USA > California > Sonoma County > An illustrated history of Sonoma County, California. Containing a history of the county of Sonoma from the earliest period of its occupancy to the present time > Part 35
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is seldom seen exhibited by a city of its age. Already it presents a showing of iron front buildings, paved streets and patent stone side- walks that gives to it quite a metropolitan appearance. Its street railroads are great con- veniences. and are great aids in attracting a de- sirable class of residents to the place. It is a veritable " City of Roses," and to its enterpris- ing people are to be congratulated, for most assuredly " their lives have fallen in pleasant places."
Santa Rosa has fostered and built up a large number of manufacturing industries. Every line of mechanical art is well represented. These industries are so varied and numerous as to pre- «Inde description and specification of each. So, too, every line of general business is fully repre- sented, and conducted on a scale worthy of that prosperons and growing city.
We note a few of the most important institu- tions of that city:
Santa Rosa Bank .- - The oldest banking house in the city of Santa Rosa was incorporated August 20, 1870, and opened its doors for busi- ness November 21st of that year with a capital stock of $100,000. Owing to the rapid develop- ment of the country and the consequent growth of business, it was found necessary to increase the capital stock in 1873 to $300,000, its present volume. The first board of directors was com- posed of E. T. Farmer, A. Thomas, T. N. Willis, David Banis and C. G. Ames. E. T. Farmer was president of the bank from its organization till his death, in October. 1885. William E. MeConnell was then elected president and has filled the office up to the present time. C. G. Ames was the first cashier, and was succeeded in December, 1878, by W. B. AAtterberry, who served in that capacity until September 1852, when he resigned and Mr. L. W. Bunis, the present cashier, was elected. . In 1878 the num- berof directors was increased from five to seven; the board is now composed of William E. Mc- Connell, Thomas Hopper, James HI. Langhlin, John S. Taylor, David Bunis, J. C. Maddox and Allen AA. Curtis. In addition to the gentlemen
above named E. II. Barns, David Clark, John A. Paxton, J. Temple, W. E. Cooke and Richard Fulkerson have been members of the board of directors since the bank was opened. From its inception Santa Rosa Bank has always been under the control of some of the oldest and most judicious business men of Sonoma County, and the policy of the management has ever been conservative and safe. Hence it has done a large business and its career has been one of uninterrupted prosperity. The stoek, on which the bank has been and is now paying eight per cent. dividends, is nearly all owned by citizens of this county. The bank has an acenmulated reserve of 885,000 and a surplus of over $20,000. Having been the first bank organized, and for a number of years the only one in Santa Rosa, it has had much to do with the important publie enterprises connected with . the city. The bank is situated on Exchange Avenue, opposite the court-house. The first bank building was erected in 1872, and oceupied by the bank until September, 1888, when it was moved into the more commodious new building then completed for the purpose, one door north of the old one. The new two-story building is beautifully and tastefully finished and furnished, and is one of the most elegant banking honses in the State. It is furnished with a large safe deposit vault, 10x 20 feet in size inside and two stories in height. It is fitted up with nearly 400 private safe deposit boxes of the most ap- proved patterns and convenient in arrangement for the accommodation of patrons, the whole being both fire and burglar proof.
Santa Rosa Surings Bank .- The Santa Rosa Savings Bank was organized in 1873, with a capital stock of $100,000. A. P. Overton was elected first president of the bank, and has held that position down to the present day. The late F. G. Hahman was the first cashier. Ile was sue- ceeded by the present eashier, Mr. G. P. Nov- nan, a gentleman of high standing and thorough business capacity. The assistant cashier is Mr. John P. Overton. Since its organization the bank has increased its capital stock to $150,-
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000. The bank was a success from its start, under the intelligent financial management of Mr. Overton.
