San Joaquin County Historical Society & Museum

The Art of the Label

Brianna Anderson — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:22:55 +0000

Ever looked at the sides of the boxes of fruit or wine in the grocery store as they're restocking the shelves? Did you notice the small stamped labels on the side? I never did—I never even gave those labels a moment's notice—until I began researching and putting together an exhibit on fruit crate labels currently on display at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum.

Fruit in labeled crates heads east, ca. 1935.

In the beginning, fruit crate labels were a way for farmers to advertise and entice customers. With the construction of the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, and Union Railroads, goods from one coast became available on the other.

Before the 1880s, fruit crate labels were branded trademarks and images stenciled onto the side of a wooden crate. Seeing an excellent way to advertise to consumers who couldn't see their product outright, farmers began to embellish their labels using a process called stone lithography. At first, this process was exceedingly time-consuming, requiring many steps to complete. As the industry developed, new methods like Ben Day Screens and Half-Tones revolutionized the label-making process. These processes made producing new labels faster and more cost-efficient.

The labels themselves feature a variety of themes, from the Old West to pin-up models. The early years of label design were heavily influenced by a romanticized version of naturalism. The images showed consumers California as people believed and wanted it to be. Featuring pictures of flowers, birds, palm trees, and even farmers' houses, the labels did just that. Building upon these themes and transforming them to fit the times, the 1920s quickly became the heyday of the fruit crate label. These labels played upon the imagination of the consumer and depicted exotic places and even fairy tale characters.

The 1950s saw a decline in artistic label production. Farmers switched from wooden crates to cardboard boxes and paper labels were no longer used. The art of the label ended up where it began, with simple labels stenciled on the side of a box.

With this in mind, I began scavenging boxes of fruit crate labels at the Museum trying to find the most unique and the most artistic labels. What I had thought would be an easy task turned into the most difficult part of the whole endeavor. I simply could not choose which labels to put back and which to display. They were all so beautiful. Focusing on wine labels helped to narrow down the selection, but even then it proved difficult. Finally, I had to call in reinforcements to help me choose. With the hard part over, I began designing the exhibit itself using not only the labels but also lithographic plates. Adding some grapes in the case and wooden crates next to it completed the exhibit and gave it the panache the labels deserve.

Brianna Anderson is a volunteer at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum. She graduated last year from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and currently studies in the graduate program of the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University.

A Tractor for Kids

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:16:13 +0000

Most children I know are fascinated with heavy machinery. I think they imagine the machines giving them vast amounts of power far beyond the ability of their tiny bodies. Even my daughter, who was a stuffed-animals kind of kid, had a special toy truck of her own. I can still hear her humming to herself as she loaded her animals into her tractor-trailer and navigated the hallways and rooms in our house.

A tractor for kids . . . and the young at heart.

Now kids who visit the Museum can pretend with the real thing. They can hoist themselves into the seat of an honest-to-goodness tractor, jab at the controls, pull the levers, and roar at the top of their lungs. They can imagine themselves digging up vineyards or tearing down buildings, and they can do it with permission from adults, who usually don't take kindly to such behavior.

They might even want their picture taken as they wreak imaginary havoc.

The San Joaquin County Historical Museum holds a lot of antique agricultural machines, many of them rare and fragile. Touching them—let alone sitting on them—is strictly forbidden. But workers at the Museum recently rehabilitated a small Caterpillar tractor especially for the enjoyment of young visitors. The tractor is just the right size, and a stairway prepared as part of an Eagle Scout project helps ensure that they reach the seat safely.

For the record, the machine you see in the photograph is a Caterpillar Thirty, and it dates from 1930. Operating at its prime, it had thirty horsepower and apparently spent most of its life farming on Mandeville Island, in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. At present, however, it lacks any means of propulsion and is destined to spend the rest of its days sitting at the Museum, looking beautiful and baiting imaginative youngsters.

The Museum's "Photo-op" Caterpillar Thirty awaits admirers during regular hours: Wednesday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Racing Cars in Stockton

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:10:09 +0000

I like old photographs. I like them especially when I know something about them—for example, the names of the subjects and the context. When I don't, I'm tempted to make up imaginary stories that may or may not be grounded in reality.

