Bear in Mind: The Story of the California Grizzly

San José, CA – May 7, 2013 — Does a bear walk through the woods? We don’t know, but the California Grizzly will be touring through History San José beginning in May.

Opening to the public on Sunday, May 25 at the Leonard & David McKay Gallery at the Pasetta House in History Park, the touring exhibition, Bear in Mind: The Story of the California Grizzly, brings ecology and history together.

“It is this type of historic exhibit that makes the History San José partnerships so significant,” said Alida Bray, President and CEO of History San José. “Grizzly bears, nature, science, art and photography — all of these monumental stories are what evolves the Santa Clara Valley into today’s Silicon Valley.”

Over the centuries, the relationship that Californians have had with the grizzly bear is one of dualities -– expressed in fear and fascination. Although now extinct in the state, the grizzly has long been a central character in California’s history. Illuminating the story of the grizzly bear, this exhibition will run at History Park through December, 2013.

Scientists estimate that 10,000 grizzlies once lived in California, perhaps the densest population of brown bears on the continent. However, through increased human settlement, loss of habitat, and hunting, by the early 1900s the California grizzly had vanished and could only be seen on the state flag.

It is through exhibits and artifacts, some from the collection of History San José, that Bear in Mind provides an in-depth look at the history and science of one of California’s most revered and feared animals.

The exhibition is produced and toured by Exhibit Envoy and was developed in concert with The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley and Heyday Books, and supported by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation with additional funds from the Bank of the West.

Celebrating the Sempervirens Story — More than 100 Years of Conservation

History San José’s Family Days Series: Sunday, May 19 at History Park in Kelley Park

San Jose, CA – May 6, 2013

On May 18, 1900 the Sempervirens Club was founded by photographer and painter Andrew Putnam Hill of San Jose to save the old-growth redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains. The Sempervirens were pioneers in the conservation movement, and the home of Andrew and Florence Hill is now located in History Park.*

In order to celebrate Sempervirens’ 113th Anniversary, History Park will host a family day focused on trees, photography, painting and conservation. Andrew P. Hill, founder of the the Sempervirens who helped to save the Big Basin Redwoods, documented his studies with paintings and photography, which will be featured inside his home, open in History Park for the festivities on May 19.

Mountain Charlie McKiernan will be on hand at 2 PM with his story of a fight with a grizzly bear, and how he lived to tell about it. Mountain Charlie will be available for photo opportunities, as will Portraits of the Past characters dressed in attire of the period.

Children are invited to go on an edu-trek, which focuses on the trees of History Park, while the entire family will learn through fun activities.

Sunday, May 19 is also Archaeology Day.

Fun for children includes Dig San José: Public Archaeology Day with Stanford Archaeology Students providing guidance and an opportunity to dig and become a junior archaeologist.

The Print Shop will be open to learn about printing before computers. The Printers Guild will demonstrate by giving away souvenir bookmarks printed on an 1884 platen letterpress.

Plein Air Painters will be painting throughout the Park and hosting a beginner’s workshop from noon to 3 PM.

Hill was also known for his documentation of nature, so those who bring their cameras may follow Master Photographer John Paulson from 1 – 3 PM on a photographic trek of the Park.

Live music will be performed in the bandstand at History Park and the trolley will be available for rides throughout the park.

Refreshments will be available for purchase from O’Brien’s Ice Cream Parlor and Tony’s Popcorn Cart.

Admission is free for HSJ members, or $5 per person, 4 years old and older. City parking lots are $6. History Park is located at Senter Road at Phelan, in San Jose, CA. (for GPS purposes, use 635 Phelan Avenue, San Jose, CA).

Buildings Open on Sunday, May 19:

Pacific Hotel Galley & the Leonard & David McKay Gallery
Trolley Barn with California Trolley & Railroad Corp.
Print Shop with the Printers Guild
Hill House with the Victorian Preservation Association
Paulson House with the California Pioneers of Santa Clara Valley
Chinese American Historical Museum with Chinese Historical and Cultural Project
Portuguese Historical Museum with the Portuguese Heritage Society of California
Dashaway Stables
Stevens Ranch Fruit Barn

*About Andrew Putnam Hill and the Sempervirens: A selection of photographs by A. P. Hill, as well as portraits of the Hill family, can also be found in History San Jose’s Photographic Collection and the Leonard McKay Collection.

