Legislation and law suits related to Hiram Thorne's toll road

Here's more history about Hiram Thorne's road, which we now know as Thornhill, in Oakland. But who was Miles, and what road is described by "defendant should reconstruct that portion of the road which was situated in Contra Costa county." I think it's what is now known as the Lower Huckleberry Loop trail. Two articles mentioned William Hamilton being involved in the construction. Did "Miles" inherit Hamilton's interest?

1 package saws, marked H. Thorn, Redwoods, Cal., shipped by Edward Corning to Coit & Beals.
Daily Alta California, Volume 5, Number 291, 20 October 1854

The Brick-Makers' Protective Union & St. Ignatius Church

Recently I went on a fun, weekend bicycle camping trip to Point Pinole with my friends Mark and Donna, and some of our mutual, and new friends. It was a delightful outing. Mark is interested in old bricks, and they are plentiful at Point Pinole. Some of the bricks there are stamped C. H. I became curious about these bricks. I set aside one to bring home.

 

 

Digging into the history of the San Francisco New City Hall bricks, I learned that the reason they bore the "C. H." mark was due to a requirement that contractors meet certain specifications, and that the bricks only be made with "white labor." 

 

 

I then learned about the anti-Chinese sentiment in San Francisco, circa 1878, inspired by an economic slowdown that resulted in joblessness, and racial animosity between working classes. As you can see below, what starts out as racial animosity and working-class concerns resolves itself to be more simply the actions of the wealthy ensuring maximum profit, represented by the Brick-Makers' Protective Association. (Sometimes called the Brick-Makers' Protective Union) This story continues to play out in our national politics. I've picked the newest article to be first, as it lays out the history very well. The remainder are in chronological order, and I've linked to other articles. - MF

 

Kevin Starr

Free to speak a secret

Now that the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall is built and dedicated, a dramatic story - one relevant to the Golden Age of Jesuit Education in San Francisco - can surface. It involves bricks, the construction history of Old St. Ignatius Church and College, and a sad but revealing aspect of our City's troubled, albeit glorious, past.

FASCISM MUST BE HOME GROWN, CLAIM - Green Bay Press-Gazette Green Bay, Wisconsin • Sat, May 15, 1937 Page 18

FASCISM MUST BE HOME GROWN, CLAIM

U. S. Will Not Stand for Foreign Ideas, Krueger.

Repeating the words of Benito Mussolini that fascism cannot be imported, Prof. Maynard C. Krueger told a Public Forum audience at the Y. W. C. A. Thursday that if fascism ever comes to this country it will be a very nationalistic government built on an particularly "anti" philosophy suited to our national life.

If and when fascism ever comes to America it will be brought about and financed by the wealthier elements of the population, the reactionaries, rather than the leftist elements, Prof. Krueger also stated. He said that an anti-Negro program, like the anti-Semite campaign in Germany, was a very plausible rallying-cry for American fascists.

Fascism is built on hate, speaker said, hate of some general source of irritation over which a great mass of the people can be aroused. He said he thought Germany had been heading in the right direction under the national socialists, but that it was moving too slowly, and then Hitler came along with his campaign against the Jews and rather side-tracked the movement, but at least speeded it up. He compared the movement to a boy riding a bicycle, he must keep up speed for if he goes too slow he will fall off.

Americans are very adverse to anything "foreign," Prof. Krueger continued, and thus fascism would have to grow up here as an American movement in order to be tolerated by the masses of the people. He spoke of recent strikes in this country, which he described as merely American workers fighting for their rights, and he said the terms radical and foreign were always applied to these men. 

Fascism gains its greatest converts among youths, Prof. Krueger pointed out. In Germany it is the youths who are more entranced by the rattle of swords, saluting and parading, he said.

When fascism comes to America

Article from May 15, 1937 Green Bay Press-Gazette (Green Bay, Wisconsin)

San Francisco City Hall bricks and the 1873 investigation of the New City Hall project

I recently learned about San Francisco City Hall bricks, from the "New City Hall," built 1871 - 1899, and destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. (More, here.) The articles below are about a series of Legislative Committee oversight meetings in late 1873 and early 1874 investigating the construction of the New City Hall, I think primarily looking for graft, fraud and misuse of funds, but also about design decisions. I think the Legislative Committee was a California state judicial body investigating the project, and it had the authority to investigate because a law was passed to initiate the project. The people called to question included members of the commission which was in process of planning and executing the construction, as well as their contractors and suppliers. It has a fair bit about the bricks, so that's why I transcribed and researched it. I'll keep digging into this, because I want to know more about these City Hall bricks.

STICKING LABELS ON TOWNS. - A Queer Mixture of Languages in Alameda County Names. - SPANISH, INDIAN, ENGLISH AND IMPROPRIETY. - The San Francisco Examiner Sun, Jun 19, 1892 ·Page 10

There is some racist language in the place names below. The article is from 1892. - MF

STICKING LABELS ON TOWNS.

A Queer Mixture of Languages in Alameda County Names.

SPANISH, INDIAN, ENGLISH AND IMPROPRIETY.

Combining in One Name a Row of Poplars and a Grove of Live Oaks - Robbing Old Associations of the Soft Spanish Titles That Belong to Them - Railroad and Postal Sponsors.

Contra Costa was the original name of a little settlement on the bank of the estuary of San Antonio, a cluster of houses on the grant to Don Luis Maria Peralta, the most magnificent estate ever owned by one man in California.

