dsoderblog

These are sites familiar to my great great grandparents. The country from San Francisco up through Healdsberg, California.  Towns like San Rafael, Santa Rosa, Sonoma, and Glen Ellen.

My great great grandfather Henry Marsh.

In the winter of 1980 I had a conversation with my grandmother, Helen Hussey about our family history in California.

“Your great great grandmother Julia Maria was a Delano from Boston. She married Henry Marsh and they came out to California. They carved an estate in San Rafael, and I think they were pretty well fixed.”

Julia Delano Marsh was the youngest child of Henry and Julia Maria Marsh. She was born in San Rafael on July 13, 1887.

Julia married John Cordes. They had one child, Helen Margaret Cordes, born on October 13, 1902 in San Francisco. She’s my grandmother.

Nothing is known about John Cordes. And there are few pictures of Helen’s earliest years. Looking at the clues however, one might guess John Cordes was a prospector. This photo is captioned “Helen in Jerome, Arizona in 1906-07.”

The mystery deepens with this photo. It is captioned “Helen with stepfather Larkin in Prescott, Arizona. 1906.” Perhaps he was the prospector. Helen made no mention of him in our conversation. “I don’t remember my father and never knew what happened to my father,” she said. “My earliest memories are of a little silver mining town in Colorado called Silverton.”

“Helen and stepfather Larkin, Prescott, Arizona. 1906-1907.”

“In Silverton we lived on a street where there was a Catholic Church across from us on the corner. It looked to me like those steps were so long and I’d see the little kids in their white dresses. But when I went back as an adult the steps looked so small.

Grand Imperial Hotel, Silverton, Colorado.

“There was a big hotel there, it was very fancy, and I can remember my mother singing accompaniment to a magic lantern show of color picture slides. And I remember buttercups. I could only have been 2 or 3 years old then. I was too young to go to school when we lived there, but I remember one day a little kid took me to the school, and they were talking about the North Pole. Someone must have just been there. Isn’t that weird to remember? And I remember going down in a mine one time too.”

Sisters May and Julia. May Delano Bridinger, Julia Delano Cordes.

“My mother Julia died in 1907 when I was about 3 or 4 (closer to 4) in Silverton.

“I was adopted by my mother’s older sister whom I called Mother Bridinger. She was married to a man named Leon Bridinger. I came out to California to live with them after my mother died.”

“I was put on a train to Oakland. Then took a ferry across. I wore a white muff and had a little sign “I am an orphan.” A kind porter on the train, a black man, looked after me and tucked me in at night.”

Chapter 2 “A life in Santa Rosa,” next.