Sounds of a spring evening, downtown Santa Rosa, 1908: Crickets chirping, horses clopping, men blasting guns skywards into trees, blindly, with no light for aiming except for flickering candles and lanterns. It was probably a good idea to stay safely indoors that night.
The quarry was a formerly pet raccoon, who had escaped and developed a taste for caged chicken. As it wasn't mentioned that this 'coon was minus a leg, it presumably was another animal than the one shot out of a tree by a cop back in 1905.
The story ended with a boy selling the dead raccoon in Santa Rosa's little Chinatown, but given that many old-timers from the Southern U.S. were quite fond of raccoon recipes, the enterprising young man might have made more by selling the carcass to a cook along McDonald Avenue.
COON HUNT IN THE HEART OF TOWN
Animal Treed and Killed in the Grounds of the Hahman Residence on Third Street
There was a coon hunt right in the heart of Santa Rosa at a late hour on Friday night and the game was treed and finally dropped into earth.
For some time the tell tale nightly slaughter in chicken roosts, particularly on Second and Third streets, and the knowledge that the animal was abroad in the land, having escaped from a pen were it had been kept as a pet, has kept householders on the qui vive and officers and civilians have been on the lookout for Mr. Coon.
About 10:30 o'clock Friday night a commotion in the chicken house in the grounds of the residence of Mrs. Henrietta A. Hahmann on Third street--a place previously visited by the animal--warned members of the family that the four-footed prowler was around making a another call. The fine Plymouth Rock hens, tasted once before, had called back an appetite for more.
A telephone message to police headquarters for Chief of Police Fred Rushmore and Police Officer I. N. Lindley to the scene. There was an exciting chase and the animal took to a tree. It was some time before the hiding place of the chicken thief could be located and then Chief Rushmore took a shot into the leafy bower and missed in the uncertain light afforded by candles and lanterns. Policemen Lindley joined in the fusillade. C. Louis Kolf who lives a little way further down the street, and is a great hunter, was attracted to the place and he brought his rifle with him. The rifle proved Mr. Coon's undoing. Rushmore took aim and this time the bullet found a billet in the animal's anatomy, and it fell with a dull thud to the ground. Another bullet from Kolf and all was over.
A lad with an eye to business and a recollection that Chinese make mysterious dishes with just such pot luck, came along. He shouldered the chicken-fed coon and wended his way to Chinatown. There was much rejoicing in Mongolian quarters. He found a willing purchaser and before long the aroma of cooking with doubtless a coon-chicken flavor, came floating out of the shack in which the feast was in course of preparation.- Press Democrat, May 10, 1908
His story sounded like something made up on the spot: Honest, officer, I was hired by Lord Rothschild to kill these birds. The Lake County game warden must have thought the poacher before him was a clumsy liar or maybe daft; why would one of the world's richest men send some guy to Lakeport to illegally shoot birds?
Incredibly, the story was true. The man was Dr. Charles M. Harris, a renowned taxidermist who could skin fifty birds in a day. For more than a decade, he had indeed worked for Walter Rothschild, the eldest son of fabulously wealthy London banker Baron Rothschild. While other powerful bankers in the late 19th century loaned money to giants of industry, the House of Rothschild funded nations, having built the largest fortune in modern world history. Walter, however, wanted to spend money as fast as possible. He was an amateur zoologist, and a collector on a scale that made William Randolph Hearst look like a piker. He seemingly wanted one specimen of everything that flies, walks, crawls, swims or slithers, alive or dead. He was an eccentric but fascinating man, often so obsessed with his collections that his sanity was in doubt.
Before charging down the trail that led Dr. Harris to Lake County in 1908, indulge me a paragraph of rant. The story of Walter Rothschild is now my quintessential example of how unreliable the Internet can be for research. Except for a bare-bones Wikipedia page offering random facts, there are only a handful of online resources (biblio below in addition to article links) that tell even a part of his remarkable tale, and sometimes the facts are cockeyed or the rough patches are sanded flat. In a couple of my research dead-ends, Google Books blocked critical pages in "preview view" or hinted in "snippet view" that intriguing information may (or may not) be found in a book. Look, I would happily buy a digital copy of the book (or even just that essential page!) on the spot, since a scanned copy is obviously on their hard disks. But that's not an option, even though these are books long out of print and usually can't be obtained through inter-library loan. If I hadn't lucked across a copy of "Dear Lord Rothschild" - a biography written by his niece and difficult to find in the U.S. - I wouldn't have even known how to properly research his life. The takeaway lesson is threefold: Even in 2011, loads of critical information is still not available online; Internet articles - including this one - have no standing next to a real book that took years (decades?) to research and write; also, a Google Book search is no substitute for a good book index and bibliography. End of rant.
