Tragedy

Growing up, I remember my dad telling the tale of how his aunt lost her arm in a nighttime train wreck. It was such a wild story, but without a lot of details, so my imagination filled them in. We still had her prosthetic arm in the attic or the garage--which was always kind of creepy. I inherited that arm and still have it stored in my garage... it seems like it could be useful as either a valuable historical artifact or a creepy Halloween prop. So far I've resisted putting it out on Halloween. My daughter says I should make it look like it is coming out of the ground.

Well, the scales just tipped toward the historical, when I found an old newspaper clipping:

When I saw this, I knew that despite the misspelled name, it was about "Mrs. Meek," my dad's aunt. I was so excited to learn the July 13, 1913 date of the "Vineyard train wreck" and the rest of the story. My entire life, I had always wondered about it--where, when, why, how--and I could finally learn what happened. And interestingly, to those involved, I'm sure it reinforced the concept of the number 13 being unlucky.

Reconciliation

On October 26, 2024, the Alliance for Felix Cove hosted a reconciliation conversation between a Tamal-Ko (Tomales Bay Coast Miwok) family and a Point Reyes settler family. The settler family's ancestor, C.W. Howard--who owned most of the land on the west side of Tomales Bay--in 1887 hired Captain Henrik Claussen to evict all the Indians living on the west side of Tomales Bay. Their houses were destroyed and the people were forced to leave. One house remains standing at Felix Cove (Laird's Landing, used by the Lairds to ship dairy products to San Francisco 1860-1866). The last of the Felix family was evicted from their ancestral home by ranchers in 1952, and then later the ranches became part of the Point Reyes National Seashore--owned by all of us and managed for us by the National Park Service.

Felix Cove in 2020

Looking up Tomales Bay from above Felix Cove

The road to nearby Marshall Beach

The thought-provoking conversation included how family members learned of their ancestors' history and how they feel about it, complete with long-overdue apologies. It also included discussion of reparations--specifically, returning Felix Cove to the now landless (aside from a recently-acquired parcel in Nicasio) and federally-unrecognized tribe. You can support their efforts here.

Etcha Tamal, rematriated Coast Miwok Tribal Council
land in Nicasio (photo taken in 2015 after pile burns, and
prior to the 2023 purchase)

The conversation was relevant to all of us, since we all are either indigenous to the land where we live or from somewhere else, and many of us from somewhere else have ancestors who came here and displaced the indigenous people. It felt personal to me, because I too have ancestors that pioneered a dairy industry in the 1850s on stolen indigenous land. And it made me realize that I too would like to apologize for those actions. This is that apology.

"At some point, you have to decide, are you going to live in a world of abundance, open-heartedness, and open-mindedness, or are you going to live in a world of exclusion, isolationism, and scarcity?"

--Theresa Harlan, founder of the Alliance for Felix Cove, describing why she laughed at herself when contacted by a descendant of the Point Reyes colonizers

My great-grandmother was born in Mazatlan

Going through old papers, we had another family history breakthrough. Enough new information to make me want to revise former posts (see To Los Angeles in the 1840s), but I'll let them stand for now and put all the updates here.

A long-standing mystery has been where (and under what circumstances) was my great-grandmother born, and how and when did she get to L.A. We thought the Homestead Blog had answered the question August 24, 2019, when it stated:

"According to a genealogical source, the Bilderrains were living in Mulegé, Baja California, now a town of about 4,000 on the east coast of the peninsula along the Bay of California.  Based on somewhat conflicting census records (how many of these aren’t?), it appears that Ygnacio Bilderrain and his wife María Encarnación Martinez migrated to Los Angeles about 1847 or 1848 (a 1900 census listing for their son, Jesús, recorded his arrival in the area in 1846).

In the 1850 and 1860 censuses, there is no listed occupation for Ygnacio, so, whether he came north with some means is not known, but the family occupied the adobe house shown in the photograph and there were at least seven children.  Jesús, the eldest, and brother Guillermo and sisters Eduarda and Domitia, were all born in Baja, while three boys, Andrés, Refugio and Ygnacio, and a girl, Guadalupe, were born in Los Angeles."

