Capturing Beauty
by
John Presco
Copyright 2021
They say the best way to describe a dysfunctional family, is to describe a functional one. There are several books and movies scripts about my late sister, Christine Rosamond Benton, but, they are dwelling in the problem – to say the least.
405 Rolph Ave, Crockett, CA 94525 | MLS #40937458 | Zillow
Yesterday I saw the solution on Zillow. I wanted to be an architect when I was twelve, and am one as a hobby. I search for homes that appeal to me, and get to tour the inside. After Mary Ann Tharaldsen and I got married, we looked at the old bakery in Crockett that was up for sale. We were thinking of remodeling it and founding a art association with gallery and living places for artists. This structure is perfect for a gallery, and the home of Royal Rosamond Press. Since I was a young child I was told my father’s father lived in a tarpaper shack under the Carquiniz bridge. Does this dead end road lead to the encampment where hobos, gamblers, and Bohemians dwelt, for free!
In the last two days I bought $300 dollars worth of art supplies – that were half off. I have been working on my proposals for several grants. I have some great ideas that I will be sending out.
Belmont Legacy of Carl Janke
Posted on September 11, 2011 by Royal Rosamond Press
Months after my sister’s death I went to the Sacramento Library and looked at microfish about a legal battle between the heirs of Carl Janke’s estate in Belmont that appeared in the San Francisco Call. I lost the copy I made of that article that I am certain mentioned William O. Stuttmeister, and the sisters of Augusta Stuttmeister-Janke. Carl’s sons did not want Minni and Cornillia, to have anything, and one brother (or cousin) took their side, and was cut out. This has to be William, or W. JANKE.
“The bride was attended by Miss Alice Stuttmeister, a sister of the groom, and Miss Minnie Janke, a sister of the bride, as bridesmaids, and Dr. Muldownado and Wm. Janke, a cousin of the bride, were groomsmen.”
When Victor Presco turned twenty-one, the the Janke spinsters offered him a moving company in San Francesco. Apparently they saw him as the heir to the Stuttmiester legacy, and the Hope of a return to former glory because they had no children. How about their brother, William? Rosemary said this; “Your father was a made man.”
Two days ago, in an e-mail, my cousin Daryl Bulkley confirmed my suspicions that ‘Stuttmeister’ was not the original name of the folks from Berlin. I suspect they were a branch of the Glucksburg family who became Calvinist Evangelicals, and perhaps Rosicrucians. In the top photo we see Minni and Corniallia Janke in the family vault that William Stuttmeister purchased for $10,000 dollars to put the reains of the Jankes and Stuttmeisters in after they were evicted from the Oddfellow cemetery. That William Ralston was a Oddfellow that put up a large sum of money to establish the Oddfellows in Germany – and perhaps elsewhere – makes me wonder about his alleged suicide by plunging into the bay. I am reading articles on the internet about the Oddfellows being the founders of the Welfare State in America, where being charitable to the poor, the infirmed, and the widows, was paramount. They also paid much attention to burying their dead, which suggests they believed in a different hereafter. As a theologian I have pointed out the strange raising of the dead in Matthew 27:53 at the very moment of Jesus’ alleged death.
Daryl pointed out in her research that we knew next to nothing about the Stuttmeisters, whose tomb was lost until seven years ago, tells me William Stuttmeister retired to the Geronimo Valley a disillusioned man, who played a rare violin, and left his Stuttmeister-Janke legacy to his housekeeper. And then he is dead, his remains put in the vault that I went to visit with my daughter and grandson. Before I left for California I told my friend Joy Gall, that I wanted a AA coin to put in this tomb in honor of Christine Rosamond Benton whose funeral fell on he first sober birthday in AA. As I lined up to view my sister in her casket, I did consider the Nazarite Vow I took in 1989. As fate would have it, I ended up putting this coin in William Oltman Stuttmeisters crypt because there was an opening made by the earthquake of 1989.
On this coin is an Angel. In 1992 I began a biography of my family called ‘Bonds With Angels’. It begins with an account of the Blue Angel that appear at the foot of Christine’s bed that woke her and Vicki, who crawled into Christine’s bed and beheld her. Vicki was six years of age, and is clean and sober this day. The Nazarite Vow bids one to not ingest alcohol, not get drunk, so that the Holy Spirit may speak through you, use you as a Horn of Power to broadcast the Word of God. When I entered the tomb of my ancestors and sat down on the marble bench, I noticed the letter A made of brass lying behind the faux fern plant. I picked it up. It was the A in JANKE that had come lose in the earthquake. I looked up at the stained glass window and read; “In loving memory of my beloved wife, Augusta Stutteister,” Was Augusta the Angel that came to visit my sisters? May our bonds with Angels continue – forever more! Amen!
Jon Presco
Daily Alta California, Volume 42, Number 14175, 24 June 1888 STUTTMEISTER-JANKE.
One of the most enjoyable weddings of the past week took place at Belmont, Wednesday morning last, the contracting parties being Miss Augusta Janke, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. August Janke of Belmont,
and Dr. Wm. Stuttmeister of San Francisco. The house was handsomely decorated with a rich profusion of ferns and flowers, and at the appointed hour was filled with the relatives and intimate friends
of the contracting parties. At 11 o’clock the wedding march was played and the bridal party entered the parlor. The bride was attended by Miss Alice Stuttmeister, a sister of the groom, and Miss Minnie Janke, a sister of the bride, as bridesmaids, and Dr. Muldownado and Wm. Janke, a cousin of the bride, were groomsmen.