Guide to the Sempervirens Club of California Records
Search the History San Jose online catalog
Purchase prints of A. P. Hill’s photographs through History San Jose’s PrintRoom gallery

San Jose’s First Piano

(Part of our “From the Piano Bench” series, reprints from the San Jose Historical Museum archives)

By Anne-Louise Heigho

Martha “Patty” Reed Lewis in Capitola, circa 1910 (History San Jose)

An article in the San Jose Mercury of December 22, 1941, traces the history of the first piano in San Jose: it was a rosewood square grand, made by an Albany builder named Burns in 1849. Purchased by a Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, it then made the voyage by ship around the Horn to San Francisco. Mrs. Wilson insisted that the instrument be accessible for playing, not consigned to the hold for ballast [what effect do you suppose that had on its tune and condition?], and that was her last chance to enjoy it. Upon arrival at Yerba Buena (as the fledgling city was still called], her husband pawned it to the newly rich James Frazer Reed for $1000. If the Wilsons were successful in the diggings they could redeem the instrument; otherwise, another $500 would give Reed absolute ownership. [This, in a time when you could build a large house for about $100...] The piano was moved to San Jose by wagon — why not by water, when there were no responsible roads? Again, we question the effect on the hapless instrument.

James Frazer Reed, survivor of the infamous Donner-Reed overland party, had himself struck a Golconda in the goldfields and returned to San Jose to buy up much of the downtown property between the SJSU campus and route 280. Local streets are named for his family: Margaret, Martha, Virginia, Reed, etc. He wanted the piano for his daughter, Virginia, to use, and contracted with a local Frenchman named Love for a series of piano lessons for $175. Another kind of love interfered with that project, for Virginia soon quit and got married. The rest of the lessons were snapped up by younger sister Martha [nicknamed Patty], who was apparently more receptive to music, for she persisted in the art. Patty’s succeeding teacher, Jessie B. Winlack, was luckless enough to be returning to her Scottish family by way of the steamer Jenny Lind when it blew up at Alviso in 1858, killing her and most of the other passengers.

Patty had later connections with the Pacific Conservatory, whose faculty member J. M. Moody wrote a series of “Nine Songs,” and dedicated one to Patty, now designated as Martha Reed Lewis. She had married and moved to Capitola, where she was one of the founders of St. Johns’ Episcopal Church. According to the newspaper article, the “first piano” had come with her and was still in the family home in 1941.

Read more about History San Jose’s Music Collection

Gems from San Jose’s Historic Music Journals

(Part of our “From the Piano Bench” series of reprints from the San Jose Historical Museum archives)

By Anne-Louise Heigho

San Jose was a vibrant participant in the turn-of-the-century music scene. Local music publishers, and branches of larger West Coast firms, were located on San Jose’s South First and Second Streets. They issued their own music journals of information and advertisement. A survey of History San Jose’s collection of these journals, published between 1880 and 1900, produced these gems:

From Sherman & Hyde’s Musical Review (March, 1877): “Last Wednesday morning, Mr. Morton of San Jose sold two Weber pianos, a Standard Organ, and a very fine guitar, all before lunch.”

From the Musical Circular of Wiley B. Allen (March, 1880). (The store was next to the Post Office, then located in the Hensley House on Santa Clara at 2nd Street). “More people came to the recital of Professor King’s pupils, at the College of the Pacific Conservatory [uptown on the Alameda, now Bellarmine Prep], than there were street cars to take them home — the transport system should be more alert and responsive to such demands.”

Editorial headline in the same issue: “Why Can’t We Have a Normal Music Department?” The San Jose Normal School, later Teachers College, was the nucleus of today’s San Jose State College; its music department is the sole survivor of four major music conservatories operating downtown from 1876 through the mid-1920s.

From the Musical Journal of the Music Hall Store (C. H. Maddox, proprietor, September 1882): “There are 125,000 music teachers in the United States.” San Jose’s city directories from 1885 to 1893 listed about 50-60 each year.

In the same issue: “a Miss Griswold (Bret Harte’s niece) has won the first prize for singing, and a second for operatic singing, at the Paris Conservatoire competition, the first occasion on which first prize for singing has been taken by an English-speaking pupil.”

Also in that issue, a portent of things to come: “Music performed in Harrisburg, by the aid of appliances for transmitting sound, was heard in Philadelphia, a distance of some 105 miles. The notes were said to be perfectly distinct, even to those who stood 25 feet from the receiver!”