This was fantastic information, pushing our knowledge forward (or more accurately, back). Mulege, an oasis near a desert sea, is a pretty cool place to have ancestors from--I spent an afternoon and a night near there and have fond memories of that area. So for about three years now we've assumed our great-grandmother Domitila was born in Baja.

Well, it turns out she was born in Mazatlan on January 1st, 1845 while the family was on a business trip. According to a "Vital Statistics and Historical Record" filled out on March 5th, 1947 by my dad's aunt, Lillian Caroline Orr:

"Father was of German descent. Came with his brother to California in their youth, from Ohio during the Gold Rush. Both located in Los Angeles in 1850 where my father and mother were married June 11, 1868. Mother was of Spanish descent, born Jan. 1st, 1845 at Mazatlan, Mexico while her father was on a journey with his wife and children and a stock or [sic] merchandise from Mexico to Los Angeles where in due course they established their home and business. Mother died in Los Angeles in 1942."

Henry Starr-Domatilda Bildarrain marriage license
and certificate, June 11, 1868, Los Angeles, CA.
My great-grandmother died on the
74th anniversary of her wedding at age 97. 

As always, new information raises new questions. What was her father's business, and what merchandise was he bringing from Mazatlan to L.A. on January 1st, 1845? Why were they living in Mulege and why did they relocate to L.A. just as the U.S. began to invade California? Gold was first discovered in California in 1842, and the U.S. declared war on Mexico in May 1846, so there were a lot of reasons to migrate (or not migrate) in the late 1840s.

On a side note, Aunt Lillian's vital record also records very interesting historical information about her late husband, Oscar Owen Orr:

"...at the time of our marriage my husband was associated with the Banning Company and the Catalina Island Company in Los Angeles, Calif, and so continued until February 1903, when he entered the business of Life Insurance. From July 1907 to February 1939 he was Gneral Agent for the Prudential Insurance of American first at Denver (1907 to 1910) and then at San Francisco from 1910 to 1939."

The house on Hobart St. in L.A. where my dad lived with his mom, aunts, uncle, and his grandma Domitila Bilderrain during her last decades.

100 Years Ago This Weekend

100 years ago this weekend my dad was born. The end of World War I and the end of the pandemic were recent memories, and the Roaring Twenties were just getting started.

He was an only child, living with his mother and father in Torrance. His father, Charles G. Reis, born 140 years ago in St. Paul, Minnesota, moved to L.A. in 1894, and worked for the Pacific Electric Railway (PE) as a carpenter... until, the story goes, due to anti-German sentiment (racism and nationalism), he was beaten and spent the rest of his life in the hospital. 

There was a long history of racism affecting his family--his great-uncle Refugio Bilderrain resigned from the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners in 1889 in protest of firing Latino officers; another other great-uncle Jesus Bilderrain was shot during the Chinese Massacre of 1871.

The violent incident that took his father from him occurred around 1924 when my dad was 3 years old. He and his mom, Ida C. Reis, moved in with his grandmother and aunts and uncles in L.A. He was taken care of by his Spanish grandmother, Domitila Bilderrain de Starr, while his mother worked as a secretary for the P.E. 1924-43. They got free passes on the railway and my dad spent his childhood riding electric trains around the greater L.A. area. Here is a 1926 map of the PE railway system, when my dad was 5 years old.

The last 100 years was an interesting century, and my dad had some interesting times. He was 8 years old when the 1929 stock market crash triggered the Great Depression. This period instilled an attitude of fixing everything and not wasting anything.

In 1941 the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into World War II. He worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica during the war, and then was drafted into the Army just as the war ended, spending most of his time in the Army at Fort Lewis, WA.