Sonoma County Agricultural Park .- - In the latter part of 1875 a number of prominent eitizens determined to organize an association under the corporate name of "The Sonoma County Agricultural Park Association." On the 30th day of December. 1878, the following persons signed the articles of incorporation: Dr. W. Finlaw, J. P. Clark, James Adams, II. W. Byington, Baker & Ross, Jos. Wright, W. G. Atkins, Murphy Bros., E. Latapie, U. P. Quackenbush, G. W. Savage, J. S. Taylor, Rags- dale Bros., E. T. Mills. The articles of ineor- poration were filed in the office of the county elerk on the 9th day of January, 1879. Follow- ing were the first directors of the association: Jos. Wright, James P. Clark, James Adams, Wmn. Finlaw, H. W. Byington, E. Latapie, Wyman Murphy. The capital stock of the corporation was fixed at $25,000. The sum paid in amounted to $7,000-abont $500 apiece for each of the original promoters. A tract of eighty acres of land, adjoining and partly in the city limits, was purchased of the estate of Dr. John Hendley for the sum of $5,600. For the purpose of constructing a mile track, erect- ing fences, stalls, grand stand, etc., a further assessment was levied and collected, aggregating the sum of 85,000. During the following year the track and necessary buildings were com- pleted.
The fair of 1SSS was largely attended and was a decided success. Ilon. George A. John- son, State Attorney-General, delivered the fol- lowing able address:
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It is pleasant to meet together again on this an- nual occasion, to witness the exhibit of the growing industries of Sonoma County, and talk over its retrospect and its prospects. .
Some of you when you first came hither were young men flushed with excitement and hope amid your new surroundings, but however rose- colored were your dreams as to the future of
this county, they have been more than realized. thus proving that at times truth is stranger than fiction. Time and again you have had to take back your dogmatic assertions as to Cali- fornia's possibilities and impossibilities, in the face of the all-convincing faets. In honor of you, the early projectors of our present pros- perity, I will have something to say in regard to Sonoma's past, and then in honor of you all, including this greater grouping of young men and women of native sons and daughters, Iwill have something to say in regard to Sonoma's present and future.
We refer with commendable pride to the fact that here in this county the first steps were taken to found a Republic in California. Here, first of all, Americans severed their relations with their sister country Mexico, and deter- mined to set up for themselves. And they had no sooner so determined than with characteristic energy they made a successful assault, took prisoners, and raised a flag. The bear flag meant that they were in earnest; it typitied per- sistenee and down-right stubbornness. It was no gala-day flag, or flag appealing to esthetic principles or wants. It was uncouth in its de- sign and texture, but there was something about it that rallied together a few hardy men to strike for liberty and self-government. Sloat in Mon- terey Bay soon hoisted another flag, the flag of our common country: the bear flag was at once taken down, and in its place the star spangled banner run up. Then came others to Sonoma, whose names have since become national Per- sifer F. Smith, Philip Kearney, George Stone- man, Tecumseh Sherman, Old Joe Hooker. Ilalleck, Fremont and Stone. Hooker was elected road overseer, but got defeated when his ambition led him to aspire as high as a seat in the Legislature of California. Sherman eapt- ured a justice of the peace by the name of Nash, because he was so pretentious as to claim to be chief justice of the country, and took him before Governor Mason, who proceeded to repri- mand severely the chief justice, and then re- leased him. Besides these leaders and generals
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there were others who, though not written up in history, were equally heroic. I mean the privates in the ranks, many of whom have be- come a part of the bone and sinew of Sonoma's strength, and some of whom I see before me to-day. Afterward others came to add laurels to her civie wreath. A young man all the way from Massachusetts settled at Petaluma, having first taken the precaution to appear in high-top boots in honor of her then muddy streets, which have been since converted into the best of thoroughfares, nailed up his law sign and began to look about for business. He has since be- come a distinguished jurist, of whom Sonoma is justly prond. Among her lawyers, by common consent, Wilkins was brilliant and Thomas pro- found.
