"Women's History Programs" Table of Contents
Activities & Performances, 1983 - 2003
Activities & Performances, 2004 - 2010
Script of the 2003 Performance
Script of the 2004 Performance
WOMEN’S HISTORY PROGRAMS
of Paradise AAUW
Compiled from records, minutes and materials provided by members
1983 - 2003
1983-84 National Women’s History Week celebrated by exhibit featuring women in general and special exhibit on History of California Women 1720-1920 at Paradise Library. A special dessert/coffee was held by the Branch. First of many Proclamations presented by Town of Paradise celebrating Women’s History Week were received.
Numerous women’s groups in Paradise and Chico held special events, including Special “Women in Art: exhibits, “Women in Politics” panel. Gloria Steinem was the featured speaker. Young high school women from the area were honored.
1984-85 Creative Writing Competition among local 5th-8th graders. This was the beginning of the “Real Women” Essay Contest. Frances Pence chaired the contest. Students were to write about women they knew and admired in their family or community. The object was to become familiar with the real life role of women in the community and family. A winner was selected in each grade level, including one young man. Essay winners were urged to bring the person they wrote about to the awards event. Town Proclamation about Women’s History Week in Paradise. Each year there was an award winners event which involved winners, teachers, and school personnel. Our branch event was a panel of local women who explained their life plan and showed how they went about achieving their goals.
1985-86 Second Annual “Real Women” Essay Contest – open to both male and female students. The creative writing competition was to encourage students to look at the lives of women they knew, either family members or women in their community, and to see the many ways in which they contributed to their community and the historical period in which they lived. Examples were a great grandmother, a person who founded Paradise Express – a cab service for senior citizens and disabled people, another person who worked with hospice, and a 88 years old cousin who was a former county school teacher. Judges based part of their decisions on grammar usage along with subject choice. An 8th grade male student was one of the winners. Two students from PHS were present at luncheon honoring young women student leaders in Butte County.
Workshops were again held in Chico, sponsored by various Women’s Groups, including Expressions of Peace by “Women in the Arts” and a panel on The Media and Women Candidates, a special lecture on Dame Shirley and The Shirley Letters was the featured event.
1986-87 Our Reader’s Theater Presentation, directed by Helen Foster with Beth Pitney as narrator, featured Branch members in “Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times.” Littie Colt, Lotta Crabtree, Julie Morgan, Ernestine Kettler, Harriet Quimby, Luzena Wilson, Mary Ballou, Helen MacKnight, Gertrude Atherton were portrayed by: Tedo Johnson, Lavon Becker, Dianne Lorenz, Nora Brewer, Shirley Huneven, Vicki Massae, Kristi Youngdahl, Gevean Pregill and Marilyn Walsh.
The “Real Women” Essay Contest, theme entitled “Thanks to Women’s Work” - A need for public recognition of the value of women’ s work in the paid work force, in the home and in volunteer activities. 7th and 8th graders – 175 boys and girls participated. Students were told to look around them and write about someone they knew personally. Of the ten winners, two were boys.
1987-88 Essay contest had become a big yearly community event with the Mayor and School Superintendent involved in a special evening for the winners. A different slant was used on the subject this time. Students were to interview and write about a woman who was vitally concerned with, perhaps even actively engaged in keeping the Paradise Library open. (Library crisis), Generated interest in our Community Library and also deepened student awareness of the role of libraries in a literate, civilized world.
1988-89 Essay Contest entitled “Heritage of Strength and Vision.” Students were to study legacy left by visionary woman by interviewing person or reading about the subject. They were to write essay, describing events in the women’s life that students found to be particularly inspirational and how the events helped shaped writer’s goals. Students picked Helen Keller, Diane Fossey, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Tubman, Susan B Anthony, Marie Currie and local women or teachers. Also, students did combative posters celebrating Women’s History Week, displaying them in various community locations. Again, there were boys among the winners.
1989-90 Essay Contest continues with theme of “Women Volunteers Do Count in the Community Service.” First, Second, Third Place and two honorable mention were given for each class level (7th/8th grade). Judging criteria stressed the value of looking at the lives of everyday women who were part of the student’s family and community and seeing how their lives contributed to the community around them. The students wrote about mothers, neighbor, and adult women they have come in contact with.
1990-91 A Women’s History Celebration Essay Contest was held. “The Mothers of Invention” was the theme. This contest was essays on various women inventors, with creative projects to go along with the inventor and the essay theme. Four teachers, with three students each provided program. Included were Mary Quant, who invented the mini skirt, Marian Joy, a ridge resident who invented quilting thimble.
1991-92 At our Intermediate School, 20 male and female students were involved in essay and poem presentations with visual aids such as posters, collages and life size models. The women they chose to discuss were Sally Ride, Rosa Parks, Betsy Elizabeth Blackwell, Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, Harriet Tubman. Elizabeth Cook, Florence Nightingale, and more. Done in student pairs or as a solo. There were no winners since everyone was a winner! We praise our teachers because they have always played a major role in the success of our programs and worked with their group of students on presentations.
One student, who studied Rosa Parks, actually took a camera to San Francisco and asked an equal number of black and white men about Parks. None of the white men knew who Rosa Parks was, but all of the black men were very knowledgeable.
1992-93 “Women working to improve our community” was the theme for the March Branch Meeting. Members and others were asked to share activities and achievements in improving the status of women and children. Jean Crist, Ronda Hoffman and Barbara Roberts-Schill spoke on their experiences as volunteers. The audience had a great evening of sharing and learning more about participating in our community.
1993-94 One male and six female Paradise High School students were selected to present creative interpretations of American pioneer women in the western movement. Each student was awarded a $50 savings bond.
1994-95 We started a program of touring schools, plus presentation for our Branch Meeting. The program was narrated by Joan Dresser. The Characters were:
| Annie Oakley: | Lavon Becker |
| Beatrix Potter: | Madeleine Caton |
| Elizabeth Stanton: | Karen Hilleman |
| Babe Didrickson: | Mary Johnson |
| Eleanor Roosevelt: | Linda Pielusch |
| Georgia O’Keefe: | Kristi Youngdahl |
| Emma Lazarus: | Shirley Liston |
1996 Performances at: Paradise, Ponderosa, Pines Elementary Schools and our AAUW Meeting. The characters were:
| Sally Ride: | Ronda Hoffman |
| Grace Hopper: | Lois McDonald |
| Barbara Jordan: | Karen Hilleman |
| Sojourner Truth: | Linda Pielusch |
| Amelia Earhardt: | Kristi Youngdahl |
| Sandra Day O’Connor: | Claudean McAlexander |
1997 Performances at: Paradise, Ponderosa, Pines Elementary Schools, Gold Nugget Museum and our AAUW Meeting. The actors were from Paradise High School:
| Susan Butcher: | L’Vonna Wier |
| Barbara McClintock: | Lacey Levine |
| Marina Mitchell: | Amanda Michaels |
| Julia Morgan: | Jeni Taylor |
| Susan Picotte: | Crystal Riley |
| Annie Bidwell: | Anne Goodsell |
1998 Performances at: Cedarwood and Pines Elementary Schools, Gold Nugget Museum. Carol Braun Director. The characters were:
| Juana Briones: | Peggy Schilling |
| Ina Coolbrith: | Connie Rogers |
| Jane Lathrop: | Claudean McAlexander |
| Grace C. Hudson: | Carole Chumbler |
| Harriet Quimby: | Dianne Lorenz |
| Ivy B. Priest: | Dorothy Weed |
| Esther H. Morris: | Barbara Roberts |
1999 Performances at: Paradise Intermediate, Pine Ridge Middle, Paradise Charter Schools, Gold Nugget Museum and our AAUW Meeting. The characters were:
| Sacagawea: | Janet Truffli |
| Emma Lazarus: | Kay Hinerman |
| Laura J. Wilder: | Mary Johnson |
| Alice Paul: | Lois McDonald |
| Babe Zaharias: | Kathleen Swick |
2000 Performances at: Cedarwood Elementary, Paradise Intermediate School, Mt. Ridge Intermediate and our AAUW Meeting. The characters were:
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton: | Ruth Moyer |
| Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell: | Dianne Lorenz |
| Fanny Farmer: | Janet Tuffli |
| Annie Oakley: | Jackie Westbrook |
| Georgia O’Keefe: | Katie Rosenberg |
| Jane Goodall: | Harrietta Aiken |
2001 Performances at: Cedarwood, Pines Elementary, Mt. Ridge Intermediate and our AAUW Meeting. The characters were:
| Bella Abzug: | Carol Braun/Kay Hinerman |
| Wilma Mankiller: | Cheryl Knudsen |
| Eleanor Roosevelt: | Jackie Westbrook |
| Beatrix Potter: | Janet Tuffli |
2002 Performances were at Paradise Intermediate, Mt. Ridge Intermediate, Adventist School and our AAUW Meeting. The characters were:
| Katherine Sullivan: | Jackie Westbrook |
| Dr. Antonio Novello: | Lois McDonald |
| Judith Baca: | Cheryl Knudsen |
| Annie Smith Peck: | Marilou Linhart |
| Jessie Benton Fremont: | Merrie McLaughlin |
2003 - "Ridge Women Who Made a Difference"
Susannah Bassett was an independent businesswoman, who knew how to make money. She was not afraid to make decisions and use opportunities to her advantage, without the enthusiasm for gold mining, which dominated Dogtown. This part was played by Kay Hinerman.