The Rev. A. L. Brewer of San Mateo performed the beautiful and impressive ceremony under an arch composed of flowers and greens very prettily arranged, after which the guests pressed forward and offered their congratulations. The bride was attired in a very pretty and becoming costume of the crushed strawberry shade, and wore a corsage bouquet of orange blossoms. She carried a handsome bouquet of white flowers. After the guests had paid their compliments the bride and groom led the way to the dining-room, where the wedding dinner was served and the health of the newly married pair was pledged. The feast over, the guests joined in the dance, and the hours sped right merrily, interspersed with music singing and recitations, until the bride and groom took their departure amid a shower of rice and good wishes. Many beautiful presents were received. Dr. and Mrs. Stuttmeister left Thursday morning for Santa Cruz and Monterey, where they will spend the honeymoon. On their return they will make their home in Belmont. 1911: Dr. Willian O. Stuttmeister was practicing dentistry in Redwood City, CA. (Reference: University of California, Directory of Graduates,
1864-1910, page 133).
Records from Tombstones in Laurel Hill Cemetery, 1853-1927 – Janke
– Stuttmeister
Mina Maria Janke, daughter of William A, & Cornelia Janke, born
February 2, 1869, died March 1902.
William August Janke, native of Hamburg, Germany, born Dec. 25,
1842, died Nov. 22, 1902, son of Carl August & Dorette Catherine Janke. Frederick William R. Stuttmeister, native of Berlin, Germany, born
1612, died January 29, 1877.
Mrs. Matilda Stuttmeister, wife of Frederick W.R. Stuttmeister, born
1829, died March 17, 1875, native of New York.
Victor Rudolph Stuttmeister, son of Frederick W.R. & Matilda
Stuttmeister, born May 29, 1846, died Jan. 19, 1893, native of New
York.
http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/daughters-of-the-americanrevolution- california-s/records-from-tombstones-in-laurel-hill-cemetery- 1853-1927-gua/page-6-records-from-tombstones-in-laurel-hillcemetery- 1853-1927-gua.shtml Copyright 2011
Janke Park, Hall, And Stagecoach Line
Posted on November 27, 2014 by Royal Rosamond Press
The Bohemian Club of Crockett
Posted on May 24, 2016 by Royal Rosamond Press
I am a Journalist. I own my own newspaper that is registered in Lane County. The Bohemian Club of San Francisco was founded by Journalists who soon admitted Artists. I am also an Artist and Poet. I am not famous. To be famous, or, become famous, defeats the idea of being a Bohemian – a True Bohemian! For this reason, on this day, May 24, 2016, I found the Bohemian Club of Crockett California, the BCCC. Soon I will make available Certificates of Bohemian Authenticity, and present them to those who pass the test. This will include a portrait and brief biography.
It is my intent to move to Crockett and set up Royal Rosamond Press in a Gallery and History Room. In 1980, Mary Ann Tharaldsen, the sister-in-law of Christine Rosamond Benton, and I, looked at the old Crockett Bakery as the potential site for an Art Gallery with studio space for artists. I predicted this city would become the new Bohemian Colony. Hence, it has become an Art Colony. I will be the Curator of this Gallery-Museum, and Caretaker of my creative family history, as well as the history of Crockett. I will stroll about my Art Colony as Captain Gregory. Gregory is my full middle name. I will get the latest scoop. I will be the premiere Crockett character. I will make a Virtual Crockett and promote this town and my newspaper. My biography is now on hold. Our Bohemian Tales are too big to be confined to a book.
Here is a photograph of the house my father’s father, Hugo Victor Presco, was living in when my father, Victor William Presco, was born. For awhile, my grandfather lived in San Francisco and was a business partner of his brother, Oscar. They remodeled houses and built cabinets. Hugo is listed as a house painter on Vic’s birth certificate. Rosemary told me, after the brothers went their own way, Hugo ended up living in a tar paper shack under the Carquiniz Bridge in Crockett, where Hugo made a living gambling. I had a talk with the old curator of the Crockett Museum who knew my grandfather. He told me he was one hell of a nice guy. Rosemary said 5,000 people came to his funeral, including the Mayor of San Francisco. The curator told me there were scores of gambling joints and whore houses. This is the City of the Golden Setting Sun. Hugo also gambled in the Barbary Coast in San Francisco.
When Vic was delivering produce to Crockett one day, he took his two sons down to the wharf to meet his father who lived in a houseboat. When Hugo answered the door, in a gruff voice my father introduced his sons to the man who had abandoned him, and walked away, we never to see this man again.
Rosemary told me Vic took the money Hugo’s friends had given him to buy a headstone and got drunk. What he did with the body, is a mystery. I would not put it past my father to have weighted his father down with rusty chains and dumped him in the bay. Captain Vic never paid a Vet bill if he could help it.
Victor’s father, Wensel Anton Prescowitz, came from Bohemia Germany. My father’s lineage is true Bohemian that took root in the city by the bay that would become world famous for its Bohemian flavor. The name Victor Hugo suggests Wensel was an intellectual. His history blends with that of Jessie Benton, Bret Harte, Jack London, George Sterling, and Joaquin Miller who established Oakland, Carmel, San Francisco, as Bohemian Meccas. Add Crockett to this list.
Captain Gregory
President: Royal Rosamond Press
Copyright 2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Bohemia
http://www.apartments.com/1471-15th-st-san-francisco-ca/yfe5rqs/
Wensel Braskewitz
Born in Bohemia on 1851. Wensel married Christine Marie Roth and had 3 children. He passed away on 1921.
