This presentation was created for the Museum of the Sierra as part of its Voices of The Sierra Presentations. Its goal is to find the voices of Lena and CB Shaver and to explore their lives and actions in the broader context of the Shaver Community.
This presentation is designed as a living document:
1) It’s was introduced to a live and a zoom audience.
2) It is a web site that lives, will be maintained and is readily available.
3) It will change with corrections and new information and inspiration.
4) We are hoping that you will assist us in making corrections and gathering new, insightful information. Please email us.
Upon request, your responses will be posted in the Blog.
Think of this website as a tall
and majestic Sugar Pine and the
trunk as the Shaver Family. As
you climb the tree, each branch
that you touch is a new member
adding it’s power and meanings
to the family. If you chose to
stay close to the trunk you will
complete the arc of Lena and
C.B. lives quickly. If you follow
the branches, you will
discover the back stories of
those who become family
members. In the first part of
the Shaver Family Story, you
will also have the option of leaping
to the roots of Lena and C.B.’s
Families.
The Smiths
The Hemphills
The Rudes
The Maupins
The McDonalds
The Hoovers
The Craycrofts
The Swifts
The Shavers
The Palatines
The Danforths
The Roberts
The Shaver Community, 1884
The golden coins will click you back to navigation
Click @ for external links.
The Frogs will leap back to the beginning or take you a chapter.
This is a story about origins, place and meanings. This is a story about community, perseverance and love.
1892
The Shaver Community
Deep in the midst of the Hartz Mountains, a robbers band was gathered around a camp fire, Black Bart stood up and said, Shorty spin us a yarn, and Shorty began.
Deep in the midst of the Hartz Mountains, a robbers band was gathered around a camp fire, Black Bart stood up and said, Shorty spin us a yarn, and Shorty began.
Deep in the midst of the Hartz Mountains, a robbers band was gathered around a camp fire, Black Bart stood up and said, Shorty spin us a yarn, and Shorty began.
The Harz Mountains are the land of German fairy tales a place of dark forests, rushing streams and stormy mountains. Such a place is this. CB Shaver’s meanings were born in the forests of Germany and so, with this preface, he began the nighttime stories that he told his children as put them into bed. But Ladies first.
The Miwok understood that in the beginning there was no earth, only water. Silver Fox expresses her loneliness in a prayer song and as she sang, Coyote appeared. "We will sing the world"
10,000AD
As they danced and sang, the Earth took shape beneath them.
P L A C E
C
1897
CEDER RUN
1887
1889 - Lena, Grace and Minnie
Blanchard, Michigan
Lena Ariana Roberts was born on May 2, 1864 in Cedar Run, Pennsylvania.
CEDER RUN
PINE CREEK
In 1864 Ceder Run was a bustling lumber town settled into Pine Creek Gorge. Pine Creek travels 30 miles before it flows into the west branch Susquehanna River. Five Miles down river is Lock Haven a small, booming metropolis. Lena’s father, Nathaniel Danforth Roberts and Mother, Ariana Person met and were married in Main in 1846. In the early 1850’s they move to Pennsylvania where Lena’s older sister Minnie was born in 1860. Documents indicate that Nathaniel had skills as a jointer, later a lumberman, a farmer and, finally, the proprietor of a boarding house
NATHANIEL
DANFORTH
ROBERTS
Nathanial Danforth Roberts was born in 1821,
in Bangor Main.
This locket was given to Lena
by her mother Arian upon
her fathers death in New Orleans.
1907
1821-
1889 - Ariana P Roberts
Blanchard, Michigan
Ariana (Hanna) Pearson was born on August 20, 1834 in Main.
1898
1834-
THE ROBERTS FAMILY
Minnie
K.
Roberts
Ariana married Nathaniel in A Main in 1856. Arianas family is of distinguished British lineage that goes back in New England to the Great Migration in the mid-17th Century. Neither Ariana nor Nathaniel travel to California but their daughter Minnie joined Lena and CB in our cast of characters in the Shaver realm.