The first anecdote usually told about Walter Rothschild (1868-1937) has him announcing at seven years old that he was going to build a little museum of insect specimens in a garden shed. But an incident from age five was even more revealing. He brought a dead butterfly to his mother, which she told him was a "nice Tortoiseshell." The little boy disagreed: "No, it's not. It's different." And he was right - that butterfly really was from another, rarer species.
The next vignette from Walter's youth finds him at 13, when he met Albert Günther, head of the zoology department at the Natural History Museum in London. Walter quickly attached himself to Günther and made him a mentor, writing through his teenage years hundreds of letters to the man ten years older than his father. Günther was cautious in encouraging the boy, aware that the powerful family was expecting Walter to become a financial Napoleon instead of a hunter of bugs.
Walter had no formal childhood education, but attended colleges in Germany and at Cambridge for three years (at the latter, he brought along a flock of brown kiwis, which can grow as large as a big chicken). When he turned twenty-one in 1889, Walter and his father came to an understanding; he would join the bank to learn the trade, and his father would give him a plot of land on the outskirts of "Tring Park," the family's six square-mile country estate where he could build a museum to house his collections. In truth, his father probably wanted the museum to be built as much as Walter; the manor house, sheds and rented buildings were overflowing with boxes stuffed with hundreds of thousands of mounted beetles, butterflies, moths, and things larger.
If Baron Rothschild hoped his son's interest in zoology would wane as he grew older, he was quite wrong. From his banker's chair over the next twenty years, Walter would fund over 300 collecting expeditions, including Dr. Harris' bird-hunting trip to Northern California. If anything, his collecting mania grew out of control, and some thought he was mad. When Walter ordered Dr. Harris to the Galápagos islands with the mission to capture every single giant tortoise they could find, Harris first secretly told Albert Günther about the planned trip, giving him the opportunity to intervene (he didn't).
The Galápagos expedition is well-documented, and shows that these trips came with considerable risks. Four men died and Harris was nearly killed by yellow fever. Walter found his expedition budgets swelling with payments to doctors, widows, morticians, and collectors seriously injured - on another trip, a man had his arm ripped off by a leopard. But Dr. Harris managed to bring sixty live giant tortoise to England. (Capturing a giant tortoise is the easy part, as it turned out. When Harris and the others would find one, they turned it onto the back of its shell and weighted it down with a rock before going off to search for more. But when they returned, they would sometimes find the animals had shaken the rocks off and flipped themselves back over. Thus the mission became not the hunt for rare tortoise, but the search for nice heavy rocks.)
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Walter's herd of giant tortoises became the signature part of his menagerie; one of the most famous photographs of him is the one at right, wearing a proper Edwardian morning coat and top hat while riding on the back of a tortoise being coaxed along with a leaf of lettuce on a stick. The other best-known picture has Walter driving a four-in-hand carriage pulled by zebras, a stunt he performed in a courtyard of Buckingham Palace to demonstrate they could be tamed - although he later admitted he was terrified of what might happen when a young girl in the royal family tried to pet one of them. Also roaming the grounds of his museum were kangaroos, ostriches. wild horses, emus, deer, turkeys, cassowaries, a tame wolf, a monkey, an anteater, and an opossum, which slept under his desk during the day. And when these pets died, he had them skinned and stuffed for his museum, which became known by local children as the “Dead Zoo.” (His 'evolution of the dog' exhibit is particularly creepy.)
Although there was a trench separating the museum grounds from the rest of the estate, escapes likely added to the tensions between Walter and his father. The kangaroos would regularly tear up the flower beds surrounding the manor house, causing the Baron's staff of gardeners to often have to replant daily. One of the cassowaries - a flightless bird that can grow taller than an adult human - attacked the Baron's horse when he was on a morning ride, and a dingo bit several horses in the stables.
