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By David Stuart, on February 22nd, 2012
Museums are like icebergs—only a small portion of most museums' collections are visible to the public. The bulk remains "underwater," stored for future exhibits and preserved for the benefit of future generations. And sometimes fascinating artifacts are visible, but under-appreciated.
 Davis-type windmill adapted for domestic use, D. M. Drais farm, Farmington, Calif. Such is the case with the wooden Improved Davis Windmill currently displayed—but easily overlooked—on the inside north wall of the Micke Building at the San Joaquin County Museum. Windmills of this kind were often called "Italian Windmills." Here's the story behind that artifact.
Truck farming was the entry point into self-directed agriculture in San Joaquin County from about 1900 into the 1940s, especially for immigrant Italians and Japanese. Truck farmers were small-acreage family farmers who grew a variety of vegetables and fruits that they delivered by small trucks and horse-drawn wagons for sale at the Stockton Growers' Market.
The barriers to entry into truck farming were low compared to larger-scale agriculture. Relatively little money was needed to lease a small plot of land, acquire simple farm equipment—typically small implements pulled by a team of horses or a small tractor—and purchase a small truck or wagon to transport the produce to market. However, the "sweat equity" was high. Usually, the entire family worked long hours because there were no hired workers.
Truck farmers grew season-specific crops year round to use best their family labor force, to spread the risk of crop failure or low prices, and to have an ongoing cash flow. Thus they introduced many new varieties of vegetables and fruits that came to represent the diverse agriculture of this region.
John S. Davis was one of the earliest windmill makers in San Joaquin County. By 1858, he was manufacturing about sixty windmills per year. In 1883, Richard F. Wilson purchased the company and renamed it the Davis Regulating Windmill Company of Stockton. The Stockton Daily Evening Mail in 1891 called Wilson's Davis Regulating Windmill Company "one of the most successful windmill manufacturers in the country."
Wilson's company made a twenty-two foot wooden windmill called the Improved Davis Windmill. The windmill could be connected to a rocker arm between two wells—one pump worked on the down stroke and the other on the return stroke. It was said that the Improved Davis could lift five hundred gallons of water per minute, or more than two hundred thousand gallons per day. The Improved Davis Windmill in the Museum's collection may be the only surviving example. A Linden truck farmer used it to irrigate his vegetable garden.
The Improved Davis Windmill and other large windmills—some as large as thirty feet in diameter—were called "Italian windmills" because Italian truck farmers used them extensively. Many truck farmers continued to use these wooden windmills long after the switch to galvanized metal mills because the metal models required more frequent maintenance. Wooden windmills, which were ultimately replaced by gasoline and electrical pumps, often lasted thirty years or more.
These giant windmills were typically mounted on twenty- to thirty-foot towers. Many of the Improved Davis Windmills had no weather vanes or rudders—the example in the Museum collection has one—so they had to be tied into the wind with ropes attached to a tail shaft. When the wind blew too hard, they were secured edgewise to the wind to protect the fragile wood fans.
For protection from winter storms, owners often disassembled the giant wooden mills and stored them flat in the fields or tied them upright to the towers. This was a difficult task and was treated like a "barnraising"—friends and neighbors pitched in to help. After the workers secured the windmill, they brought out wine and the gathering became social. The work party moved from neighbor to neighbor until all the windmills were put away. In the spring, they brought out block and tackle and reassembled the big windmills.
We hope to include the Improved Davis Windmill in an upcoming exhibition on truck farming. If any readers have additional information, stories, or photos on the Improved Davis Windmill, "Italian windmills," or truck farming in San Joaquin County, please comment or contact me by e-mail at davidstuart@sanjoaquinhistory.org.
David Stuart is the executive director and CEO of the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum.
By Leigh Johnsen, on February 15th, 2012
Remember the San Joaquin County Obituary Index Project? (If you don’t, see the entries for June 16, 2011, and October 12, 2011, below.) Well, work on the project has ended successfully! At last, genealogists, historians, and other researchers can view online citations for or copies of newspaper obituaries in San Joaquin County that date from the 1850s to the 1990s.