Four years older than Lena, Minnie married C.B Shavers
eventual partner, Harvey Swift in Blanchard, Michigan in 1883. Harvey and his older brother LP would both travel to California to become essential partners with the Shavers in the establishment and the roaring success of the Mill. In fact, the
entire operation and the community as a whole must be seen as a collective adventure with all hands given credit and praises sung round by round.
Harvey
W
Swift
Harvey W Swift was born on June 29, 1860,
in Pennsylvania.
1903
Lewis Philotus Swift was born on June 1842,
in Indiana.
1897
CHARLES
BURR
SHAVER
1897
Charles Burr Shaver was born on June August 7, 1855,
in Stuben County, New York
"You Press the Button,
We Do the Rest"
The $25 camera came pre-loaded with a film roll of 100 exposures, and could be mailed to Eastman's headquarters in Rochester with $10 for processing. The camera would be returned with prints, negatives, and a new roll of film. Additional rolls were also sold for $2 to professional photographers who wished to develop their own photographs
This 1897 photographic is the earliest photographs we have of Lena and of Ethel. It was taken by CB at Lena’s family in Blanchard, Michigan. The camera is epigramatic of an aspect of CB Shaver that cannot be overestimated, he was a visionary and experimenter, riding the cutting edge of technological change in a generation that saw more radical changes to their physical reality in their lifetime that any that came before or after.
Speaking of the girls:
To understand both Lena and CB we will introduce their daughters, certainly the center of the life between them
GRACE
MABEL
SHAVER
Grace Mabel Shaver was born on Feb 24, 1887,
in Blanchard, Michigan
ETHEL
G.
SHAVER
Ethel Gertrude Shaver was born on November 23 1888,
in Blanchard, Michigan
DORIS
SHAVER
Doris Shaver was born on December 13, 1897,
in Fresno, CA
HOWEVER, before we get into the family, let’s take a quick look at one of the most motivating and revealing factors in CB’s life, the first seven generations of Shavers in America.
Gertrude Swift (with dog), Floyd Shaver, Lena Roberts Shaver, Ella French Swift, Polly Rose Shaver, Doris Shaver, Ethel Shaver, CB Shaver, Luella Swift and Grace Shaver
Let it be understood that family is thought of here in a much broader context than the traditional “nuclear family”. The photo above reflects the close partnership between the Swifts and the Shavers that runs as many threads that we will follow. There are two additional photos taken as a series with the framed print above. It would seem that the framed print
was shot second because two of the “farm girls’ (above), Ethyl and Lewella, are displaying two of the eggs that they have gathered.
1902
The print above would appear to have been shot (what do you think? )
last because the impetuous imp Doris has donned a bonnet and CB’s older brother, Truman, has been coaxed to join the group for the final shot. But that’s all pure speculation because, like almost all of the photos in this presentation, there are no words of description, no identification of participants, no attention paid to the needs of future generations, no assistance for historians. In fact,
it is only the occasional identification scribbled on the back of photos, shared memories and official public records that allows us to piece it together. In this case, we don’t absolutely know that this is Truman, Rose or Floyd but I would say 98% positive on that and that’s good enough for me. The same goes for the location. This is Trumans house in Clovis.
What is outstanding about this series is it is rare that we find the characters acting out.
CB, the unflappable stare
and determined, immovable
, hands in pockets, defiant
posture that we have seen
before but as acted, its in
spades and punctuated by
the plug cigar (only time
I have ever seen it in fact
though it’s omnipresence,
is gospel from
the lore).
And Lena, wow! Plenty of
evidence that she had
a strong backbone and
was a force of nature when she needed to keep
the family and the extended family and larger
community in line but here dear Lena thank you so much for
demonstrating THE LOOK. Thank you both! One
of the most vital truths embedded in this series is that if you look
closely. the photos tell a lot. They do not lie. They do not shade or cover the facts. We are very fortunate in this family to have a very large and very
personal collection to share.
EXAMINING
C B
Visual Epigrams, Logos, Symbols
ASPECTS OF A MAN
connecting the dots
Here are some well known stories along with some hand me downs, with stories of their own to tell. (clockwise from high noon):
1) Cannon Balls bowler hat flew off as he went flying down towards Clovis on a flume boat.
No doubt. Given the omnipresence of a hat on his balding dome and his daring nature this happened often, something to be expected.
