I See by the Papers...

If it wasn’t for the reefers, Santa Rosa would have been a sad, sad place during the 1920s. Prohibition had nearly wiped out Sonoma County’s wine industry and Santa Rosa’s downtown was a quiet place now that our dozens of saloons were either closed or pouring nothing stronger than sarsaparilla. The only bright spot in the local economy was fruit.

The rest of this article and the entire series on July, 1925 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

Of all the places demolished during the urban renewal debacle to clear land for the downtown mall, the ones mourned most heavily are A) the California Theater B) the Occidental Hotel and C) the Elks’ Building. What? You don’t know about the Elks’ Building? Maybe that’s because it was called the former Elks’ Building for most of its existence.

The rest of this article and the entire series on July, 1925 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

In the pages of old newspapers there are stories you will not expect, nor easily forget. Some stray into Believe-it-or-Not! territory; a 30 year-old laborer who died of drinking too much cold water (July 21 1922) or the Cotati couple that tied up a dinner guest with wire after he began acting crazy, yet didn’t take him to the police until the next day (Nov. 18, 1907). The story found below isn’t as dramatic as those, but I found it an intriguing glimpse of attitudes here a century ago. Plus, the writing’s better than what usually appeared in the Press Democrat.

The rest of this article and the entire series on July, 1925 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

What beginneth with headlines endeth with a page of classifieds. Every day in July 1925 the Press Democrat there were hundreds of chickens for sale plus cows (which you could sometimes rent!) and goats and horses and dogs and…hey, do you have any use for 350 pigeons? Call H. Heffelfinger if so.

The rest of this article and the entire series on July, 1925 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

He was Santa Rosa's top lawman by day, top scallywag by night: Around the turn of the last century, Charlie Holmes was both Town Marshal and leader of the Squeedunks. It's as if Bruce Wayne split his time between Batman and performing Monty Python skits.

This is the fourth and final chapter in the story of Charles H. Holmes Jr., who was surely among the most...colorful people to come from Santa Rosa. While this article is centered on his Squeedunkery, here we also find how all those loose threads introduced earlier were resolved during the 1910s, when Charlie was in his fifties.

Charlie always craved attention and as a kid he saw the Squeedunk's Fourth of July antics were the biggest hit at the town's celebrations. Having an audience with everyone you ever knew laughing and cheering because of a silly speech seemed an easy route to popularity, and for him it was. The first newspaper item about him appeared in 1894, when the 30 year-old Charlie stood on the corner Fifth and Mendocino streets and yapped about politics and bugs. In keeping with the spirit of nonsense, the editor commented "thunderous applause greeted his apostrophes" and joked he didn't shut up until someone "brought the muzzle of a six-shooter on a level with his open mouth."

Now flash forward six years to 1900. Charles Holmes is a Spanish-American War vet (although his National Guard company never left the Bay Area), elected and then reelected as marshal, a popular afterdinner speaker and comic entertainer, and not the least of it, chairman of the "Ancient Order of Squeeduncks."

The Press Democrat - which adored the Squeedunks and Charlie in equal measure - devoted much coverage to their planning sessions for the upcoming Fourth of July. The meetings were held at City Hall (probably in his marshal's office) and mainly concerned which of the guys would be elected Squeedunk Queen. Dressing in women's clothing was always a major part of the Squeedunk shtick, and that's enough said about that. The most interesting element in those articles is that about two dozen members were named, revealing both how large the group was and how it cut across divisions by age and social status.

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

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 ain't like today. 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 from someone extremely well liked our ancestors were willing to tolerate.

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.

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 link the accident to stress resulting 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.

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

It wasn't supposed to turn out that way. The 1895 Rose Festival was a perfect example of a Victorian American community celebration and afterward was considered a great success, drawing visitors from all over the West Coast, including the mayor of San Francisco and the Governor. It was viewed as being something like Santa Rosa's coming out party.

Hundreds of our ancestors dived in to make that Rose Carnival (its real name) a success through diligent planning and hard work. It also had a major boost because all of the major San Francisco newspapers - the Chronicle, Examiner and Call - touted it as they might a must-see gala happening in their own city. There were full-page features and front page updates over several days. All papers sent artists here to sketch the street scenes and people involved, and as a result it's the best visually documented glimpse we have from 19th century Santa Rosa. Below are a sampling of the drawings which appeared in SF newspaper articles.

Those 1895 doings were also surprising because the previous Rose Carnival in 1894 was remarkable only in that Santa Rosa was able to pull off anything at all. There were less than three weeks from when that one was proposed to the day of the parade. The idea that year was to draw visitors from the "Midwinter Exposition" which was kind of a World's Fair being held in Golden Gate Park.

This time the festivities would stretch over three days in May, Wednesday through Friday. Today we might expect a town celebration like that to be scheduled for a weekend, but in those times Saturday was the big market day, when farmers shopped in town and stores stayed open late. On the last day there was to be a high-profile race (which would mean gambling) and heaven forfend such a thing happen on the same day we were all supposed to be piously sitting in pews.

Newspapers began whipping up interest weeks before the carnival. Their main focus was on the Carnival Queen competition, which gave editors an excuse to print lots of portraits of pretty women. The papers framed it as a beauty contest, cheering for different favorites to win.

Over 7,000 votes were cast at 10¢ per, and during the final hours ballot boxes were stuffed with envelopes containing up to $100. Isabel Donovan won with 4,610 votes. She was a leader in planning this carnival and the one before; she was also a working woman (general manager of the Sunset Telephone Company's office in Santa Rosa) and unlike other nominees, wasn't part of the society clique.

The publicity spotlight was also on cycling, and not just the race held on the final day. John Sheehy's Petaluma Historian blog has a great essay on the 1890s bicycle craze and our Santa Rosa Wheelmen Club invited other clubs large and small. The Democrat reported the head of the Reliance club of Oakland vowed their group "...with its large contingent of lady bicyclists, will come up in a body to our Rose Carnival if invited. It is the boss club of the State, and will come uniformed and all together on wheels....Just think of it, one hundred and fifty gentlemen and ladies to enter the town on wheels escorted by our local wheelers, won’t it be a fine sight?"

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