The crisis came in 1907-1908, when it became clear that Walter's spending had gone off the rails. Most of the property he owned had been mortgaged, and the museum was deeply in debt. The Baron disinherited his son, and Walter resigned from the bank. The estate would go to his younger brother Charles, who remained in banking. (Charles, by the way, was also a lifelong entomology buff, building the world's top collection of fleas and discovering the identity of the plague flea.) Walter would inherit the title (becoming the Second Lord Rothschild) and £1,000,000, more than enough for him to continue expanding his museum and funding new expeditions.
The one thing that Walter desired most he could not buy: Membership into the scientific community. He had pissed off everyone at the Natural History Museum except Günther with his fits of pique; once he threatened to break his promises of specimen donation when the curator named one of "his" giant tortoises without Walter's permission. Rarely would a scientific journal publish his letters or studies, and when his work was questioned or rejected, he responded with tirades insulting the editor. And despite having amassed the most significant collection of bugs on the entire planet, he wasn't even allowed to join the Royal Society until 1911. Stymied in gaining any foothold in this fraternity, he gave up and launched his own scientific journal, with himself as editor.
In many ways, Walter Rothschild was like Luther Burbank. Both expected (demanded, really) due respect as scientists even though they ignored the basic precepts of the scientific method, such as keeping good notes on your research. More than once, Walter mistakenly claimed to have discovered a new species when the creature was actually still a juvenile or only had individual variations in color or markings. And of the millions of butterflies in his collection, he liked to boast, "I have no duplicates," a claim that defies belief.
Walter also had a career as a Member of Parliament, and played a key role in the movement to establish modern-day Israel, a topic explored in depth on many other web pages. He continued to expand his museum, set back only by the 1931 purchase of his entire stuffed bird collection by the American Museum of Natural History. That Walter sold anything - particularly one of the crown jewels of his life's work - seems antithetical to his nature, and it was. But he needed to raise $225,000 because he was being blackmailed by a former mistress, said to be a peeress and her husband. While he could have tapped the family coffers for the sum, he couldn't bear the thought of his elderly mother learning of his indiscretion.
In the end his collection included 300,000 bird skins, 2,000 stuffed birds (presumably stuffed after the blackmail sale) and over 2 million butterflies and moths. He left it all to the UK Natural History Museum, and exhibits are still on display in his museums. If you visit, skip gallery six with the creepy dogs, all of them with glass-marble eyes sadly looking at you as if they want someone to explain why their old companion did this to them. (UPDATE: There was a dog cemetery at Tring, so few, if any, of these animals were actually pets of the family.)
Whatever his failings and foibles, what Walter Rothschild created was simply incredible, never attempted before by an individual and rarely by nations. A member of the Rothschild Archive summed it up well:
| It is hard to absorb the scale of these numbers, but the logistics of collection which lie behind them is, to me, still more staggering. Walter was employing collectors and arranging expeditions, as we have seen, from the time he was up at Cambridge. He continued throughout his life. The journey for each one of his specimens, ending in a drawer in Tring, begins in some remote part of the globe and involves, in each case, a collector, a packer, a sequence of transporters, in some cases a dealer, a taxidermist or setter in the case of insects and, finally, one of the Tring trio to identify, label, record, file and perhaps publish. All of this repeated millions of times. And at the heart of this, one man’s drive, organizational ability and finance.... It was equally significant that, perhaps for the first time, the man with resources could conceive a scheme on a global scale and actually have a chance of pulling it off. As a Rothschild, Walter would have been used to hearing his relatives in business talking in such global terms: their day-to-day business involved resources and finance for virtually every corner of the globe. And as a Rothschild, he had access - or so it seemed - to unlimited resources. |
But wind the clock back to 1908, the crucial year that Dr. Harris found himself under arrest in Lake County. What a loss that neither Press Democrat editor Ernest Finley nor other local newspapermen knew who he was, or his link to one of the most eccentric and interesting persons in the world. What a story it would have made to sit down with him and ask, "tell me about your boss. Tell me what it was like to sail a ship with a cargo of sixty giant tortoises around Cape Horn. Tell me about all your other adventures hunting for the great Dead Zoo."
Something in the Genes: Walter Rothschild, Zoological Collector Extraordinaire
A sheltered life: the unexpected history of the giant tortoise
The Aurelian legacy: British butterflies and their collectors
Introducing Walter Rothschild (interesting but whitewashed video from The Natural History Museum at Tring)
CLEVER CAPTURE OF BIRD KILLER
Deputy Lea Lands a Man Who Claims He is Securing a Collection for the Rothschilds
In order to provide the Rothschilds, the wealthy London bankers, with a collection of California birds of all descriptions, Charles N. Harris says he went gunning in Lake County. When arrested he already killed about 140 birds. Deputy Game Commissioner A. F. Lea made the arrest in Lakeport the day before yesterday, and Harris is awaiting trial.