Helen Berry took community improvements seriously. She had five children and made sure that a swimming pool was available, along with a Harvest Fair, which became Johnny Apple Seed Day. She became a reporter for the Paradise Post. This part was played by Katie Rosenberg.
Frances Strong Breese took a leadership role in the community for improvement. The cemetery still has a gate, which honors her interest in the beautification of Paradise. This part was played by Marygrace Colby.
Minnie Starkey Abrams became a Butte County Superintendent of Schools without even being able to vote. She was active in Women’s Suffrage, because women didn’t get the right to vote until the early 1900’s. This part was played by Marilyn Eldridge
Nena Burkhalter was a single mother, who had no formal education, so she became creative as a beautician. She helped start the Old Timers Organization. She became popular in Paradise. This part was played by Mickey Harnage.
Performances were at Paradise Elementary, Children’s Charter, Cedarwood School, United Methodist Church and our AAUW Meeting. Small parts were played by Lois McDonald and Claudean McAlexander; story boards were by Kerry Alaimo and Pat Nohrnberg.
2004 - 2010
2004 Performances were at local Schools. The characters were:
| Clio (Greek Goddess): | Kaye Myers Carson |
| Mary Ann Brown (John Brown’s wife): | Katie Rosenberg |
| Anna Morrison Reed: | Kay Hinerman |
| Freda Ehmann: | Pat Nohrnberg |
| Ella Gatchell, MD: | Janet Logan |
2005-08 Lois McDonald and Carole Chumbler met in the spring of 2004 and decided to try to tie our Women’s History presentations into the social studies framework of the local schools. As teachers we felt very strongly what we presented needed to compliment what was already going on in the various classrooms. We also wanted to present one character to one classroom so there would be time for a longer presentation and an opportunity for the students to interact with the presenter. By limiting our audience to 4th graders, we could present women who were important to the history of our state as California history is taught at that level. That way we could also repeat characters from one year to the next as we would have a whole new audience of 4th graders each year. The schools have been very supportive and the Curriculum Director, Laura Deardon, was great to work with in developing a master schedule for the presentations.
2005 March 7-11, 14-18th Performances were at Paradise Elem., Ponderosa Elem., Children’s Community Charter, Pines Elem., and Cedarwood. The characters were:
| Annie Bidwell: | Jan Kinney |
| Ella Gatchell, MD: | Janet Logan |
| Dame Shirley: | Karen Hilleman (Cheryl Knudsen & Gail Prince assisting) |
| Phoebe Hearst: | Chris McKenzie |
| Julia Morgan: | Kaye Myers Carson |
2006 March 13-17, 20-24th Performances were at Paradise Elem., Ponderosa Elem., Children’s Community Charter, Pines Elem., and Cedarwood. The characters were:
| Annie Bidwell: | Jan Kinney |
| Ella Gatchell, MD: | Janet Logan |
| Phoebe Hearst: | Katie Rosenberg |
| Julia Morgan: | Kaye Myers Carson |
Assistants: Phyllis Larsen, Janet Tuffli, Peg Ramsdell, Pat Nohrnberg and Laurie Baker.
2007 March 12-16, 19-23rd Performances were at Paradise Elem., Ponderosa Elem., Children’s Community Charter, Pines Elem., Achieve Charter and Cedarwood. The characters were:
| Annie Bidwell: | Janet Tuffli |
| Ella Gatchell, MD: | Carole Chumbler |
| Phoebe Hearst: | Katie Rosenberg & Carole Chumbler |
| Dame Shirley: | Peg Ramsdell (Bob McCusker on the Guitar) |
| Billie Jean King: | Jean Crist |
Assistants: Phyllis Larsen, Marygrace Colby, Mary Drew, Kaye Myers Carson, Jane Lesko and Laurie Baker.
2008 March 3-7, 10-14th Performances were at Paradise Elem., Ponderosa Elem., Children’s Community Charter, Pines Elem., Achieve Charter, Cedarwood and one presentation at Sunshine Manor. The characters were:
| Annie Bidwell: | Sara (Baz) Stanley |
| Ella Gatchell, MD: | Carole Chantal |
| Phoebe Hearst: | Katie Rosenberg |
| Dame Shirley: | Kay Hinerman |
Assistants: Phyllis Larsen, Mary Drew, Mary Johnson, April Grossberger, and Satsie Vieth.
2009 March 9-13, 16-20 Performances were at Paradise Elem., Ponderosa Elem., Children’s Community Charter, Achieve Charter, Cedarwood, Pine Ridge School and one presentation at Sunshine Manor. The characters were:
| Annie Bidwell: | Sara (Baz) Stanley |
| Dame Shirley: | Kay Hinerman |
| Julia Morgan: | Carole Chumbler |
Carole Chantal was to play the part of Dr. Ella Gatchell but had to drop out due to unanticipated surgery. Assistants: Pat Nohrnberg, Mary Drew, Janet Tuffli, Jane Lesko, Jan Kinney, and Laurie Baker. Phyllis Larsen coordinated rehearsal schedules and assigned helpers.
2010 March 9-19 Performances were at Paradise Elem., Ponderosa Elem., Children’s Community Charter, Achieve Charter, Cedarwood, Pine Ridge School. One presentation at Sunshine Manor and Ms. Myers’ class at the Adventist Academy. The characters were:
| Ella Gatchell, MD: | Carole Chantal |
| Annie Bidwell: | Sara (Baz) Stanley |
| Julia Morgan: | Carole Chumbler |
Assistants: Pat Nohrnberg, Mary Drew, Ronda Hoffman, and Sidne Gray.
SCRIPT OF THE 2003 WOMEN'S HISTORY PERFORMANCE
Susannah Bassett - Enterprising Pioneer Business Woman: I wasn’t thinking about making a name for myself when I talked my husband into taking me with him when he came west seeking gold. In fact, few people on the Paradise Ridge even know my name to this day, though they know how I came to name a town. That town was Dogtown.
I was born back in 1824 to Abraham and Mary Folck during their stop at a settlement in Illinois as they were moving from Pennsylvania westward. My mother had eight children, and was worn out and died, leaving Pa with nothing else to do but find another wife and then move on again to Iowa. Pa was a farmer, but he also liked to tinker with sawmills. If there was a good stream nearby, he could put up a paddle wheel and have a saw working pretty fast.