 Obituary fodder: newspaper from 1851. The Project is based on data taken from a collection of approximately 170,000 index cards compiled late in the twentieth century by members of the staff at the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library.
The San Joaquin County Obituary Index Project represents a collaborative effort by the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library, the San Joaquin Genealogical Society, staff in the IT Department at San Joaquin Delta College, and the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum. Another indispensable partner was FamilySearch.org, which not only provided an infrastructure for the task of indexing, but also integrated the results into its general database.
Special thanks also go to approximately seven hundred volunteers, many affiliated with one or more of the partners, who during the closing months of 2011 tirelessly transferred raw data from the index cards into the online database of FamilySearch.org.
Anyone interested in the San Joaquin County Obituary Index is encouraged to visit FamilySearch.org, where they can search for specific names or browse selected segments, such as the County’s Obituary Index.
The Society is pleased to announce completion of this online research tool.
By David Stuart, on February 8th, 2012
I find it amazing that San Joaquin County was for fifty years or so the capital of earthmoving equipment. The County’s industrial, transportation, and financial infrastructures came into existence shortly after the Gold Rush, during the dry-farmed grain era. But it was the reclamation of rich peat soils of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the switch to irrigated, intensive agriculture that provided a need for new kinds of heavy machinery that inventors and entrepreneurs like Robert G. LeTourneau and Benjamin Holt helped fill.
 Testing gasoline-powered Caterpillar prototype in Mormon Slough, Stockton, California, ca. 1906. Benjamin Holt (1849-1920), president of the Holt Manufacturing Company of Stockton, is credited with perfecting the design of the track-type tractor, or Caterpillar. Holt’s three older brothers came to California from New Hampshire in the 1860s and set up family businesses in San Francisco. Young Benjamin joined them in 1883, and with his brother, Charles, formed the Stockton Wheel Company. The Holts originally manufactured wooden wagon wheels, then added combined harvesters in 1886 and steam traction engines in 1890.
The first practical field trial of a track-type tractor took place along Mormon Slough near the Holt Manufacturing Company plant in Stockton in November 1904. The "Caterpillar" was developed to work the deep peat soils of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, but it revolutionized equipment used in agriculture, construction, road building, and logging around the world.
For the 1904 test in Stockton, Benjamin Holt had engineers remove the rear wheels of a steam-powered traction engine and replace them with a set of tracks he had designed. The machine performed well in the mud of Mormon Slough, so Holt had it taken to the Holt ranch on Roberts Island, west of Stockton, where it operated successfully all winter.
Holt Manufacturing Company sold its first steam-powered track-type traction engines in 1906. That same year, Benjamin and his nephew, Pliny Holt, tested the first gasoline-powered track-type machines, and the Company incorporated the Aurora Engine Company (named after its location on Aurora Street in Stockton) to produce gasoline engines. Within two years, the Holt Manufacturing Company had sold more Caterpillars than all the wheeled steam traction engines it had produced the previous fifteen years.
The San Joaquin County Historical Museum will present the Benjamin Holt story as part of a long-term exhibit on the history of earthmoving equipment in the County. You can currently see a preview in the Museum’s Brown-Jones Building. Please contact me by e-mail (davidstuart@sanjoaquinhistory.org) if you would like to donate funds, ideas, stories, photos, or artifacts for the final exhibit.
David Stuart is the executive director and CEO of the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum.
By Leigh Johnsen, on February 1st, 2012
Chances are, you may not recognize the objects in the photograph below. It's highly unlikely that you know the story behind them, either. But I can almost guarantee that you will never forget either the images or the story after you read the next few paragraphs.
I've worked at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum for about three and one-half years. Shortly after I arrived, one of the maintenance workers took me on a tour that included some dark, hidden corners. There we came across several canisters of film sitting quietly on a steel shelf.
"Hmm," I said to myself, "these don't belong here." So I grasped the stack and lifted it, planning to place it in a more suitable place, alongside other reels of film. This action released a cloud of foul-smelling powder, so I quickly set the containers down. Masked and gloved, we returned to the shelf and carried the stack—at arm's length—outside the Museum.
It didn't take long for us to discover what had happened.
