History of Santa Clara County California with biographical sketches, Part 52

Author: Sawyer, Eugene T
Publication date: 1922
Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1934

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This church, however, was so badly shat- tered by several earthquakes in 1812 and 1818, that the padres were forced to build anew. This time they chose the site which the uni- versity now occupies. There, on August 11, 1822, a still larger church was dedicated, which did service for many years till the vio- lent earthquakes in the years 1865 and 1868 so cracked and weakened it that extensive re- pairs were necessary. By the year 1885 it had been almost entirely removed, having been gradually replaced by the present frame build- ing, the interior of which is a nearly perfect re- production of its predecessors and retains some of the old ornaments and furniture and the ceiling of the sanctuary.

The Mission of Santa Clara was secular- ized in 1836 and passed from the hands of the devoted Padres into those of politicians who robbed Santa Clara of her lands and drove many of her children into the forests. When Rt. Rev. Joseph Sadoc Alemany, O. P., ar- rived as bishop of the diocese in 1850, he found only one Franciscan in charge of the Mission, which had been restored by the American Government, though in a sadly re- duced form, most of the land being occupied by squatters. Desiring to save the remnants of the Mission and also to begin a college to meet the growing need of the times, the

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Bishop invited the Society of Jesus to Santa Clara. The invitation was accepted and ac- cordingly, on March 19, 1851, the Rev. John Nobili, S. J., laid the foundation of the Uni- versity of Santa Clara and began the work. Fr. Nobili adapted the old adobe buildings to. the requirements of a school and in a few years many students were in attendance. On April 28, 1855, the institution was chartered a university and for many years was known as Santa Clara College. In 1904, during the presidency of Father Robert E. Kenna, S. J .. a large tract of land was bought at Mountain View, with the intention of transferring the college thither, but owing to lack of financial support, nothing was done.

After careful consideration, it was decided in 1910, that this plan would have to be aban- doned, and that it was much wiser to improve the college in its present location and thus make the most of the equipment it then had. Accordingly, in 1911, two new reinforced con- crete buildings, in the mission style of archi- tecture, were begun.

In 1907 lectures were commenced with a view of preparing students to enter upon the professional courses in law, medicine and en- gineering. By 1911, the pre-medical course was thoroughly established and the law school was begun. Realizing, therefore, that the college was practically doing the work of a university, the president. Fr. James P. Mor- rissey, S. J., and the board of trustees, decided to adopt officially the name of "The Univer- sity of Santa Clara," and this decision was publicly announced on April 29, 1912. Later, on June 16, 1912, with appropriate ceremonies in the presence of Most Rev. Patrick W. Riordan, D. D., Archbishop of San Fran- cisco, of many present and former stu- dents, and of 30,000 spectators, with a pageant illustrative of the history of California and Santa Clara, the two new buildings were ded- icated.

In the summer of 1912, engineers of high standing were engaged to carry on the courses in engineering, and in the next summer a thoroughly equipped laboratory for engineer- ing was prepared. In the same year the amount of work required of law students was increased and almost all classes in law were thenceforth held at night.

The university now possesses the follow- ing constituent colleges: The College of Philosophy and Letters: The College of Gen- eral Science : The Institute of Law ; The Col- lege of Engineering, embracing Architectural. Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering : The School of Pedagogy : and The Pre-Med- ical Course.

The following buildings are on the grounds :