In 1849 the news came to Iowa like to all the rest of the country, that gold had been discovered in the far away land of California. So much gold, it was said, that anybody was sure to become a rich man if he wasn’t afraid of a little work. Since my Pa heard that gold was discovered in the mill race of a sawmill, he thought for sure he could make a lot of money running a mill and picking up gold nuggets.
Dad began recruiting a party to go with him right away. He took his sawmill partner, my older brother Abe was a bachelor, and my younger brother, John, who had been married less than a month. He had gold fever so he took off anyway, though his wife was fit to kill him. She told him, “Never mind coming back to me, John Folck!” And Pa also talked my husband, Burrell Bassett, into going along and taking his best team or oxen to pull a wagon.
They started out across the plains. My Pa was pretty old to try something so strenuous- being over sixty years. He sent back one letter and advised anybody to think twice before setting out. There were hardships and death along the California trail. For some reason about half way, my husband Burrell, turned around and came home. He wouldn’t talk about it much and I figured he was just lonesome for me, seeing as how the year he started out for California again. And this time I came along. We didn’t have any children, just our family of dogs, of whom both Burrell and I were mighty fond. I said, ”Well, Burrell, dogs can travel too. We’ll take them to see California and maybe they’ll like it.”
It was a hard trip. Sometimes I’d get out of the covered wagon and walk just so the female dog could ride. She was in a family way you see-expecting puppies- and the trail just tuckered her out. Then, as we were coming over the Sierras she had ten fine pups. On down the western slopes to Butte Creek we came to where my father and brothers had camped at a little place called Butte Mills. My father had been responsible in part for the name, because he had set up his mill in partnership with my brothers right near the mountain that was soon to be called Sawmill Peak.
We were sad when we arrived to hear that my father Abraham Folck had died and been buried there on a hill near the trading post for miners he had set up between Butte Creek and the Feather River’s west branch. He had sold his mill and was just fixing to start for home when he took bad sick. I think Burrell would have gone home too, right then, but I was going to stay until we could go home with a respectable nest egg. I reminded him that we’d come to make a fortune in the mines.
Burrell wasn’t any good at mining as it turned out, but he built us a little house near Little Butte Creek where the Magalia Dam is today. And then he built a ten-pin alley where men could bowl, paying to play tenpins.
By the time we came into camp. Me dog’s litter was bouncing around inside the wagon as lively as could be, and my other female dog was pregnant. They both had beautiful litters of the cutest, cuddliest, most-playful pups you ever saw. The miners made right for the, picking up and petting the puppies and asking what breed they were, and I said “poodle” just to make them laugh. One miner offered me ten dollars in gold dust for a pup! Next thing I knew miners were coming to town on Saturday just to see if I had more pups for sale, and of course I did, with always more on the way, it seemed. When the miners came into town to the bar on Saturday nights, they brought their dogs, and the dogs all ran loose and barked and had a good time at a family reunion, so to speak, every Saturday night.
Frances Strong Breese - Home-town Minded Pioneer Women: Hold on a minute, Susannah Bassett! Oh, I know I came west 25 years after you did and you never knew me, but I want to drag a little about how modern we were when my parents brought all of us Strongs from Illinois in 1876.
We traveled on a train. No smelly oxen that had to be fed grass and watered along the way. We came in an emigrant train in an “accommodation” car. Several families came in each car. The railroad company put a kerosene cooking stove in one end that the wives took turns using. We made up the seats into beds for at night. Out fathers and brothers helped pay the far by getting wood at every station we stopped at and carrying it into the train to use as fuel for the engine that pulled us over the mountains.
Susannah, “It surely sounds easier than covered wagon travel. But I have to run. We have to catch the stagecoach to Marysville and Burrell is waiting.” (Exit)
Fannie, (Calling after her), “What about your dogs?”
Susannah, (from offstage) “I sold all my dogs!”
I’m Fannie Strong Breese, when I was nine years old I arrived at Leonard’s Mill. That was a big wooden house across the road, but near where McDonald’s is today. There had been a sawmill, but the house was sold to my uncles, and Uncle John had opened a hotel for stagecoach travelers. They wrote my parents to come to a land where there was no asthma. Pa had asthma so bad we thought he was dying once on the train coming west.
By 1876 quite a few people lived on little farms cleared from the tall pine trees. My Uncle John Strong decided there were enough people to have our own post office and not have to go to Magalia for the mail. In 1877 the post office opened and it was named Paradise. Folks argue about how that name was chosen, but I maintain it was chosen because it is almost a paradise here.
My older sister Libby and younger brother Lew and I went to a country school called the Delaplane School that sat in a patch of poison oak. We always itched, and the people down in Chico and Oroville called us the poison-oakers. Sometimes they called this Poverty Ridge because the poorest people seemed to settle here and there wasn’t much of a way to make a living even if it was real pretty.
My mother said we’d manage if we hustled. She ran the hotel at old Leonard’s Mill. My brother drove a freighting team that went up into the mountains with hay and other supplies.
My mother cooked for all the men that drive the freight teams. They slept in the barn instead of the hotel, but they liked a big breakfast before they started up or down the hill with their horses and wagons.
Still my mother found time to start a church right in her kitchen, the first one in Paradise. I went to the valley towns like Oroville and asked the storekeepers for money to build a meeting hall in Paradise for the community folks. The hall was built 120 years ago, right where the Am/Pm station is now, and then we had dances and suppers, funerals and weddings, and of course, church services when a preacher cam to town.
(Women:)”Aren’t you going to tell about the saloon called Pair-O-Dice? Did’ the saloon keeper burn down the community Hall?”
Fannie: Well, yes, but since nobody saw him actually set fire to it, I thought it best not to stir up that old quarrel again. Paradise has too many quarrels.
(Women:)”But didn’t it happen?”
Fannie: Yes, the hall burned down not long after it was finished and people said it was because the saloon didn’t get as much business anymore. But the saloon keeper saw the way the wind was blowing and he helped move the saloon from kitty-corner across Clark Road from the hall and we built our new hall right onto the saloon building.
My mother and I always worked together on projects. I was young, so I went from door to door and asked men to help clear the land for our Paradise Cemetery. Some gave a dollar or two to help built a fence and keep the cows out. I took charge of making that cemetery beautiful for many years, and so today my name is on the big gate to the cemetery entrance on Elliott Road.
When the railroad came to Paradise a new town grew up around the depot. The town, when I came, had been all on Clark Road. When the railroad came, we had new post office for a while near the train station where I had a turn as post master.
In those days we didn’t move around much, but if we had to go to Chico, we’d catch a ride on a lumber wagon, take a stage coach and later the train.
(Women:)”Aren’t you going to tell about going to school?”
Fannie: Well, I wasn’t sure they wanted to hear about school! We had only one school in Paradise and eight grades went to the one school. Sometimes they had a ninth grade because we had no high school.
Classes were sometimes very large. When I started in Paradise we had over 50 children, and not even enough desks. Of course, the school directors knew that attendance would almost never be very good. Children were kept home when it rained or snowed. The bigger boys and girls had to stay home to help when there were jobs to do, like picking fruit or caring for younger children. When it rained the dirt roads were a foot deep with mud. No one could walk through that and we certainly had no buses. Often only 5 to 10 children would make it to school. But when the weather was nice and it was easy to go to school, our teacher would have to be very clever to see that every child was taught. When I was ten or eleven, I was given what we called the ABC class, the beginners, to take them outside on the grass and teach them their ABC’s and how to sound out letters.
(Enter Mrs. Abrams)
Mrs. Abrams: Since you’re just leaving, Mrs. Breese, I’d like to say that I know a great deal about what the schools were like. I’m Minnie Starkey Abrams. I was Butte County Superintendent of Schools for many years, and it was my job to see that every little schoolhouse in all the county provided the best education possible for children.
Fannie: Oh, yes I remember you. When my children were in school you sometimes drove up to their school in our fine black buggy and fine team of horses to visit the school.
Minnie Starkey Abrams - Butte County Superintendent of Education: My father was from Ireland, and he settled first to be a farmer near Biggs. Then he got the idea to be a newspaperman. He started a paper called the Butte County Register in 1877 in Biggs and later moved it to Oroville.
