Pages on this blog mentioning Robert and/or Ida Fitzgerald:
- Wheelmen's Rest
- AT THE END OF THEIR TRIP. - The San Francisco Examiner San Francisco, California · Sunday, September 22, 1895
-
Quaint Village of Condemned Street Railway Cars on the Ocean Beach. - San
Francisco Chronicle San Francisco, California · Sunday, October 04,
1896
- Burn the Car Out of "Carville" - San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco, California · Sunday, July 06, 1913
Read more about Carville.
Robert Harrison Fitzgerald, (2 October 1854 – 30 November 1932)
was married to
Ida Florence Wells, (1857 – 2 January 1944). Her bicycling biography can also be found
here. If you have
an ancestry.com account, you can view their family trees, with many newspaper
clippings linked,
here.
Robert was a clerk at San Francisco City Hall, and also for the state Supreme Court. He and his wife were early residents of Carville. Ida was president of the Falcon Bicycle Club, which had a clubhouse in Carville as well.
Judge George P. Gough keeps bachelor's hall in a red car at the end of the row, and Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald and Mr. and Mrs. White, two ladies from the Falcon Club, have taken the fourth car cottage. It used to run down Valencia street to the ferries in ante-cable days. Now it is used for observation purposes and it has a glorious view of the "sunset gates, open wide, afar in the crimson west."
Quaint Village of Condemned Street Railway Cars on the Ocean Beach. - San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco, California · Sunday, October 04, 1896
He and his wife feature in this profile of Carville-by-the-sea:
When Carville was in its last days, a reporter interviewed them after the old horse cars were all burned to make way for new development.
The chief shrine of these many devotees of the bicycle was an old street car from the discarded stock of the old North Beach and Mission road. This car had been placed as an "improvement," one of those legal fictions beloved for the services they perform in holding occupancy of the premises when clients go to war and lawyers wrangle over disputed titles. After serving its purpose this car was obtained and the right secured from former Mayor Sutro, in 1895, for the "Falcon Bicycle Club," formed by the women enthusiasts, to establish a home at Oceanside. This club was officered as follows; Mrs. Ida Fitzgerald, president, Mrs. William Leonard, secretary, Mrs. Viola Rice, treasurer, Mrs. Dr. Edson, vice president with Mrs. William Miller and Mrs. F. Lisinski of the Mission, Mrs. Gilman, mother of Mabel Gilman, now Mrs. Corey, wife of the Steel King manufacturer, and Mesdames Cox, Le Long, Rice, Orpin and Sutton as active and enthusiastic members.
...
"It should be remembered" said Robert H. Fitzgerald, "that at that early day it would have been impossible to have remained upon the beach amid the hills for any length of time, owing to the shifting sands, had it not been for the work of Frank Pixley, who secured the importation of the Belgian grass which holds the shifting sand securely."
In her excellent article Carville, published in California History, The Magazine of the California Historical Society (1922, VOLUME LVII WINTER 1978/79 NO. 4) Natalie Jahraus Cowan wrote:
Before the turn of the century car-houses were used as residences, as well as
for recreational purposes. Contemporary accounts differ in identifying the
first person to live permanently in one of the cars at Carville. They allude
variously to an Italian immigrant; a sea captain lonesome for the sea
(possibly
Colonel Dailey
in his seaman's coat, although he lived in a real-estate shack); and a
horse-car conductor who retired to live in his old car rather than work on an
electric trolley.11 A more recent article suggests that the Robert H.
Fitzgeralds were the first permanent car residents. Fitzgerald was described
as an influential city official who found a car to be a quiet retreat from the
favor-seekers who hounded him. The Fitzgcralds were named in early accounts as
renters in Colonel Dailey's resort when Ida Fitzgerald was president of the
Falcon Bicycle Club. They may well have chosen permanent beach life as early as 1896 when
Fitzgerald's city address disappears from the city directory and he is listed
only by his title, deputy city clerk.
...