Early in the twentieth century, most motion picture film was based on nitrate, a substance also used to make gunpowder. Over time, this kind of film can decompose, discolor, get sticky, and blister. Eventually, gooey bubbles can appear and a brown froth form that turns into fine powder—which catches fire easily. In fact, film based on nitrate has been known to ignite spontaneously.
This was the powder we smelled—a stinky, highly acidic, flammable dust that in one of its forms had already eaten through the wall of one canister.
You don't want this to happen in an archives, library, or museum, but it could have been much worse. In December 1978, construction workers at a National Archives facility filled with nitrate film accidentally started a fire with electric power tools. The flames spread quickly, destroying almost thirteen million feet of film.
Whoever accepted our reels into the Museum sometime in the distant past apparently didn't understand these dangers. Nor did they appreciate the need to keep them in a controlled environment, monitor them, and replace them with safer copies, if necessary. But we certainly know now.
Our experience with these canisters has added an entire universe of new meaning to the term explosive films, and we have learned to be much more careful.
By David Stuart, on January 25th, 2012
The story of George Shima, the Japanese immigrant who became known as the "Potato King" of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, is fairly well known. But did you know there was an earlier, Chinese immigrant also known as a "Potato King?" Here’s the story of Chin Lung.
 Unidentified Asian laborer with sacked potatoes, Woodward Island, ca. 1928 At the turn of the twentieth century (1901) the grain market had fallen on hard times, but Los Angeles investors, wealthy from citrus, real estate, and oil—as well as other investors from the East and from Europe—began reclaiming the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. These investors were soon leasing the Delta peat lands to energetic farmers, many of them Asian immigrants. A major crop planted on these rich peat farmlands was potatoes and Stockton became known throughout the United States as the "great western potato mart."
Chin Lung was one of the first Chinese farmers to lease San Joaquin Delta farmland. In September 1901, he planted a crop of potatoes on his eleven-hundred-acre lease just west of Stockton. Chin’s potato crop hit the Eastern markets almost two months ahead of all his competitors from other areas and he suddenly became wealthy.
Delta potatoes not only reached the market before those from other growing regions, they could also be grown in the rich peat soil with little or no fertilizer, and they had a pale skin that Eastern customers found attractive.
Potato yields in the San Joaquin Delta were significantly higher than elsewhere in California or the United States. The 1910 Agricultural Census reported the average potato yield in other regions of California to be 147 bushels per acre, whereas the San Joaquin County yield was between three hundred and eight hundred bushels per acre!
In 1901, when Chin first planted potatoes, there were almost two thousand Chinese in San Joaquin County—the fourth largest concentration in California, surpassed only by San Francisco, Alameda, and Sacramento counties. Half of them were farmers or farm laborers.
In spite of racist editorials and exclusionary laws, the Chinese were generally liked by the Whites of this region. The Stockton city attorney, for example, spoke in favor of further Chinese immigration and he and his law partner helped Asians ineligible for citizenship form corporations so they could continue farming.
Census records show that in 1910 Chinese farmers were leasing 5,381 acres of San Joaquin County farmland. By 1920, the acreage leased by Chinese had increased to about 13,500 acres.
Between 1901 and 1925, Chin Lung farmed at least one thousand acres each season and was the principal employer of Chinese laborers in San Joaquin County. In 1910, Chin purchased twenty-two hundred acres of Delta farmland of his own, northwest of Stockton near White Slough—the first agricultural property in San Joaquin County purchased by a Chinese. Two years later, Chin purchased the nearby Shin Kee Tract, named after a store he owned on Sacramento Street in San Francisco. Chin lost the store and his agricultural holdings in California and Oregon by 1923 as a result of the Alien Land Acts of 1920 and 1923.
If any readers have additional information about the life of Chin Lung or photographs of him or his operations, please comment or contact me at davidstuart@sanjoaquinhistory.org. I hope the Museum can tell his story in an upcoming exhibit.
David Stuart is the executive director and CEO of the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum.
By Leigh Johnsen, on January 18th, 2012
Have you ever wanted to drive a big old tractor, the kind that shakes windows, blasts eardrums, and gives off enough pollution to destroy the ozone? I'll confess that I have. How about something really old, like a 1920 Holt 75? Now, pretend you've found one. How do you start and drive it, let alone repair and keep it running? It's not as though former operators and mechanics from 1920 can be speed dialed for advice.
