none to produce.”

This dismal story ends with a faint glimmer of hope for the abused Pearl Vagas: Two years later, she is listed in the census as unmarried, working as a housekeeper for the Frank Silva family in Petaluma. There was no mention of her child.

BEAT BABE AND MISTREATED HIS WIFE

Mrs. Pearl Vagas, the pretty little wife of the of the brutal fellow who was arrested for beating his nine-months-old babe and also his wife, was taken by the chief of police to Rev. F. T. Hopper of the Peniel Mission Friday night and placed in his care. She and the child were taken to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Warren Brentner, where the Hoppers reside, and there given the best of attention. Both she and the child were terribly bruised about the body and face, and were in a half starved and poorly clad condition. She told the people who befriended her a pitiful tale, and of how they were married in Petaluma, and the manner in which her husband has treated, or rather mistreated her since. She will be given shelter temporarily at the Bentner home until such time as she may be able to secure permanent quarters. In speaking of the trouble Friday night Mrs. Vagas stated that she would be glad to get a position where she could work for a living if she could only take her little babe along. She is quite a handsome little lady, and seems to have been given a very poor chance while tied to her brutal husband.

– Santa Rosa Republican, January 18, 1908
WIFE’S TONGUE TIED BY RULE OF COURT
Man Charged With Beating Child is Acquitted Because of Lack of Evidence

Joseph Vagas, charged with beating his infant child, escape conviction in Justice Atchinson’s court Wednesday by invoking the rule of practice which prohibits a wife from testifying against her husband. There was no evidence to connect the child’s injuries with his misconduct when the wife’s testimony was barred, and he produced several witnesses who had known of the child being injured by falling against the stove and chairs in the house.

The prosecution was represented by…

A relative of the accused man called at the Press Democrat office and alleged that the child’s mother had neglected it, and that she was to blame and not the father. He intimated that the reason why she did not produce evidence was because she had none to produce. The parties concerned are well known in Petaluma.

– Press Democrat, January 30, 1908

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WHO WAS JESSE PETER?

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

In a 1983 Press Democrat column, Gaye LeBaron compared him to a real-life Indiana Jones, “Scaling the cliffs of Indian dwellings preserved for centuries in the dry desert air…such is the stuff from which anthropological adventures are made.” When I recently mentioned his name to archeologists, 2 out of 4 dismissed him using the same description: “Pothunter,” which is an insult that ranks at the bottom near “grave robber” (it means an amateur who vandalizes prehistoric sites searching for interesting and/or valuable artifacts). The man was Jesse Peter. He wasn’t Indy, and it isn’t fair to call him a pothunter, either.

From his death in 1944 until recently, his name was on the Santa Rosa Junior College Museum in homage to his driving role in its creation. Jesse Peter was known in the 1930s for his donations of interesting rocks and Indian relics to the Junior College and for leading some field trips to the pueblos of the Southwest with JC students, documented in some very Indiana-Jonesish photos in the school’s collection. His day job was far less glamorous; he taught shop class at Santa Rosa Junior High, where his challenge was guiding pimpled Santa Rosa boys to use hammers for hitting nails and not their thumbs.

Teaching “manual arts” was a midlife career change for him. Born in 1885, he studied at UC/Berkeley, but never graduated. His father – also named Jesse – had been a miner, and he likewise spent his early adult years knocking around mining camps, starting in the Mojave Desert tungsten mines during the boom period when that ore was considered as precious as gold (think: Filaments for those popular, new-fangled lightbulbs). After that came at least five years in the Alaskan gold fields near Juneau. “Jess” also spent some time as a construction worker and contractor. He was good at these jobs and earned a living, but it was a bit of a drifter’s life.

At the same time, Jesse Peter had another identity as a well-known and respected figure in the world of archeology. In 1933 and 1934 he was among the 75 “experienced men” nationwide invited by the National Park Service to join the prestigious Rainbow Bridge/Monument Valley Expeditions. The group trekked into the vast, 3,000 square-mile “Four Corners” region of the Southwest – then accessible only by horseback and mule – to document Navajo culture in the remote area and begin archeological research into the little-known Anasazi people. (There are thousands of photos from the expeditions available here, but participants are rarely identified.)