Leon Clancy Collect., S.J. Co. Hist. Museum

Several months ago, I came across the photograph at left. It sits in the Museum's archives. Nothing we have in our records tells us the location, the names of the people, and the nature of the occasion. For all I knew, it could have been a photograph of Barney Oldfield at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Or was that just my overactive imagination?

A question from a patron recently brought me back to earth: Was this photograph actually taken in Stockton sometime early in the twentieth century? According to research of his in the Stockton Record, there was a track in Stockton in or around 1918 on which women were known to race cars. One of them was named Ruth Wightman, and she died there in a tragic accident in March of that year.

Women? Racing cars? In 1918? That sounds rather daring to me—especially in 1918. Who was Ruth Wightman, anyway, and what's her story? Was she racing against other women alone, or also against men? And why were women racing at all? Did the scarcity of men, many off serving their country during World War I, somehow influence the makeup of the field?

My patron has other questions, as well. When was the track built? Was this the forerunner of today's Stockton 99 Speedway, which apparently started in 1947? And how many people did it hold? Above all, is there a book or article somewhere that not only tells its history but also affords glimpses into its appearance over time?

I'm afraid I've exhausted my resources here at the Museum. So, once again, I ask for your help. I welcome your online comments and e-mails sent to me at the following address: leighjohnsen@sanjoaquinhistory.org.

Lodi History Made Easier

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:20:24 +0000

One of the best-kept secrets of San Joaquin County may be the historic government records housed at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum. Knowledge that these resources exist often comes as a surprise to visitors. The Museum holds official records from the County of San Joaquin and the Cities of Stockton and Lodi that, together, span the years 1850 to 1997.

Members of the staff are pleased to announce that research in its historic Lodi City Records just got easier due to the addition of a guide recently posted on the Online Archive of California. The guide, viewable by clicking here, offers a searchable list of material in the collection, which spans the years 1907 to 1962.

During this period, Lodi matured into a thriving agricultural center with an increasingly sophisticated government, society, and physical infrastructure. Notable local developments early in the twentieth century included establishment of the Lodi Improvement Club (1905; later, Lodi Women's Club) and construction of an Opera House (1905), Library (1910), City Hall (1912), High School (1913), and jail and first city park (1914).

The collection, which the Lodi City Council gave to the Museum in 2010, includes material from the City's assessor, clerk, treasurer, and police, and as well as the Public Works Department. The kinds of documentation it contains range from correspondence, tax assessments, minutes, reports, oaths of office, and hospital records to maps, diagrams, contracts, and a scrapbook.

Members of the public are welcome to research material in the Lodi City Records by appointment. To arrange a visit, send me a message at leighjohnsen@sanjoaquinhistory.org or phone me at (209) 331-2055.

The Great Register of San Joaquin County

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:42:42 +0000

Sometimes I marvel at the amount of data floating around "out there." Any stranger who knows where to look can discover where I live (and have lived), my telephone number, my age, and the names of members in my family. And that's just the beginning.

Have you ever wondered how different things were in the past?

Searching the Great Register.

The Stockton-San Joaquin County Library recently gave the Museum a collection of official records spanning the years 1866 to 1946 that suggests at least some similarities. Starting in 1866, California state law required all county clerks to keep meticulous records of registered voters. At the beginning, they entered these names into enormous bound volumes known as Great Registers, and they compiled new versions every few years to keep their records current.

Here's one way those volumes could be used. Let's say you're a San Joaquin County election official in 1880. A man who looks like a farmer comes in wearing bib overalls and claiming to be a registered voter from Tulare Township. He wants to cast his ballot (women couldn't vote then). He doesn't have a driver's license (automobiles didn't exist yet), and there are no official personal ID cards. So how do you know this person is who he claims to be? You consult the Great Register to see whether the data the man supposedly offered when he registered meshes with the story he currently tells.

