These days we may wish our state representatives might work a bit harder for the public good, but compared to the statehouse boys in the early days, this bunch looks pretty good.
Caroline Nichols Churchill came to California in 1869 for her health. She travelled extensively throughout the state and formed some pretty strong opinions about its politics.
Vallejo was talked of as the capital of the State at one time. There were two sessions of the legislature commenced here, both adjourned to other places to finish—one to Benicia, . . . the other adjourned to Sacramento. In moving, the members were obliged to brave both mud and flood, which they did in order to secure the better facilities of the other towns in the way of business excitement, the variety of their fluids and for many unknown reasons. It was not expected by an over generous people that Vallejo could hold, for one entire session, that excitable body of highly intelligent men who are supposed to possess an order of brain that soars far beyond all earthly restraint. The legislature of those days was really a "Circumlocution Office," with the opportunity of putting in practice "How not to do it." Like boys in an ungraded country school, they were permitted to move their seats to any part of the State, in order to avoid what might occur to mar their happiness. . . .
Caroline Nichols Churchill published two volumes of California travel writing. The second, Over the Purple Hills, appeared in 1881.
Monterey's Whales
From Over the purple hills, or Sketches of travel in California, embracing all the important points usually visited by tourists, 1881. Read OnlineDownload PDF
"Monterey Wharf," photographer Joseph Kurtz Oliver, c. 1896. Larger.
Today, whale watching in Monterey Bay has become a fun and educational outing, but at one time visiting the central coast was a dangerous undertaking—at least for the whales.
Monterey Bay's shore-whaling industry was established in the early 1850s and did not end until 1971. As travel writer Caroline M. Nichols Churchill noted, fewer whales were visiting the Bay by the late 1880s after being targeted for their valuable blubber.
The port was formerly quite a resort for whales, which came in from the ocean for the chance of procuring food in the more shallow waters of the bay. It is said that with this creature the period of gestation commences in the North, and is finished in the Southern seas . . . they do not call as frequently as they did twenty years ago, because they have been mercilessly slaughtered here. However, I never hear of Monterey but that they have taken another whale, which the whole population turn out to see, as if it were a novelty . . . The beach is strewn with the bleaching bones of these sea monsters, and sections of vertebra a foot across are converted into sidewalks, stretching half a block, or the length of an adobe house. It is supposed that only inexperienced, restless young whales, which refuse to follow the advice of their seniors, now put in at this landing where so many have lost their lives.
Caroline M. Nichols Churchill wrote about Monterey's whales in her 1881 book, From Over the Purple Hills, or Sketches of Travel in California.
"Suffragettes holding an NWSA banner," photographer unknown, 1913. Larger.
In 1911, California became the sixth state to extend to women full voting rights, an event anticipated by travel writer and journalist Carole Nichols Churchill.
While visiting San Jose in the 1870s, Caroline Churchill was optimistic that women would eventually have the franchise, despite discovering some surprising limits on the freedom of women.
A regular live Woman Suffrage Association is organized here, and is in good running and working order. Though women by no means yet enjoy equal rights they hope to do so by-and-by.
A lady applied for a vacant postoffice clerkship, but was told that she could not serve Uncle Sam in that capacity, for she was not a citizen. When she replied that as she was born in the United States, she would really like to be informed whose citizen she was if not Uncle Sam's, the laughing rejoinder came, "Well, well, you're a non-voting citizen, and it don't pay to give clerkships to sich like. . . ."
Non-voting citizens are permitted to pay taxes, to give birth to and rear voters, aided or unaided, as the case may be; to wash, to sew, to teach and to scrub; to be tried by a jury of voting citizens, to be imprisoned, and to be responsible as voting citizens in every responsible way, and yet enjoy only the political privileges of serfs and aliens, idiots, criminals and lunatics.
Caroline Churchill's "Little Sheaves", a collection of letters from California and the west, appeared in 1874.
In the late 1800s, Santa Clara was a place of genial climate, lush flora, Elysian landscapes, elegant architecture and . . . exotic birds with too much to say.
Describing Santa Clara's Catholic institution of higher learning with the tourist in mind, Caroline M. Churchill describes a rather tranquil and agreeable place . . . until you reach the parrots.
Among those institutions which attract the attention of the stranger and tourist is her Monastery, or so-called Catholic College for boys and young men—a very extensive and imposing structure, modeled after the Doric and Corinthian style of architecture. It is built of adobe, with an external finish resembling stone, and the great depth of its windows attest the thickness of its walls, presenting a castellated and port-like appearance. . . . The grounds surrounding the college are very spacious, handsomely laid out, and beautifully ornamented with trees, flowering shrubs and the brilliant, blooming exotics of the country. . . . while small trellises are completely hidden by clementhis, roses and other climbers. The playgrounds contain gymnastic apparatus, and chattering parrots give the stranger the impression that the language of the pupils is more characteristic of rude frontier life and association, than of the educational refinement of an institution of learning as munificently endowed as this one appears to be. "Dry up," "You lie," "You bet," and other like ejaculations are screeched from the throats of the feathery chatterers, till one wonders if they hear nothing else to imitate. . . .
Caroline M. Nichols Churchill recounts her experiences in California in Little Sheaves, published in 1874.
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