The Mission Church-Built on the site of the old Mission Church of 1822, this building preserves many of the relics and decorations of the Franciscan days, though most of the walls have been removed. The Memorial Chapel-As a memorial of deceased students this handsome chapel was erected in 1887, dur- ing the presidency of Rev. Father Robert E. Kenna, S. J., through the generosity of many alumni and friends of Santa Clara College. Senior Hall-This hall, built in 1912 of rein- forced concrete, furnishes on the second and third floors, private rooms for the older stu- dents. On the first floor are seven large class- rooms for college classes, the Law Library and Study Hall, and the College of Engineer- ing. In the basement are a large social hall, senior reading room, the practice court of the Institute of Law and the Palaeontological Museum. The Theater-All dramatic produc- tions at Santa Clara since 1870, including the Passion Play and the Mission Play of Santa Clara, have been presented in this theater. Its stage is one of the largest for amateur produc- tions in the West. The lower floor is fitted up as a dormitory for older students. The Literary Congress Building-For a time the meeting place of the House of Philhistorians and the Philalethic Senate was in this build- ing. Now it houses the Philalethic Senate and the Department of Chemistry, and is used to some extent as a substitute for a Gymna- sium. The Scientific Building-The first and second division study halls, the typewriting room, the physical cabinet and laboratory, the mineralogical museum, the biological labora- tory and lecture-rooms, and the laboratory for wireless telegraphy are in this building. The Commercial Building-This building contains the high school classrooms and study hall, the commercial school, the physical laboratory for the high school, and the drafting room of the College of Engineering. The Infirmary Build- ing-This structure, with its several wings. comprises the kitchen, the refectories, the in- firmary with private rooms and ward, dormi- tories for younger students, clothes-room, the students' cooperative store, rooms for the in- dividual practice of music, and the band-room. The Observatory-The equatorial telescope, seismographs, meteorological instruments and the study of the father in charge are housed in four small buildings. The Faculty Build- ing-This structure of reinforced concrete. built in 1912, to replace the old Fathers' Build- ing which was destroyed by fire in 1910, con- tains the offices of the chief executive officers of the university, parlors, the residence of the Fathers and Scholastics who are attached to the university or Parish of Santa Clara, and

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the Library of the university. The Engineer- ing Laboratory-Forges, machinery for wood- working and pattern-making, etc., used in the courses of the College of Engineering find place in this building.

Besides the buildings there are the athletic field of fifteen acres, two large baseball dia- monds and an inner campus for track, tennis courts, baseball courts, etc. There are two semesters ; one begins in August, other in Jan- uary, after the holiday recess.

The board of trustees for 1919-20 were : Tim- othy Leo Murphy. S. J., president: Joseph William Riordan, S. J., secretary and treas- urer ; Aloysius Vincent Raggio, S. J .; Jerome Sextus Ricard, S. J .; Richard Henry Bell. S. J .: Cornelius Aloysius Buckley, S. J. : Charles M. Lorigan. Executive board-The president. Joseph William Riordan, S. J., Charles M. Lorigan. In 1921 Rev. Z. Maher succeeded Rev. Timothy Leo Murphy as pre- sident.

After the convention of the Jesuit order at Seattle in July. 1920, Father Murphy, presi- dent of the university, announced that a new building, to be used for instruction and dor- mitory purposes, would be erected on the uni- versity grounds as soon as plans could be completed. The building will follow closely the plan and style of Senior Hall, having three stories and a basement. It will be of concrete and will cost about $200,000. It will make it possible to accommodate 500 more students than formerly could be housed at the univer- sity and will no longer make it necessary for Father Murphy to refuse applications for en- rollment. Enough applications are on file to have every room in the new addition filled immediately upon completion. In the spring of 1922 a drive for the purpose of raising $500,000 to enlarge and improve the univer- sity started with every promise of success.

The Last of the Mission Indians

A romantic figure whose life span reached a century and a quarter, was Marcello, the last of the Mission Indians. Charles D. South, Litt. D., present postmaster of Santa Clara, has written most entertainingly of this grand old fellow, whose history is a part of the his- tory of the university. Mr. South's article appeared first in the March, 1920, number of The Columbiad, the organ of the Knights of Columbus. It is herewith given as a part of the history of Santa Clara.

"Of the twenty-one Catholic Indian Mis- sions of California, the seventh in chronolog- ical order of establishment was that of Santa Clara de Asis, on the Arroyo Guadalupe, near the southern extremity of San Francisco Bay ; and of the thousands of red men who were

fed, clothed and educated there by the self- sacrificing sons of St. Francis, and who la- bored to upbuild and maintain this heroic Christian settlement in the territory of the Olhone, or Costano, tribes, the name of Mar- cello alone has survived, and his personality stands dimly outlined in solitary hugeness against the hazy background of California's pastoral age. Most famous of all the Mission Indians, Marcello, last of his race, joined the innumerable caravan only after his life had spanned, it is claimed, a full century and a quarter-a century and a quarter which more than 'tinges the sober twilight of the present with color of romance.'