6) CB clowns around the camp site with a can for a hat on to top his head.
7) Cannon Ball races his Stanley Steamer through the streets of Fresno in the early morning hours.
2) At critical times CB had himself lowered down rock faces to set dynamite
charges. He knew what he was doing, exactly the results he wanted and how to get it done.
Check that, daring nature and iron will to get things done.
Check that, daring nature and iron will to get things done.
Check that, daring nature and iron will to get things done.
3) He was driving his team hard against a down hill turn as the inside front wheel hit a bolder in the road throwing everything off the ground and launching his favorite shotgun into the air. The wagon righted its self, Cannon Ball survived, people are still out with lanterns looking for the gun.
4) CB loved to eat and craved his favorites, limburger cheese at the top of the list. Lena haited the smell and they squabbled a bit, some might call it a row. In the end it found its place in the capped hollow of the oak tree outback.
It took a strong, bright and charming woman to keep CB in check.
5) In full board room dress, CB on the Mills steam boat Michigan nudging up to a dock, remembering his youthful prowess in spiked cogs on rolling logs, leaps upon a log buffering the dock and plummets with an enormous cannonball splash into the lake.
Absolutely true to form, daring, self -effacing and ready for a laugh
When your point man of a complex, fast moving organization, you need to be able to laugh at yourself and give others the opportunity to laugh with you and at you,
When you are under so much pressure you have to be able to blow off steam. In CB’s case, a lot of it, both figuratively and literaly. The early morning is the best time. It helps you face the day, clear it all out before you put on your serious face.
8) CB patiently suffers (with a smile) the blows of snowball from children in wait.
The magic of humor: when your seen as the Big Boss. the guy who makes all the money, you gotta take it even, bring it, even encourage it. It comes with the territory. its part of the game.
9) A golden watch as Midas touch.
I think we are all getting the picture of what a complex balancing act CB’s role was. The Midas touch? Snake oil, grit, hard work, long hours, brains and determination and lots and lots of luck.
10) Mr. High Tech.
There is this ever present notion floating around of aw at the pioneers, sure, when your out there, in the middle of no place with nothing but your bare hands and you figure out how to survive, true grit, amazing courage, pure genius, that’s awesome. That happens. The wilderness forces it, many seek that. The High Sierra are a breeding ground for that and we will get to that, but for the most part, Lena and CB’s stories are not about that. They both came superbly, even ideally and uniquely equipped. In CB’s case, in his beginnings, he was following well worn paths. Men like David Whitney and Thomas Friant had come before him, blazing the trail. He was lucky to have known them, worked for them and learned from them. He knew it and they knew that they were lucky to have found him. Like in nature, they had all worked their way up but more so for CB. He came from much more humble roots. He had more to prove. Much of what that meant we have uncovered and will apply here now. What was unique about the venture that LP, CB, Harvey, the Long brothers and their families embarked on was overcoming the enormous obstacle of the Tollhouse Grade, to reach and harvest Pine Ridges’s Mother Lode. It wasn’t just about getting there, it was about getting there, operating effectively and efficiently there, delivering what you made there with speed and accuracy to market and justifying the enormous costs involved. It was about connecting all the dots, finding the right people, working as teams and creating a vibrant and sustainable community. CB had worked in every aspect of the timber business and was ideally suited to oversee the full array of technologies that would needed to be applied. As we have seen CB was a new technologies junky, first Stanley Steamer in Fresno, early edition White Seamer, early camera adopter, railroad and steamboat engineer, etc. This played out in the application of all of the most advanced technologies to the Fresno flume and Irrigation Company and was facilitated by MacGyver mechanical geniuses like LP Swift. Lewis undoubtedly contributed many unique innovations along with keeping a steady hand on the wheel.
Some years back, I was visiting my Grandfather, John Hemphill’s, house on Vassar Avenue in Fresno and discovered that the owner was a geologist for the Forest Service. When she discovered that I was CB Shavers Grandson she took a deep breath and launched into a diatribe about all the clutter he had left behind and how it interfered with her work. I apologized.