I was born in Biggs in 1863, the only girl among four brothers. In a newspaper family the children heard a great deal of discussion about the politicians of the day- much of it not very complementary but still exciting and conducive to thought.
Like most girls who wanted to make their own money, I became a teacher and I was always challenged by the education process. After I met Charles Abrams, a bricklayer, and we were married, I still thought about the best ways to teach children and asked myself under what surroundings children learned best. I had four of my own, one girl and three boys.
We moved to Paradise when the children were small and we lived on Pentz Road. That was the Kunkle School District. Because of the difficulty in crossing Dry Creek where there was no bridge and the roads were very poor, a district had been formed on the east side of the creek. For two years there were no other children at all in the Kunkle District than the four little Abrams. In those days the law provided for a parent to teach one’s children at home, very much like today’s home schooling but out of necessity, and not because it was thought to be better for the children. It gave me another experience to use in developing my teaching theories.
That was early in the last century, and at that time the county school superintendent was elected as today, but she or he ran as Republican or Democrat. In 1906 I was nominated on the Republican ticket, and was elected for four years. At that time I was 43 years old. In 1910 I was re-elected. Perhaps you can imagine how ironic it seemed to me to be nominated by a political party to represent them in an election for public office- and yet not be permitted to vote because I was a woman!
I was commended for my energy, ability and enthusiasm. The job called for all of that. It was required that I visit every school once a year. At that time it was thought important that the superintendent make a good impression, so I rented a very dashing team of horses and my buggy was new and the mud from the rural roads washed from it often. Although my visit would be a surprise, I always tried to reassure the teacher that I came to encourage and make positive suggestions, Some beginning teachers I visited many times during the years. If a new teacher had problems disciplining unruly students, I called on the School Board member to demand more support from them. I went over the struggling teacher problems with lesson plans, and provided any other kind of help I could.
If for some reason or another a teacher became ill or was truly not up to the job (many a new teacher was only 17 or 18 years old!), then I had to search the county to find another teacher to take over. This process was complicated. Some districts held school open only during summer months when the roads were dry. Sometimes a district ran out of money in the middle of the school year, leaving the teacher to work for nothing or come to me for help in finding another position.
The County Teachers’ Institute once or twice a year was held to expose teachers to new ideas and to give them a chance to share ideas with each other. Often this led to the teachers; visiting other classrooms, for which they were given free days.
I startled both teachers and educators one year with my speech at an institute. I advocated that children younger than the seventh grade not be given home work. “If they have to study outside school,” I said. “Let them learn domestic science or a trade from their father, and give them credit for this.” I also spoke out against the very hard examinations administered by the county following the end of eighth grade. I believed in less testing and more learning in a comfortable friendly atmosphere. The exam to quality for teaching could be taken after either the eighth grade or (if district offered it) the ninth grade. These were tremendously difficult, and in a way testified to the depth of the material that was taught in elementary schools in those days. The school day was from nine to four o’clock, a rather long day, especially for lower grade pupils who often had to walk a mile or more to get home after the school day.
I was thoroughly involved in the issue of women’s suffrage which at that time, 1911, was being proposed for the State of California. The vote followed a heated campaign in which I used my office to good effect. I had a letter sent home with every child in the schools under the superintendent’s supervision and urged parents to vote yes for giving women the right to vote.
I was elated when the election was won, and Butte County carried the issue by a very large majority. I think the men in the rural areas could see, more than men in the big cities like San Francisco, how women carried an equal share in the work or making a living and rearing children. I think my letter helped to make that point.
Then as today, some questioned the ethics of using my office this way. When I decided to run again for County Superintendent in 1915, I had some opposition on the Democratic party ticket. I was still enormously popular with parents and teachers and those who closely observed the schools, but malicious and untrue things were said that deeply hurt my feelings and I feel ill during the campaign. I had been elected president of the Northern section of the Teachers Federation, but was unable to preside at the Red Bluff convention because.
It was said that I went into a state of collapse after the election campaign. Perhaps I did show signs of extreme depression and loss of energy, but I was just beginning to gain my old vigor when I had a stroke. Fortunately I did not linger in a state of paralysis. I died in June 1915, at age of 52.
My funeral was held on the steps of the Butte County Courthouse where my many friends from the educational community gathered to bid me farewell. I am buried in the old Oroville Cemetery.
Nena Burkhalter - A Career as a Beautician: My father and mother named me Lena, and I always hated the name, Lena Higgins. After I had grown up, and had my own business, and my daughters were nearly grown, I decided to change it – to Nena. I came to Paradise in 1937 as Lena White and came back some years later as Nena Burkhalter. But I found that if you say your name is such and such, people are apt to use that name!
It may seem strange today to know that Paradise had no shops for women to have haircuts or permanent waves in Paradise until the 1930s when Mary Ellen Bruse opened up the first one. Women who had “bobs”, as short hair was called in the 1920s, usually went to a man’s barber shop and had it cut there. Or their husband cut it.
Then the permanent wave was invented. The first such waves were set by having electrical heat applied to tightly rolled hair – each little roll on the head being clamped onto a monstrous machine that often made a sizzling sound and burned ears or the scalp in the process. It usually left a frizzy mess for a few weeks until the hair relaxed a bit.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
I was born Lena Higgins to a rather poor family in the small town of Lorenzo, Idaho. My father worked as a carpenter when he could get work. We were always moving about from town to town and state to state. We were living in Oroville when I went to high school. Then my father moved us to Monterey, California and I got my first real job. I work in a sardine cannery on what was called fisherman’s row. John Steinbeck wrote about this picturesque area in his first book.
I met a young man named White who persuaded me, a teenager, to marry him. After having two daughters we split up and I had not only myself but my two little girls to support. I went back to Oroville and worked in a cannery there, but it was only seasonal work.
The girls and women working in the cannery used to talk about the ideal job to have, and we all agreed that the best way to achieve steady, well-paying, respectable work was to get a license as a beautician. I had saved a little money, so I moved us to Chico and enrolled in beauty school. I couldn’t afford a car, and it was often hard to find money even to buy lunch. I walked a lot, and went hungry often.
My first job was in Paradise. There was one beauty shop here, but Mrs. Bruce was tired of the business and sold it to me for $150. This included her permanent wave machine and a hair dryer. My shop was on Black Olive next door to the main grocery store in town owned by the Hammas. Dan DeTree, the Paradise barber, had his shop in the front room. I had my shop in the middle room, and I lived with Meryl and Donna, my girls, in the back room. I paid $20 for my half, and he only paid $10 a month rent. I had to pay for the electricity and hot water. That was because of my permanent wave machine.
Having hot water for shampoos took some doing. It came from my living room next door to the shop where I had to keep a wood heater going all the time to heat the water that ran through coils inside it. That was fine in the winter, but not so in summer. And I was always running from my shop next door to put wood on the fire.
For 25 cents I would set a head of hair in waves and pin curls. In summer my customers usually shampooed their hair at home and came in with head wrapped in a towel. I’d do the set, and then my customer would go home to let her hair dry and comb it out herself. One Saturday, I had ten “wet waves” customers, which really kept me on my feet a long time, and I made only $2.50 for the day.
Since I worked six days a week, I never had time to do house cleaning, but several of my customers would clean my little living quarters in exchange for waves. For a permanent wave, she should have to work eight hours. Or a women would promise that her husband would bring me a tier of firewood for a permanent.
The barber left town once and men used to beg me to cut their hair. I could do that, but I didn’t want to on so much extra work. I fibbed and said my license didn’t let me cut men’s hair. I did have a little black market in men’s hair, but it was always after dinner in the evening when no one would be apt to see. Even a few men wanted permanents, which in those days was a bit scandalous.
What a time we all had with the PID water. Pipes were always breaking and the water came through into my sink as muddy as could be. There were only 125 telephones in all of town, so I usually couldn’t reach my customers to tell them to shampoo at home.
