In the minds of the emigrants who came here, California could be a rich gold mine, a limitless expanse of wheat, or even the gateway to Pacific adventures. To their children, California was just one big playground.
Recalling her childhood on a southern California ranch, Sarah Bixby Smith conjurs a place where kids were busy, contented, and most of all, adventurous.
Sometimes we went down to the orchard, where all summer long we could pick ripe apples and pears; and occasionally, as a rare treat, we were allowed to go barefoot and play in the river, reduced to its summer safe level. One day, after having built elaborate sand houses and laid out rival gardens, planted with bits of every shrub and water weed we could find, we went to a place deep enough for us to sit down in water up to our necks, where, grinning over the top of the water, we enjoyed an impromptu bath. We hung our clothes on a willow until they were dry and then wondered what uncanny power made our mothers know that we had been wet. . . .
The sum of child happiness cannot be told. How good it is to wander in the sun, smelling wild celery, or the cottonwood leaves, nibbling yellow, pungent mustard blossoms while pushing through the tangle; how good to feel a pulled tule give as the crisp, white end comes up from the mud and water, or to bury one's face in the flowing sulphur well for a queer tasting drink, or to cut un-numbered jack-o-lanterns while sitting high on a great pile of pumpkins of every pretty shape and color, and singing in the salty air; how good to wander in the sun, to be young and tireless, to have cousins and ranches!
Sarah Bixby Smith's descriptons of 1880s California appear in her 1925 memoir Adobe Days.
No matter where they're from, emigrants to California often draw on the strength of their families for mutual support. In the 1850's relying on family could be especially important.
Born nearSan Juan Bautista in 1871, Sarah Bixby-Smith was the daughter of an emigrant from Maine who established a sheep ranch where resided the families of three Bixby relatives. As told in her 1925 memoir, Adobe Days, however, domestic life there demanded a good deal of mutual accommodation.
The plan for housekeeping in this large establishment was for each wife in turn to take charge for a month. It was no small undertaking to provide for the household, with the growing flocks of children and the frequent addition of visiting sisters, cousins, or aunts. The women involved, being individuals, had differing capacities and ideas, and each had the desire for a home managed according to her own idea. Imagine the difficulties when a corps of servants must accept the first of each month a new mistress! Imagine sitting down to every meal with six parents, twelve children, and half a dozen guests! Inevitably the communal plan could not but fail to be altogether ideal. For a wonder it held together in a fashion for fifteen years, but there were many trips to San Francisco to relieve the strain, or long visits of mothers and children in Maine, that I guess might not have been so frequent or of so long a duration if there had been individual homes for the cousin-partners.
Sarah Bixby-Smith's family soon left the complicated domestic life of their San Juan Bautista ranch for the "small and humble town" of Los Angeles, where her family eventually became some of the largest landowners in Southern California.
In the 19th century, emigrants from Maine—the Bixby's—bought up huge plots of land throughout California, perfect settings for children intent on worrying the hapless animals they discovered there.
Remembering 1880s Los Angeles, Sarah Bixby Smith emphasized her fascination with the land, with poppies and bananas. . . and even so-called tarantulas.
Between the weeds and bushes there were bare spots of ground where, by careful searching, one might find faint circles about the size of a "two-bit" piece. Wise ones knew that these marked the trapdoors of tarantula nests. It was sport to try to pry one open, with mother spider holding it closed. We young vandals would dig out the nests, interested for a moment in the silky lining and the tiny babies and then would throw away the wrecked home of the gorgeous black velvet creatures that did no harm on that open hillside.
Sarah Bixby Smith grew up with a generous spirit and a deep appreciation for a cherished past, which she records in her 1925 memoir Adobe Days.
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