Enter the Agricultural Technology Collection, in the archives of the San Joaquin County Historical Museum. As its name indicates, the collection brings together an assortment of publications that address the assembly, operation, and repair of old agricultural machinery. Recently, Nick Jackson, an intern and graduate student from the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University, finished arranging, describing, and preparing a guide to the collection. In addition, he coded an electronic version that can be found at the Online Archive of California.
This is a large collection. It includes more than one thousand items. In fact, it's so big that the Museum burned through two workers making it available for patrons. The summer before last, Matthew Keeling, a history major at California State University, Chico, started organizing and describing it before needing to cut his efforts short to head back to school.
So what's in the collection? Here's a sample of brand names it includes: Allis-Chalmers, Blackwelder Manufacturing, Buda Company, C.L. Best Tractor Company, Caterpillar, Cleveland Tractor, Cummins Engine, John Deere, Graham-Paige Motors, Harris Harvester, Holt Manufacturing, International Harvester, and Yuba Manufacturing.
The Museum holds other agricultural technology publications, as well. Some can be found scattered among other collections, and a small number of related catalogs, brochures, and assorted promotional publications are still waiting to be arranged and described.
The Agricultural Technology Collection promises to be especially useful for a group of tractor buffs who gather regularly at the Museum to restore antique machinery. However, anybody interested in the operation, repair, and maintenance of such equipment is invited to view items in the collection—by appointment—at the Museum's library.
Once again, the online version of the finding aid can be viewed at the Online Archive of California.
By Leigh Johnsen, on January 11th, 2012
Have you ever wondered about the history of the Pledge of Allegiance? I know I did after coming across the photograph to the left.
This image comes from a collection of photographs and documents that U.C. Cooperative Extension agricultural advisors in San Joaquin County gave to the Museum some time ago. It shows a group of women participating in a retreat that the University sponsored in the Tahoe area. The year is 1929 and the ladies are wives and daughters of San Joaquin County farmers. Writing on the back of the photograph verifies that they are, in fact, pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States.
These are not ordinary salutes. Look closely and you’ll recognize one stage in a ritual recommended by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), Baptist minister, Christian Socialist, and author of the Pledge of Allegiance. The so-called "Bellamy Salute" went like this:
At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the Flag the military salute—right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all." At the words, "to my Flag," the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side. (Youth’s Companion 65 (1892): 446-47)
Bellamy’s Salute dates from 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s voyage. In September of that year, Bellamy published an article in the Youth’s Companion, a popular children’s magazine, suggesting adoption of the Salute and Pledge to promote national unity. The idea caught on, and public schools started to use them the next month. However, the U.S. Congress didn’t officially recognize them until half a century later, in June 1942.
The Museum’s photograph offers a glimpse into an often-forgotten era. In December 1942, just half a year after official recognition, the United States abandoned this version of the Salute due to obvious similarities its final stage shared with a common Nazi greeting. Then, twelve years later, pressure from a cluster of religious groups convinced Congress to insert the words "under God" into the otherwise-secular text. The Pledge and Salute we use today reflect these and other minor changes.
Sometimes we assume that American’s most venerated institutions and rituals have existed unchanged since the founding of the Republic. However, this photograph points toward something else: a valued ritual relatively young in age and a delivery and message that have changed significantly over time.
Looking at this photo reminds me to expect the unexpected whenever I explore the past.
By Leigh Johnsen, on January 4th, 2012
The San Joaquin County Historical Society is pleased to announce that it has reached a significant milestone with its ongoing digitization project in partnership with Internet Archive, a nonprofit corporation based in San Francisco.
Completion of this stage enables visitors to the Web sites of the Society and Internet Archive to view one-of-a-kind volumes of official San Joaquin County assessors’ plat books covering the entire span of years from 1876 to 1919. (Click here for index.) Not only will this development enhance accessibility, it will also guard the originals from damaging wear and tear and help preserve them for future generations.