This data can be a goldmine. Consider one San Joaquin County resident named Ole Bolsted. The Great Register for 1896 says he was twenty-nine years old in that year and that he lived at Number 2, East Weber Avenue, in Room 5, on the second floor of the "Russ House." It also records that he was five feet eleven inches tall; had a light complexion, blue eyes, and light brown hair; and was able to read English, write his own name, and mark an election ballot. According to the Great Register, he worked as a bartender in 1896, was born in Norway (so he probably spoke with an accent), and became a naturalized U.S. citizen on August 28, 1892, in San Joaquin County. In addition, he had a scar on his forehead.

Bolsted may have left other footprints, as well, especially if he married, paid taxes, ran for public office, committed a crime, had children, started a business, bought real estate, divorced, joined the army or navy, died and was buried in San Joaquin County, or did anything else the law required him to record or offered somebody else a compelling reason to write down.

That's a lot of potential detail, not all of which may have survived.

I won't pretend that the amount of personal data floating around in those pre-Internet days matches the level accessible at present. Nor will I claim it could be found as easily. But I am willing to venture that certain forces leading in that direction were already well in place by 1896—and that the Great Register can be seen as a significant landmark in that process.

So what did Bolsted and others of his time think about these things? I honestly have no idea. But I do know that nowadays genealogists and other students of the past have reason to rejoice, not only for the survival of such material but also for the forces that brought it into existence.

Henry Ford and Benjamin Holt

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:04:10 +0000

Henry Ford (1863–1947) is not one of my heroes. However, I do admire the innovations he brought to the assembly line. By the beginning of the twentieth century, many manufacturers already understood the value of interchangeable parts. But Ford was the first to apply this insight to the automotive industry. Using identical parts enabled him to streamline the process, lessen turnaround time, lower costs, and pass the savings on to consumers. As a result, Ford expanded his market.

Stockton inventor and businessman Benjamin Holt (1849–1920) was a contemporary of Ford. But according to evidence I came across at the Museum last week, he apparently followed a different path.

My evidence comes from a 1919 Holt 75 tractor that volunteers and Museum personnel are currently restoring. (For more details, see the blog entries for March 23 and June 8, 2011, and February 8, 2012, below.) At this point, it sits torn apart in at least a thousand pieces. Gears—large and small—tracks, shafts, engine parts, and mountains of nuts and bolts sit on workbenches, tables, and the floor throughout the shop.

The largest piece that can still be recognized as a tractor part is its enormous frame. I've attached a photograph of the rear section. (Click here for a larger image.) Look closely at the panel on the right. See the two rectangles cut into the steel plate? The edges are jagged and rough. Workers made them with a gas torch—while the tractor was still at the factory—to make way for other parts required to make the tractor run properly. See the square slightly to the left of and above the rectangles? Same story.

Now look closely at the lower rail on the left side. Using torches, workers trimmed sections of the inside edge to make way for large chains (think bicycle chains) that did their part to propel the tractor. As with the rectangles and square, I don't see these cuts as evidence of careful planning—or of standardization needed for assembly line precision.

The evidence I see instead tells me that the Museum's Holt 75 did not take shape on an assembly line like Ford's. To a large extent, it was still handcrafted. Fitting the pieces together still required craftsmen who could apply ingenuity and brute force, and at times customize individual parts with results that might vary from one tractor to another. At Holt, an approach like Ford's still apparently awaited the future.

Someday, the Museum's Holt 75 will be fully restored and operational. Whether and how soon this privately funded project reaches that goal depends largely on the generosity of volunteer workers and monetary contributions to the San Joaquin County Historical Society, the nonprofit organization that manages the Museum. To partner with the Society and help fund this restoration, contact me (leighjohnsen@sanjoaquinhistory.org) or Executive Director David Stuart (davidstuart@sanjoaquinhistory.org).

Filipino Asparagus Workers

David Stuart — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:48:19 +0000

Visitors to the Museum's Festival of Trees in recent years may remember seeing a jaunty (and well-decorated) red Massey–Harris tractor with gray wooden bins on each side. Agricultural workers in San Joaquin County once used this tractor, and they loaded its bins with harvested asparagus.

Asparagus sledding operator poses in field with harvested stalks.

