Dear Luther Burbank: Will you please allow us to honor you by putting your name on our new elementary school? Sincerely, The Board of Education.
That was the gist of their February 1906 request, according to the Press Democrat, and a few days later an article followed about Burbank granting permission, "...but not without many misgivings as to my ability to hold up the reputation of such a fine institution. My deep interest in all children, as well as Santa Rosa in general, will be my apology for accepting this honor."
Sure, old Luther poured on the faux humility a bit too thick, but he really did have a genuine affection for children, although he was never a parent. He wrote and spoke often about education and the importance of nurturing children (including some quirky ideas, such as they shouldn't begin schooling until age ten). Burbank was famously impatient with adults who dropped by his Santa Rosa garden seeking an audience, but he always gave children his full attention, hoping to spark a lifelong love of nature. And for some reason he oddly felt compelled to entertain them by performing headstands and somersaults.
Why they wanted to name school after Burbank was obvious: In the Press Democrat article he was called a "great scientist" and "Santa Rosa's eminent citizen." The year before, Burbank had been awarded a grant of $10,000 a year by the Carnegie Institution. As the prestigious Institution was known for funding only the pursuit of pure scientific research, Burbank suddenly was cast as a celebrity and a genius of world-class importance instead of merely a nursery man who produced novelty flower and vegetable seeds. (The deal ended bitterly for Burbank in 1909 amid a growing number of scientists calling him a charlatan - see the four part "BURBANK FOLLIES" series for more.)
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
"Every village has its idiot" it's said (although Mark Twain might have quipped that was an undercount) but it's more likely every village in early America had a bonafide eccentric. Some had crazy ideas and some were outright crazy; some did or said things that seemed bonkers to fellow villagers but might have been seen as reasonable, even inspired, by those in the know.
In Civil War-era Santa Rosa the town eccentric was a guy named John Morrow. He captured birds and then let them go after tying weights to them. He also created a wind-up toy that could fly a short distance. And then there's this: He patented an invention which could have rewritten the history of aviation.
Before jumping on that story, a reminder that Santa Rosa has been overlooked by historians as a crossroads for many pioneer aviators. Gentle Reader presumably salutes Fred J. Wiseman for making the first airmail flight between Petaluma and here in 1911; lesser known is that one version of his flying machine made here was later among the first handful of aircraft bought by the U.S. military. And although he never flew around Santa Rosa, Blaine G. Selvage made probably the first airplane flight on the West Coast at Eureka in 1909; in the years immediately prior to that he lived here, and is buried (in an unmarked grave) at Santa Rosa Memorial Park.
John Bland Morrow apparently arrived in Santa Rosa during early 1865, then 28 or 29 years old. A letter to his parents from Virginia City survives, where he told them he was earning a good wage although many men couldn't find any work at all: "I have an advantage over most of the sharps, for when I get broke, I fall back on Science. So I went to work at Gold Hill Machine Shop at five dollars a day - in Gold." (He also described to his Pennsylvania folks an unusual plant in Nevada called a "cactus.")
Morrow signed his letter as the "Secretary of the Nevada Territory Engineers Association," and always listed his profession as a machinist or mechanic - except in Santa Rosa, where he was a "tinner" (tinsmith). After about three years here he moved to San Francisco along with his friend Harry Rich.
Nothing about Morrow appeared in the local newspapers while he was in Santa Rosa, but much was printed about him afterward, particularly in Healdsburg's weekly Russian River Flag:
| John Morrow— Formerly of Santa Rosa, but now living, we believe, in San Francisco. Some years ago, our attention was called to this person, by what was then regarded as a somewhat novel eccentricity. He was engaged in catching various kinds of fowl, carefully measuring their wings, estimating the force and velocity of their motion, and loading them with weights, to find what each could carry. Some time afterward. passing through Santa Rosa, we heard of a small machine worked by a spring, that flew through the air like a bird. But few had seen it and by many it was regarded as a doubtful rumor... |
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott