The Story of Rosamond

by

Jon Presco

Copyright 2017

“Sometime around 1890, Ada’s husband took off and left her with their two children, Violet and Romer. She turned to art full-time, set up the Shawhan Studio, and earned money illustrating books and painting society portraits. She became well-known in California and often was written up in the San Francisco Call, where a woman reporter followed the art scene closely.”

https://rosamondpress.com/2015/02/18/del-monte-aviation-buck-inst/

Melba’s best friend was named Violet. The two Violets look alike, and were dancers. I met Violet once around 1956. Vic described her as “ethereal”. He was eluding to something else. When I saw the photo of them in the Oakland Hills near Joaquin Miller’s Bohemian retreat, I wonder if they were Lesbians. Melba had only one child, and her second husband, Joe Wilson, slept in his own bedroom. Did he have a war injury? Why didn’t Melba have more children? She was keen on having Vic’s children as her own.

In the Snyder, Sydney, Rose, and Buck biography we read the wanton denigration of the Rosamond Female Line, starting with Rosemary, and ending with Vicki, who is called “the hero” by Snyder. Vicki was seen by Vic and Melba as their heir. This claim is extended to my daughter, whom I do not deserve, because I am titled – INSANE!

Here is the INSANE LINE of the DISQUALIFID that allows Caretaker Stacey Pieorrot to be seen as THE REAL FAMILY HEIR, thanks to the blessing of  Robert Buck.

ROSEMARY

CHRISTINE

SHANNON

GREG

Vicki and Mark Presco allowed this slanderous pretention. Both of them read the rough draft, and I believe were slipped profits under the table. Here’s a list of the NON-ARTISTS;

VICTOR

MARK

VICKI

STACEY – Buck Baby

Thanks to my Dancing Muse, Rena Victoria Easton-Christensen, I am led thru the thorns and bramble, to the truth.

Garth Benton is behind the scenes working Pierrot like a puppet. He’s got Drew all to himself. He knows Vicki and Mark have been jealous of Christine, they stuck in the shadow of her limelight for twenty years. They point to me, the failed artist, as the owner of all the Creative Jealousy I have owned since I was four years of age.

Snyder&Buck employ ALCOHOL and the family recovery to hand it over to THE FRONT PERSON. My sober brothers and sisters were aghast when they read ‘When You Close Your Eyes’ as to how they had been used. Every meeting stresses the importance of The New Comer, and not famous folks in recovery. This is a LIQUIDATION! This is what Sydney Morris did to the Weston legacy.

I am certain Morris bid Snyder to get me to sign that non-disclosure agreement – so they could utterly shut me up, and leave me out of The Family Biography altogether. They have about 1% of the history I compiled in this blog that honors hundreds of creative souls!

https://rosamondpress.com/2015/02/18/del-monte-aviation-buck-inst/

“The nonprofit’s board chose Alcohol Justice from three alternatives a branding consultant penned.

The organization, one of the Buck Trust’s three major beneficiaries, focuses on research, education and campaigning through mainstream and social media nationwide.

While not anti-alcohol, the organization keeps a close eye on the alcohol industry, going after products or advertising campaigns it believes pose a threat to public safety and health, Livingston said.

Recent work includes a campaign against “supersized alcopops,” which are fruity beverages with high alcohol content served in 23.5-ounce cans that some believe target underage drinkers; assisting a grassroots campaign in Los Angeles to get alcohol advertising off of city-owned property — the organization has met with success on similar Bay Area initiatives; and supporting a state Assembly bill to bar retailers that sell alcohol from allowing customers to use automated check-out stations.”

Here  is the final report from Heisinger Buck and Morris that is now a part of The Buck & Presco Creative Family History. We are forever married in the files of the Superior Court of Monterey. This is beyond Steinbeck! Morris goes with Snyder’s lie that they were walking on a beach, and justifies  the sale of the Presco Family Legacy to outsider, Stacey Pierrot, by harping on the family “discord” BEFORE the wave, and AFTER the wave. This discord began the day AFTER my sister was “killed”, when Jacci Belford made an offer to purchase the entire Rosamond Estate – while my sister’s house – without Shannon Rosamond Benton being present. This is CONSPIRACY!

I hereby connect the evil work of Heisinger Buck and Morris to Ada & Violet! No living artist-writer has come up against such powerful people who are bent on rubbing out my history and make sure I never publish. No diseased famous artist in history has had her Last Wishes – so violated and publicly abused – their reputation utterly destroyed for the sake of making a legal firms outrageous input, work, for the sake of their reputation.

A week after I received THE LEGAL LIE, I sent a long letter to Morris informing his legal theory lacks a “death scene”. Do you see a beach here? I was the first to suggest a reality show that Pierrot and her second ghost writer promise will air this year. ‘Before the Wave’ depicts Christine as an out of control drunk and sex maniac. Buck & Morris missed the boat! Consider ‘Mr’s Eastwood & Company’ starring THE EASTWOOD FAMILY and not a bunch of Court Appointed Caretakers.

SHANNON ROSAMOND is the OBJECTOR. She was twenty-four years of age when her mother was “killed” by the fake rogue wave. She was the adult Heir. Her mother filed Bankruptcy. The Caretakers knew Rosamond was writing a biography in order to save her artistic legacy. How many Caretakers wondered is Rosamond’s Death would put her legacy in the red, so, they could get money – before the wave?

I suspect Tom Snyder kept in touch with my sixteen year old daughter via her mother so as to get them in the Buck & Snyder camp – that put all their chips on DEAD ARTIST KILLING at the cash register. To suck a minor child into this DEMONIC PROBATE, is pure evil. My daughter and her family – were free and clear of the “discord”. All those who dragged Heather Marie Presco into this Bleak Home of Dark Lies, are predators, on par with pedophiles.

“There had been many years of discord in the family, which had been intensified by this tragic death.”

Morris takes legal liberties with this “discord” he has no intention of ending, or bringing relief to. I know Pierrot approached him with the idea of a book and a movie in 1994. How would you like to see your mother demonized in a book, or on the silver screen – for the sake of whom? No profits from the book went to my nieces. How about the movie? How is this going to NOT make them bitter and angry? The prints should have been dealt out, and the probate closed before any more family “discord” could arise! Morris dug a Pit of Evil Discord, and sniggered as my family fell into it. He needs to be DISBARRED!  He needs to be put in public pillory – and shamed!

I am almost certain it was Robert Buck that gave me a menacing look at the funeral. I suspect he knew the Bentons, and stopped in the Rosamond Gallery located just around the corner from his law firm. Did he take sides in the divorce? After ten years of probate, Morris did not charge a legal fee. I stuck by Shannon when they went after her, saying she would destroy the estate, that Robert was bent on saving?

When I was shut out and blackballed, I conversed with my father, whom I had very little to do with. I suggested he call Robin Beare, Garth’s divorce attorney, who Vicki talked to every day. Robin expressed shock that Vic existed – and three million dollars of family prints, that Jacci Belford said would not be given to – MY FATHER!

“I told Garth and Stacey to inventory the entire estate.”

Here is more “discord” by non-family members. In the last six months I have exchanged cordial messages with Shannon a Larry who offered I was Christine’s mentor. How generous! I backed Shannon and paid a price. I honored my sister’s Will. Vicki and Mark Presco backed Garth, and Drew, a minor child. I was put out – with my father and my mother. That rich man who glared at me was told bad things about me. By whom? Morris knew all these intrigues. He went to lunch with Stacey Pierrot – from the start! Did Robert Buck know about these lunches? Are we looking at conflict of interest?

https://rosamondpress.com/2016/03/26/julie-lynch-sexpot-2/

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Royal Rosamond Press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidation

https://rosamondpress.com/2015/12/28/the-weston-rose-line/

“I don”t think of it in terms of money. I do it just for the love and excitement.”

-Brett Weston

Here is what Sydney Morris said about the creative estate of Brett Weston;

““We had considered trying to manage the estate and running it as a business, but in view of what we had to deal with, in our opinion to run it as a business entity would have been long and arduous and maybe not successful,” says Morris. “Erica”s lawyers and my lawyers felt it would be in the best interests of the estate to dispose of substantially all of the collection.”

Basically what Morris did was give the bad business people that helped Christine achieve failure and bankruptcy – along with the recently divorced husband – a second chance at making it all work. They failed like the first time which was blamed on Rosamond’s dysfunctionality in Snyder’s book, along with choice dysfunctional family members. The more family members out of the picture, the better, was Morris’s remedy for making money, and nothing but money! If there was any adventure and love to be had by my family that was once titled ‘The Greatest Soap Opera Ever Made’ it was put in suspense while Morris did his thing.

“According to Morris and former estate co-executor and Weston friend Bob Byers, there were 29 versions of estate plans for Weston during his lifetime, “the common theme being gifts to lady friends and family members and to ultimately take care of [Weston”s daughter and sole heir] Erica,” according to Morris.”

“In looking back at Brett Weston”s life and career as an artist, one is struck by the degree to which his art is inextricably linked to his relationships with women. Married and divorced four times, Weston engaged in countless personal relationships with women, many of whom assisted Weston professionally.”

Easton! Weston! What are the odds! The Bentons and the Westons should have joined forces with the Eastwoods to make the ultimate Carmel Reality Show. Now bring in Rena and her Glamazon sisters.

Jon Presco

After Zayda died in 1956, Romer stayed in the house with his sister Violet. They lived out their days painting and reading. Romer died in 1970 and is buried with Zayda at the Lone Mountain Cemetery in Carson City, Nevada, surrounded by Zabriskies.

https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/return-to-zabriskie-point/

“Meanwhile Daria (Daria Halprin), “a sweet, pot-smoking post-teenybopper of decent inclinations,” is driving across the desert towards Phoenix in a 1950s era Buick automobile to meet her boss Lee, who may or may not also be her lover.”

When ‘Easy Rider’ came out, my kindred and friends said I look just like THE ACTOR, Dennis Hopper, who is some kind of hippie biker – only on film! Hopper marred THE ACTRESS, Daria Halprin, whose mother was a dancer and who runs a dance healing clinic called ‘Tamalpa Life/Art’ which may be near Mount Tamalpais where I camped with Rena – all alone. There was not one famous director to be seen. We took no direction. Rena’s beauty was not captured and put in a can. I got a real good close-up of her about sixteen hours a day. I can’t complain – really!

Daria starred in A MOVIE about radical hippies in revolt, called ‘Zabriskie Point’. It was an utter failure. I am an original hippie, who along with my hippie friends, did not go see this movie, because, it is a case of Art Imitating Life. We had no interest in paying money to go see FAKE PAID HIPSTERS imitating us, and, speak for us. We spent our extra money on drugs so we could alter our mind, get turned on – and have sex!

The other star of Zabriskie Point was a Mel Lyman devotee. Mark Frechette held up a bank with another Lyman Family member after he made his movie. He had real-life interests. Mel Lyman is my kindred who created a network of MUSicians, Actors, and Artists. He is in my family tree. He married Jessie Benton, a cousin of my ex-brother-in-law, Garth Benton who acted in movies, as did his first wife, Alli McBride.

https://rosamondpress.com/2015/05/26/back-to-zabriskie-point/

https://rosamondpress.com/2011/08/31/melba-charlott-broderick/

http://www.throughthehourglass.com/2016/04/the-long-arms-of-zayda-zabriskie.html

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~npmelton/s99_249.htm

The pair probably met in the Bay Area where both grew up. His father left the family a few years after Romer was born in 1888. His mother, Ada Romer Shawhan, a painter and illustrator, worked out of a studio on Sacramento Street in San Francisco. And his beautiful, ethereal sister, Violet, pursued a career as a modern dancer.

Christian Brevoort Zabriskie (1864 – 1936)
Margaret Louise Edwards Zabriskie (1867 – 1933)Spouses:
Frank Henry Buck (1887 – 1942)
Romer Shawhan (1888 – 1970)Children:
Christian Brevoorte Zabriskie Buck (1914 – 1995)*
Edward Zabriskie Buck (1917 – 1964)*

It’s surprising to see Romer Shawhan’s name listed as one of the ushers at Zayda’s first wedding in 1911. She would marry and divorce thrice before they took their own vows 25 years later in the marriage chapel of New York City’s Municipal Building, a wedding-cake structure in lower Manhattan.

And that was just 11 days after she secured a divorce from husband #3, in Reno.

Later on, Romer said they were childhood sweethearts. So you have to wonder what happened during the years between.

It reminds me of Rhett Butler’s line in Gone with the Wind: “I can’t go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands.”

After marrying in 1936, Romer and Zayda were together until her death two decades later.

The pair probably met in the Bay Area where both grew up. His father left the family a few years after Romer was born in 1888. His mother, Ada Romer Shawhan, a painter and illustrator, worked out of a studio on Sacramento Street in San Francisco. And his beautiful, ethereal sister, Violet, pursued a career as a modern dancer.

Romer attended Lick-Wilmerding High School and graduated with technical and college preparatory degrees. At age 17, he submitted a plan to redesign the city’s Dolores Park, on the western edge of the Mission District. Romer’s design clearly was inspired by the work of the landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.  The city fathers chose it but before anything could be done, the earthquake happened.

Ada, Romer, and Violet all were bold, creative, and enterprising.

In 1910 Romer went to New York City to study architecture at Columbia University. Zayda Zabriskie already lived there with her parents. She attended Brearley and Miss Porter’s before heading off to Bryn Mawr.

Her father, Christian Brevoort Zabriskie, made his fortune as vice president and general manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company. Zabriskie Point in Death Valley is named for him. The company’s 20-mule teams hauled the borax from the mines to the nearest railroad in Mojave, California.

Zayda stayed just one year at Bryn Mawr before marrying Frank Buck, heir to a California fruit company, who inherited great wealth and invested it well. The ceremony took place in New York at the Little Church Around the Corner on 29^th Street.

After the wedding, and after Zayda had been presented in her wedding gown at the Court of St. James, the couple moved to the West Coast where their four children were born.

Meanwhile, Romer studied in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Returning home, his projects included various office buildings around the country.

The U.S. entered World War I in April 1917. In August, Romer enlisted in the Air Service and became a lieutenant and fighter pilot. He served as Assistant Operations Officer on the staff of General William Mitchell, Chief of Air Service in the American First Army. Romer’s fellow pilots included Eddie Rickenbacker and Theodore Roosevelt’s son, Quentin, who was killed during a dogfight in the Second Battle of the Marne.

Romer received the Pershing Army Citation, the Croix de Guerre, and the Distinguished Service Medal.

Through the 1920s, he worked with several prestigious architectural firms, living in Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Indianapolis. Building materials especially interested him. He published articles about slate, terra cotta, and marble.

Out in California, Zayda stuck with Mr. Buck (who later served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a New Deal Democrat) until the mid-1920s. Then they divorced and she married Scott Springer Hendricks, who also ran for the House (as a Republican) but lost.

In 1927, Zayda and Scott testified on behalf of a friend in a custody case before the New York State Supreme Court. The cast of characters included a deceitful father, an adulterous mother, a blind aunt who stated the child always looked dirty, a maternal grandmother whose Garden City home was said to lack sufficient yard space, and a governess who was ill or told to be ill whenever a dashing real estate developer came around . . .  largely played out against the backdrop of dozens of dinner parties in San Mateo where liquor flowed freely.

Zayda displayed some wit on the stand but she definitely stayed with her story.

Sometime in the early 1930s, Zayda and Scott divorced, and she married a lawyer named Mark Daniels. A few years later, she divorced Daniels in Nevada and within two weeks married Romer.

He was working for the Federal Government so they lived in Washington. During World War II, he served four years as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S.A.F. The man must have adored flying.

After the war, they bought a house in Mount Vernon, N.Y., where family antiques, art, and relics were arranged throughout the spacious rooms. Subsequently, Romer helped found the Marble Institute of America. This organization brought together quarriers, wholesalers, importers, finishers, and contractors to create standards for quality and craftsmanship of marble.

After Zayda died in 1956, Romer stayed in the house with his sister Violet. They lived out their days painting and reading. Romer died in 1970 and is buried with Zayda at the Lone Mountain Cemetery in Carson City, Nevada, surrounded by Zabriskies.

Miss Violet Romer

It made complete sense that they lived in a quintessential American house: an elegant Foursquare with generous bay windows that overlooked the sidewalks lined with elm trees. Built around 1905, it was thought to be the second house that arose on the street where I grew up.