Harvesting asparagus in an earlier age required a lot of skilled hand labor. Workers cut each spear individually using long asparagus knives expertly plunged into the soil to cut below the surface. The cut needed to be low enough to include some of the spear's fibrous lower end. Doing so helped preserve moisture during transit.

Before the use of tractors in the 1910s and 1920s, cut asparagus spears were picked up in the fields with a horse-drawn cart that carried an asparagus "sled." Loaded with their harvest, the sleds were rolled into sheds, where workers washed, trimmed, and graded the asparagus. Then they boxed the spears in distinctive "pyramid" wooded crates.

After the shift to mechanization, workers set the tires of modified small tractors like the Museum's deep in the furrows of the asparagus field to keep them running straight. The operator, sometimes called the "sled boy," set the throttle and trotted behind picking up cut spears and putting them into the sleds.

A variety of immigrant farm workers harvested asparagus through the years—Chinese, Japanese, and Mexicans—but immigrants from the Philippines provided most of the skilled labor during the County's heyday of asparagus. In 1930, more than 350 asparagus camps—with about seven thousand harvest workers—dotted the San Joaquin Delta.

They moved across the light, loose soil, teams of men, bent low, moving steadily as a tide. The men probed the soil with long steel knives, found the tender shoots, sliced them cleanly. The workers were covered, protected, head to foot. Straw hats worn low across the face. Bandanas across the mouth, tied behind the head. Shirts closed to the highest button. Pants stuffed into boots, or even taped to them. Often the peat soil would swirl around the men and the fine dust would invade their hair, noses, even their throats. Still the men moved forward, gathering the green stalks.

During the early years, for the pinoys, the young Filipino immigrants, Stockton was the center, the place to be. By 1930, Stockton was home, for at least part of the year, to perhaps a third of all the Filipinos in the United States. A pinoy could feel comfortable in Stockton. (Richard Hammer, "From the Philippines to the Delta," Stockton Record.)

In 1935, a federal law limited Filipino immigration to fifty per year and changed the status of all Filipinos previously admitted as U.S. nationals back to foreign aliens. A law in 1936 granted Filipinos free passage back to the Philippines—which encouraged them to leave the United States—but more than 90 per cent of California's Filipinos chose to stay.

The Filipinos of San Joaquin County supported each other in fraternal and civic groups such as the Legionnarios del Trabajo. Many Filipinos served gallantly in World War II, which encouraged the majority society to accept them, and were allowed to become citizens. To this day, they call San Joaquin County "home."

The Museum is developing an exhibition on the history of asparagus growing and processing. If you have ideas, stories, photos, or artifacts you would like included, please comment or e-mail me at davidstuart@sanjoaquinhistory.org.

David Stuart is the executive director and CEO of the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum.

Sex and the Gold Rush in San Joaquin County

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:41:37 +0000

What comes to your mind when you think about California's Gold Rush? Do you see yellow specks in the sand? Frenzied miners? Lawlessness? How about unattached women who practiced the oldest profession on earth? Knowledge about the presence of prostitutes in the gold fields is nothing new. But not until recently did I come across evidence in the Museum's archives that they practiced their trade in San Joaquin County.

Stockton, Calif., 1850.

Last week, I found myself looking into the Museum's Kerr–Hurd Family Collection at the request of a patron. One of the more prominent members was William Reed Kerr (1813–1861), a physician. Kerr studied medicine at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, got a license to practice in 1843, married, and moved to Ohio, where he and his family of four lived half a decade before heading to California's Gold Rush.

The family settled on a ranch east of Stockton after its arrival. Meanwhile, William became a "circuit–riding doctor." He also opened a pharmacy in Stockton—apparently unconcerned over what many of us today would see as a conflict of interest.

The Kerr–Hurd Collection includes William's ten–volume medical library. Reading the titles reminds me of how far medical science has gone over the past 150 years. Not only are there books on anatomy, physiology, and surgery, but the library also contains volumes on "botanic medicine" and phrenology, the ability to analyze one's character by feeling bumps on the head. In addition, there are three well–worn books—almost one–third of the library—devoted to what one delicately calls "Diseases of the Genital Organs."