One of the first publications printed in San Francisco after the great earthquake and fire of 1906 was the New San Francisco Magazine, “dedicated to the development of the State of California and the rebuilding of a new and greater San Francisco.” The first issue, called the “Salamander Number” in imitation of the salamander which emerges from the mud and thrives after forest fire, observed the local street scene: “Then, too, there is music. In some way a piano was saved from a ruined mansion on Nob Hill. Every night there are wags who gather around it and jangle merriment on its keys. Also there are phonographs. Many of these were saved from the ruins, and in the parks and squares where the homeless are located their strange melody is going on day and night.”

In the back pages of a song collection of that era is an advertisement by the Ruff Organ Co. of St. Louis, presenting a new instrument “guaranteed to be dust and mouse-proof.”

Read more about History San Jose’s Music Collection

CLIR Grant Work Successfully Completed at History San Jose

Staff and volunteers at the History San Jose Research Library and Archives have recently completed processing five manuscript collections from the Perham Collection of Early Electronics under a 2012 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Cataloging Hidden Collections and Archives program. Series through item-level catalog records, as well as many digital images, are now available through PastPerfect Online.

The project provides access to more than 100 linear feet of the largest manuscript portions of the Perham Collection, previously unprocessed, and to some extent unknown even to our Curator:

The Lee and Marie de Forest Papers comprise the largest collection documenting this award-winning radio and motion-picture inventor. They include not only de Forest’s early Yale University, American DeForest Wireless Telegraph, and DeForest Phonofilm scrapbooks of correspondence, ephemera and news clippings, but also extensive correspondence between de Forest and his peers during the 1940s and 1950s that sheds light on the complex man behind his sometimes controversial inventions;
Professional and personal papers of 1916 Stanford engineering graduate Harold Elliott contain extensive materials on his work with Federal Telegraph, Galvin Manufacturing, RCA-Victor, and Hewlett-Packard, and his radio clock-tuner inventions. In addition, Elliott was a talented photographer, and his papers include more than 1000 photographs from his early days at Stanford University (1911-1916), hiking and camping trips in the Sierras and Arizona (circa 1915-1930), early automobiles, and later photographs of the Pacific Coastline and Portola Valley foothills, many of which were displayed in photography exhibits in the 1950s and 1960s;
Rare materials from Federal Telegraph Company (1909-1929), one of Silicon Valley’s earliest successful startups, including Douglas Perham’s scrapbooks of photographs, blueprints, and technical reports documenting Federal’s radio installations in San Francisco, San Diego, El Paso and Kansas City between 1909 and 1912;
Research notes and correspondence of Jane Morgan, author of “Electronics in the West” (1967), a treasure trove of information on early electronics pioneers on the West Coast. Although written in a popular style, Morgan’s work was meticulously researched and documented, and her research files include correspondence and notes detailing interviews with many key individuals; and
The Perham History Files, a collection of ephemera, notes, manuscripts, and other items pertaining to hundreds of people, companies, and technical developments.

The Perham Collection of Early Electronics preserves rare books and ephemera, trade manuals, personal papers and archives, along with some 1200 photographs, and 2500 electronics devices from some of the earliest commercial ventures in electronics in the Western U.S. and a nascent Silicon Valley, from the 1890s to 1960. Douglas M. Perham, who began this collection, spent his career with many of these firms, from Federal Telegraph in 1909 to the highly successful post-war Varian Associates. He and his colleagues avidly collected material documenting what they saw happening around them over a seven-decade period. Originally displayed at Perham’s New Almaden Museum, the collection became part of the Perham Foundation’s Electronics Museum at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California, in the late 1960s. After the Museum’s closure in 1991, the Collection went into storage, and was eventually donated in 2003 to History San Jose.

The Collection, received largely unprocessed, has now been almost entirely re-housed and cataloged, thanks to the dedication of a hardcore band of semi-retired engineers who have logged thousands of hours over the past ten years identifying and researching the over 2500 objects within the collection; and thanks to this CLIR grant, without which we could not have dedicated the time and resources to process this primary source material invaluable to anyone interested in early Bay Area commercial history. The grant has also allowed us to create an in-house processing manual, available to all volunteers and staff, that fully integrates PastPerfect museum and archives software into an archival workflow process, resulting in a more consistent and efficient approach to processing collections and submitting EAD guides to the Online Archive of California.

As part of this project, we have created a website to document the people, companies and products that comprise the Perham Collection at www.perhamcollection.org. The site will continue to grow, and highlights some of the more compelling stories found in the manuscript collections over this past year. We also anticipate researchers and collectors will benefit from the richer insight provided by these materials into the personal and professional lives of the engineers responsible for many of the inventions that are the foundation of today’s telecommunications and computer industries.