Other Santa Cruzans

In the last part of the interview, Mr. Leask told me about Santa Cruzans either related to my house, or mentioned in his father's memoirs.

Miss Forbes
Mrs. Walton
Mr. Rennie
A.A. Taylor
The Rittenhouses
Ernest Otto
H.C. van Torchiana
Chinese Santa Cruzans
Anne Besant

The illustrations are linked to short articles and larger illustrations.

Other Santa Cruz people

Miss Forbes

Linda: Can you tell me anything else about Miss Forbes? What did she do?

Haswell: I don't know. There were a lot of interesting people in Seabright, there were a whole group of them. My mother and I had many friends over there. Most of the people who I recall were women. There were a lot of women there who were quite musical.

Mrs. Walton

Haswell: Did I tell you the story about Mrs. Walton? This is a Seabright story. I hadn't seen her for many years. One time I was over here, thought about her . So I thought I'd go over and see her. She had a beautiful home just toward the river from the library, a nice place overlooking the bay, right on the edge. I got over there and into her house and she was sitting on a big chair facing the window looking over the water. I told her who I was and she said where you from? And I said "oh , a little town in the San Joaquin Valley, you wouldn't know it, Mrs. Walton." And she said, "Where are you from?" And I said, "The name of the place is Waterford." She said, "I know where Waterford is." And I said, "What the know about Waterford?" She said, "I know where Waterford is." She started out telling the about the time with three other women they had rented a spring wagon and a team of horses and the driver, stocked up with equipment and provisions and started for Yosemite.

Linda: When was this?

Haswell: Well, it must have been in the late 1880s. It took three weeks to get to Yosemite. She said, "we camped overnight on the river in Waterford. And the wind blew so hard, it blew the ham out of the frying pan, so that is why I will never forget the place." She went on to say they stayed in Yosemite a month, and came back to Santa Cruz. When they got home the wages of the driver and the expenses they had were $50 apiece.

Mr. Rennie

[ Mr. Leask had a copy of Phil Francis's Santa Cruz County (1896). We looked at it together and he told stories as they came to him. ]

Haswell: There's Mr. Rennie's House. Isn't that beautiful? That was a nice place. I'd been there several times. Rennie was a Scotsman. And my father, when he started the store, he had a partner. My father bought him out. He used to display stock on the sidewalk. He was putting stock out there in racks and a man who he didn't know came by and stopped and asked him why he was selling this stuff at those cheap prices. My father explained to him that he was buying out his partner and he needed the money. The fellow said, "You don't have to do that, I'll loan you the money. " That was Rennie, an older man. That started an acquaintance between the Leasks and the Rennies and it lasted as long as the Rennies lasted. Rennie was a sailor, and he was involved in a serious shipwreck. He ended up in Santa Cruz. He owned a lot of property all over.

A.A. Taylor

[ photo in another book]

Linda: There's A. A. Taylor. Do you know anything about him?

Haswell: Just that he was the editor of the Surf and he was "the other side" of the Sentinel. My father was very fond of him. When Netherton ran for D.A.–he was the city attorney–and when he ran for D.A. the Sentinel hated him. They'd run the story–full of lies–or their opinion, and then in the afternoon the News would run it their side of it. And the Sentinel would do again in the morning. But he wasn't the editor then.

Linda: Did you read both newspapers or did most people just read one or the other?

Haswell: Oh we always had both newspapers, the Sentinel and the Surf, and then the News later on. Eventually, I don't know what happened to Taylor, but I think he got older and finally sold it. But he was always broke. The paper was never very successful.

Linda: Why was the Sentinel successful and the Surf unsuccessful? Why were the McPherson's so rich?

Haswell: Well, it took a them a good many years to get that money. I don't know because there wasn't much excuse for it. Duncan McPherson was a very poor writer, you know, and his–I know my father used to be eternally disgusted with his editorials and a good many of his developments, but we've always been good friends with all the McPhersons.

The Rittenhouses

Linda: Did you know the Rittenhouse family? [No reason to ask him, the name just popped into my head.]

Haswell: Floyd Rittenhouse, I remember him very well. He was originally a barber; all the Rittenhouse brothers were barbers. And when we were over on Walnut Avenue across from the old high-school, my parents had some friends from San Francisco come visit them. My mother sent me down to the Rittenhouse barbershop, which was across the street from Woolworth's , with instructions to get a haircut, and to tell him not to cut it too short. Well, I was between six and seven and I went down and delivered up the message, which evidently was misunderstood. Because the first thing that happened–I had some hair then–the clipper went right down through the center of it. Well, it was too late to do anything, so I sat there and took it, and on the way home I wondered what in the world my mother would do when she looked at me. I went to the house and opened the door and there she was. I thought she'd hit the floor laughing. They took a picture of it and it is somewhere in the family archives.