It seems that somebody had venereal disease, and they wanted relief. This was apparently not an isolated problem, nor was the number of sufferers small. Judging from the evidence, Kerr faced significant demand for treatment, and he answered with a suitable level of attention. I'm willing to wager that the dozen years Kerr practiced medicine in Stockton—in part, picking up after the sins of the Forty–Niners—afforded him and his family a comfortable living.

So does Kerr's library offer ironclad evidence? I wouldn't give it the same weight as more direct evidence from photographs, diary entries, or legal judgments. But the glimpse it offers is consistent with the picture of disorder known to exist throughout Gold Rush California. San Joaquin County may have been a very special place, but it seems to have shared with the rest of the state the conditions and kind of people that all too often left careless miners with souvenirs they would never forget.

Historical Society Awarded Grant

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:02:46 +0000

The San Joaquin County Historical Society is pleased to announce receipt of an award from the California Preservation Needs Assessment Project. The award will support an analysis by outside professionals of preservation needs within the San Joaquin County Historical Museum’s archives and library. This award complements another, more general one that the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services granted the Museum a couple years ago to assess preservation needs throughout the Museum’s collections.

The California Preservation Assessment Project is designed to help small and mid-sized libraries and archives plan improvements in the care of their historical collections. All institutions in California with library and archival collections and that provide free public access were eligible to apply. The assessment will cover books and journals, archives and manuscripts, prints and photographs, moving images, sound recordings, architectural and cartographic records, and digital materials.

The resulting recommendations will serve as an important first step in the creation of a plan for enhanced collection care. Preservation assessments are also often valued as a required step preliminary to preservation grant funding.

The assessment will consist of four parts:

A site visit to the Museum to assess needs in its archives and library.
A pre-site visit questionnaire to elicit information before the arrival of a consultant.
A final management report that details findings and gives recommendations in priority order.
Follow-up advice on implementation.

Implementation of the assessment process is expected to begin in mid-April.

The California Preservation Assessment Project is managed by the California Preservation Program, supported in part by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, and administered by the California State Librarian.

Mining in San Joaquin County

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:00:09 +0000

I don't usually combine the words San Joaquin County and mining in the same sentence, even though Stockton can be considered the gateway to the so-called Southern Mines of the Mother Lode during the Gold Rush. But actual mining—here in San Joaquin County? When it comes to natural resources, I think of water and soil, not minerals dug from the ground.

Downtown Tracy, Calif., ca. 1900.

Well, my thinking has just shifted. Recently, an archivist from the Montana Historical Society contacted the Museum to announce the availability of research material from the Taylor-Knapp Company, a mining firm from Philipsburg, Montana. One of Taylor-Knapp's subsidiaries happened to be Teekay Mines, of Tracy, California. (Click here for the full description.)

According to the archivist, Taylor-Knapp began exploring the Ladd Mine, an abandoned manganese mine south of Tracy, in 1950. In June 1951, Teekay Mines opened as a subsidiary of Taylor-Knapp, and went on to produce manganese dioxide. Operations ended in 1955, but liquidation of Teekay Mines wasn't complete until the 1960s.

Historical material in the Teekay Mines segment of the collection includes administrative correspondence, employment records, financial papers, production documents, and documentation covering exploration, labor, machinery and equipment, marketing, publicity, government regulation, taxes, and tests.

Discovery of Teekay Mines sent me searching official historical records from the County of San Joaquin, many of which can be found in the Museum's archives. There, in an Index to Mining Locations, I discovered a dozen other mines, most claimed during the era of World War I. Someday, I hope to find out where these mines were located and what kinds of riches they held—or their owners hoped they would yield.

In addition, there's Carnegie, also located near Tracy. Named after American businessman Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie was home of Carnegie Brick and Pottery Company, which prospered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thanks to nearby deposits of coal and clay. Today, Carnegie is a state recreational area, and the only visible evidence of the brick works is its foundations.

Were there other mines in San Joaquin County? Perhaps some still operate. I welcome additional insights into San Joaquin County's mining history via e-mail sent to leighjohnsen@sanjoaquinhistory.org or comments attached to this blog entry.