LP Swift, Ethel Shaver, CB Shaver, Grace Shaver, Lena Roberts Shaver, Ella French Swift
Christmas,1897
Visual Epigrams, Logos, Symbols
We will get back to CB but now let’s take a closer look at Lena. Whenever Lena came up, a benevolent, respectful calm settled throughout the room, The Lena affect. And it wasn’t just our family and extended family, it traveled far beyond.
In the mid 1930’s as Lena’s health was failing and my father Charles Burr Craycroft (then in medical school at Stanford) arranged for Adeline Nord to be her companion for several years in the Mountains.
Later Adeline married Karl Smith and together they created the store and ferry at Florence Lake and Muir Trail Ranch. Through many trips to the ranch and the high country beyond over a period of 40 years, I got to know Adeline very well. From her stories, just the way she spoke about Lena, Lena came alive for me.
1) The birds nest forms a halo over Lena’s head, for honestly, that’s how I see her.
It serves as a symbol for her consumate skills as a mother and as a home and a community builder. The children she raised, the community she built and the nest/homes that she built will follow.
I inherited this cart and have loved and cherished it for many years with no idea who it came from. While working on this project I was so please to find its source. Here is Lena practicing her craft in the back yard of her beautiful house at 1455 N Echo Avenue.
3) Discipline with kindness
The butter paddle is about my
mom, who branished it but
never needed to use it. Like
Lena, she did it with a look.
4) The camera refers to a series of photos previously displayed to introduce
CB’s love for technology.
"You Press the Button,
We Do the Rest"
The shots at the beginning of the Shaver album are a mixture of shots from Michigan and Fresno with no labeling to assist in differentiating between the two locations. Research revealed that the shots below were taken in Kalkaska, Michigan.
The shot of Lena embracing, adoring, Ethel is taken in the front yard of Lena’s parents house in Blanchard, where Lena and CB were married. The poor quality of the Kalkaska High School shot indicates that it was shot by an amateur. The choice of Manning Hotel hints at romance and escape. Perhaps one location on their Honeymoon. There is only one photos of Lena and CB next to each other, one featuring the two of them that
I know of. In group shots, they are surrounded
by others, two community leaders embracing the
crowd. Yet, in private, one knows most assuredly,
that a deep and all embracing love was there.
So appropriate that the National Trout memorial fountain is in the center of Kalkaska. Paired with Canisteo’s world’s largest living (pine tree) sign, it memorializes the destiny of these two loving and powerful people.
3) No Limberger Chess in my house! Somebody had to set some limits for the force of nature.
This shared family anecdote is a rare descriptive of an aspect of the relationship between Lena and CB. It is undoubtably true because it was witnessed by many and oft repeated. It is typical as a descriptive of the traditional male female territorial boundaries of the time. It is also typical of the lesson stories tales told in our family particularly around the heart, the campfire or on the mountain trail. The mountains were a place for lessons and for testing understanding. Away from the bustling chaos and the rigid routines of urban and city life, with things simplified, relaxed and here and now, experience common and unencumbered by the outside world people become more able to see one another clearly, laugh together, learn together, love.
4) The tea cart is for the community of home, these many hands are for a broader landscape. Our photo albums are filled with many group shot.
Womans Groups:
This is an area where I need to do more research and I welcome any help that you have for me. How these groups function and who all these unnamed people are is of interest. That said, several things are remarkable to me about these photos. First, how many there are, particularly because of their context, a family photo album. Clearly Lena had an expansive idea of the limits of family. And second, just how radiantly happy Lena is when she appears in them.
THE MERRY WIVES CLUB ON A PICNIC
1895
Left to right 1) Mrs. H.O. Baker 2) Mrs. J.F. Hixon 3) Mrs W. Parker Lyon 4) Unknown 5) Unknown 6) Mrs Jim Brown 7) Unknown 8) Unknown 9) Mrs Frank Roman 10) Mrs C.B. Shaver
1890
THE MERRY WIVES CLUB
First row 1) Mrs Jim Brown 2) Mrs Linforth 3) Mrs. James F. Hixon 4) Mrs Frank Roman 5) Mrs Markham. Second row 1) Mrs C.B. Shaver 2) Mrs John Gearhart 3) Mrs Mrs George Mourse 4) Mrs. H.O. Baker 5) Mrs W. Parker Lyon
Family Groups
Family Group photos will highlight the discussion as be move forward but first its time to talk about Lena and CB’s daughters
G R A C E
Grace was born in Blanchard, Michigan in 1887 and moved to California at age 4 when CB was organizing the Fresno Flume and Irrigation Co.