If worse came to worse, I would send a customer next door to where the telephone operator lived and worked the switchboard from her home. If Clara’s water wasn’t muddy, the customer could shampoo her own hair there.
Elsie Hamburger, the town’s well known realtor, wanted to help me advertise when I first took over my shop. She came to get a permanent right away, and told everyone what nice work Mrs. White did. Once she embarrassed me terribly though, when we met in the post office across the street. She hadn’t combed her hair that morning, I guess, and she looked a frizzy mess. “See, everybody, what a mess my beauty operator made of me!” She was only kidding, and everyone else knew, but I wanted to fall through the floor.
A women would tip me when she was especially pleased with her new perm. Usually it was bringing me a wonderful not casserole on the afternoon of a very busy day, or maybe a fresh pie, fresh picked berries or a dozen eggs from her hens.
When my girls were grown, I decided to sell my business and move to a Sacramento location. I met an Federal Aviation Administration engineer, Harry Burkhalter, and we had a few wonderful years as I traveled with him on his business. When he died I came back to California and managed a shop in Stockton until I retired – sort of. I came back to Paradise to live. When people met me, old timers would say, “Why Lena White!” “No,” I’d reply, “I’m Nena Burkhalter!”
I loved working with hair and couldn’t resist working part time again in a Paradise shop- a far more modern shop than in the early days. I also became involved with the historical society. I enjoyed meeting all me old friends from the 1930s so much, that I conceived the idea of having an old timers’ picnic one August about 25 years ago. Now the Old Timers’ Picnic is held every year the last Sunday in August on the grounds of the Gold Nugget Museum. Different Old Timers still around take turns chairing it.
I died in what was then called Heritage Convalescent Care Home on Skyway, in 1993. My many friends from Soroptimists International, and the Paradise Business and Professional Women’s Club of which I was a charter member helped to cheer my last years, but many days came and went as the dreary life of inactivity crept by. My daughter Donna, always came from Sacramento to take me to the Old Timers’ Picnic on the last Sunday in August as long as I was able.
Helen Beery (1890 – 1980) - Paradise Community Activist: Life was so very, very different in the time and in the place I was born, over 110 years ago now. Kansas was a state of many farms spread out over the land, and the farmers and their children barely made a living with everyone in the family pitching in to feed the farm animals, weed in the garden, milk the cows and bring in the wood to heat the farm house and kitchen cook range. We had to inside bathroom and no electricity.
When I arrived in Paradise over 30 years later, thing were not much different, but where Kansas had been flat and often treeless, Paradise was hilly and had beautiful trees. Making a living was still a challenge.
I didn’t come straight to Paradise from Kansas. First I went with my husband to homestead in eastern Oregon, nears Burns, where it is as much like desert as can be and no neighbors for as far as we could see. I was 20 and Ralph was 22 when we were married, and he had found a 160 acre piece of land to homestead, with a little shack already built on it. He sent for me to come out and we got married there in June, 1910 to start our great adventure together.
You had to agree to work a homestead for at least five years in order to get title to the land. Most folks just stayed long enough to have the land to sell for a little nest egg. That was Ralph’s and my plan.
Both Ralph and I passed the county teacher’ examination in our home states. When the Oregon people heard that, they right away offered Ralph a job as teacher in a one-room school 20 miles from our little house. And then another man came from a school district only 10 miles away and offered me a job teaching too. Our jobs would pay for the groceries, but we had no transportation. Then one of school trustees in Ralph’s district loaned him a horse. On Sunday afternoon, we saddled the horse and with Ralph in the saddle and me riding behind, we rode the ten mile to where I was boarding near my school. We kissed each other goodbye and Ralph rode on another ten miles. On Friday afternoon, we made the trip in reverse.
We had lots of time off, for the ranchers closed the schools during cattle roundup in the fall. If we had a spell of rainy weather, it was so hard for the children to walk to the schoolhouse that it would close down again until the trustrees decided otherwise. I think the children really didn’t get more than two or three months of actual schoolroom time. Ralph and I didn’t care because we had more time to try to grow something on our homestead.
When I was going to have a baby, Ralph decided that he needed a more dependable paycheck. He took a job far away in Portland, Oregon in a phonograph factory. We got an apartment there, but we still lived on our homestead from time to time over the years until we proved it up – tat is, until we had a clear title.
By the time we got thoroughly sick or the Portland weather – rain all the time – we had four little girls and began to look elsewhere for a place to settle down.
We read an advertisement of Southern Pacific Railroad about Paradise, California, through which the railroad passed. Going to and from the Stirling City lumbermill. Ralph and two of his friends went to look Paradise over and came home to Portland very enthusiastic! Ralph had bought 80 acres on Bille Road without my ever seeing it, but he described it to me and I was eager to go. The pioneer Copelands were selling it. The house had burned, but it was very beautiful with tall pines and a stream running through the woods.
So in July, 1920 we packed all our belongings and put them in a boxcar on a freight train to Paradise, including our two cows and a flock of chickens in coops. An old gentleman friend of ours rode with our belongings and milked the cows on the way. When he got to the railroad siding at Bille Road, he got the cows out at once to graze on the grass along the railroad tracks.
Ralph, me and our four little girls were packed like sardines in our Maxwell automobile driving down from Portland. It was so hot coming down the valley that Ralph and I took the first road marked Paradise that we came to. Naturally that was Honeyrun Road. For a while the Maxwell almost reveled, streaming with the strain of the grade and the curves. The brakes began to give out, so I had to walk along beside the car and put rocks behind the rear wheels when Ralph stopped around every second curve to let the engine cool.
By the time we reached the top, it was almost dark, but we drove on up Neal Road (which is now Skyway) and found all our belongings in the boxcar, on what was called the Ostrander siding, and our cows tethered contentedly along the tracks. We just unpacked our tent and camped right there, at Bille and Skyway, for the night. We had fresh milk for supper. We slept fine, There was no traffic to speak of in those days.
For our first months in Paradise we lived in our tent and furniture out under the pines trees which Ralph built a four room house with no plumbing and a woodstove for hear. We moved into it just as the rains began.
After he cleared land for an orchard and planted apple trees, Ralph took a temporary job with the county roads department, a job he held for 26 years! His assignment was to keep Clark Road open – grading and smoothing in the summer after the rainy season and using the snow plow in the winter. He had a gasoline driven grader, but it had no cover so he came in pretty wet and cold many a day.
Life for a housewife and mother wasn’t easy in those days. Soon after we arrived in Paradise, I had a baby boy to complete the family. With five children, a house with no modern conveniences and lots of fruit to can and a garden and chickens to care for, I found the town of Paradise less than perfect. But I was strong, and soon got acquainted with a number of other women within walking distance of the Berry Farm who shared my lot in life and like myself, were determined to make the best of it. The brush was so thick around out house that it took a while to realize that a number of little houses were nestled in the woods all around.
One by one I called on these women and we decided to form a club, just for ourselves – the women within walking distance of each other. There were about ten to start and eventually we had fourteen or fifteen and continued our Friday meetings for forty years.
We called ourselves the Friendly Friday Club. Our meetings were a time of merriment and laughter, getting away from the routine of housekeeping to enjoy each other’s company and try to outdo each other in putting together fancy little luncheons and serving them with a touch of la-de-dah.
I chaired the Home Advisor Group at the Farm Center at a time when Paradise was largely in farms, and both men and women were learning new skills from people sent out from the University at Davis. Many Paradise women met regularly to learn more efficient ways of keeping our homes clean and sanitary, and how the most healthful menus could be prepared from the materials farm folks had to work with.
Other more serious tasks needed doing. I joined the Women’s Improvement Club and in my fifty years of membership was president four times. We focused on doing things around Paradise to make it better for everyone. The old community hall at Clark and Elliott roads was falling apart. Making money by giving penny suppers (each item on the menu cost 1 cent) we bought the old hall and spruced it as a place for meetings and parties of all kinds- even funerals and weddings. We worked hard to revive the old harvest fairs that had been discontinued during World War I. One year I co-chaired a three-day harvest festival. What a job! But what pleasure we had in seeing people from all over our county and those nearby who came to see what had been produced here in the way of fruits and vegetables.