After leaving the Army, he got an A.A. degree in Electrical Engineering. About a year after his mother died, he had a nervous breakdown and was in a mental hospital 1952-1958. While there, he had electric shock treatments that erased his memory. He came out of the hospital, and rediscovered his life, his friends and cousins, and began piecing together his lost memories. He moved back to Torrance, and in the late 1960s met his soulmate, my mom. They married, and had my sister and me. 

He had his last ride on the Red Cars in 1961. He built a wooden railroad train car capable of carrying a couple of kids at a time that ran on tracks made from galvanized pipe along the side of our house, called Reis Valley and Mudville, that was the highlight of our birthday parties. He built a play house, a treehouse, and repaired almost everything himself. He had a ready laugh and a great sense of humor. He was always interested in science, outer space, and followed the Apollo moon landings closely.

He was an electric motor repairman who worked for M&W Electric for 27 years, and was recognized by his colleagues as someone they could rely on, capable of solving technically difficult problems. He was an inventor, and applied for a patent. He was a devout Catholic and interested in theology and the history of the church. He loved to go hiking in the mountains. He loved to ride trains, and explored the old PE rights-of-way and wrote letters to the Metropolitan Transporation Authority advising them to build new light rail lines in the same places where the PE once ran. He was often reserved, but once you got him talking about trains or electricity you couldn't get him to stop.

He was laid off in 1986 when the City of Torrance condemned his employer's land to make way for the expansive front lawn and parking lot of the future American Honda headquarters. He then worked for the City of Torrance for over 20 years as a Senior Aide cleaning up the garages where buses and police cars are repaired. He rode his bike to work every day until he was 84 years old, when a head injury forced him to retire. He died in 2008 after being run over by a car driven by an unlicensed driver with Alzheimer's Disease.

He lived an incredibly full and eventful life, filled with love and joy and family and friends.

Happy 100th Birthday, Dad.

To Los Angeles in the 1840s

In my last update of my genealogy research from a little over a year ago, I had discovered several new exciting leads for who and where my great great grandparents were prior to appearing in the Los Angeles 1850 census. After examining the data again, and after discovering a new baptismal record in Mexico, I am now prepared to fully go with the hypothesis I raised a year ago.

I looked at this again because my sister wanted to join the Society of California Pioneers. The application required submission of a family tree, with the membership requirement that an ancestor have been in California prior to January 1, 1850. This requirement disqualified Henry Schwerin, because although some of his brothers arrived in 1849, he didn't arrive in San Francisco until January 1850. He missed the Society's deadline by a month. So that sends us back to our dad's side of the family, and the mystery of when my great great grandparents arrived in L.A.

A Great Great Grand Coincidence?

My last update on the mystery of my great-great-grandparents left off with a probable coincidence in similar names. The essence of the mystery is that before the 1860 census, I couldn't find much information about my Spanish ancestors. Their names in the records available on the Internet are often misspelled, or variably-spelled. Not only that, but the change in countries when the U.S. conquered California means that to take my family history back deeper into the past, and farther southeast geographically, I need to start looking at Mexican records instead of U.S. records. At least, that is what I used to think the major challenge was.

I've got some new breakthroughs to report, thanks to some new resources I've discovered, and some more-than-coincidences that my detective work has unearthed.

I Should Have Been a Schnautenhaus

I wanted to post it here, but the script wouldn't work on blogspot, so here is my family tree, color-coded with the migration status of my ancestors. This project had its roots in a California Geography class I took two decades ago at El Camino College, when the assignment was to summarize the immigration history of my ancestors. Below is an expanded (beyond what was on my former Website) Javascript version of just my mom's side, four years in the making (mostly four years of not getting around to finishing it).

This wouldn't have been possible without the work of my cousin Brian who did extensive research and put together a book on the Schwerin family history. I intend to refine, update, and fine tune the page as needed.