Children
Wensel Braskewitz
Born in Bohemia on 1851. Wensel married Christine Marie Roth and had 3 children. He passed away on 1921.
Gregory Roth
Born on 1824. Gregory married Kristine Krause and had a child. He passed away on 1894.
http://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/christine-marie-roth_127637820
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Club
The Bohemian Club was originally formed in April 1872 by and for journalists who wished to promote a fraternal connection among men who enjoyed the arts. Michael Henry de Young, proprietor of the San Francisco Chronicle, provided this description of its formation in a 1915 interview:
The Bohemian Club was organized in the Chronicle office by Tommy Newcombe, Sutherland, Dan O’Connell, Harry Dam and others who were members of the staff. The boys wanted a place where they could get together after work, and they took a room on Sacramento street below Kearny. That was the start of the Bohemian Club, and it was not an unmixed blessing for the Chronicle because the boys would go there sometimes when they should have reported at the office. Very often when Dan O’Connell sat down to a good dinner there he would forget that he had a pocketful of notes for an important story.[6]
Journalists were to be regular members; artists and musicians were to be honorary members.[7] The group quickly relaxed its rules for membership to permit some people to join who had little artistic talent, but enjoyed the arts and had greater financial resources. Eventually, the original “bohemian” members were in the minority and the wealthy and powerful controlled the club.[8][9] Club members who were established and successful, respectable family men, defined for themselves their own form of bohemianism which included men who were bons vivants, sometime outdoorsmen, and appreciators of the arts.[5] Club member and poet George Sterlingresponded to this redefinition:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Life-in-the-slow-lane-In-I-80-s-shadow-2786413.php
Small and seemingly timeless, Crockett has a thriving artist community, is rich in early California history, and is surrounded by thousands of acres of scenic parkland. Yet, it has managed to remain a secret in the bustling Bay Area.
According to Rita Szeto, who recently moved to Crockett, the town’s 3,100 residents move at their own pace, and nobody is in such a hurry they can’t stop and chat for a little while.
“Even the pumps at the local gas station are the slowest ever,” she said. “One day, I asked the attendant why, and she just shrugged and said, ‘This is Crockett.’ “
“It’s very picturesque here, but more importantly it’s affordable, and that’s always important to artists,” she said.
Over the years, the presence of artists has resulted in a number of galleries, photography studios and woodworking shops concentrated on Pomona Street, the town’s main drag.
A good place to begin a gallery-and-shop tour is the three-story Epperson Building, a former car dealership that now houses the Epperson Gallery, a gift shop and showcase for regional painters, sculptors and potters. The Nash Gallery specializes in custom framing and the Peel Edgerton Gallery features fine sliver jewelry and American Indian art.
Farther down the street is the 1314 = 9 photography studio that specializes is photos of Crockett, and next door is solYluna, a gift shop that features authentic folk art from Mexico and South America.
The Valona Market and Deli, besides serving a good breakfast and excellent sandwiches, acts as an unofficial community center and performance space. Every Sunday evening, the deli transforms into a jazz club and patrons nosh on sandwiches and sip wine while listening to local musicians.
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/08/25/springfield-augurs-ken-kesey/
Victor Hugo – Last Bohemian
Posted on July 21, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
Raymond Chandler wrote about the people my grandfather hung around with, and did business with. The fact my mother made porno movies and was a prostitute for Big Bones Remmer, put’s me in the Black Mask revival, and put’s my fictional character, Smoky, on the Bohemian Gangster map.
John Presco
https://rosamondpress.com/2012/06/07/elmer-big-bones-remmer/
https://www.cocohistory.org/essays-ccnavy.html
https://rosamondpress.com/2012/12/20/big-bones-of-scowtown/
The Petticoat Navy of Contra Costa County
By William Mero
During the early 20th century, Martinez gained a colorful reputation for its unique fleet of floating brothels anchored in the middle of the river. Some of the most famous “boats of ill repute” were Wanda’s Scow, Margaret’s Scow and “Old Lady” Miller’s Scow. Police raids were regularly made but timely warnings always allowed their clients to be absent. Fines for running houses of prostitution provided significant revenue to the county for many years and became a practical method of taxing the profits of these illegal enterprises. Rumors suggest that some of the best customers of these watery “entertainment” boats were the local politicians, lawyers and judges. Their patronage may have provided protection for the illegal operations. Drinks were also sold allowing clients to socialize with the soiled Martinez mermaids before and after services rendered. According to court records, Margaret Bantz and Millie Landt were some of the most notorious water loving madams on the river.
During the 1920’s the floating pleasure palaces found that local objections and difficulty with access forced their closing. Among the ordinary citizens of Martinez the biggest complaint to the local police was the frequent ringing of various ship bells on the shore announcing that a client wished to be ferried out to a particular barge for an evening’s entertainment. It was one of the first recorded instance of a county noise pollution problem.
Open prostitution had been an accepted fact of life during the settling of Contra Costa County. Many county brothels masqueraded as “boarding houses” whose guests were exclusively young women. Many had interesting names. One famous house in western Contra Costa was called The Artists’ Tea Room. Of course, a request for tea would have been greeted with astonishment.
Women were always in short supply in this thinly settled, largely rural county. The early vaqueros, sheep headers and field hands led lonely lives without much opportunity to meet available women or, even more importantly, the financial ability to marry. Consequently brothels were widely tolerated or viewed as a necessary evil. In fact, it wasn’t until the early 1900’s in California that the ratio of women to men became nearly equal. Women were initially so scarce that during the 1850’s in San Francisco several madams were accepted as valued members of normal society. They often made large contributions to local charities out of their profits of sin. Mammy Pleasant, a famous Black madam, was a major donor to early African-American civil rights groups.