Each of the plat books measures approximately two feet by two feet and contains up to seventy unique maps meticulously drawn in color by public officials. Readers of the maps will find boundary lines, property owners’ names, and figures for assessed valuation and actual taxes. In addition, they will often see drawings of prominent buildings and other man-made objects, as well as geographic features such as rivers, streams, and irrigation ditches, many of which have long since disappeared.
Online availability of this material will prove useful for a wide range of potential users, such as surveyors, government officials and administrators, attorneys, property owners, historians, and genealogists.
This development marks a major milestone in a broader effort to place historic documents from the Museum online. Plans for the next, more ambitious stage, call for digitization of selected individual maps from the Museum’s collections.
Funding to support this project has come from generous San Joaquin County residents and professional historians in the Sacramento area. Readers interested in sponsoring the next stage are encouraged to contact me by e-mail (leighjohnsen@sanjoaquinhistory.org) or telephone (209-331-2055).
By Leigh Johnsen, on December 28th, 2011
The past always holds surprises. Several weeks ago, Stockton historian Alice van Ommeren started an online discussion among local archivists about "wanted postcards," postcards that law enforcement officials from an earlier age circulated by mail hoping to catch criminals. That exchange reminded me of a scrapbook I found in the Museum’s collection some time ago.
 Wanted poster from Stockton, November 1916 The book is about three inches thick and its cover measures around twelve by sixteen inches. On its front are the words Scrapbook Elkhorn Township. The scrapbook covers the years 1916 to 1917, and it holds not only wanted postcards of the kind that interest Alice, but also posters, telegrams, and other documents that describe lawbreakers. It was apparently compiled by law enforcement agents in Elkhorn Township, the area around Lodi, who received and sent such messages as part of a statewide network.
Whatever official purposes those messages served, they also left glimpses into a parallel universe on the other side of the law, alongside what we often consider "the good old days."
Many of the documents contain photographs of lawbreakers or suspected lawbreakers, and most include physical descriptions. All of them tell stories, often in unsettling detail. They tell about murder, arson, larceny, assault, embezzlement, burglary, abduction, rape, child abuse, and escape from prison. They appeal for the return of missing minors, and they tell about husbands who left families for parts unknown. Above all, they tell stories of people who couldn’t seem to find their way living within the boundaries of civil society.
In June 1916,for example, a wanted poster arrived from the sheriff of Tulare County. It offered a reward of 250 dollars for the arrest of one Bert Shaffer, who was wanted for a murder in Three Rivers. According to the poster, Shaffer was approximately forty years old, stood about five feet nine inches, and weighed around 160 pounds. Shaffer had "medium" complexion, dark brown hair, and a mustache.
Now, close your eyes and have someone read the next part of Shaffer’s description out loud. "The right eye looks dim," reads the poster, "as if covered with scum, and when looking at you points to the right, like an artificial eye. The second finger on one of his hands is slightly stiff, and when walking his shoulders move up and down."
The sheriff goes on to describe Shaffer as an "industrious worker," who nevertheless "frequents saloons whenever he has money" and "is likely to be arrested for drunkenness." When last seen, Shaffer wore "a brown hat, gray trousers and a pair of new tan work shoes (No. 9)."
Get the picture?
Sometimes we idealize the past. We see in our minds happily married couples with large broods of smiling children. We imagine God-fearing families that attend church each weekend, hold to traditional values, find steady employment, and successfully weather whatever bumps in the road of life they encounter.
But this scrapbook tells a different story. It points to a society laced with deviant, dangerous people on the run, people whose presence shattered norms and threatened the well-being of those who lived within the mainstream. It suggests that life on the fringes could be uncaring, depressing, brutal, and downright violent.
I don’t know whatever happened to Shaffer, but his story has set me wondering: Were "the good old days" really all that good? I honestly have my doubts. Obviously, I can’t go back in time. But if I could, I would lock my doors, take care with strangers, and know how to reach the police—just as I do now.
By David Stuart, on December 21st, 2011
There are two remaining stereotypes that I’d like to address. First, that the Indians from San Joaquin County area were nothing special.