But it is not so much of the men of Sonoma of whom I am to-day to speak as of her general industrial development, the improvement of her general well being; it is of her rise from a wilderness, from hier primitive adobe buildings, her mustang horses, her long-horned Spanish eattle, to the Sonoma of to-day, with the prize given her at the last Mechanics' Fair for the best display of citrus fruits, with her vine- covered hills and valleys, with her palatial resi- dences, the homes of thrifty eulture, with her blooded stock, with her communication by rail with the North and South, and lastly with the East, and with the symmetrical development under the best of climatic influences of a vigor- ons manhood and lovely womanhood. Thus we have fully realized the prophesy of Bayard Tay- lor in respect to Sonoma. expressed in those mateliless words:
"The wild, barbaric beauty of thy face Shall round to classic lines."
The little town of Sonoma was at one time the most prosperous city north of the Bay of San Francisco. Here, in this county, was first erected a church north of the bay, the Greek Church at Fort Ross, and here north of the bay were first grown fruits and grain, planted or sown by the Russians from Sitka. Now, how changed is the landscape. Over the great een-
tral valley, embracing the Petaluma, Santa Rosa and Russian River valleys, has budded forth into loveliness opening flowers of urban beanty all along the line of the San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad; and the picturesque valleys of the Rincon, Los Guilicos and Sonoma, so long hidden from the view of the traveler, are brought into direct communication with the East by the new Carquinez Railroad. The earlier settle- ment at Sonoma, though it has not kept pace with the luxuriant development of other towns, will always be remembered for its historie in- terest, and for the general culture of the people, who have their happy homes in the country around it. As great as has been the progress of this country from the times when Charles V sent forth his galleons to Mexico and Peru to carry the Spanish arms to snecess under Cortez and Pizarro; as great as has been its progress from the time when Mexico declared her inde- pendence of Spain, and the Monroe doctrine was officially announced, which gave a final quietns to the encroaching elaims of Russia in these borders; as great as has been its progress since the bear flag was raised and the star-spangled banner gave the protection of a great people to these far-off occidental shores; still greater will be our development in the future, when the fertility and adaptation of our soil shall have become better known, when the fact that here degrees of latitude make no appreciable differ- ence in elimatic demarkation shall have become better understood, and that Riverside and Sonoma have nearly the same winter and sum- mer temperature, although the latter is hundreds of miles further to the north; when more per- fect and expeditions shall have become our communication with the East, by new discover- ies and appliances, such as better motor power, and the practical realization for long distances of the newly-discovered electric pneumatic tube in sending parcels, with the aid of the improved phonograph in transmitting messages.
Agriculture is the greatest industry of the world. Labor is the source of all wealth, and Sonoma County is specially adapted for agricult-
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ure. Our rainfall is one-fourth greater than that around San Francisco, and even without it the dews of heaven are sufficient to fructify our crops. The husbandman need not sow or plant here as in many localities with uncertain hopes, for a failure would be almost an anomaly in life's experience. This of itself, with the protection furnished by our coast range against unpleasant and destructive winds, should concen- trate attention on Sonoma. The inter-commun- ieation by rail, which I have already spoken of. opens up to us all the avenues of trade and commerce. No better sanitarium can be found for the invalid, nor more healthful airs to give bloom to the cheek or tension to the muscles. Our people, too, are a moral people, yielding cheerful obedience to the laws. The young generation among us is growing up under the sheltering care of enlightened schools and col- leges and the Christian church. When this enumeration of our advantages is borne in mind, it is no extravagance to predict the great appre- eiation in landed property, which is destined inevitably to come, and that, too, in the near future.
Every male person should have an art or trade, and let not the generous soil of Sonoma be forgotten by our young people in making their selection. If, in after years, they should turn their attention to purely professional or intellectnal pursuits, the trade will be an aid instead of an obstruction.
It was in the shipyards of England that Peter the Great learned how to teach the builders of his navy. Ilenry the Eighth, with many other accomplishments, was proficient in laying the keel of a vessel. The present Prince of Wales and his brother, the Duke of Edinburg, passed their apprenticeship like any other midshipman in Britannia's waters.