Romanticizing the brothels of the pioneer west can easily be carried too far. While providing a service valued by at least the male portion of the population, they also had a serious downside. Disease and violent crime were not uncommon where prostitution flourished. In the Chinese community many young Asian girls were sold by their families into prostitution and shipped off to the cribs of San Francisco. Many prostitutes used alcohol and drugs to excess. That combined with disease, often made for short, tragic lives. Some women did marry and leave the sporting life but this was comparatively rare.
Eventually Contra Costa outgrew its pioneer past and traditions. By 1952 the public tolerance of openly functioning brothels in Contra Costa County had worn thin. Under the urging of Attorney General Earl Warren, the remaining historic brothels were finally closed. One of the most famous houses shuttered at that time was located near Crockett under the Carquinez Bridge close to the old railroad tracks. The site was notorious for a establishment called the Golden Horseshoe, famous for its spicy selection of a dozen accommodating women who for many years entertained the local factory workers and longshoremen.
Court records and Sheriff Veale’s personal papers preserved in the Contra Costa County History Center offer unique insights into this colorful facet of Contra Costa’s social history.
https://cocohistory.org/essays-ccnavy.html
My Historic Grandfather
Victor Hugo Presco
by
John Presco
Copyright 2020
After writing and posting about the Dashiell Hammett archive, and reading how this great writer’s grandchildren looked foreword to the paltry check Lillian Hellman sent them on Christmas, I went in search of more information on my grandfather, Victor Hugo Presco, the Bohemian Gambler. I wanted to find what was Authentic. There is too much Fool’s Gold in the Nation. We are on the verge of another Civil War over who has the right stuff, and who does not. I wanted to own something that was free and clear of the grabby hands of the Claim Jumpers. I struck pay dirt! I found this essay by Bill Mero that records the floating Houses of Ill Repute that bobbed in the water near Martinez and Crocket, where I saw my father’s father, just once.
Sterling became a significant figure in Bohemian literary circles in northern California in the first quarter of the 20th century, and in the development of the artists’ colony in Carmel. He was mentored by a much older Ambrose Bierce, and became close friends with Jack London and Clark Ashton Smith, and later mentor to Robinson Jeffers. He is depicted twice in Jack London’s novels: as Russ Brissenden in the autobiographical Martin Eden (1909) and as Mark Hall in The Valley of the Moon(1913). His association with Charles Rollo Peters may have led to his move to Carmel. The hamlet had been discovered by Charles Warren Stoddard and others, but Sterling made it world famous. His aunt Missus Havens purchased a home for him in Carmel Pines where he lived for six years.
Sterling, posing with caricatures of himself at the Bohemian Grove, 1907
The California Barrel Company of San Francisco
Posted on March 9, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
Bohemian Club Members of the Bohemian Club, including California Gov. Ronald Reagan (centre left) and U.S. Vice Pres. Richard Nixon (centre right), at Bohemian Grove, California, 1967.The California Barrell Company
The California Barrel Company
by
John Presco: President of Royal Rosamond Press
Copyright 2020
An idea for a book, movie, and cable series.
William Broderick supervised the loading of two hundred barrels onto the freight car in Dogpatch, and now accompanied them on the barge to the dock in Oakland. He could just make out Joaquin Miller’s white home in the hills that sat as a Bohemian Beacon above the Stuttemeister orchard. Bill had picked a fight with the old curmudgeon and fraud about having his brigades of artistic circus clowns marching up and down the road they shared that was in theory, the Stuttmeister Road, that was later changed to Berlin Way. Now there were Japanese poets coming and going, and this made Bill’s German kindred, nervous. After the great earthquake, the Suttmiesters found sanctuary in Oakland, along with a couple of hundred well to do German Pioneers that had gone to the San Francisco Opera to hear Caruso sing.
When Miller took a keen interest in his daughter, Melba Broderick, who he carried on his knee when they took the trolley Frisco, Bill bought a new Victorian home on 13th. Street in Oakland. To his chagrin, Melba found out Gertrude Stein lived down the street and had known her idol, Isadora Duncan. At ten, Melba was found having tea and scones with literary greats, she helping Gertrude conduct her salon just before it moved to Paris. She was paid to do the dishes. There was no escaping the influence of Joaquin, who Bill had run into at the Bohemian Club, and, had to indure his non-stop bragging about the royalty he met when he went to Europe, and the Pre-Raphaelite artists he had dinner with at Gabriel Rossettis.
Bill celebrated Miller’s death in his own way. When he heard Bohemian Club members had built a funeral pyre and were going to burn the bloated braggard, he notified the authorities. Broderick had complained about the outdoor Japanese barbeques that filled the air with the stench of all kinds of meat, that wafted downhill under certain conditions, and wiped out the beautiful smell of cherry blossoms on the ranch When the cherries were ripe, they were sold for a pretty penny in Jingle Town, a cannery located on the Oakland Estuary where Jack London docked his oyster boat.
Frederick Jacob Koster had invited Bill Broderick to the Bohemian Grove Hijinks. It was while talking to a railroad magnet about how Prohibition was ruining many honest businessmen, that Bill came up with his brilliant plan to provide Bootleggers with barrels, and keep the profits of freightage rolling into the pocket of railroad owners.
“What if we put another product in our barrels that can be consumed. The Feds can not stop us. One is left with an empty barrel – to do with it you please. What if we shipped grapes? We can pack them in sawdust. We got plenty of that!”