"To the tribes which occupied the heart of the valley of Santa Clara at the advent of the Franciscans, according to local tradition, Mar- cello came a stranger, speaking a strange dia- lect. His heroic size and princely bearing seem to have lent credence to his boast that through his veins coursed the blood of kings. His ancestors are supposed to have been royal Yumans of the valley of the Colorado River, and this reputed scion of a great aboriginal family was instinctively hailed as a chief by the tawny sun-worshippers whose wigwams cast their shadow in the fretful Guadalupe. He was hailed instinctively as chief, perhaps, be- cause his very figure was commanding, since he is said to have loomed above the squat In- dians of Santa Clara as the Sequoia looms above the dwarf pines of the Sierra.

"An inscription in the San Jose Public Li- brary informs the reader that Marcello's meas- ure of life was 125 years; that he opened his eyes on the world in 1750, and was gathered to his fathers in 1875. The longevity of his existence may be the better appreciated by reference to characters and incidents of the history which civilization was inditing the while Marcello rose to manhood and stalked, an imposing figure, through the romantic Mission age, through the revolutionary Mexi- can period, through the epochal era of mad- dening gold strikes, and on down through the still greater era of American progress-an era in which not the mineral gold but the richer vegetable gold becomes the stable basis of prosperity.

"This Indian celebrity, who is said to have assisted Padre Thomas de la Pena to raise the storied Mission Cross near the laurelwood on the banks of the Guadalupe January 12, 1777, and who is quoted as having averred that he had seen Lieutenant Jose de Moraga raise the royal emblem of Spain at the founding of the Pueblo de San Jose, was supposedly toying with wampum and feathers in the wigwam of his father when young George Washington. leading a band of colonials, accompanied the

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British General Braddock and his veterans on the disastrous march against Fort Duquesne. Assuming that 1750 was the date of Marcello's nativity, he was five years of age when Wolfe's intrepid redcoats stormed the Heights of Ab- raham and when Montcalm heroically wel- comed the death that shut from his vision the surrender of Quebec. He was fifteen when the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act which precipitated the American Revolution ; and when the Liberty Bell rang out the glad tidings of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 he was enlisting in the service of Padre Junipero Serra for a peaceful invasion of the valleys of Alta California. The chief, as Mar- cello was called, had passed his thirty-ninth year when Washington was elected President of the United States, and had he survived one year longer he might have participated in the first centennial of American liberty.

"Following out the natal-day hypothesis, Chief Marcello was nineteen years old when Napoleon Bonaparte was born, and when the French Revolution burst into throne-consum- ing flame this Indian was marching into a wilderness of the unknown west with the cowled Grey Friars of St. Francis. He was fifty-four when Napoleon, at the age of thirty- five, was crowned Emperor of the French ; fifty-six when Bonaparte reached the zenith of his career at Austerlitz, and sixty-five when the star of the Corsican genius went down in blood at Waterloo; and, moreover, it may not prove uninteresting to note that this towering aboriginal was still conspicuous in the ranks of the living, having reached his hundred and twentieth year, when the third Napoleon, after overthrowing the French Republic, was himself overthrown at Sedan.

"Marcello (who had beheld California in its tribal stage and then successively under Spain. Mexico and the United States) ultimately surrendered to the inevitable ; and, finally, be- fore this super-Indian looked his last upon the sun there was already reigning on the Ans- trian throne that ill-starred monarch of the House of Hapsburg, the late Emperor Francis Joseph, whose edict in 1914 set Europe ablaze and plunged the world into a war so colossal as to render small in comparison the sum total of destruction in all the wars of Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon.

"According to trustworthy authority, Chief Marcello was a veritable walking encyclope- dia of Mission history ; yet nobody in his time saw fit to make a transcript of his story and that possible source of infinitude of details of the early annals of Santa Clara is now shut off forever. Nobody living knows exactly where the first Santa Clara Mission stood.

Marcello knew the location ; but, odd as it may seem, little interest appears to have been taken in the subject until after Marcello's demise. When the book was eternally closed, the people became eager to read.

"This copper-skinned giant, in his prime, stood six feet two inches in his bare feet, weighed 250 pounds, was rawboned and pos- sessed of prodigious strength. There is no evidence other than unauthenticated stories handed down by the old Spanish families that he had assisted in the erection of the wooden frames of the original Mission on the banks of the Guadalupe, and it is not certain that he witnessed the destruction of the settlement by flood in 1779; but there is plenty of corrobora- tion for his story that he aided Padre Jose An- tonio Murguia to build the adobe Mission on the second site, now marked by a simple white cross which stands some two hundred paces west of the Southern Pacific Railroad depot at Santa Clara.