Let our large holdings be subdivided, and our young men have an opportunity to give in- creased productiveness to the soil. If it is true anywhere it is true of many parts of old Sonoma, that every rod of ground ean be made to main- tain her man. When this condition of things
ean be realized, even this successful tenth an- nual fair of your association will be thrown far into shadow by the princely outcome of Russian River and Dry Creek bottoms. The people may hereafter call some of your boys from turning what is metaphorically the stubborn glebe, to the halls of legislation, the seat of justice, or the government of the great State itself. Cin- cinnatus was taken from the plow to honor the headship of the Roman legions. Elisha was holding well in hand his yokes of cattle when the mantle of Elijah fell upon him. Cromwell, amid the fadeless glories of his Ironsides, and the discomfiture of the fiery Rupert, sighed for the pastoral ditties of the home-land, where joeund he used to drive his team afield. Joan of Arc, amid the splendors of the coronation of her King at Rheims, preferred to doff her un- sullied suit of white armor and tend the sheep which had been her care in the Vosges forest. And, lastly, our Washington, who was called from rural life to the leadership of our armies, sheathed the sword which had won freedom for a nation, and betook himself again to his home at Mount Vernon, where he could see from his porches the tranquil flow of the Potomac and dispense a varied culture and boundless hospi- tality among the scions of old English stock.
Although the husbandman has his days of toil, yet they have been greatly lessened by modern discoveries and appliances ; and he has many opportunities for quiet research and snc- cessful observation and experimentation.
The greatest discoveries have been made in this way, not only in the field of agricultural labor, but in all great inquiries. Many a man following in the footsteps of Archimedes of old, has exclaimed " Eureka " as he has seen all at once the object for which he has so long striven attained.
Noticing the falling of an apple ultimately settled the question of universal gravitation. The swinging of a church lamp enabled Galileo to grasp at the idea of the pendulum and the exact measurement of time, and this should operate as an incentive to some of you who are
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presumably a little lax in your church attend- ance. Jacob not only learned, but has fought, a lesson in seeing his piebald flock disporting themselves among the peeled poplars and hazels.
Indeed, you have nothing to do in order to verify these observations but to look upon your vineyards, which, standing with the old Mission stock, have been improved by grafts from Italy, Spain, France and Germany, until Sonoma has now become the recognized habitat of the most successful viticulture. You know that the potato was once a semi-poisonous tuber, that the apple has grown into all its lusciousness from its dwarfed paternal crab, and that even the sheep with its soft merino wool had its great ancestor with a different coating, like the hair of a goat. Our modern flowers, with their rich varied hues and perfumed essences, have been the outgrowth of constant labor in propagation and successful experimentation.
The age is an utilitarian age. It is the age of positive and appreciable results. If men set their heads together to breed a horse which will lower the record of Mand S and trot his mile in two minutes, the chronicles of some subsequent fair will tell you the feat has been accomplished. If the object to be attained is an orange more luscious than that of Riverside, if a flower more delicate than the violet, if a perfume more sweetly diffusing than the heliotrope, if a rose redder than the jacqueminot, if a grape more flaming than the Flaming Tokay, the result of continued observation, experiment and eompari- son of views will be the attainment of thesc new fruits and flowers to be added to the present wealth of our hortienlture and floral kingdoms.
It requires patience, intelligence, persistence, hopefulness, but the end will sooner or later be reached, and the man who succeeds has done something to increase the blessings of mankind, and to perpetuate his name to posterity.
For successful agricultural work where it accords with your children's inclinations and aptitudes, they should be sent to the higher technical schools, where they may learn the principles of applied science, become skilled in
electralysis or the analysis of soils, be taught meteorology even if there is no danger of our weather becoming cyclonie as in the East, and become learned in insects and their parasites, which is all important in our fruit-growing and wine-producing counties. The French Govern ment has a standing reward of a large amount offered for the discovery of an antidote to the phyloxera. Such a discovery would not only revitalize old French vineyards, but would re- clothe or maintain in their pristine luxuriance and prolificness the vineyards of California.
If the orange suffers from the scale, some- thing should be found to act as the scale's evil genius and destroy the destroyer.
Even our purely cereal-producing counties are interested in arresting the ravages of these little pests or discovering some insectivorous parasites.
These discoveries will be made, and a crown- ing triumph yet awaits the discoverers, not only, it is to be hoped, in universal benediction, and a memory which the world will not willingly let fade from the long roll of its benefactors, but also in well-earned compensation.