Deputy Lea stated yesterday that Harris was in the habit of killing the birds and then take them back to San Francisco where they were stuffed and mounted. The Rothschilds are to pay a big sum for the collection when it is completed, according to Harris' story. Some of the birds he secured in Lake County are said to have been Mountain Quail.- Press Democrat, March 25, 1908
MORE ABOUT MAN WHO KILLS BIRDS
Case is Unique in Annals of Prosecution of Violations of the Game Laws
Mention was made in the Press Democrat Wednesday morning of the arrest in Lakeport of Charles N. Harris, who is securing an exhibit of stuffed birds for the Rothschilds of England, on a charge of killing birds out of season. The Lakeport Press adds these additional details of the case:
"Game Warden Alonzo Lea and A. M.. Fairfield dropped into town Thursday and yesterday arrested Charles M. Harris, a cousin of Jack Wilson, who has been in the county about five weeks. The charge against the man was that of killing quail out of season. He appeared before Justice Bruton, pleaded guilty and was released on $150 cash bail, and April 4th was set as the date for pronouncing sentence. Seventeen charges are held pending against him but will probably not be prosecuted.
"The case is an interesting one and unique in the annals of the prosecution of violations of game laws. Harris is an expert taxidermist and has traveled over much of the world in his business, and is said to have been in the employ of the Rothschilds, the millionaire bankers of Europe, preparing specimens for their private collection. The Sunday Examiner a short time ago had a page account and pictures of some of his work. Here he has been making a collection of the native birds of this county, and the Wardens seized 148 specimens of various bird skins, particularly prepared for mounting. The killing of protected birds is permitted by law when they are taken for public institutions of science on a regularly authorized permit but Harris admitted that he was collecting for private sale and had no permits.
The collection was a revelation of the wealth and beauty of bird life in this county. The confiscated skins will probably be presented by the Game Commission to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, which lost all his collection in the big fire."- Press Democrat, March 26, 1908
Dear Abby: I'm a county game commissioner and my son was "acting out" by allegedly blowing up fish with dynamite in Austin Creek. Boys will be boys you know, but that would be pretty durn illegal if he done it! A policeman showed up at my door to arrest Fred, but I told 'em it was good enough that I ordered the boy to stay in his room. They took him away anyway, and it cost me $250 to bail him out after he confessed to the crime, although I says he didn't. So while he's waiting for trial, should I restrict his access to the family dynamite? Signed, Concerned in Cazadero
SEQUEL TO AN ARREST
Commissioner's Son Charged With Dynamiting Fish
Game Warden John C. Ingalls and Constable Ben H. Barnes arrested Fred Quigley at Cazadero Tuesday and landed him at the county jail Tuesday evening. The young man is charged with having used dynamite in Austin Creek, near Cazadero, to kill fish. The case is an interesting one, and promises to develop other things equally as interesting.
Quigley is the son of a deputy game commissioner, and his offense was against the very laws his father is endeavoring to uphold. The father told the arresting officers Tuesday that he had arrested his son for the offense, had taken him before Justice E. E. Trosper at Cazadero, and the latter had informed the father that there was insufficient evidence against the boy. Quigley, Sr., said that since that time he had had his son under detention at Cazadero.
When Ingalls and Barnes attempted to take young Quigley and bring him to the county jail, the father interfered. He charges that Ingalls knocked him down when he sought to prevent the arrest of his son, and he threatened to have Ingalls arrested as soon as he reached home. He proposed to swear out the warrant before Justice Trosper. Ingalls admitted that he had pushed Quigley out of the way, but denies having struck him.
It is claimed here that after Fred Quigley was landed in the county jail he confessed to dynamiting the stream. The father claimed that his son had not confessed.