1905
Grace attended public schools and graduated from Fresno High School in 1904. After graduation she attended a girl’s Finishing School in San Francisco and then she met a man.
Dr. Harry Judge Craycroft became the company doctor at Shaver shortly after he graduated from Medical School in 1906.
Harry Judge Craycroft was born on October 19, 1877,
in Warm Springs, California
After Harry, also, established a practice in Fresno and on October 6, 1909 he and Grace were married.
They were a very popular young couple with a busy social life. They lived on L Street next door to Mrs. Shaver.
In 1911 they spent a year in Europe where Harry studied medicine in London and Vienna, learning all the latest medical and surgical techniques. When they returned, Harry taught the techniques to physicians free of charge. This is a very good example of two characteristics and measure of this Family:
1) Each succeeding generation reflects the values of the previous generation. The measure of the parents are the values of the children, the acts of the children and the partners that they chose to bring into the family.
2) The basic values of this family are open communication and understanding, sharing and giving generously. They are very successful but they are because of these values.
Harry, Grace, Jenny Wishon and Ethel in Venice
Harry would soon return to Europe to apply these skills.
But first, there was a family to create. Grace and Harry had two children.
Ethel was born in Blanchard, Michigan in 1888 and moved to California at age 3 when CB was organizing the Fresno Flume and Irrigation Co. She attended public schools and graduated from Fresno High School in 1904. After graduation she attended a girl’s Finishing School in San Francisco. There is more evidence of her social life than there is of Graces. She is mentioned in the press as attending Lewella Swifts fifth birthday party the two appeared to be quite close. Both girls, along with Jenny Wishon
, who, also, as we have see, traveled to Europe with her parents. Ethyl’s pictures reflect kindness, curiosity, modesty and depth.
Being born to privilege is a double edged sword. My father was a calm and steady man but he transmitted a vexing and gut wrenching anxiety from having to ride in
the limousines at the head
of the Raison Day Parade.
Life in the mountains
had a tempering effect.
Neither Lena nor CB were born with silver spoons in their mouths Whether they were able to raise their kids to be level headed is an ongoing question of interest. Would the silver spoon or the wooden spoon prevail?
?
Ethel met Gus Hoover in her neighborhood and in school and the relationship was reinforced by the friendship between CB and Gus’s father, Thomas A, Hoover (an early Fresno pioneer, inventor and carriage maker). They were married on December 2. 1914.
Thomas A. Hoover family: left to right, Isabella Gorla Hoover, Mary Isabella Hoover, Gus Hoover and Thomas.
They lived in Fresno on L Street for a few years and then moved to Los Angeles. They had 3 children: Robert Benton Hoover, Richard Shaver Hoover, and Ethel Virginia Hoover Olsen.
Gus Hoover was born on June 19, 1888,
in Fresno, California
Robert Benton Hoover was born on March 7, 1916,
in Fresno, California
Burr and Bobby
Burr, Dickie Daddles and Bobby
Richard Shaver Hoover was born on November 2, 1918,
in Fresno, California
Ethel Virginia and Gordon
Ethel Virginia Hoover was born on February 15, 1921,
There are very few pictures of Doris in the Shaver album after 1904 and they are limited to group shots. The Society pages take note of Doris’s social life and there are reports of her making a splashing in New York Society. The family announced her engagement to Harold (Mick) McDonald in the press.
San Francisco Chronicle,
Sunday Dec. 16, 1917
Doris and Mick eloped and were married in New York, Nov 16, 1918, shortly before Mick enlisted for overseas duty in World War 1. Lena was not happy but when Mick returned after the War, they were given a house on L Street as a wedding present.