“Sounds like a brilliant plan! I know an Italian who has planted a vineyard in Sonoma. Infact, there he is chatting with Frank Buck. You will want to talk to him, too. He’s becoming the biggest grower in California.”
Bill Broderick of Barrel and Box
Posted on February 26, 2019by Royal Rosamond Press
This morning I found an article about Bill Broderick and the California Barrel Company. What an historic account, that I have sent to the Mayor of San Francisco, and the Board of Supervisors. It’s all here, the elements that made San Francisco, and California – great!
William Frederick Broderick is trying to save a successful business, that due to prohibition, is on the ropes. My mother told me Bill traveled across America selling barrels. Bill has stopped in Chicago where Al Capone is making a fortune as a bootlegger, and arrives in Cleveland Ohio. Bill’s boss, Frederick Koster, must be furious to see organized crime families prospering, while he and his five hardworking bothers are desperate to keep their cooperage business afloat. Frederick is a member of the Bohemian Club, and the Law and Order Club. He may be one of the reasons the Mafia never got a foothold in the Bay Area. Frederick is ahead of his time in how he treated those who worked for him. They were like family. He shortened their work day, and paid good wages. Bill and Fred are promoting California Grapes. They made barrels for this billion dollar industry. They are Pioneers!
“One of the disciples of good barrel and service to meet the conditions of their customers, is William Broderick, sales manager of the California Barrel Company, San Francisco, Calif. Mr. Broderick attended the convention, stopping off at Chicago en route. Mr. Broderick is a natural born salesman, and certainly has the creative idea in salesmanship which is demonstrated by the fact not withstanding from the loss of business from wine and whiskey operations, the cooperage shops in the country and the manufactures supplying the same have kept busy even in maximum capacity during the past year and half, since prohibition arrived, which leads us all to do the same kind of constructive salesmanship. Malaga grapes have always been shipped in kegs and packed in ground cork, but in the last years, California has a become a great factor in furnishing the world with Malaga grapes packed in redwood sawdust. The California Barrel Company, as well as other cooperage institutions on the coast, are making kegs to deliver these grapes seasoned without moisture, to various markets of the world. Bill Broderick is one of the fellows who made this possible by demonstrating to our merchants the value of California grapes packed in the right way, in the right kind of packaging!”
Bravo!
I have put forth an idea for a Working Museum that preserves very valuable history, and creates jobs by giving new life to the ancient art of cooperage. I follow in my grandfather’s footsteps. It is my ambition to make the people of San Francisco – Big Winners!
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
Copyright 2019
Dear Mayor and Board;
My great grandfather, William F. Broderick, was a salesman and Director for the California Barrel Company that was located near the Portreo Power Plant that was just purchased for Redevelopment. The CBC got started by shipping Spreckels sugar. Claus Spreckels did business with president, Frederick Jacob Koster, and his four brothers. Their businesses were next to each other.
This morning I found an article about William who was interviewed by a reporter for . He speaks about shipping Malaga Grapes to cities across America – in barrels! Here is a merger with California grapes. Prohibition has just begun, and the cooperage industry is in crisis. Frederick Koster has gone abroad to map ut market in the Orient. Barrel and sailing ships go hand in hand. What I am proposing is a cooperage museum that would contribute to San Francisco’s tourist trade, and cooper college at the old site. There is a historic building and facade that could be used for this Trade College. The art of barrel making is coming back.
I have seen beautiful Japanese and Chinese packaging in museum. I saw wondrous labels on crates when I worked as lumper in the produce market in Jack London Square. Packaging is an art form, a craft that can give merchants new ideas.
To help fund this college a museum, I suggest quality prints be made of the amazing machinery invented to make barrels. I put a copyright in this book, but, your people may know how to do this. I have found no cooperage college in America. Meg Whitman purchased the PPP property and founded Qubi. She might want to imitate Alva Spreckels who was give the title ‘The Grandmother of San Francisco. The people around Meg have been selfish with information. Perhaps this is because I copyrighted the CBC name in 2011, and am the owner of californiabarrelcompany.co.
Associate Capital chose this name for a company that is floating around in Business Law World for reasons that are beyond my understanding. I have sent e-mails to several people offering my ideas. I got not response. The way I see it, the People of San Francisco deserve to see their history preserved, and, bring Civic Prosperity – now! Let’s build a dream – today!
https://www.potreropowerstation.com/about/
We Will Soar At Black Point
Posted on February 19, 2017 by Royal Rosamond Press
Those with Free Spirits, who know how to be released, and soar, come to Black Point and Fort Mason. Here we will make a stand for Arts and Culture. Here the Nation of California will be born. The epicenter is here. We will put on a lightshow. They will see our light in the sky, and in the bay, playing with whales and dolphins. They will marvel.
Jessie Benton Fremont held a salon at Black Point. Mark Twain was a frequent guest. Rena gave me permission to install her in ‘The Muse Hall of Fame’. If not for the painting I did of Rena, Christine would never have married Garth Benton. I am the official Benton Historian. There is not other.
I just read Carrie Fisher predicted her own death, as did Mark Twain, and, allegedly my sister. Carrie was hired to do a screenplay about Christine. Debbie died the next day.
Join us!
Jon ‘Master of the Rose’
Blunt said, Fisher also had a scary premonition.
“She put a cardboard cutout of herself as Leia outside my room, with her date of birth and date of death on her forehead,” he told the Times. “I’m trying to remember what the date was, because it was around now — and I remember thinking it was too soon.”