Closer to home, he documented over 200 archeological sites in the North Bay, more than anyone else of that era. He had an uncommon eye for seeing what other’s couldn’t; his most significant discoveries locally were probably the locations of the enormous obsidian quarry at Annadel State Park and the large Pomo village now covered by Santa Rosa’s City Hall.

That Peter spent his last decade associated with the Junior College and the creation of its museum gives a nice arc to his biography – he was just about the same age as a SRJC student when he made his astonishing debut as an archeologist. In 1907, when he was just 22 years old, he donated to UC/Berkeley a collection of over 600 artifacts that he had excavated near Santa Rosa, apparently on his family’s farm. These “finished and half-completed mortars, spear points, knives, and ceremonial instruments,” according to a university newsletter, included “several pieces of types that have not been discovered before and are therefore of particular importance.” Over three decades later, it was still described as one of the most important private archeological donations ever made to Berkeley.

Given his lifelong interest in the field, it may seem strange that Jesse Peter didn’t become a professional archeologist, but you have to consider his time; had he finished a degree at the university he would have been a member of the class of 1907, when there were few career opportunities in archeology aside from college teaching or working as a museum preparator. There was also less stigma to being an “avocational” scientist in those days; another example from Peter’s generation was John A. Comstock (eldest brother of Judge Hilliard Comstock), who became the acknowledged expert on California butterflies despite having no former education whatsoever. The difference between Comstock and Peter, however, was that Comstock published his research (always the academic yardstick of accomplishment) while nothing by Peter appeared in print – even as his field notes, maps, and artifacts were recognized as important and were being collected by the University of California and other institutions.

(RIGHT: Jesse Peter in the 1930s. Photo courtesy Santa Rosa Junior College Museum.)

Peter’s reputation is further diminished by our modern revulsion over the destructive nature of archeological practices of a century ago. In the photo seen to the right (CLICK to enlarge), he is counting tree rings to calculate the age of a log shaped by Native Americans. While modern scientists have the technology to bore tiny core samples into wood, it appears here that the hewn tip of the log was sliced off with a saw, destroying much of the worth of this object – and possibly the entire site – to future researchers.

And finally there’s the “pothunter” label, which likewise has to be understood in the context of the day, when the belief was that important objects had to be taken away and preserved before they were grabbed by treasure hunters, accidentally destroyed by development, or ended up on someone’s knicknack shelf. “Everyone picked up objects back then,” an SSU anthropologist told me, “including the most well-known names. You can’t point fingers.”

MAKES GIFT TO UNIVERSITY

Jesse Peter, a former well-known young man of this city and a graduate of the high school here, has presented the University of California at Berkeley a valuable collection of prehistoric implements obtained by him principally from the deposits around the warm spring two and a half miles east of Santa Rosa on the Peters place. The specimens were found at varying depths ranging down to more than twenty feet below the surface. The collection includes more than six hundred pieces, of which many are rare objects not commonly represented in museums. It is of special value because all of the material has been obtained from a limited area and the facts relating to the discovery are all available.

– Press Democrat, August 24, 1907

JESSE PETER’S GIFT TO THE UNIVERSITY
Archeological Remains Found Near Santa Rosa Are Given to Museum at Berkeley

The University of California Weekly News Letter acknowledges a gift from Jesse Peter of this city of archaeological remains unearthed near Santa Rosa. The letter says:

“Jesse Peter, of Santa Rosa, California, has presented to the Museum of Anthropology of the University a collection of archaeological remains from the vicinity of Santa Rosa. This collection comprises several hundred pieces, including finished and half completed mortars, spear points, knives and ceremonial implements. There are several pieces of types that have not been discovered before and are therefore of particular importance. Of special interest is a large series of chipped obsidian implements and charm stones, all found in a large spring where they were evidently for a long period deposited as offerings by the Indians of prehistoric times.”

– Press Democrat, February 2, 1908

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