The examination of the young man was set for February 18, and he was released on two hundred and fifty dollars.- Santa Rosa Republican, February 12, 1908
Followups to some articles from the 1905-1906 Santa Rosa newspapers discussed in earlier posts:
 | 1906 EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG CLEANUP The 1906 earthquake flattened much of downtown Santa Rosa, and it took an army of workers six weeks to clear just the worst of it. What happened to that mountain of rubble? Most of it was hauled away by train, as shown in many photographs of men with shovels standing next to flatcars (perhaps they would have done more shoveling and less standing around if the town had paid them more than $2/day, which was 50¢ below the prevailing wage for manual labor). But not all the debris left town; some was apparently used as riprap on the creeks, and hundreds of loads were used by Santa Rosa as fill for the approaches to the new E street bridge. As a result, the banks of Santa Rosa Creek were squeezed together by over one hundred feet, the first in a century of abuses to a waterway that had salmon runs so plentiful that fish could be caught barehanded. |
| THE MAN WHO WOULD BE SIDEWALK KING There couldn't have been a more dolorous figure in early 20th c. Santa Rosa than Joseph Forgett, whose love for opium led him further and further down unlovely paths. In 1905 he was charged with carrying a meat cleaver under his coat and stealing an opium pipe; nearly two years later he was the ringleader in a jail break. The items below from early 1907 document what he was doing inbetween, including fraud and petty theft. |
| THE STREET KNEE-DEEP IN MUD Enough with the complaints about potholes on Santa Rosa streets; a little over a hundred years ago, there was a crater on Sebastopol Ave. that regularly sank buggies up to their axles - and considering that a buggy axle was between 16-26 inches off the ground, this was a Pothole From Hell, indeed. And even worse, it took the town over three years to patch it. The problem was apparently a feud between the town and the owners of a property at the corner of Boyd street, who refused to sell their 14-foot frontage to allow the street to be widened and drainage added. Until it was resolved in 1907, it was a frequent topic of hand-wringing at City Council meetings, with it even proposed that a bridge should be built over the hole. |
| ANY ROBIN ON THE MENU? It may sound Henry VIII-ish today, but at the turn of the 20th century, songbirds baked in a pie, particularly robins, were considered good eatin' by many. The group that came to Sonoma County in 1907 for robin hunting soon would face a change to the law that made it a felony to harm or deal in robins, meadowlarks and "any wild bird" (except for sparrows, bluejays, pigeons, and other birds considered pests). The crime was later downgraded to a misdemeanor. |
E STREET BRIDGE SOON TO BE OPEN
New Structure a Complete Change to the Old One--The Approaches Are Filled In
Few people who have not visited the E street bridge know of the extensive improvements that are being made in connection with the erection of the new bridge. In a few days the bridge will be opened for traffic.
The bridge is a pile bridge with one span of forty-six feet. The approaches of the old bridge have been cut down so that the main bridge and approaches together are only a little over ninety feet. Before they were over two hundred feet. Hundreds of loads of old brick and debris--have been used in filling in the approaches so that the bridge will be on a level with the grade of the street.
[..]- Press Democrat, January 13, 1907
FOUND MAN WAS HIDING
Constable Boswell Locates Man He Wanted
Joseph Forgett was arrested Saturday morning by Constable Boswell, charged with having embezzled a sum of money from a physician. He is alleged to have represented to the physician that he was in the employ of Henry Von Grafen, and that he had a large sum of money due him. On the strength of this statement he secured some coin. Later it was learned that he had not been in the employ of Von Grafen at all.
Constable Boswell has been searching for the man for several days, and made two trips to the tent occupied by Forgett. Both times the officer was informed by Forgett's wife that he was not at home. Saturday morning when he called Constable Boswell demanded that the door be opened under penalty of breaking it down and gained an entrance, and then he heard a whispered conversation inside. Divining that his man was in hiding, Boswell insisted on the door being opened and there he found Forgett on a bed with numerous quilts and comforts piled on him to hide him from view. He was ordered to arise and feigned sleep, but was rudely shaken and finally said, "Hello."
Forgett at first tried to put the officer off by saying he would come down town later, but Boswell would not stand for that, and brought his man to the court.