JOELY: I’ve been having an out-of-body experience. The world lost Carrie and Debbie, of course, but– and– and Princess Leia and we lost our hero. We lost– our mirror.”
http://abc7chicago.com/entertainment/carrie-fishers-sisters-open-up-about-her-final-moments/1683949/
https://urbanlifesigns.blogspot.com/2013/01/forgotten-hills-fort-masons-black-point.html
http://www.militarymuseum.org/BlackPointBty.html
”
Our members are to hear much about this Cathedral of the Soul in the near future, and at present I wish merely to announce its name and present to you a brief picture of what it is. This cathedral is that great holy of holies and Cosmic sanctum maintained by the beams of thought waves of thousands of our most advanced members, who have been prepared and trained to direct these beams of thought at certain periods of the day and the week toward one central point, and there becomes a manifest power, a creative force, a health giving and peace giving nucleus far removed from the material trials and problems, limitations and destructive elements of the earth plane.
While men have been busy planning, building, and directing great spires and towers of earthly cathedrals that would reach high into the heavens and become the material abiding place for those in devotion and meditation, we have been creating this cathedral of prayer and illumination, Cosmic joy, and peace high above every material plane and ascent into the Cosmic itself.”
Mark Twain
Twain’s landing place was San Francisco. As Ben Tarnoff explains in his deftly written, wholly absorbing “The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature,” the city was an ideal crucible for an ambitious young writer on the make. It prospered during the Civil War and had a literate population that craved a new kind of writing. Important patrons such as Jessie Benton Fremont and Thomas Starr King nurtured the nascent talents of Charles Warren Stoddard, Ina Coolbrith, and most prominently Harte, a disciplined dandy and a brilliant mentor and editor who founded The Californian, a literary paper where Stoddard published his first poem and Twain refined his style in the fall of 1864.
http://galleryoftherepublic.com/index.php?id_product=29&controller=product
http://www.militarymuseum.org/BlackPointBty.html
Jesse Benton Fremont
by Susan Saperstein
She is thought to be the real author behind the successful writings of John C. Fremont (general, senator, presidential candidate, and the Pathfinder of the West) describing his explorations. Jesse Benton Fremont (1824– 1902), Fremont’s wife, was also the daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, a leading advocate of Manifest Destiny, a political movement pushing expansion to the West. And in her event-filled life, some of her happiest times were at her house in San Francisco’s Black Point area, now known as Fort Mason.
The Fremonts lived there between 1860 and 1861. The prop- erty included three sides of the point, and Jesse described it “like being on the bow of a ship.” They had a clear view of the Golden Gate, so named by John when he first viewed it in 1846. Alcatraz was so close that Jesse is said to have called the lighthouse on the island her nightlight.
The Spanish called the area Point San Jose and built a battery in 1797. However, cold winds and fog soon made the cannons useless. By the time the Mexicans were ruling in the 1820s, the area was known as Black Point for the dark vegetation on the land.
Their house was one of six on the point. Jesse remodeled the house and added roses, fuchsias, and walkways on the 13 acres. Their home became a salon for San Francisco intellectuals. Thomas Starr King, the newly appointed minister of the Unitarian church, was a fixture for dinner and tea. Young Bret Harte, whose writing Jesse admired, became a Sunday dinner regular, as did photographer Carleton Watkins. She invited literary celebrities when they came to townó including Herman Melville, who was trying to get over the failure of Moby Dick. Conversations in her salon led to early conservation efforts when Jesse and a group including Watkins, Starr King, Fredrick Law Olmsted, and Israel Ward Raymond lobbied Congress and President Lincoln to preserve Yosemite and Mariposa Big Trees. Jesse’s husband, however, often away on business ventures, was not a regular at her gatherings.
Jessie Benton Fremont at Blackpoint
Historical Essay
by Jo Medrano
Mrs. General Fremont on porch at Black Point, 1863.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
Mrs. General Fremont on her porch at Black Point, c. 1863.
Photo: Jesse Brown Cook collection, online archive of California
Black Point (now Fort Mason), 1870. Spring Valley Water Co. brought water through the flume that skirts the cliffs. Small farms run down to the shore. Alcatraz is in the distance.
Photo: Private Collection, San Francisco, CA
John C. Fremont bought a farm for his wife Jessie on the north edge of San Francisco, on a small rocky peninsula then known as Blackpoint, about 1860. At the time of purchase, they were living in Bear Valley in the Sierras. In Bear Valley Jessie Fremont developed physical problems due to the intense heat. She wrote that a buried egg would cook in just a few minutes. One account states that it was 106 degrees at sunset–not an uncommon temperature that year. So we can probably imagine her delight when John C. came back from a business trip to San Francisco in 1861, and told her they were moving to the city. Blackpoint was a self-sustaining farm, and Jessie’s favorite home. She had relatives living with her, as well as visits from other relatives in addition to local and national celebrities.
Spring Valley Water Company flume is visible at right; Small farms on the hill above c. 1870
Photo: Private Collection, San Francisco, CA
As a matter of fact, a influential San Franciscan, I.W. Raymond, visited the Fremonts in Bear Valley and traveled with them to see the place that wasn’t yet named Yosemite. He was a key person in the 1864 action of President Lincoln which made Yosemite a protected place.
Black Point is described in “Jesse Fremont: A woman who made history” as “a small headland jutting out into the channel entrance of the harbor, in fact directly opposite the Golden Gate, affording an unbroken view westward to the Pacific and eastward toward the mountains of Contra Costa.” Jessie said she “loved this sea home so much that I had joy even in the tolling of the fogbell”. It was here she planned and built her “sunset beach.”