The women in the improvement club were well aware that young people had to travel some distance to the West Branch to swim at Nelson Bar. It was dangerous- both riding there, often in some old jalopy, and swimming without a lifeguard.
So we women went to work and raised money to have a swimming pool made by damning Berry Creek where today’s Gold Nugget Museum grounds are. For many years during the 1930s and ‘40s, that pool provided a major source of summer fun. It was certainly much safer as well.
I served on the Board of Directors for the Paradise Cemetery and helped to make it the beautiful spot it is today. I also took a membership on the board of the Paradise Recreation and Park District when it was formed because of my commitment to your people’s needs.
When World War II came – by that time my son Bobby went into the Navy and the girls were married – I headed up the Red Cross efforts on the Ridge. Our main task was to meet regularly and fold bandages from gauze- bandages just the right size to send to military hospitals wherever Americans were fighting in Europe and the Pacific.
Never reluctant to try something new, when I was offered the job as reporter and editor of the social news for the Paradise Post in the 1950’s, I took that one, too. I knew everything that went on in our little town of 5 or 6 thousand, so gathering news was easy.
In June 1960 Ralph and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary, and 40 of those years in Paradise.
Right after the war ended, Bobby spearheaded the building of a new house for us, which happily ended as a Hospice Headquarters after Ralph and I died. Other sections of the ten acres we still owned at our death, were used for homes by some of our adult children.
The Paradise Soroptimist Club made me an honorary member for my years of work for my community. Even Ralph was pleased, though he more than once became exasperated at me for “jazzing around” so much, as he put it. And he also said “love and happiness beats all the community work a thousand fold.”
Ralph and I lived to join the history class begun in 1959 at the Paradise Adult Evening School at the new High School. We shared our knowledge in both the telling and writing of history on the Ridge. Many of our contributions may be read in issues of The Tales of the Paradise Ridge.
SCRIPT OF THE 2004 WOMEN'S HISTORY PERFORMANCE
We present the stories of four women:
Mary Ann Brown, widow of the anti-slavery martyr, John Brown. After Brown was hung, his widow came to California and lived in Red Bluff until southern sympathizers began to make life miserable for her and her family.
Anna Morrison Reed, who as a child came with her mother to Table Mountain where her father had a gold mining claim during gold rush days. When he became disabled and illness struck the rest of the family, Anna set out at age 19, traveling around northern California on a horse as a lecturer on family and other social issues and accompanying herself on the guitar with songs she had written.
Freida Loeber Ehman came to American as a child in 1848 with a widowed mother. She met and married a young doctor and they had a happy married life in Illinois until her husband’s death when she decided to move to California and undertake a new career wherever she might find it When her son was given an olive grove in payment for a debt, she learned to perfect a recipe for pickling ripe olives and built an industry that for many years made Oroville the center of canned ripe olives.
Dr. Ella Gatchell trained to be a doctor in Maine, but thought husband was a doctor, no one wanted a women to treat them. So she decided to go to Chico, California where her cousin, John and Annie Bidwell had a mansion and were important in the community. Gradually Dr. Gatchell overcame the prejudice against women and built up a practice in Chico. She also was hired by Annie Bidwell to care for many sick Indians in the Rancheria. Dr. Gatchell was the first women to establish a practice north of Sacramento.
Our narrator, the Greek Goddess Clio, Muse of History, tells of the reverence for history held by the Greeks. They created a special God just to look over history. She asks questions of the above four ladies.
Mary Ann Brown
April 15, 1816 – Feb. 1884
Clio: It has always been the lot of women to experience their husband’s problems as their. So personal is the sacrifice that women must make that in India for centuries women were thrown alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands. In modern times a wife has only to live on in order to support and rear her children and to bear witness to the greatness of her husband. Such is the case of an American women, born with no future except to follow the fates:
Mary Ann: If, when you have heard my story, you feel sorry for what I have suffered as a part of the great cause for which my husband was hung by the neck until dead, do not do so. I suffered what I did bravely, because I knew that he – John Brown – was inspired with a courage that came from some higher source that told him it was right to try to free enslaved men and women, even to giving them guns to shoot their owners if need be.
It was my lot to have a family to rear during the years of the Great War known as the Civil War. This was the war between states to decide whether White American had the god-given right to hold other native-born Americans as slaves because they happened to be black. The northern states were opposed to slavery. In the southern states most of the work was done by black slaves brought from Africa and their descendants. They were willing to fight a war to protect the right for rich men to own other- men, women and children to control their actions and even their very lives
When I was seventeen years old and at my father’s home in Pennsylvania, I met a widowed man named John Brown. He was nearly twice my age, a widower with five sons. Two other children had died before I met Mr. Brown. His wife had just given out after so many childbirths and deaths, and Mr. Brown was looking for a good strong girl to take her place.
I had hardly ever been to school. My father was a blacksmith and very poor, but honest. Mr. Brown was a stock raiser and kept moving from place to place so I made few friends after our marriage, but I had little time for friends since I soon added thirteen more children to his family. Life was hard work –at cooking, sewing, washing, nursing my children and mourning those babies who died. I lost three of my little ones in just one year when whooping cough spread through the countryside. Some of my children lived a few years before they were taken. Six of my 13 did live to adulthood. Two of them died fighting for the freedom of the slaves along with their papa in 1859.
What kind of world was that I lived in, you may ask? It was the terrible world of our America during the time it was legal to own slaves.
If there was one thing that aroused my husband, John Brown, to a fury that he could not contain it was the thought of black men being held as nothing better than dogs. He was a religious man, and he vowed to go to battle to correct as much of this wrong as he could.
On one attempt to eliminate slavery, he went west to the new state of Kansas where the people – the men, that is – had been told to vote whether Kansas was to be a “free” state or a “slave” one. Violence broke out as the matter was debated and one of my stepsons were short to death in Kansas by men who were determined to extend slavery into Kansas.
My husband came home, broken and near despair, but he could not rest. He hit upon the idea that if the negro slaves were given guns, they could fight themselves to freedom. To get guns for this purpose, he plotted a break-in at the U.S. Armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. My own sons, Watson and Oliver were big enough by then, to join the little army of perpetrators who with my husband, fought with the guards at the Armory. Both sons were killed in the fighting and my husband was captured. He was tried for treason and sentenced to death by hanging.
From that time Hon Brown was seized upon as a symbol, either of hate or to raise as a standard of right. When the Civil War itself broke out soon after, some one wrote a song about John Brown’s truth marching on for freedom. Perhaps you have heard that famous old battle song, Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, His truth goes marching on!
As Widow Brown I was so poor I had to bed from my neighbors for food for my children who still survived. There were many in Pennsylvania who sympathized with what John Brown had tried to do. They urged me to go away from that part of the country. “Mary Ann Brown,” they said. “Why not go to California, the land of gold and free land and where no slavery is allowed?”
So we started out, what was left of John Brown’s 21 children and I, first stopping in Iowa for a time and then moving on in a three wagon outfit which our friends helped us supply with food. One wagon was for my son Salmon and his wife Abbie and two children. Another wagon was for me and my three daughters, Sarah, Annie and Ellen. In the third wagon were some valuable Spanish Merino sheep with which Salmon planned to start a herd in California and sell their fine wool.
When we began to be frightened by Indians lurking about to steal our oxen and perhaps kill us, we joined another large wagon train. Then as we progressed across the prairie some of the men in the train asked questions about us. When they found that we were John Brown’s family – the hated abolitionist – they planned to kill us, at least my son. Many of these men were from Kansas and believed strongly in slavery.