Justice of the Peace Atchinson released Forgett on his own recognizance to give him an opportunity to raise money.- Santa Rosa Republican, January 17, 1907
EXCITEMENT IN JAIL
Prisoner Essays Insanity When Deprived of his "Dope"
Joseph Forgett, a man sent over to the county jail yesterday for thirty days by Justice Atchinson found himself deprived of his "dope" at the jail last night, and he set up a howl and evinced insanity. His shouts were echoed by those of other prisoners and iron cell doors were rattled. The noise was heard for blocks and people hurried to see what had happened. The noise was soon silenced, however. Forgett's wife also came to the jail stating that she had nothing to eat and nowhere to exist in warmth.- Press Democrat, January 23, 1907
JOSEPH FORGETT IN TOILS OF LAW AGAIN
Joseph Forgett is again in the toils of the law. This time he is alleged to have stolen a sack of dried apples weighing more than fifty pounds, and when the warrant was sworn to for his arrest he was charged with a prior conviction. The officers claim to have information as to where Forgett sold the apples and feel certain of convicting him. Justice Atchinson set the case for hearing Friday and fixed the man's bond at $300 cash, or $500 personal bonds. Forgett is unable to give bonds and is in custody of Sheriff Jack Smith pending his examination.- Santa Rosa Republican, March 27, 1907
SIX MONTHS ARE GIVEN FORGETT
Joseph Forgett will spend the coming eleven months in the county jail. This was the judgment pronounced by Justice Atchinson Friday afternoon. It was understood that Forgett wanted a sentence of sufficient duration to enable him to break off the morphine habit. During this time he will be kept away from the drug and it is his intention when given his liberty next year to refrain from its use. He entered a plea of guilty to charges of petty larceny and obtaining money under false pretenses.- Santa Rosa Republican, March 29, 1907
SEBASTOPOL AVENUE WILL BE IMPROVED
The unsightly mud hole on Sebastopol avenue near the California Northwestern depot is soon to be a thing of the past. At the council meeting Tuesday evening the matter was taken up and decided upon a proposition made by Messrs. L. B. Henry and Cummings, who have secured an injunction against the city to prevent certain street work being done on Sebastopol avenue.
In consultation with Street Commissioner Decker recently Messrs. Henry and Cummings proposed that if the [illegible microfilm] grade Boyd street from Sebastopol avenue to the slough, a distance of 260 feet, they would give the city fourteen feet in front of their property. This will permit of the widening [sic] of Sebastopol avenue and the construction of a new sidewalk on the south side of that thoroughfare.
When the work has been completed and the street widened there will be ample room for teams to pass when electric cars are being operated. This will be good news to the people of that section of the city and to all who had to traverse that section. For some time past Sebastopol avenue has been almost impassable because of the mud holes there and under this proposal this will be remedied.
The council agreed to accept the suggestion and City Attorney Geary and Street Commissioner Decker were authorized to accept the proposed agreement, and when a deed has been given to the fourteen feet a resolution to grade and gravel Boyd street will be passed by the council. The hearing of the injunction suit brought against the city will be called Thursday and this will settle the matter without the necessity of the courts.- Santa Rosa Republican, January 23, 1907
WAGONS MIRE DOWN ON SEBASTOPOL AVENUE
The mud hole on Sebastopol Avenue has been causing all kinds of trouble lately. Thursday a wagon heavily laden with eggs was en route to the cold storage plant of the National Ice Company, and became stuck in the mud hole. The efforts of the team were unavailing, and the wagon could not be moved. Another express wagon was drawn up alongside the mire and two-thirds of the load transferred, and the team was then able to move the load of eggs. Recently an automobile became stuck in the mud there and other vehicles have mired down.- Santa Rosa Republican, March 8, 1907
ROAD TO BE MADE GOOD AT LAST
Disgraceful Condition of Highway on Sebastopol Avenue Can Now Be Remedied
The disgraceful condition of the roadway on Sebastopol avenue, near the railroad crossing, is at last going to be remedied. The injunction suit which has held back the repair of the road for many months will be dismissed and at once and the property owners, Messrs. Cummings and Henry, have given deeds to the city to a strip of land in front of their property, in return for which the city will repair the street, grade and put down sidewalks, etc., and grade Boyd street so that a proper drainage for surface water will be provided. An agreement to this effect was reached and a resolution adopted at last night's council meeting. Colonel L. W. Julliard, representing the Henry and Cummings interest, told City Attorney that he would dismiss the suit today.- Press Democrat, April 3, 1907
FRENCHMEN KILL ROBINS GALORE
Last Sunday a party of four members of the French colony in San Francisco came up to Sonoma to spend the day and do a little hunting. They killed a number of robins and one of their number in addition broke the ordinance regarding the discharging of firearms on the county road. The men were arrested and haled before Justice J. B. Small. They paid fines that aggregated sixty dollars and went on their way home to San Francisco hardly feeling as if the sport they had enjoyed had been worth the while.- Press Democrat, January 24, 1907
BIRD KILLING MUST STOP
New Game Bill Has Passed Senate And Will be Law
A bill has passed the Senate and is now before the Assembly for the protection of the medow lark and robin. It makes the killing of these or the robbing of their nests a felony. The entire section to cover this question is as follows:
637a. Every person who, in the state of California, shall at any time, hurt, hoot, shoot at, pursue, take, kill, or destroy, buy, sell, give away or have in his possession...- Santa Rosa Republican, February 22, 1907
Bare-handed salmon fishing in Santa Rosa creek sounds amazing until you consider the Russian River was so thick with Salmon a year earlier that they were fishing with pitchforks.