The federal government took over Black Point soon after Jessie and John Fremont went back east to be involved in the civil war. John fought for compensation for the expropriated house and land until the day he died.
When Thomas Starr King first walked to the pulpit of the San Francisco Unitarian Church in 1860, the eyes of the congregation turned to this small, frail man. Many asked, “Could this youthful person with his beardless, boyish face be the celebrated preacher from Boston?”
King laughed. “Though I weigh only 120 pounds,” he said, “when I’m mad, I weigh a ton.”
That fiery passion would be King’s stock in trade during his years in California, from 1860 to 1864. Abraham Lincoln said he believed the Rev. Thomas Starr King was the person most responsible for keeping California in the Union during the early days of the Civil War.
King’s reputation as a noted orator had led the San Francisco congregation to ask him to come west, with little hope he would agree. During his 11 years as minister of Boston’s Hollis Street Unitarian Church, King increased the congregation to five times its original size and pulled the church out of bankruptcy. Ralph Waldo Emerson, noted essayist and poet, said after hearing one of King’s sermons, “That is preaching!” Churches in Chicago and Brooklyn sought King as their minister, but this popular Boston pastor rejected them. San Francisco, he decided, offered the greatest challenge.
George Sterling posed for an illustration by Adelaide Hanscom Leeson which appeared in a printing of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Kevin Starr (1973) wrote:“The uncrowned King of Bohemia (so his friends called him), Sterling had been at the center of every artistic circle in the San Francisco Bay Area. Celebrated as the embodiment of the local artistic scene, though forgotten today, Sterling had in his lifetime been linked with the immortals, his name carved on the walls of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition next to the great poets of the past.”The Carmel Bohemians
by Stephen LindsleyIt was mid-November, and after a week of perfect weather in Carmel the fog had rolled in to stay. Cold and moisture hung in the air, turning midday into a protracted dusk. Nora May French sat alone on the front porch of George Sterling’s bungalow, listening to the ocean. All she could see through the pine trees between the house and the beach was a few pearly sparkles of water, but the sound of the waves rolling onto the shore, now soft, now booming, was strong and constant.It had been a glorious summer in the little village of Carmel-by-the-Sea in the year of 1907. Yet, only the year before the great San Francisco earthquake had brought tragedy into the lives of thousands. George Sterling was the first poet laureate of San Francisco, a dominant literary figure whose close friend Jack London called him “the Greek.” Sterling was at the center of a small group of artists and writers who frequented the Bohemian Club and trendy cafés such as Coppa’s, exchanging ideas and planning periodic dramatic works and “High Jinks.”When the earthquake struck many of their favorite haunts crumbled and burned. Sterling and his wife had built a cottage in Carmel the year before. Now they were trying to convince friends to abandon the city and forge a rustic community among the cypress trees and eucalyptus groves. Nora May had been among those who accepted. She came not as a wife or a lover, but as a literary peer to these Homeric poets and artists, the last of the classical romantics.At night they gathered on the beach in small groups, roasting abalone and mussels over driftwood fires, drinking wine and singing songs. They could not help but be inspired by the pure spectacle of their surroundings – a place where the perfect commixture of elements reveals nature’s full dynamic grace. Grand romantic epic poems were dreamed in their entirety in those evenings on the beach, and other kinds of romance blossomed as well.The romantic life had been a blessing and a curse for Nora French. She was young and lovely, with a strong nose, piercing blue eyes and wispy blonde hair that seemed to glitter with moonlight, even in the daytime. She loved horses, walking on the beach and strolling the needle-strewn paths that threaded Carmel’s old pine forest. Her poetry reflected her coastal life, but also betrayed a melancholy that few recognized as portentous. She had followed her star where it would take her, and by the time she arrived in Carmel by way of San Francisco, Los Angeles and originally Albany, New York, she had already loved and lost more than once, and seen much that the world could offer. And now she was deeply in love once more, but she knew the man she loved thought of her only as a friend and nothing more. At the age of just 27 years she had the sense that her life was already behind her.She had carried the cyanide with her for some time. Sterling and several of his close friends all had identical vials they carried in little envelopes marked, “Peace.” It sharpened Nora’s senses to know that death was just an impulse away, though she had already seen death in many forms, from the devastation in San Francisco to the termination of her unborn child. In her life and in her writings she celebrated art, drama, literature, the beauty of the land and sea, the wonder of life and the mystery of death. Her poems had been published alongside those of the best of her age, and she had eaten, drunk and slept among many of them.But this afternoon she was wistful. The melancholy had seeped back into her mind, propelled by the fog that had shrouded the Carmel River valley. It left her strangely calm. She had done nothing half way. Her life had been lived to a romantic ideal that could not be matched with words on paper. And now, with love lost once more, Nora May had come to a moment of peace. She knew that at this moment, sitting alone on the edge of the continent in the most beautiful, magical spot imaginable, she was as happy as she was ever likely to be.Ten minutes later she was dead.When they gathered at Point Lobos to scatter her ashes into the sea, emotions ran high. This small group of men had lived their lives by the example of the gods of Olympus. Yet they seemed to have forgotten how much tragedy and destruction the Olympians wrought. They called her “sister,” but failed to treat her as one. Through their hubris and narcissism these men had calmly condemned this young beauty, and also themselves, to a terrible fate. The cries of the seagulls and the sound of waves crashing on rocks below swept past them as they faced the cold November wind. There were sharp words of contention, and a scuffle broke out among them. Nora May’s dust returned to the world in a moment of passion. Her influence remained strong, even then.Caroline Sterling endured her husband’s philandering for another 10 years, and then she left