The announcement of Carville's passing may have been premature, an underestimation of the intense emotional attachment of San Franciscans to the horse and cable car. When new, more conventional houses were built, cars were sometimes incorporated in the framework. When Carville pioneer Robert Fitzgerald, the first president of the Oceanside Improvement Club, constructed his house, two cars made up the second floor, with a hallway running around the outside of the cars.
What follows is a biography, assembled from newspaper clippings & genealogical information.
Ida
was born circa 1857 in Boston, MA to William and Mary Wells. William was
English and Mary, Irish. She was the second child born in the family, one of
four girls. A brother did not survive into adulthood. She remained close with
her sisters. William was a ships rigger. He brought the family from Boson, MA
to San Francisco, CA between 1865 and 1868. She was employed in a shoe
manufacturing shop when she was seventeen.
Robert's parents were Austin Fitzgerald and Margaret (Corrigan) Fitzgerald, both Irish. Austin Fitzgerald was a tailor. He was also born in Massachusetts, in Cambridge, three miles away, and three years earlier. He was the oldest of six, with two brothers and three sisters. His family came to San Francisco in 1860. In the 1880 census, when he was twenty-six, his occupation was listed as laborer, but in the years before voter registration showed he was a clerk, and a year later, when he married Ida on January 17, 1881, he was a Deputy County Clerk, of San Francisco.
Marriage 17 Jan 1881, Mon
The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California)
Newspapers.com
He held some variation of this position for the remainder of his life. Robert and Ida had no children, but kept a busy social life, often spending vacations with her family. In 1888, he and Ida were living at 1618 Clay Street. Something happened in 1895, causing Ida to file for divorce, but it looks like their marriage survived.
Ida was a bicyclist, like many Californians at the time. She was president of the all-women, seven-member Falcon Bicycle Club, which kept a clubhouse at the beach starting in 1895. Ida's sister Viola (Wells) Rice was also a member, and she did some big rides with another member, Minnie (Cox) Le Long, whose story Alone and Awheel from Chicago is also on this blog.
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Falcons lady bicyclist club and clubhouse in old horse car at
Ocean Beach, 1890s. - from the excellent
Bicycles West post at outsidelands.org. One of these women is surely Ida, and probably also her sister Viola.
Maybe that's there mother, Mary Wells, seated at left. |
"They may well have chosen permanent beach life as early as 1896 when Fitzgerald's city address disappears from the city directory and he is listed only by his title, deputy city clerk." - Carville, Natalie Jahraus Cowan
.jpg)
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from
Quaint Village of Condemned Street Railway Cars on the Ocean Beach. -
San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco, California · Sunday,
October 04, 1896 |
Robert and Ida were the center of a bohemian social circle that was fun, lively, and involved some of the best-known people in society; artists and writers, womens-rights suffragists, famous stagecoach drivers and the wealthy and powerful. In October, 1896, he and Ida were profiled in a San Francisco Chronicle article titled Quaint Village of Condemned Street Railway Cars on the Ocean Beach. They had Great Dane dogs. Robert was president of the Far West Improvement Club, renamed to be the Oceanside Improvement Club.
Mr. Robert Fitzgerald, a clerk in Judge Hebbard's court, owns a residence composed of two cars perched in airy fashion side by side on an elaborate trestlework, the height of which enables him and his to obtain a glorious view of the wide expanse of ocean. Four cars placed two on two form the home of Mrs. A. K. Staples, a school teacher, while a retired school teacher, Mrs. S. D. Rodgers, lives with her daughter in an oddly beautiful house consisting of two cars placed end to, with a roofed frame connection, and supported by a roomy and well-lighted basement of ordinary rustic lumber.
The Oddest Suburban Town in America - The San Francisco Call, 23 Jul 1899
It's not clear which came first, at Ocean Beach, the Falcon clubhouse or the
Fitzgerald residence. In the
1900 census, they are at what appears to be 46th Ave and J Street. (now Judah) They were
not far from
Colonel Dailey, the "pioneer or Carville," at "cor 49th Av and H." There are many other
interesting names on the same census page, notably Carl Barta, owner of the
Villa Miramar, who I mention in this haphazard
blog post about Wheelmen's Rest. (I wonder if he ever got
that airship
into the right hands.)