1903
Family Group Photos:
Summer 1925
ETHEL
Ethel
Christmas1929
The photos above contain the only images that we have of Uncle Mick. Gordon Shaver McDonald was is born January 1, 1920 n Fresno. Doris and Mick moved to Pasadina in 1921. Douglas McDonald was born in Los Angeles February 13, 1923.
After C.B.s death in 1907, Lena became a very respected businesswoman in Fresno, very astute, an unusual position for a woman in those days. She managed the Shaver properties and as a major shareholder, she stayed active in the lumber company affairs. Harvey Swift took over as president and A.B. Long as vice president and managed the company very successfully for another 5 years. Her first love was the mountains she spent summer always at Shaver and it is said that she preferred her mountain home to her mansion in Fresno.
After the sale of the mill in 1912 and eventually the sale of the land at Shaver Lake to Southern California Edison (each in excess of $1,000,000—a lot of money for those days). In 1919 Lena bought (with her son in law Harry Craycroft) a 160 acre parcel, which they subdivided to create Rock Haven , the first vacation homes at Shaver.
Lena had the Edison Company take her Shaver Lake home apart piece by piece and rebuild a home for her at Rock Haven. Burr (Craycroft) told a story about how they laughed when they found that the board that had been in the kitchen where all the grandchildren’s heights had been marked through the years was placed in the ceiling paneling of the second-floor bedroom!
SHAVER HOUSE AT ROCK HAVEN, 1924
SHAVER HOUSE AT ROCK HAVEN, 2023
The upstairs is divided into two halves with a connecting door. Each half has two bedrooms with room for six beds. The downstairs has an additional bedroom with a single bed. Current residents speak of the house being built to be shared by two daughters (presumably Grave and Ethel) with room for Lena.
1920
Dickie Hoover, Burr Craycroft, Unknown Boy, Bobby Hoover
Harry built a home as well.
CRAYCROFT HOUSE AT ROCK HAVEN, 1924
Marian and Burr Craycroft
Walter “Red” Rude and
Marian Craycroft Rude
Red Rude and
Marian Craycroft
THE RUDE FAMILY
Quite a number of Fresno families still have homes there.
MAUPIN HOUSE AT ROCK HAVEN
Maupins, Shavers and Others
In 1921 Lena and Harry purchased Armstrong’s Hotel and Store and Pine Ridge Post Office on a 360 acre parcel on Tollhouse Grade. They leased the running of the hotel and store for a time, but they soon moved in to the hotel.
Lena’s
First
Glance
“July 4th, 1893—As the oxen labored, slowly but surely, hauling the wagon up the hot and dusty Toll House Grade, Lena Shaver finally got a chance to see what her husband had been talking about so passionately for the last two years. This first portion of the trip may not have met her expectations as it was a steep, rough, rocky, dusty wagon trail. But when they reached the meadow at Jose Creek, it changed dramatically. They certainly would have stopped here to rest and water the animals as it was the first opportunity, an oasis, after the long haul up the grade.
At that time, the Kenyon family operated the Post Office, a store and blacksmith shop with cabins for guests, an apple orchard, and cultivated fields in the meadow. The following year they would add a school. This was the center of the community of Pine Ridge.
Little did she know that one day, this would become her beloved mountain home.”
Pine Ridge: The Early Years
by John Shaver Craycroft
Pine Ridge
Franke Craycroft
Harry moved his medical equipment from Shaver and set up one of the cabins as his doctor's office and was the Pine Ridge Post Master. It was called the Pine Ridge Hotel and Tavern, and they eventually grew to prefer it to Rock Haven. I think because of the room to garden, have horses and the social atmosphere many stoping there on there the way to and from Shaver Lake.
1924
1934
It was Lena’s great sorrow that the doctors would not let her go to the mountains the last couple of years of her life—she wanted to die there. In May of 1939, she died at her home in Fresno.
1943-1970
John and Sally Rude, Pine Ridge, 1943
COMMENTS ON PINE RIDGE DRAWINGS
John and Sally Rude
First let me observe that accuracy in these drawings will matter to exactly four living souls. Acknowledging the love which John and Peter Craycroft might have for the Shaver Homestead, this is truly the only place that Sally and I have to call home. It is only a memory now, but what a potent bundle of emotions remain attached to these images!