The surprising thing is that despite my grandfather's parents "arriving" (one was born there) in San Francisco by 1864, the proportion of my ancestors that never reached the New World (in black text) is overwhelming. Going back 350-450 years, 67 of my direct ancestors on my mom's side never reached the New World, one reached the New World but not San Francisco, four migrated to San Francisco, and only three (including my mom) were born in San Francisco. If we look back only to the last 164 years, since my first ancestor to get off the boat arrived in San Francisco in January 1850, four migrated and only three were born here.

That is fascinating because if you think about how long white people's families have been in California, it really isn't very long when measured in direct ancestors. I feel like my family has a long history in California, but only three of my direct ancestors on my mom's side were born here and only about five or six on my dad's side. On my mom's side, 8 lived in California, and probably 9 on my dad's side. So my generation is the pivot point where half of my direct ancestors that lived in California were born here.

Think about how new we all are! How quickly we have changed this state! Can we please stop messing it up and work a little harder to live here sustainably and restore the amazing and incredible natural environment that we took from the natives? Because a lot of us plan to be here a while...

My Great Great Grandmother - A Mystery

There are some really fascinating genealogy Websites - even the free ones give you some amazing resources. I was recently repeating a search for my oldest ancestors in L.A. to see if anything new popped up--I'd really like to find out where they came from.

Instead, I found something that raises a lot of new questions.

My great great grandmother was Dona Encarnacion Marteniz, who married Ignacio Bilderrain. In searching for her maiden name, I came across a biography of William Richard Rowland. It refers to his mother, a Dona Incarnacion Martinez Rowland.

Welcome (back)

My previous Website was "Sustainable Use and Restoration of California's Natural Environment," found at www.ecomafia.com from about 1998 to 2008. Ecomafia was a novel I never had time to write. In 2008 I changed it to www.reisvalleyandmudville.com (a new book I wanted to write about my dad, who passed away that year). And in 2010 I canceled the site, and the new domain name, saving a few bucks, and keeping an eye out for a free place to host it. It was time for a change.

Well, ever since I discontinued my site I've been thinking about how to find an outlet for my essays. My ideas are too good (or at least thought provoking!) to keep to myself. Plus I had a few good essays on the old site that would be nice to put back up somewhere. The old site had five sections: Inspiration (quotes, lyrics, humor), The Realist Idealist (sustainable solutions), Glimpses of the Golden State (California geography and history), The Other Side of the Batholith (essays from the Eastern Sierra), and Resources and Links.

So here's the plan. I'll start off by posting the "best of" ecomafia.com and reisvalleyandmudville.com, revised, updated, and edited. I've changed since then, and so has the world. A lot of my resources and links are no longer relevant, surpassed by far better resources--and better compilations of them! When I started a Website about sustainability, it was easy to keep track of good resources, but the Internet has grown far too large for me to keep track of.

After I post "the best of," and maybe intermingled with it if I can't wait, I'll post my new essays and ideas... the ones that are worth sharing. And in the midst of all that, there is the book...

Bilderain Adobe in L.A., 1880s

I really really want to write this book already. But the research is daunting. And I don't have lots of time to do it. The general plan of the book is to write about my dad's fascinating life, but to include all his ancestors that I can find. Since my dad kept lots of journals, there is a lot of material to use, but the genealogical research is what is going to take the most time. And since I want to start writing at the beginning, and researching ancestors the farthest back takes the most time, I'm feeling like I'm not going to start writing for a few years. So this blog will be an outlet for that writing energy, and maybe you'll get some interesting updates on the book and the research once in a while. Like Encar. Bilderain, my great-great grandmother who lived here (see photo above right) in Los Angeles, but was born in 1824 in California (according to the 1880 census). The mystery is--where was she born? My dad's papers indicated that she and her husband were from Spain. But the censuses of 1870 and 1880 show California and Mexico as her birthplace. Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, so if she was born 3 years earlier she could have been born in Spanish California. And what of her husband, Ignacio? By the time of the U.S. censuses, she was widowed, so those aren't too helpful for his information.

My cousin Brian did a family history of my mom's side of the family, and his effort is inspirational for my attempts to delve into my dad's side. What an interesting journey this will continue to be.