The Barson Family

This is an unusual photograph because we can see a bit of the garden that the hotel was famous for. Alfred, the hotel founder, and his wife Mary Ellen are in the center of this photo. Their children are Sarah, Alfred, William, Mary, Arthur, Gertrude, Lilla, and Robert Gale. Fred, Mary, Lilla, Robert, and Gertrude lived and worked at the hotel until they retired in 1945.

Descendants of the Barson family spoke with me in the summer of 2002 and allowed me the use of this photo and many others in my research. Dorothy Barson married Art Barson, the son of Arthur Barson, who the youngest child in this photo. She still lives in the family home on Third St. Judy Williams and Rhonda Baird, Art's children, happily recalled memories of the family.

After the Barsons sold the hotel, they moved to 407 (100) Oceanview. The granddaughters remember visiting them there. "They were reserved," Rhonda said, with an 'Englishness' about them." They did not take part in civic or social life of Santa Cruz. "But they were nice, for the most part." "Gertrude played games with us. " said Judy. "We were scared of Aunt Lil," said Rhonda. Aunt Mary was called "Molly." Aunt Sarah was "Sadie."

Judy said that it seems as if Fred Barson was the entrepreneur, the man with a plan and energy to create a great hotel and estate, and the children were content to live there, and work, and enjoy their lives as a family of inn keepers. Perhaps, as family legend has it, the father frightened away any suiters who may have presented themselves from the families of the rich and powerful who came to stay each summer. Or perhaps the daughters simply spent their days taking care of their guests, but retired to a private home with the people they loved and knew the best.

The geneology of the Barson family available on the internet (and sometimes these are incorrect) states that Alfred Barson married Mary Ellen Archibald on December 9, 1845. Her parents were William Putnam Archibald, born April 23, 1810 in Musquodoboit, Halifax County, Nova Scotia, Canada and her mother was Mary Jane Gourley, was born May 7, 1821 in Truru Township, Colchester County, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Art Barson, in common with many people of his generation, did not value "old things" and "the old days." His children discovered too late that he had cleaned out a barn at the 3rd St house that contained many Barson family and Riverside hotel artifacts: furniture, diaries, papers. The family still has a bed and dresser from the old hotel, as well as a menu from the days from the hotel as it was in the 1960s. But they, and we, are left with little else.