CATCH SALMON IN LOCAL CREEK
Salmon are running in Santa Rosa creek, and yesterday several beauties were caught by citizens. In consequence several nice suppers were enjoyed last night.
Walter C. Nolan, the Sonoma school principal, waded into the creek near the electric railroad bridge and caught a fine fish with his hands and soon after boarded the electric car for Forestville with his finny prize.
After this announcement fishing should be general in Santa Rosa creek today and woe betide any salmon that come up the stream.- Press Democrat, December 29, 1906
An important lesson to remember when reading the old newspapers: all of your presumptions are probably wrong. Even the simplest news items may have a complex backstory mostly forgotten today, as is the case here. I had noticed that it was sometimes reported that boys were arrested for shooting robins, but hadn't thought the stories noteworthy -- surely the editor was filling column space on a slow day, or maybe throwing out a little civics lesson, like the Press Democrat's stern warnings over the downtown orange peel menace. I was wrong; there was far more to the story than Peck's Bad Boy plonking away at birds with his Daisy air rifle for the fun of it. Little Sammy Shooter might have been working for a smuggling ring in violation of federal law -- or might have been seeking to feed his family.
In the 19th century, America was of three minds about robins. Farmers, particularly in the south where the birds winter, considered them a pest bird like the crow, with flocks of hundreds swooping down to strip fruit trees bare. Northeners also lost berries and fruit (cherries in particular), but were more sentimental about robins, waxing about their cheery songs and that their appearances heralded the coming of spring. Both Yanks and Johnny Reb, however, agreed that the birds were delicious.
An 1883 ag report told farmers, "the robin is eminently a game bird, and makes the most delicate and delicious eating known, almost. If, therefore, you beg the question, kill a mess for a savory pot-pie at such time as when they are in the height of their plunder, you can accomplish your purpose, and can say conscientiously that you have not violated any law for the good of the community." And even Audubon (one of his American Robin watercolors seen at right) wrote in 1841 about the joys of cooking robins:
| "In all the southern states...their presence is productive of a sort of jubilee among the gunners, and the havoc made among them with bows and arrows, blowpipes, guns, and traps of different sorts, is wonderful. Every gunner brings them home by bagsful, and the markets are supplied with them at a very cheap rate. Several persons may at this season stand round the foot of a tree loaded with berries, and shoot the greater part of the day, so fast do the flocks of Robins succeed each other. They are then fat and juicy, and afford excellent eating." |
Under pressure from the new conservation movement, turn of the century attitudes and laws began to change. The small fruit and berry crops aside, it was recognized that robins were pretty useful birds; the rest of the year they mostly ate weed seeds and harmful insects, particularly the dreaded army worm. The 1900 Lacey Act was a landmark federal law to beef up protection of wild birds, and nearly two decades later, the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act finally put strict limits on killing birds like the robin.
Shamefully, some conservationists played race, regional, and class cards to drum up support for protection. A 1902 League of American Sportsmen author wrote, "no Northern man thinks of shooting a robin at any time. Yet in the South, white man and negro alike slaughter these innocent and beautiful birds at every opportunity." And although robin pot pie was a favorite dish throughout the south, the 1912 National Conservation Congress sensationalized it as ethnic threat:
| How many people in the North know that the negroes and poor whites of the South annually slaughter millions of valuable insect-eating birds for food? Around Avery Island, Louisiana, during the robin season (in January when the berries are ripe), Mr. B. A. Mcllhenny says that during ten days or two weeks, at least 10,000 robins are each day slaughtered for the pot. "Every negro man and boy who can raise a gun is after them!" |
But even though California had officially removed robins as a game bird in 1897, that didn't stop hunters with a taste for robin pie. A letter from an ornithological club in Santa Cruz complained bitterly that the law was useless as long as those hicks around San Jose couldn't control their appetites: "we cannot protect birds in this county when they can shoot across the line from the other county into ours...[as long as] that last relic of barbarism, robin pot-pie, is still existent in some households where they choose to believe that no protective ordinance was ever passed."