him for good. Soon after, she followed the tragic example of the woman she had most admired and reviled. She was the next one to open her envelope.Eventually George Sterling returned to San Francisco permanently, where the Bohemian Club became his only residence as the years wore on. He continued to publish his writings and the work of others, mostly without notice. By November 1926, when Sterling was to host a dinner at the club for noted author H.L. Mencken, the measured life of the businessman had long supplanted Sterling’s former bacchanalian ethos. In the process he had become marginalized, while more modern authors such as Mencken garnered the favorable reviews.The night of the party Mencken was late in arriving, so Sterling retreated upstairs to his rooms alone. He poured himself a glass of brandy and paced back and forth, thinking back on his career, the life he had led and the people he had known. In a crystalline vision he saw what lay before him – a slow descent into obscurity and death. His hand reached into his pocket to touch the small envelope, now worn with age. The word “Peace” was faded but still legible. Those best acquainted with him knew it was only a matter of the right moment for him to make use of it. They wondered why he had waited so long. His wife and former lovers were now a faded memory, and most of his closest friends had followed them beyond the pall. Ambrose Bierce had drifted alone into Mexico in 1913, perhaps to join the Zapata revolutionaries, but never to be seen or heard from again. Jack London had died a painful death a decade ago at the age of 40; the victim of a life lived in utter disregard for any of his body’s needs, save the most superficial and carnal ones. And Nora May French had shattered her own fragile beauty so many years before, while drawing a fey vapor down upon her entire generation as her light expired.At long last the moment was right. The time had come. Suddenly the brandy tasted sharply of almonds as Sterling sat back in his favorite chair.For a scant few days thereafter, George Sterling was once again foremost in the minds of the San Francisco literati. And as a result, perhaps for the last time, the name Nora May French was once again briefly upon the lips of those few who knew her and cared to remember.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessie_Benton_Fr%C3%A9mont
https://archive.org/details/reportofexplorin00fr
https://www.loc.gov/item/96688042
A report on an exploration of the country lying between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, on the line of the Kansas and Great Platte rivers [1842].- Catalogue of plants collected by Lieut. Fr{acute}emont in his expedition to the Rocky Mountains. By John Torrey.- A report of the exploring expedition to Oregon and north California, in the years 1843-’44.- App. A. Nature of the geological formations occupying the portion of Oregon and north California included in a geographical survey under the direction of Capt. Fr{acute}emont; by James Hall.- App. B. Descriptions of organic remains collected by Capt. J. C. Fr{acute}emont, in the geographical survey of Oregon and north California; by James Hall.- App. C. Description of some new genera and species of plants, collected in Capt. J. C. Fr{acute}emont’s exploring expeditions to Oregon and north California, in the years 1843-’44; by John Torrey and J. C. Fr{acute}emont.- Astronomical observations made during the expedition of 1843-’44.- Meteorological observations made during the expedition of 1843-’44. Astronomical observations made during the expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the year 1843.- Meteorological observations [1842]
John C. Frémont’s official report on the 1842 expedition he led to the Rocky Mountains reads like a great adventure story. Frémont’s father-in-law, Thomas Hart Benton, a powerful senator from Missouri and strong proponent of western expansion, was a major supporter of the expedition, whose purpose was to survey and map the Oregon Trail to the Rocky Mountains. The senator hoped it would encourage Americans to emigrate and develop commerce along the western trails.
The party that included some twenty Creole and Canadian voyageurs and the legendary Kit Carson, started out just west of the Missouri border, crossed the present-day states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming, and ascended what the men believed to be the highest peak in the Wind River region of the Rockies. Frémont’s report provided practical information about the geology, botany, and climate of the West that guided future emigrants along the Oregon Trail; it shattered the misconception of the West as the Great American Desert.
Upon his return home to Washington, DC, Frémont dictated much of the report to his wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, a gifted writer. “The horseback life, the sleep in the open air,” she later recalled, “had unfitted Mr. Frémont for the indoor work of writing,” and so she helped him. Distilled from Frémont’s notes and filtered through the artistic sensibilities of his wife, the report is a practical guide, infused with the romance of the western trail.
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/html.php?section=22
http://www.dsloan.com/ee/auction/25/item/gregg-commerce-1844
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sterling
http://caviews.com/Seacoast.html
The Seacoast of Bohemia, Carmel, California
In 1869, he became good friends with travel writer Theresa Yelverton.[5]
In 1873 he started on a long tour as special correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle. His roving commission carried no restrictions of any kind. For five years he traveled through Europe and went as far east as Palestine and Egypt. He sent considerable material to his newspaper, much of which it never printed, though some of it was among his best work.
Around 1880, Stoddard served co-editor of the Overland Monthly with Bret Harte and Ina Coolbrith.
Stoddard was homosexual.[9] He praised the South Sea folks’ receptiveness to homosexual liaisons and lived in relationships with men.
From San Francisco, late in 1866, Stoddard sent his newly published Poems to Herman Melville, along with news that in Hawaii he had found no traces of Melville. Having written even more fervently to Walt Whitman, Stoddard had been excited by Typee, finding the Kory-Kory character so stimulating that he wrote a story celebrating the sort of male friendships to which Melville had more than once alluded. From the poems Stoddard sent, Melville may have sensed no homosexual undercurrent, and the extant draft of his reply in January 1867 is noncommittal.
Rosamond Press 
Reblogged this on Rosamond Press and commented:
I suspect the whole Belmont Historical Society turned green with envy after they saw MY VISION, and kicked themselves in the butt – because it is not THEIR VISION! NOT!