Slider bike storage for van

 

We have a 2007 Dodge Sprinter, 144" wheelbase, converted to a camper van. We are bike riders, and we're often bringing bikes with us on road rips, or using the van to travel to a place where we will ride bikes. Having the bikes inside the van, outside of view is very useful; the bikes are better protected from theft, and they don't get rained on, get road spray, get dirty, or bleached by the sun. We have a bed platform in the van that is 38.5" from the floor to its underside, a cabinet on the driver side for water system and storage, and a rear bench seat with tracks installed 62" from the rear-most part of the bracket to the rear sill of the floor. The bench seat location is not stock, the Mercedes seat brackets were installed by Van Specialties in a location appropriate for through-frame access to attach the brackets. A two-seat Sprinter bench is installed, and a Serg Supply fridge cabinet is also a factor in how the bicycles must fit. There are seats with seat belts for four people in the van, so four bikes are the usual maximum we might bring. On our last long trip, we each brought a mountain bike and a gravel bike; two people, four bikes. 

THE PERALTA CLAIM. - San Joaquin Republican, Volume 4, Number 9, 12 January 1854

THE PERALTA CLAIM. 

The Land Commissioners will decide on the merits of the Peralta claim this morning. The Chronicle says that this is one of the most important claims that has come before the Commissioners - certainly more important than any yet decided by the present Board. The claim embraces the villages of Oakland, San Antonio, Alameda, and the whole range of the coast for ten miles; and about three thousand people are settled upon it. The claim was granted in fee simple to the senior Peralta, as a reward for military services, and was occupied by him until his death. It is stated that he lived to the age of 120 years, and could lasso a bull after he was 100 years old; that he rode forty miles the day before his death, which occurred in San Jose, from an attack of cholera. 

EARLY DAYS IN OAKLAND. - Oakland Tribune Oakland, California • Sat, Feb 23, 1884 Page 5

EARLY DAYS IN OAKLAND.

Some of the Pioneers and Their Achievements.

A Hunting Ground for the San Franciscans Oak Forests, Blooming Fields Squatters' Controversies The Peralta Titles Carpentier's Claim to the Water Front Famous Duels, &c., &c.

Americanized California is not old enough to have produced any native citizen who has attained to gray hairs, the "lean and slippered pantaloon," the sixth age, and retired from the lists with chaplets of regard for services done to his State or city, with troops of friends to attend his retiracy and cheer his remnant of honored life. There are not a few veterans, hoary and beat, who may be called the early State's "gray fathers," lingering in picturesque old age, who can relate the whole history of California since the "conquest" as within their still distinct remembrance. These men came to the coast when the Mexican Government still held sway over these fair plains, its subjects living in adobe dwellings, enjoying the bland air, content with the products of a most generous soil yielding its fruits with the slightest solicitation, lords of a land in whose bosom was the wealth of the Indies, unconscious of thus much of the rich heritage that Cortez had given to Spain, incredulous of fortune, unwearied by labor, secure in their possessions, the outside world as blank to them as the wide Pacific which washed these peaceful shores. The thousands who throng our streets and make city and State what they now are, a busy mart of trade, abounding in all the arts and parts that make thrifty commerce, trade, manufactures, agriculture, know little of the men and scenes of former days in this beautiful place, where winter is unknown, where flowers bloom perpetually, and the "melancholy days" never come as they come to dwellers under stormy Eastern skies. It is fit and proper that the men who have made history for California should inscribe their recollections upon the written page, to be in future times rehearsed by the generations which shall see our puissant city grown to a metropolis, hamlets become great towns, the wilderness blooming gardens, mountains covered with palaces and mansions, plains inhabited by opulent merchants and farmers enriched by labors which bring luxury and comfort to the "rest of mankind," and fill the land with plenty;

James de Fremery True '49er - Family Contributed to Oakland's Place in Sun - Oakland Tribune Oakland, California · Sunday, June 29, 1952

James de Fremery True '49er

Family Contributed to Oakland's Place in Sun

By EILEEN DELMORE MURPHY

When James de Fremery was born on his family's estate at Ouwendyck, near The Hague, in February, 1826, the California which he was to help develop had not been imagined in his native Netherlands.

As soon as the young man came of age, however, he headed for the United States, and in 1847 was engaged in the import and export business in New York City with the father of his future bride. Word of gold in California came two years later, and the diary of James de Fremery's voyage to Panama, trip across the Isthmus and arrival in San Francisco on December 15, 1849, is still in the possession of his grandson, James' de Fremery of Yorkshire Drive.

SO WE CALL THEM. - Names That Bring Back Fond Reminiscences. - Oakland Tribune Oakland, California · Saturday, August 31, 1889

SO WE CALL THEM.

Names That Bring Back Fond Reminiscences.

NOMENCLATURE OF THE STREETS.

Futile Attempts to Make the People Use the Official Designations of the Highways.

The reminiscential romance that lingers about places named for persons is the romance of inconvenience when the places named are streets. In the nomenclature of public highways sentiment and convenience are in opposition. The poetic man, loving euphony and hating trade, wants to name the streets after heroes, ancient or modern, after trees or saints or stars, while Mr. Commerce, who may drive the delivery wagon in the mornings, wants streets named with numbers that he may lose no time in reaching his destination. Then the ambitious man who owns a corner lot in the Heaven tract in the suburbs wants the main avenue in the tract named after him. How the streets of Oakland were christened a higher authority with a better memory than man knows and is reticent. Way back in 1859, thirty years ago, the City Council declared Whitcher's map, then on file, the official map of the city. The names of streets designated on that brown piece of paper became by that declaration the official names. How the streets outside the territory that in 1859 constituted the city of Oakland ever gained names, Christian, Jewish, or Buddhist, let some one else tell and I shall hold my peace.