Robin hunting continued to be an issue for years, with seven states -- Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Maryland -- keeping the robin legally as a game bird. Pennsylvania continued to allow robins to be killed between May and July into the 1920s "to protect cherries and other small fruits," although the permit allowed for the birds to be used for "food purposes."
Amazingly, no specific recipe for robin pot pie currently could be found on the Internet (yes, I also searched for variant spellings of "robin pot-pie", "robin potpie", and "robin pie"). Hints were found that it could have been similar to this 1897 blackbird pie, this 1886 pigeon pie, or this 1906 "pie of small birds." Those recipes are essentially all meat baked in a crust; if this really was a food for the poorest people, it's likely other ingredients were added to stretch out the meat, and was probably more similar to this 1874 cottage pie recipe, heavy with mashed potatoes and onions. But it's also noteworthy that many sources mention robin pie as a favorite dish of young people; I wonder if shooting robins became a means of introducing children to the culture of hunting for food, with mommy serving their kill in a meat-heavy dish as a reward.
Finally: note below the inspector who seized the smuggled birds was named Vogelsang ("bird song").
(Story update available here)
KILLED ROBINS AND IS WANTED
Shipped Birds to San Francisco Under Brand of Dried Apples
A box of robins which had been shipped from Sebastopol to San Francisco by D. Cassassa, was seized by Chief Deputy Charles A. Vogelsang in San Francisco Saturday morning. The shipping tag declared the contents of the box to have been dried apples, and as such the railroad had given a special fruit rate to the shipper. The tag contained the name of D. Cassassa as the shipper.
There were about half a hundred robins in the box, and they were consigned to Lemoine & Co. They arrived in the metropolis about 11 o'clock Saturday morning, and within an hour they had been confiscated.
Deputy State Fish and Game Commissioner Ernest Schaeffle of San Francisco was sent to this city to arrest the offender, and to prosecute the case before the court. The deputy spent Sunday in Sebastopol and Forestville, but was unable to locate Cassassa, who is believed to be in San Francisco.
It is not believed that Cassassa shipped the robins to the city for sale, but that he intended to follow them and have a feast in one of the French restaurants of that city. The robins are considered the finest of the small game birds by the French people, and it is probable that Cassassa had planned a treat for his friends, which has been spoiled by the vigilance of the officers. The law expressly forbids the shipment of robins, and from the fact that the box was labeled as dried apples, it is apparent that the shipper was aware that the law was being violated.
A young son of Mr. Cassassa appeared before the court this afternoon, but nothing was done ending his appearance late this afternoon. The youth promised to return after schol this afternoon.- Santa Rosa Republican, January 15, 1906
SALMON INFEST RUSSIAN RIVER
Sand Bar at Mouth of River Blown Open to Permit Entry -- Best Run in Many Years
The salmon are running in Russian River at the present time in vast schools, and the residents of the vicinity touching that stream are having great feasts of the delicious fish daily. It is no task at all to catch more salmon than one can carry, and small boys are catching them on pitchforks, instead of the usual gaffs required.
The run of salmon is reported to be the largest in more than eleven years, and the fish are said to be above the usual standard from a toothsome point. The sand bar at the mouth of the river was unusually heavy this year, and prevented the fish getting across. The fish were seen in swarms just outside the bar by many residents, who determined that they should be assisted in getting into the fresh water stream.
Accordingly, when the tide was low, a quantity of dynamite was placed in the sand and a hold of considerable length and depth was made. Then a number of men and youths took shovels and dug away the sand to give an unobstructed entrance to the swarms of fish. This having been done at low tide, permitted the water in the river back of the bar to run out into the ocean.
With the rising tide came the swarms of fish into the river, many of which have fallen victims to gaff and pitchfork, and are furnishing the piece de resistance for many substantial meals.
The sport of catching these big fish is among the best afforded, and those piscatorally inclined are reveling in the fun.- Santa Rosa Republican, December 28, 1905