"Anterior to the coming of the Friars-long before Marcello had set eyes on this fair scene-the Spanish Sergeant Ortega, at the behest of the renowned Captain Gaspar de Portola, in 1769, had led a band of scouts along the southern borders of San Francisco Bay and had described the future Santa Clara valley as 'The Plain of Oaks.' Subsequently, for a number of years, the region was desig- nated as the 'Meadow of San Bernardino,' and the beautiful name, Santa Clara was the happy selection of the illustrious Junipero Serra.

"While the honor of founding this Mission is shared conjointly by Padre Pena and Lien- tenant Moraga, the famous Colonel d'Anza, who had led from Mexico two hundred colo- nists to form the village of San Francisco and the civilian nucleus of the Mission of Santa Clara, was regrettably deprived of the histor- ical prominence due him through a military exigency which compelled his sudden return to San Diego. Thus was his lieutenant left to celebrate the crowning of labors which owed their successful fruition to the masterful pre- liminary achievements of his brilliant superior officer.

"In 1827, the population of Santa Clara included 1,500 Indians, and the common prop- erty was 15,000 cattle, as many sheep, and 2,800 horses. The lands reserved for the na- tive converts who accepted a settled life ex- tended from the Guadalupe to the summit of the mountain range on the west, a domain of 80,000 acres, exempt from taxation during Spanish rule. Under Mexican authority, the Missions were secularized and plundered, and there soon remained only a vestige of their once prosperous communities.

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"Marcello had acted as foreman of native laborers who constructed the Alameda under the direction of Padre Jose Viader, the assist- ant of the venerable Padre Magin Catala, at the dawn of the nineteenth century. When his years had told a hundred, the aged chief found pleasure in traversing the foliage- canopied league which separates San Jose from Santa Clara, and delighted in entertaining fel- low pedestrians with tales of the days when the great willow trees, which in summer af- forded impenetrable shade along the winding road, had in their infancy been tenderly nursed by him and his companions after the slips had been borne to the Camino Real in bundles on the backs of tawny laborers. He described how the trees had been planted in three rows extending all the way from the second Mission site to the second site of the Pueblo San Jose, and pointed out with his staff the courses of the long zanjas or ditches which carried water from the Guadalupe to the nursling willows.

"The destruction of the second Mission by an earthquake in 1818 led to the selection of the third site, on which recently the imposing structures of the University of Santa Clara have been reared. Of the third Mission build- ings, the old church alone remains, and of this church Marcello-still vigorous at the age of seventy, straight as a poplar, was the over- seer of construction. The Mission church has undergone many changes and alterations, but it still retains the original altar, the unique Indian paintings and the impressive wooden crucifix celebrated in Charles Warren Stod- dard's miracle story of the sainted Magin Catala-El Padrecito Santo; and from its ma- jestic towers, the historic bells, presented to Santa Clara by King Carlos V-bells, with music voices that have never faltered-still summon the faithful to devotion, still charm the air morning, noon and evening with their silvery prelude to the aspirations of the An- gelus.

"Marcello loved these bells, and doubtless they recalled to his memory many a face and many a voice and many a scene of a vanished aged. At their ropes his stout arms had toiled full many a time. They knelled his passage from the house of clay; and, if spirits of the dead are conscious of the things done in the abode of the quick, the soul of the chief must find joy in the prayers that rise to heaven at the nightly bell-call to DeProfundis.

"With the sequestration of the Missions, the large majority of the Indians dispersed to the surrounding hills and again became wedded to the savage life. Marcello was more fortunate for a period, but he, too, fell from his high estate. He was ninety-six years old when, in 1846, Governor Pio Pico granted him a veri- table principality known as the Ulistac rancho,

situated between Santa Clara and the San Francisco Bay. It was a landed estate worthy of a chief, and Marcello became exceedingly vain of his reputed royal descent. The shadow of war fell on the country and, when the shadow passed, a new flag-the Stars and Stripes-floated over California. Then Mar- cello, in his ignorance of law and in his blind eagerness to obtain the wherewithal to satisfy his cravings for worldly pleasures introduced by reckless newcomers, for a few paltry pieces of sordid gold, signed away to a land-grabber all his vast domain. . It was then divided into small farms, and years afterward, Marcello was accustomed to plod from house to house in the sovereignty he had lost, to request and to receive food and raiment from his suc- cessors, whimsically regarding such favors not as a charity but as a right.

