Tailor sitting in traditional cross-legged sartorial posture on platform in front of a window. (National Library of Wales) In today’s world of readymade clothes, we may not think much about where clothing came from in the late 1800’s on the coast. Depending on the wealth of the family, your clothing was made at home from what were called dry goods, or you used the services of [...]
It’s not every house in Mendocino that can have a complicated evolution and been occupied by a genuine town “character,” but 44771 Main St. deserves note. Today it’s an old yellow house east of Alegria Inn, next to a realty office and across the street from Evergreen Cemetery on the east end of town. In the Kelley House Museum records, it’s called the Ferrill House. It’s [...]
[first published in May 2015] Postcard photograph of the Domestic Steam Laundry’s delivery automobile piled high with bags of laundry, c. 1918 in Fort Bragg. An unidentified man stands next to the car. The laundry offered free washes during the influenza epidemic in 1918 for those who were too sick to do it. (Jeanette Mendosa Hansen Collection, Kelley House Museum) For fascinating reading or listening there [...]
Tom Wodetzki of the Albion Bridge Stewards recently gave the Kelley House Museum an interesting document. Its title is “Final Construction Report for the Construction of a Timber, Steel and Concrete Bridge Across the Albion River,” dated August 29, 1944. The Albion River and Albion River Bridge before the campground was established. View is looking west towards the ocean, c. 1945. Believe me, readers, this is [...]
As part of the Kelley House Museum’s current show, “South of Main,” featuring buildings and businesses that once existed on the south side of the street, let’s look at the evolution of our local meat market. The interior of Quaill’s City Meat Market on Main Street in Mendocino, c. 1920. Butchers are Tony and Joe Quaill. Children are Virginia and Harry Quaill. On the left is [...]
aerial view, 1947 MAIN STREET FROM ABOVE. The South Of Main exhibit at the Kelley House Museum (through May 18th) offers some unusual photographic views as we rediscover what was on Mendocino’s Main Street before 1960, when the last of the buildings were torn down and the view from the Headlands was fully revealed. This 1947 photograph, obtained from the California Landmark Foundation, intrigues all who [...]
Brick in the Kelley House Museum walkway, originally from San Francisco’s City Hall, c. 1870. In the eternal quest historians undertake to date building construction, sometimes they turn to the common brick. Believe it or not we’ve had history professors visit the county who specialize in tracing the origin of bricks. In 1984 this same Kelley House Calendar column reported on Professor Margaret Henry of San [...]
Francisco Faria, also known as Portugee Frank, was born in 1799 on the island of Pico in the Azores. As far as we know, he was the first Portuguese to come to the Mendocino Coast. When he died in 1904 at the advanced age of 105 years, he had lived during 3 centuries. Nannie Escola was a retired teacher and historian who contributed much to the [...]
December 18, 1964 Holiday Shopping Advertisement in the Mendocino Beacon for Matson’s Men’s Wear Nowadays it’s trendy (and logical) to “shop locally,” but decades ago that’s what everyone did for the holidays and the merchants who advertised in the Mendocino Beacon and Fort Bragg Advocate-News wanted readers to know everything their hearts desired was waiting for them right here on the coast. In 1929 the Post [...]
Lumber Schooner Maxim, one of painter David Thimgan’s artistic subjects, on Caspar beach in 1884. The Coast Road can be seen winding down the hill on the right, and circling around the base of the hill behind the beached schooner. (Kelley House Museum, Emery Escola Collection #1995-001-27) Sometimes a researcher can find a link to Mendocino coastal history when you least expect it. Sorting archive materials [...]