Ernest Otto

Linda: Did you know Ernest Otto? [A Sentinal reporter who later in his career wrote the history column.]]

Haswell: He's older. He had a brother, George, who I knew much better. I used to see Ernest Otto busily moving around town getting his news.

Edna Scott

Linda: Do you know anything about Edna Scott? [She held the mortgage on the house when it was foreclosed. ]

Haswell: She was my favorite grade school teacher. She was in Scotts Valley. She was a nice teacher. They all were pretty good. My first grade teacher was Miss Effey... Molly Morgan... Bessie Haslem lived on Front Street very close to where Longs Drugs is. She was my seventh grade teacher. I remember her telling us about hearing a commotion and going out to the street, and down toward the post office where the bandit Vasquez was shooting up upper Front Street, which was the main street.

Molly Morgan was a very powerful, real old-style teacher and disciplinarian. She was my eighth grade teacher. One of the great indoor sports was when the boy sat in back of a girl. The desks were equipped with inkwells . The girls quite often wore braid down their backs, and it was the source of considerable occupation for a boy to annoy that girl and sometimes put her hair into the inkwell. But it any rate, on this particular occasion I was annoying the girl, I don't remember what I was doing, but Molly Morgan, who knew pretty much what was going on at all times, she had moved around silently and I guess she was laying for me, and the next thing I knew something hit me in on the side of the head and knocked me off the seat and into the aisle–and she had administered the blow. Later on, she told my mother and my mother congratulated her and thanked her for the bottom of her heart.

H. C. van Torchiana

Linda: Can you tell me more about van Torchiana?

Haswell: H. C. van Torchiana was a Dutchman. He was the law partner [of William Netherton].I don't know for how long. He later became Counsel General of the Netherlands in San Francisco. Under the influence of Will Netherton, the Torchianas adopted two girls and they were no more capable of taking care of girls -- neither he nor his wife -- it was a terrible thing.

Linda: What happened to them?

Haswell: I don't know.

Linda: Why weren't they capable?

Haswell: They are people to put on a lot of dog. And they stood high among the Dutch people of their acquaintance, and they were just people who didn't have the proper interest or ability to devote themselves to what it takes to raise up youngsters. And that was too bad.

Read more. What DID happen to the two girls the Torchianas adopted?

******

Chinese Santa Cruzans

Haswell: When we lived on Green Street, it was about three acres then. Last time I was there there were seven houses and a private school. We had a barn, and we always had the livery horses from the store. We had a hen, a cow, and vegetable garden and about one-third of an acre that was farmed by the Chinese across the street. In back of our lane, there was a Chinese laundry, toward Mission. The original house was across the street. The home there now is on the land that goes back toward what was Mission Hill school. The Chinese laundry was right over the top of what is now the tunnel. My father had an arrangement with these Chinamen, there were always six or seven at the laundry and they would raise vegetables in the one-third acre and give us what we needed and take the rest. We were always on very good terms with the Chinamen. My dad got along fine with them. My mother used to take them over a big frosted cake on Chinese New Year's. Then they would go back and forth through our yard toward Locust street and Union street through our yard. And they always with a big straw basket of clothing delivering back to where they got it.

Linda: Did they do your laundry too?

Haswell: No (chuckling)

Linda: Your mother did it.

Haswell: She wouldn't let them do it. (laughing)

Linda: That must have been hard to be on good terms with Chinese people when there was so much racism against them.

Haswell: Well, you know, in all the years that I've lived in Santa Cruz I never encountered racism to any extent. There were very few Negro people here, but to us they were just like everybody else. We went to school with them and they were accepted in the school. As far as the Chinese went, of course at the time the Chinese couldn't own property, and they were looked down upon on account of the labor competition. And I think that was a fallacy because a good deal of the work the Chinese did you couldn't get white men to do. You can't today.We got along fine with them and I never saw it in school. People in those days, you had the South and the Negro problems and so forth all over the world, people just changed, gradually. Got a little more sense.

Anne Besant

Linda: Your father mentioned his friend named Anne Besant, a theosophist.

Haswell: She was one of those people, I think that originated in England. Many years after she was involved in a school in southern California. There was a family named Carter, and Mrs. Carter was a great friend of my mother's. And she was a theosophist, and she sent one of her children to that school. When my brother Robert was about fourteen, Mrs. Carter inveigled my brother to go to Los Angeles with her to get Darryl Carter who was in Madame Besant's school. To bring him home. He was attending the school. And I always remember my brother Bob told me about this kid. He got out of there with absolutely no idea of the outside world. He was cooped up in sort of a cult school. Bob said he didn't know anything.

Linda: Is this the same family who worked for Cowell?

Haswell: The man who worked for Cowell was a brother-in-law of Mrs. Carter.

Linda: Were there other people in Santa Cruz who belonged to "fringe" religions?

Haswell: Santa Cruz hasn't changed a bit. Everything in the world is here.