"At the age of a hundred the chief was forced to content himself with a humble cabin donated by a generous farmer in a remote sec- tion of Pio Pico's grant. In gratitude for Marcello's early services to the Padres, and eager to make comfortable the old chief's de- clining days, the Jesuit Fathers of Santa Clara, apprised of his hardship, invited him to abide permanently under their roof. The big chief, however, had discovered an aversion for any suggestion of celibacy. He had heard the call of the world, as it were, and his aboriginal na- ture was again dominant.

"Far back in Mission days, seeds of Chris- tian virtue had been planted in the soul of Marcello. In the half-century since the de- struction of the Mission, that seed had been sealed up in the dark breast of the Indian, dry and unnurtured, like the seed in the old church wall. For half a century the chief had pursued the way of the world in flagrant dis- regard of Mission precept and example. At length, in extreme old age, the spiritual seed, dormant for fifty years in this son of the wil- derness, responded to the nurturing tears of repentance and flowered under the smile of Divine mercy, and Marcello passed away with the comforting hope that, in a better sphere, he would rejoin the holy Padres in immortal life. Ninety-eight years in the Santa Clara Valley must have confused Marcello's memory with their procession of changing scenes and characters: First, the savage gives way be- fore the conquering Caucasian ; next, the Mis- sion rises where the wigwam stood; then, the forests fade, and spire and dome appear, as in a dream, and, by what Ruskin terms the 'art of kings and king of arts,' civilization conjures fabulous riches from earth's hidden cells.

'Where stalked the bronze-skinned brave In savage pride of power.

The paleface treads the Indian's grave.'

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"Marcello came, in 1777, a stranger to a strange land, and again, at the last, in 1875, still more of a stranger in a land stranger than of old, he crosses life's divide, hopeful of rest after a strenuous day. The red man disap- pears from view. The paleface garners the earth and, with his monuments of trade. usurps the upper spaces of the air ; and where, for nearly a century, this Indian colossus flour-

ished, like a mighty oak, pitting its knotty bulk against the ravages of time and the ele- ments-where, for ages, his striking figure was as familiar as the gray adobes and the Spanish tiles-the people of today, save for a few lit- erary pilgrims groping among the dustheaps of California history, know not that there ever existed such a being as Marcello, super-Indian of the Santa Clara Mission."

CHAPTER XXXII.

Palo Alto and Leland Stanford Jr. University-The Rapid Growth of One of the Progressive Towns of Santa Clara County-The Location and Uses of a Great Educational Institution.

Palo Alto, nineteen miles northwest of San Jose, is a city of homes. It has that air of solid, substantial, quiet comfort which is the ideal atmosphere of the home-loving. At the same time it is enlivened by the presence of a great university. Its beautiful lawns and trees, its gardens of flowers, fruits and vegetables, its clean, shady streets, are elements that con- tribute generously to the delight and satisfac- tion of the citizens. Within driving distance of Palo Alto are many points of particular in- terest, which are reached by roads through valley or over mountains and foothills. To these advantages are added others: an even and comfortable climate, enabling one to live out of doors practically the year through; educational opportunities that are not ex- celled anywhere ; nearness to San Francisco (only one hour's ride) ; a variety of religious, civic and social relationships.

Palo Alto is located on the Peninsula, twen- ty-eight miles from San Francisco, /in the northern part of the famed Santa Clara Valley. The southern arm of the Bay of San Fran- cisco is two miles to the east, and on the west, twenty miles distant, is the Pacific Ocean, with the Santa Cruz Mountains rising in forested beauty between and protecting the valley from ocean fogs.

The average summer temperature is seventy degrees; that of the winter is fifty-five de- grees. The nearness to the ocean prevents extremes of cold in the winter and of heat in the summer. The skies are habitually sunny and bright all months of the year; there are not many days when the sun is hidden longer than a few hours at a time. The average rain- fall is 19.5 inches. The city of Palo Alto owes its existence to Stanford University. With the opening of University Avenue from the quadrangle to the Southern Pacific Rail- way, it was recognized that here was the lo- cation for the college city. The first house

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History of Santa Clara County California with biographical sketches, Part 52

Author: Sawyer, Eugene T Publication date: 1922 Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co. Number of Pages: 1934

Author: Sawyer, Eugene T
Publication date: 1922
Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1934