Beginning in 1903, Robert and Ida engaged in a series of real estate transactions, which are frankly confusing to me, but it looks like they bought a lot at SW 47th and J St: one two three four. More on that below / in 1925.
He discovered fraud at his life insurance provider and sued them in March 1906, right before the earthquake: Robt H Fitzgerald v Mutual Reserve Fund Life Assn accounting etc, ABUSES CHARGED BY POLICY HOLDER. I wonder if perhaps he lost his savings.
In 1910, he ran for, and successfully became clerk of the Supreme Court.
In 1916, the Oceanside Improvement Club - of which he was first president - organized the burning of the old Carville structures, so that new housing development could commence. Robert and Ida were interviewed for it. Please go read it, it's worth your time.
Sitting in their cozy home at Oceanside, just before the torch was applied to
the cars, Mrs. Ida Fitzgerald, wife of the well-known pioneer of the beach,
Robert H. Fitzgerald, rapidly sketched the remarkable changes that have come
to that part of the city during the past twenty years.
She told of
the wildness of the sand dunes lying between the Cliff House and the South
Light Point station, and running from Parnassus heights to the sea, describing
it as a scene equaled in powers of attraction for the nature lover to any to
be found among the kopjes of the African interior. A step from the old steam
cars at a point where Forty seventh Avenue joins with Lincoln way one was lost
among the wind-piled pyramids of sand, the feet of which were many brackish
pools connected by serpentine rivulets shadowed by clusters of willow and
Acacia tangles.
In 1925, Ida had a house built at SW 47th & Judah,
one
two
three
four. (That last one was the first time I saw her middle name, Florence.) That
house,
1415 47th Ave still
stands. You can view it in 360ยบ in google maps, if you follow that link, I
think.
A three-story building at 1415-1417 47th Avenue, which originally belonged to
early Carville residents Robert and Ida Fitzgerald, once had streetcars within
an upper story, but these were removed when the building was remodeled. As
Carville historian Natalie Jahraus Cowan has written, “Today, the observer in the old Oceanside district is tempted to see a
streetcar in every long,
narrow structure and to imagine lines of them
hidden in backyards.” 25 It is unknown, however, whether any exist today other
than the one at 1632 Great Highway
Historic Context Statement of the Oceanside - A Neighborhood of the Sunset
District - San Francisco
In 1929, Robert was profiled in the Oakland Tribune:
S. F. PIONEER PLANS JUBILEE
SAN FRANCISCO. Sept. 26. - In the
horse-car" house in which he has lived for 35 years at 1415 Forty-eighth
avenue, Robert H. Fitzgerald, believed to be the oldest former county official
of California still living, will celebrate his seventy-seventh birthday
October 3.
The celebration, Fitzgerald says, will be only by way of
preparation for the golden wedding anniversary which he and Mrs. Fitzgerald
will observe in January.
The aged couple are believed to be the
first residents to move into the Oceanside section, which at the time of their
arrival was a sand-dune section and dumping ground for abandoned horse and
trolley cars.
Fitzgerald, casting about for ma- terial to use in
constructing a house, moved two of the deserted horse cars together, removing
the adjoining sides and creating one large room, in which the couple'
established their home in 1895. Since that time the woodwork interior have
been redecorated.
It looks like their home was the subject of foreclosure by Bank of America in 1931. I don't know if they were evicted. one two three.
Robert died in 1932, Ida
died a long, eleven years later in 1943. I've built their family trees at
familysearch.org
(free) and
ancestry.com. (requires account, free or paid)
You can read more about
Carville
on my blog. There's quite a bit on the internet about it. I think the best
might be
Carville, published in California History, The Magazine of the California Historical
Society (1922, VOLUME LVII WINTER 1978/79 NO. 4) Natalie Jahraus Cowan, but
outsidelands' coverage is fantastic as well. My newspaper clippings for Robert, Ida and the Falcon Bicycle Club can be
seen in chronological order
here.
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