The elderly brother and sister at 108 Forster Avenue filled their home with art, antiques, and such memorabilia as a broken plate pulled from the rubble of the San Francisco Earthquake.

While we trudged to school through sunshine and snowstorms, Violet and Romer Shawhan moved about in rooms hung with the portraits of ancestors. A few of these men had accumulated tremendous wealth before and during the Gilded Age.

Their paternal grandfather, descended from a Kentucky family whose money came from whiskey distilleries, moved West after the Civil War and invested in mining, streetcars, and stocks.

John E. Shawhan had everyone living in grand style at the Palace Hotel until the State of Virginia defaulted on its “consols” (consolidated annuities). Then he became known for “Shawhan’s Folly” – the California Street property where he built a stable to house his collection of splendid horses and carriages.

The horses drank from marble troughs and occupied stalls carved of birds-eye maple. In a private room at the stable, Mrs. Shawhan entertained friends and reporters. She showed off her gold-tipped harnesses and whips.

After the bankruptcy, the Shawhans decamped to Nevada where the missus filed for divorce. But their son James made a bit of a recovery when he married Ada Romer, a free-spirited painter whose father had arrived in California during the Gold Rush.

Ada’s father, John Lyons Romer, made his fortune in real estate and as a founding director of the San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad Company and vice president of the Sausalito Land & Ferry Company. Her portrait of him won a silver medal at the 1909 Alaska Yukon Exhibition in Seattle.

Sometime around 1890, Ada’s husband took off and left her with their two children, Violet and Romer. She turned to art full-time, set up the Shawhan Studio, and earned money illustrating books and painting society portraits. She became well-known in California and often was written up in the San Francisco Call, where a woman reporter followed the art scene closely.

It’s evident that Ada nurtured her children, who developed confidence and worldliness. In 1896 Violet wrote to her grandfather Romer, who was visiting Colorado:

I think we are going to San Francisco and I am glad for I am just getting so I hate the sight of Los Angeles, business is so poor here I don’t know how it is. I guess you have lots to tell about Denver. I guess it is a nice city. Of coarse those big citys all are.

Within several years, Violet was dancing her heart out. She never took formal lessons or studied classical ballet. Like Isadora Duncan, Violet danced interpretively and free form, eschewing ballerina costumes. Isadora, also raised by an artistic single mother in the Bay Area, had long gone to France by 1904 when Violet performed as a hamadryad in a redwood forest grove for members of The Bohemian Club.

Violet’s career really took off when The Papyrus Club, a San Francisco woman’s group, decided to sponsor her. She danced at the city’s Columbia Theatre accompanied by a 6o-piece orchestra and returned a week later by popular demand. Soon after, Ada took Violet to London and Paris where the young dancer’s “inspirational” performances drew acclaim.

During this time, Romer studied at Lick-Wilmerding, a progressive high school where he completed the polytechnic course and overlapped with my favorite educator, Willard W. Beatty. Romer and Willard even served on the yearbook staff together. In 1910, after working as a superintending architect in San Francisco for a few years, Romer went to New York to study at Columbia University.

That same year, Violet caught the eye of an impresario named Marc Klaw who co-controlled the Theatrical Syndicate, which monopolized theater bookings nationwide during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. By 1910, the powerful syndicate was losing its influence to the Schubert Brothers of New York, but Klaw and a former drama critic, Harrison Grey Fiske, were producing the Arabian play Kismet. They cast Violet as “the Egyptian Girl.” Kismet ran for two years on Broadway and made Violet’s reputation. She stayed in New York to star “sans hosiery” in Joseph and His Brethren, a pageant by a British playwright named Louis N. Parker. A critic wrote:

It may shock a number of persons in the present generation to see graphically depicted on the stage the disreputable bunch of crooks from which sprung the whole Jewish race of today, but they will find comfort in the immaculate qualities of the Joseph of Mr. Parker’s play.

Violet turned 30 years old in 1916. The following year she returned to California, moved in with her mother and taught dance at a studio into the early 1920s. Thereafter she dropped her stage name and became Violet Shawhan. The two women lived together until Ada died in 1947, with Violet working in a library.

Romer, who married in 1936, had bought the Foursquare in Mount Vernon just before World War II. His sister crossed the continent for the last time to live with him and his wife.