OUTSIDE ELEVATION - Sally is correct about the diamond window and
screened in porch. We may have photos to confirm this. The entrance from the front porch is not the bank of three windows, but instead is depicted by what looks like a window, but was actually a normal-sized door on the right side of the porch.
DOWNSTAIRS FLOOR PLAN- Starting with the front living room – on the left side of the entrance, I remember the fainting couch and book shelves; Other small items of furniture may have been in that corner. There may not of been a window in that side of the room; I remember it being very dark. On the opposite side, there was a spinet piano, and perhaps another couch or bookshelf. Sally is correct about the long table behind the large leather couch. She is also correct about the fireplace being larger and to the right. There were, of course, portraits of CB and Lena on either side of the fireplace. The fireplace may not of been inserted into the east wall, as she has drawn it. If you pull it forward into the room, the proportions may be more correct. I think there was less room to walk around than Sally depicts. The location of the beaded curtain is correct, but I think it would be more accurately called brocade. To the right of the living room, the vestibule to the upstairs seems larger than I remember it. Sally is right about the location of the crank telephone, and the stand with walking sticks. To the left is the phone, I remember entrance to a Storage closet beneath the stairs, covered with a curtain. It was one of my favorite places to explore. The dining room is essentially as Sally depicted it, with the Lazy Susan table, booths, Victrola, and player piano. She will remember the location of side tables, because they held kerosene lamps which had to be lit before electricity was installed in 1947 or 1948. The exit from the north side of the living room is clearly illustrated above Sally's head in the photograph with the Chevrolet. Sally is also accurate about the location of closets and the stairwell in the center part of the downstairs. In Grace's bedroom, she has added another exit door and window, I believe. If you are standing in the driveway behind the dining room and facing the house, I believe you are looking at an entry way under the porch, with woodshed's to your left and right. The one on the right is screened in; the one on the left is larger and walled in. Above that room is the belfry, with a rope extending down to the back porch for ringing the bell in case of emergency.
Moving into the kitchen from the dining room, there is indeed a dish pantry left and right of the entrance, with cupboards extending floor to ceiling. Sally sketched in another pantry to the right of the stairwell, where food was stored. (I remember the smell of dead mice that I had caught in traps in that room.) The objects in the kitchen are correctly placed. There were 8 foot open shelves in the center of the room, and a kitchen table behind the sink. A zinc-covered food prep counter was on the other side of the upright shelves, next to the stove. The wood box to the right of the exit was only too familiar to me. It was my job to keep it filled with split logs stored in the big woodshed a few steps away. Those logs disappeared into the stove quickly when there was a big meal, or when we wanted to heat the kitchen on cold winter mornings.
All the other rooms identified in the back part of the downstairs are
accurate, as far as I can remember.
UPSTAIRS FLOOR PLAN - Again, Sally is mostly accurate, but I think small details might be off. She remembers an L-shaped hallway, starting from the top of the front stairs, angling right at the center, and continuing down to the "Gent's Bath." I remember a modified T, with the center hallway extending from the back of the house all the way to the front. Auntie Frank's and Red/Marian's bedrooms would have been separated by a hall, in my memory. (I defer to Sally, of course, because she was older, thus more observant.) If there was a long hallway, there would have to be a window at one end or the other. Otherwise the halls would have been dark even in daytime....and I don't think they were.
I remember "John's" (my) bedroom as being narrower, possibly half the width of "Sally's" bedroom. Hers had two beds; I only had room for one. (I
cherished my privacy.) Adjustments to the two bedrooms might all Auntie Franke's room to be rectangular, instead of invaded by a nook. (I don't remember the slanted wall that Sally drew in.) There may have been a nook in Red's/Marian's room, because I remember access from the Ladies' Bath being corner of the bath room, opposite (not directly) from the hallway access to the bath. The Ladies' Bath was also narrower than depicted, I believe. The door from the hall into the bathroom was not immediately at the top of the stairs, but a few steps further on. Thus, you might adjust size and shape of these two rooms as well. The only other error, I think, is the placement of the
"Bad Room" (about which I am a
reluctant expert). The opening to the
rear stairwell (steep) was immediately
to the .right of the entrance to the Bad Room. It abutted Auntie Doris' Room,
then the stairwell, linen closet and Gents' Bath. The place where Sally drew the stairwell is approximately where the chimney came through the second floor. I think the chimney column must have
been right next to the stove in Auntie Doris' room. I won't take it any further....indeed I've gone too far on a near-empty tank of memory. By the way,
I have quite a few more exterior pictures of the house at various times, and from various angles. I'll send these in a couple of days, so you feel a little more secure about your revisions. Some of these I obtained from Peter, who had one of Burr's or Jean's scrapbooks. Quick....let's befriend a Silicon Valley billionaire, and ask him to fund the reconstruction of this gem. Otherwise, we'll never see the likes
of it again, nor will our children or grand-children, etc.