Our Brown family ran away in the right and traveled ahead as fast as possible. Even so, two of our valuable sheep were killed. We were exhausted, almost with clothing or shoes, and nearly starving when we pulled into Red Bluff, where a small party, we had joined was headed. They had invited us to join them for safety. That was 1864, and the war was almost over. Nothing gave us more joy in Red Bluff than hearing that slavery had been banished forever in the rebellious states by President Abraham Lincoln.
In Red Bluff some people were for the union side and they welcomed us and offered help. Others had sympathies with the slave holding south, but they did us no harm at first.
The good people of Red Bluff decided to build us a house, a very nice little house on Main Street. Many people chipped in a dollar apiece for the house for us. That little house is still standing today at 135 Main Street and you can go and look at it when you are in Red Bluff.
I went to work right away for nurses and midwives were needed. My two oldest girls were well educated for the time and they taught in schools nearby. One of the schools was for black children whose families had settled on farms near Red Bluff.
We might have stayed in Red Bluff where the people seemed kind but all of us women together could scarcely make enough money to live on. Then a newspaper editor in town who had come from the South, began to write editorials and talk about us in a threatening way. It became unpleasant in that community. The editor of the pro-southern newspaper printed an anonymous letter referring to my dead husband as “John Brown, the Murderer and Horse Thief.” My son Salmon advertised a $100 reward for the name of the coward so that he could confront him with the slander.
I did not want any more fighting. I sold my little house and we all moved, first to Humboldt County. Later Salmon and his family moved to Oregon to raise sheep and I moved to Santa Clara County with my daughters Sarah and Ellen. I died there, and in the Saratoga Cemetery my gravestone still proudly reads:
Mary A.
Wife of John Brown of Harper’s Ferry
1816 – 1884
Clio: Women have always shown their strength when events called them from their usual roles. Perhaps examples of that courage inspired women to begin early to show their mettle. Such was the case with a teenage girl who lived close by, some 140 years ago.
Anna Morrison Reed
Anna: I came to California with my mother when I was five years old. My father, Guy Morrison, had come from Iowa in search of gold and when he found a claim that seemed to be paying well in the Dixon Ravine of top of Table Mountain, he sent back for mother and me to come from Iowa where I was born.
Like many men, when my father had nit a financial problem in his Iowa store, he decided that his best chance to earn a lot of money was in the gold mines he had read so much about in the newspapers.
In those days we had neither radios nor television so news traveled slowly. When we came west to join my father, we could not just take an airplane or even a train.
We came by steamship down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and took another steamship to the Isthmus of Panama. There was no canal then, so we rode donkeys across the mountains to the Pacific Ocean where another steamship brought us to San Francisco where my father met us. The rest of the way we traveled in a stage coach drawn by houses, changing coaches often. It was very exiting for me to see so much of a strange land, and to have seen so much water from the ships we came on. We arrived almost a year after my father had sent work for us to come.
Very soon I had brothers born in Oregon City, the pioneer town on top Table Mountain. My mother had a Chinese man (he was called the house boy) who worked for us. He did anything she wanted – cooking or cleaning – and watching the children at play. He was very wise and I enjoyed when he talked to me about his own life, even in his broken English. My brother and I like to pretend that we were gold miners and pan for gold in Oregon gulch creek that ran close by.
But I most enjoyed reading. I read everything that I could get my hands on. We had no public library. Our one-room school house had only a few books. Sometimes I borrowed precious books from neighbors. Old newspapers were read from first word to last. How I loved it when a poem appeared. I memorized it right away. I wrote poems too, inspired by the stories of the Civil War that was being fought then. One of my poems was published in a San Francisco paper when I was only 15 years old.
My parents wanted me to get the education which I eagerly desired. They send me to Sacramento to attend a private high school and to board with a doctor’s family. It was wonderful! Then word came from home that my father had become seriously disabled. The hard work in the mine was too much for him and the family rapidly found itself without money. I was almost crazy with despair myself when I saw my hungry brothers and parents. That is when I decided that I must help out. I had heard in Sacramento a women lecture, she made money giving talks to people on entertaining subjects. Remember, no radio, TV or movies existed. People went out to community hall and paid money just to hear a new voice and see a new face in town.
So I composed a lecture – something I thought believable from a twenty year old. It was on making a happy home life. I would talk especially of how important it was for women to love and nurture and how men should respect girls and women as well as earn money to support in a happy home. After speaking, I would read some of my poems and sing some songs accompanied by my guitar.
I advertised that my lecture would be free on the poster put up around Tehama on the Sacramento River, then the Tehama County seat. My talk would be free and people could drop money in a basket when leaving the hall if they thought my presentation was worth it. My older brother went with me on these trips, for a nice women never traveled alone in those days. Especially a single young female would have been thought to be inviting improper male attention.
To my great delight, my basket collected enough money to pay my expenses and to take my parents money for food and medicine.
My father did not recover his health and so I continued to lecture and sing wherever I could rent a hall.
I went by horseback and stagecoach all over Northern California with my brother, giving tons of talks and getting good publicity in the newspapers who wrote about this young woman who at that time spoke against women being allowed to vote, stressing the need for them to concentrate on making happy husbands and homes instead.
When on one of my lecture trips I met an attractive Mendocino County newspaper publisher, Mr. Reed. We fell in love and were married. True to my words, I stopped my work to raise children and keep my husband satisfied.
But, alas, he died and left me a widow with young children to support. I found that he had not been honest with me in describing his worth and I was almost penniless. I decided that a woman must also learn to be self reliant if she were to exist in this world.
I began to write for newspapers as well as lecture. And this time, I suppose because I had learned a great deal as I experienced life, I advocated that women should vote. I thought their influence could be a great thing in handling the great social ills of the day, especially the alcohol problem, for drunkenness caused so much woe to families and in accidents and missed days of work.
I became the editor of a magazine, The Northern Crown. It continued to be a way to present my point of view. I wrote on many subjects, including my reasons for opposing capital punishment, and a plea in 1907 that the state provide better roads for the increasing number of automobiles. . . Many men subscribed showed that thinking males had respect for my opinions, I as asked one year to be the annual speaker at the California State Agricultural Society in 1893. At that time farming was truly the prime industry in California. It was recognition indeed that me opinion was one to be as respected as a man’s.
This is a poem I composed when I was about to embark on my first lecture tour, for I often wrote poems to give myself courage:
The clouds of poverty are all about me
My young heart sad, my sky without one ray
But I know that God looks at me in the darkness
And he sees and listens while I work and pray.
The way is strange, my life’s path steep and rugged
And envious foes are near me to defame
But the mighty hand of God can guide me upward.
And on the scroll of worth inscribe my name. . .
God bless the few true ones who are around me.
And bless each thoughtless and unfeeling churl;
I pity all who blame, and in their blindness
Would deem so weak a poor and friendless girl.
Clio: Acute necessity was often the motivation force behind a woman’s accomplishments. The motivation for sparking the true creativity in a women came not from a personal need as yet, but from the desire to help a loved family member. Such was the case with Freda Ehmann.
Freda Loeber Ehmannz
Freda:A woman’s motivations for achieving are as varied as those of any other creative person. As a young woman I thought that being a good wife and rearing my children in a happy home was all I could possibly need for self-fulfillment.
The death of my husband when I was 53 years old tore a huge hole in the plan I had made for my life. The death of my oldest daughter to typhoid fever at age 19 had pointed out clearly that we can neither choose our life span, or the comfortable lifestyle that I had somehow come to expect was my right.
Oh, it all began predictably. My father, a Lutheran minister in my native Germany, died when I was 13, but I had my mother to lean upon and she brought us to American where she had a married sister already established and with a husband willing to support us. I learned English, was happy in school, and when I went to visit other relatives in St. Louis, I met a handsome young doctor, Ernst Ehmann, and we were married to live happily ever after in the little town of Quincy, Illinois where Ernst set up a practice.
As I said, a woman can find herself at a crossroads. Ernst died after he had been sick for a long time. His medical practice had faded away. I found that our savings had faded too. In those days there were no pension plans. I had only our house. Even Ernst’s life insurance policy was eaten away by illness and death debts. What was I to do?