But if any one has no aptitude or inclination for this kind of labor and research, it should not be enforced, for science delights in always having a free and voluntary homage from the votaries at her shrine.
There are two departments of scientific in- quiry, and neither should be despised ; one is the imaginative or theoretical, the other the mechanical or practical. Some of the greatest discoveries have been made as if by intention, and without any previous training of thought. Other men took up the idea and practicalized it in the workshop, the laboratory or on the forge. One workman was the compliment of the other, and neither could be a success without the other's assistance. Both combining their efforts, the civilization and well-being of the age have been immeasurably advanced. Morse could see clearer than others that the electric telegraph would work successfully, and that all that was neces- sary to do was to make it work. It took the cool head and plastic touch of a mechanician
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like Aaron Vail to surround it with the proper appliances and adaptations and thus the com- bined efforts of the two have given the world substantially the working telegraphy of the pres- ent day.
We are to perform a mission here according to our respective talents. Let them not be kept buried, but burnished. We need clearly to ap- prehend the wants of the time, and then to move on to the attainment of the best results. Let the poor, erazy Knight of La Mancha do all the fighting with the windmills. Our aim should be to deal with the practical and tangi- ble. We should take advantage of the con- quests of others, of all the discoveries, endeavor to add to them, and not fight over again the same old battles when there is no foeman to strike.
Let our civil and religious liberties severely alone. They are doing well enough, baptized as they are in blood, written in charters nearly a thousand years old. and now secured by the double-plated armor of constitutional law.
These contests have had their day, and the right finally triumphed. There was a principle at stake and the principle was won. The names of the heroes are written in history, consecrated in song, and the mention of them still stirs our hearts like a trumpet, as Sidney's heart was stirred by the old story of Perey and Douglass. To fight for and acquire these rights was indeed true glory; not the false glory which inspired an Alexander, a Casar or a Napoleon, who little reeked of the thousands and hundreds of thou- sands who fell in their bloody triumphs to gain for them pelf, power and place. The country is exposed to no stern alarums that may be bounded by some border foe. It will not do to trifle with the majesty of a great nation, which at almost a moment's eall can have three millions of sol- diers marching from center to circumference for the purposes of a common defense.
Therefore, we should dismiss all ehimerieal coneeits, and address ourselves to important questions, questions which eoneern our material development, the furnishing of a better well-
being, the adding of home comforts and fireside joys.
Are you aware of the fact that our mother country had no fireside till about the reign of Queen Elizabeth? Then the hearth was laid and the mantle covered with ornaments instead of smoke curling among the rafters or blaeken- ing the unglazed windows. It was the com- meneement of the rude home life of our fore- fathers, the influenees of which were destined to radiate from the domestie circle for the better- ment of the State.
Here, in this far-away land, under your own vine and fig tree, with a generous soil and a genial climate, or rather an aggregation of eli- mates, made still more genial by the appliances of drainage and arboculture, you can greatly add to the happiness, the conveniences and beauty of your homes. You can place on your tables for reading the best of our magazines and peri- odicals that deal in the literature of the farm. By these aids and your daily observation you ean inaugurate a thorough experimentation that will afterward bear fruit in improved agricult- ural methods, better and more varied prodnets, thoroughbred stock, and general home comforts. A society or neighborhood with such facilities as you have or ean have, by frequent interchange of views, enlightened by special reading and a comparison of results, will not only leave its impress upon the immediate local community, but will affect favorably the county and State at large, and add to the thoroughness and success of these annual occasions. It will also tend to implant a more general desire in others for the cultivation of the soil and rural comforts. Young men will gradually be drawn away from the vortex of city dissipation, and will begin to build up for themselves some lofty, bueolie ideal. Many a panorama of scenie beauty, as yet un- disclosed, will be opened up. A succession of charming villas, the abode of thrifty eulture, will dot the landscape over and remind us of the far-famed beauties of the Hudson and the Rhine.
This picture is destined to be the future of much of this county, which is situated near the
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