John
Sally’s recollections:
Auntie Minn's house was really a cabin, built in a somewhat shot-gun
design--a long rectangle that proceeded from raised front porch, not as
deep as "the big house" into the living room. The living room was heavy with velvets, brocades, fringes, knickknacks--VERY different in style from Lena's house. (She evidently built the house because the two sisters loved each other dearly, but were so very different that she wanted, and probably needed her own space in the mountains, just as she did down in Fresno.) Then one went through a beaded curtain into her bedroom which was quite small and cozy--again deep reds and brocades and fringed lamps. Then a door to the kitchen, the largest room at the back of the house that had an outside porch that ran the length of the kitchen on the downward slope side of the house. (There must have been a bathroom, probably off the bedroom on the up-the-hill side of the house, but | don't remember it.) The kitchen had more light than the parlor" or the bedroom, with windows looking out on the porch and the pines. The whole thing was a little gem so different in feel and décor than Lena's house. The house was further back on the property than you have it in the drawing. It was further back than the saddle room and up the hill a bit in the pines with the apple orchard behind it running down to the meadow.
Along the edge of our property there were three or four small cabins that were about to fall down really. In their heyday they might have been small housekeeping cabins that were part of the Armstrong Hotel. We never used them at all, but they were fun to poke around in. There were parts of old stoves and such that were fun to find.
3. There were two slightly larger cabins that were in pretty good repair on the hill going up from the road where we drove into the house--up the hill from the front lawn--roughly between the caretaker's cabin and Auntie Minn's. One had lots of medical stuff from Dr. Harry's office--metal tables, basins, cabinets, etc. The other had two large beds and it was fun to sleep up there sometimes. John did that more often than I did--"a boy thing" perhaps. Both were screened in, with large wooden awnings/covers?? that protected the screens and the cabins in the winter, and were propped up in the summer. There may have been a third of these better kept cabins up the hill from these two. If so, it also was a sleeping cabin, but we didn't use it much, if ever. (It would have been great though for the crowds that used to come up with Burr and Marian, Gordon and Doug.)
4. We had a bonfire pit at the end of the lawn, and loved to have fires out
there and have Cliff and Linda come up from Cressman's with their guitar and mandolin and sing songs by the hour there. (Their son Sonny always came along, and loved to sing too--although speech and tune were a challenge for him, as was walking with his cerebral palsy.) We also had a stone barbecue near the front of the house--where the paving went in to the front door, and that saw many barbecues that were followed by singing at the bonfire pit. "Those were the days, my friend...."
5. I think you have the barn just about right--dance hall upstairs, buggies, stalls for horses, etc. downstairs. There we loved the "surrey with the fringe on top" and the buck board cart (that's the wrong word, but I can't remember the right one.) There were also lots of old treasures both upstairs and downstairs, as you and Burr remembered well.
6. A very, very minor detail: In the upstairs bedroom that I named as
"Sally's room", the two beds were both rather large and were beside each
other with the window between, not with their feet facing each other as
think it is in your schema. Also on the back porch of the big house where the bathroom is, the doors to the bathroom were toward the meadow side, not the house side, with the shower and toilet on the house side of the bathroom, probably so the pipes were just a little less likely to freeze in winter, or whatever.)
216 (and counting) of Lena and CB’s descendants cherish this unique place on earth, keep alive its stories and lore and continue to breath new life into the meanings of this Shaver homestead that they know as Pine Ridge.