My son Edwin had chosen a career as drummer – a name used in those days- the 1890’s, to describe a traveling salesman. Edwin and many other young man traveled the trains from coast to coast “drumming” up sales for manufacturing companies. He was a natural salesman with a twinkle in his eye, and a glib tongue, but one that never tried to cheat.
Edwin fell in love with California on his first trip from Illinois and talked me into coming to California and keeping house for him near an olive grove in Yuba County that Edwin had invested in. In those days mission type olives- the ones introduced into the California missions from Spain – sold well when pressed into oil. I took all the money I received from the sale of my house in Illinois and helped Edwin buy a grove of olives on the advice of one of Edwin’s employers.
That year, 1894-95, the United States was in the depths of a depression. On top of that an unusually heavy freeze and a flood killed the olive trees in Edwin’s orchard. The man who had sold Edwin the grove felt very remorseful that he was in some way responsible for my penniless state. He deeded me a 20 acre grove of young, healthy, but as yet non-producing olive trees. So here I was – no money and no market for olive oil- but with 20 acres of mission olives.
My daughter Emma had met Charles Bolles while teaching in Oakland and after they married they invited me to live with them. I had no choice. But I worried constantly. Edwin was almost bankrupt and I had no way to help either him or myself, or so I first thought.
Then I began to analyze all the things that might be done with 20 acres of olives, for in 1897 the young trees bore a crop of excellent olives.
I might sell the grove, but with the market so low for olive oil I would get little. How else to market olives? I read everything about olives I could find. I knew that all over Europe housewives had pickled ripe olives to use in their own homes – to use quickly, for they soon spoiled. I read that the agricultural department at the new state university at Davis had a Professor Hilyard who had been experimenting with pickling olives. I asked Prof. Hilyard for his recipe and he warned me that though his pickled olives kept well they did not taste good. Or if they tasted good, they spoiled readily.
When I asked my son-in-law if he would help me set up an olive experiment plant under the back porch in Oakland I was lucky that he did not laugh me away. Perhaps he and Emma got tired of seeing me so married and restless. But he agreed.
Soon there were some half dozen wine barrels cut in half to make vats under the porch. Edwin brought me boxes of bitter puckery olives from my orchard. The olive recipe called for a lye solution to soak the olives. But they had to be drained and set in new solution often and I was soon doing little but carrying water from the upstairs water faucet to the vats, draining them and mixing new lye solutions until the olives lost their bitterness. At last I had an olive that tasted delicious but looked all mottled and ugly, green and black. I sadly carried some to Dr. Hilyard and asked what I was doing wrong. He declared these olives the best flavor he had ever tasted. I had hit on the right formula!
Clio: My last example of women in history is of a woman who set out from the beginning to becomes a professional person, namely a medical doctor in a society where women were regarded incapable of mastering the science of healing.
As true in American as in ancient Greece, a woman, even a goddess, was expected to be beautiful and subtly advertise her sexuality to mans – be they gods or human. Yet some women led the way in breaking free of the chains of social tradition. None did more gracefully that Dr. Ella Gatchell, of Chico, again proving that a women can be a wife, a good mother and a career women.
Dr. Ella Gatchell
Ella:I was born Ella Twitchell on a farm in Marine in 1853. If you have ever visited Maine in the fall you have seen a state filled with glorious color – the green of thick forest; the reds and yellows of autumn foliage. But in the winter the temperatures are harsh.
In the summer when the conditions are at their best, the rocky soil has difficulty producing enough for a family to survive.
Still my father persisted on his farm- knowing northing else, I suppose. He encouraged me to become educated in a day when women rarely knew anything but housework and motherhood.
So I was sent to the Normal training school for teachers in Oxford, Maine, a tiny lumber town. Because I did very well in school and my teachers encouraged me.
My father made a sacrifice to raise money to send me – of all places - to the College for Physicians and Surgeons in Boston! An unheard of thing for a woman in those days!
Doctors were poorly trained by today’s standards. The medical school I went to tried to teach from scientific knowledge of medicine gathered over the centuries and I was encouraged to study all my life and to keep up with new medical discoveries. At the same time, we were discouraged from following new medical fads that popped up constantly. I must confess we tried many remedies that failed to cure our patients.
There were a handful of women doctoring in Maine in the 1890’s, and my shingle at the office door brought very few people. More often I was called as a last resort to go to some distant farm in the dead of winter to attend a sick child or try to relieve the suffering of an aged pneumonia sufferer. In most cases it was too late and my patient died. It was on one of those trips that I was caught in a terrible blizzard and became sick myself, with a cough that lingered long after the fever had gone.
I had married a struggling young Doctor Gatchell. He practiced in a small lumber town that scarcely could support even one doctor, so while our baby daughter Frances was small I stayed at home, but all the time itching to be back helping sick people. There were many of those, but so poor!
As I coughed on and one, from winter into spring, my husband feared that I might get tuberculosis if I did not go to a warmer climate. It so happened that my father had read about a notorious General Bidwell who had started his own town and owned thousands of richly producing acres. He said to me, “Do you know that this General Bidwell is a cousin of ours? His mother was my mother’s sister.”
The outcome of that was a letter replying to mine asking if I might visit – a letter that welcomed me to the home of General and Mrs. Bidwell to recover from my cough. I traveled to Chico in 1899, leaving behind my husband and daughter.
I soon felt better in Chico and was very happy at the pleasure it gave the Bidwells to have me. Soon I decided that perhaps California would be a place to set up a medical practice with the support of my cousin and his wife.
When word went about in Chico that I was a doctor, I began to get requests to tend to sick children. As always, most people were suspicious of a woman who claimed to know anything but nursing. Most of my jobs were staying in a home with several sick babies and children, where the mother was worn out and a nurse was needed. But it was a beginning.
Surprisingly, or perhaps it is not so surprising, even my cousin John Bidwell was very skeptical about using my services. While I was living right in his house, he would call a male doctor to come to see him if he got sick! Annie Bidwell was less doubtful that a woman could be a real doctor. And she needed a doctor often to send to look after one of the sick Indians in the village of Mechoopda Indians on the ranch. She had taken as a project the conversion to Christianity and the education of these people who her husband protected.
The Indian men and even the women worked in his fields. Many other Chico doctors were reluctant to respond to the Indian cases.
In time, as people came to know me, I set up an office and moved into my own little house in Chico. I brought my daughter to live with me and even my husband came and spent a year or so until he got homesick for Maine.
For a number of years I was not only the first woman doctor north of Sacramento, I was the only one. Even John Bidwell trusted me to treat some of his problems, and Annie began to rely on me exclusively in her last years. I became a good friend to her, and it was a comfort to her to know that medical care was always available from cousin Ella. She was grateful for my care and left me $5000 in her will, a great deal of money in those days.
Other doctors respected me. I brought ideas from the East and one of these led to my organizing a Butte County Medical Society. I served as both its president and for eight years its secretary. This society joined the California State Medical Association which I also served as President when we became part of the National Medical Association.
An infirmary was built in Chico not long after the turn of the 20th century and I had an office there. I was set up to give electrical impulse treatments from a machine which was very popular then for treating arthritis and any muscular pain. It operated on batteries. Annie Bidwell had a partially paralyzed arm that pained her greatly. I gave her many electrical treatments, often in her own bedroom. I was there when she died after a stroke from which I could not save her.
I had many maternity cases. One of the babies I delivered was Theodore Meriam whose father was a professor at the Chico Normal School and whose mother had been a mathematics teacher back East.
My daughter died very young leaving a small daughter of her own behind. It was in my granddaughter’s home that I died in 1931.
Clio: And so we close this demonstration – not that you ladies need educating in facts about opportunities for women in the 21st century, but to remind you that progress is fragile and something we cannot take for grant. There are still girls and women struggling to find a niche to make them good mothers and wives as well as self-supporting and self-respecting.
"May the Gods be with you!"