It is remarkable enough that the ancestors of the Native people from what is now San Joaquin County settled this area perhaps thirteen thousand years ago and developed lifeways suited to a new and changing environment. But in my view, the Native immigrants—probably from what is now northern Nevada—who came to this area about five thousand years ago started something really special.
 Kevin Gover, director of the Museum of the American Indian, displays flag of California Valley Miwok Tribe. These people developed a rich culture (called by archaeologists the “Windmiller culture” after the ranch owner of the first site at which it was studied). The culture was based on using the rich resources of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the river habitats in this area—the Cosumnes, Mokelumne, Calaveras, San Joaquin, and the Sacramento Rivers—and it included trade relations with other regions and quality artisanship in basketry, bone, shell, and stone.
This way of life spread from here into the East Bay and South Bay Areas and up to Sacramento. It was one of the most successful and spectacular regional traditions of prehistoric California.
By a couple thousand years ago, the Native groups in this area had intensified many of the elements of the Windmiller tradition. The descendants of those original immigrants became the historic Miwok people, groups of which later spread from this original homeland into the North Bay Area and the Sierra Nevada foothills above San Joaquin County and south past Yosemite.
The historic Miwok nations that lived here when Europeans arrived had been joined by Yokuts nations in what is now the southern portion of the County. The Miwok and Yokuts groups in this area so effectively managed natural resources (see my previous blog) that they had the highest population densities of any Native groups in North American north of Central Mexico. They had higher populations than the horse cultures on the Great Plains or any of the farming cultures of the Southwest or East.
And as pointed out in the prior blog, this area was home to the noteworthy Native patriot Estanislao (and many others) and was the site of the most successful Native resistance to the Spanish/Mexican invasion of Native homelands in California. To be sure, the efforts of those gallant freedom fighters was undermined by the continued impact of European diseases and the onslaught of the Gold Rush.
Which leads to stereotype two: That the Native cultures that developed in what is now San Joaquin County have died out. Although it is true that the Native nations here on the Valley floor were almost completely wiped out by disease; removal to the Spanish missions in the Bay Area; and the murder, mayhem, and habitat destruction of the Gold Rush, there are remaining descendants.
Current Miwok and Yokuts groups with past ties to San Joaquin County include the following:
- Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-wuk Indians (near Ione, Amador County, 1927)
- California Valley Miwok Tribe (Stockton, formerly Sheep Ranch Rancheria, Calaveras County, 1916)
- Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians (near Jamestown, Tuolumne County, 1908)
- Ione Band of Miwok Indians (near Ione, Amador County)
- Jackson Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians (near Jackson, Amador County, 1893)
- Shingle Springs Rancheria (Verona Tract) (Northern Sierra Miwok, near Shingle Springs, El Dorado County, 1916)
- Tule River Indian Tribe of the Tule River Reservation (Yokuts and others, near Porterville, Tulare County, 1873)
- Tuolumne Band of the Me-Wuk Indians of the Tuolumne Rancheria (near Tuolumne, Tuolumne County, 1910)
- Wilton Rancheria (Plains Miwok, near Wilton, Sacramento County, 1927)
Another important organization is the Northern Valley Yokuts Nototomne Cultural Preservation Group.
In 1991, the California Indian Basketweavers Association (CIBA) was founded. It continues as an important nonprofit organization with a mission of preserving and promoting traditional California Indian basketry. Part of fulfilling the CIBA mission has been efforts to preserve, tend, and properly gather native plants that provide the materials for baskets.
A number of Native language preservation efforts have mobilized in recent decades, including the Advocates of Indigenous California Language Survival. The California Valley Miwok Tribe headquartered in Stockton is among those working to continue its language heritage.
Traditional religion, dance, and foods have also continued as important elements in the lives of contemporary Native people in this area.
I’ve often lamented that most history museums treat Native cultures as “past tense,” at least implying that they are extinct and ignoring cultural continuity and the presence of contemporary Native peoples. Perhaps the Indian casinos have mitigated this stereotype, but they have created their own stereotypes, too.
I hope the San Joaquin County Historical Society will continue to educate the public about all these stereotypes of the Native peoples of this area, both in the updated exhibits supported by the Nature Education Facilities Program grant, as well as in future publications and programs.
David Stuart is the executive director and CEO of the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum.
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