Interview with Margaret Leask Epstein

I took notes when Margaret Leask Epstein came to visit a few months after I last interviewed her father. A tape recorder was not available. We spoke in the dining room of 96 Riverside.

Mrs. Esptein sat at the table and looked around the dining room, She could remember what it looked like in her grandparents' day. "On the wall of the dining room was a picture of lawyers and judges, but the lawyers and the judges were dogs." She noted that he house has simple molding and is very modern for its time [It is a 1906 Craftsman, a radical departure from the high Victorian excesses of just a few years before.] She remembered that there was a Tiffany lamp over the dining room table. [here she took my pen and drew the shape of the lamp in my notebook] She said that the doorways that I had stripped of paint from looked familiar, that in her childhood there was dark wood everywhere. It was very discreet and very subtle. They had a Morris chair is made of dark wood. They had a piano made-to-order for Hazel when she was 15 or so, and it stood in the front corner of the living room. Hazel took singing lessons too.

Mrs. Epstein and I moved to the kitchen and the pantry. On the back porch [utility porch] Mrs. Netherton had a fireless cooker. She used it to cook overnight. Mrs. Epstein remembers steamed Indian pudding. When she walked into the pantry, she said, softly. "Oh, Muddy." I asked her what she had said, and she replied that the grandchildren called Mrs. Netherton "Muddy. " Then she remembered that her grandparents had an apple tree and Blue Damsom plums. They also had Logan berries that she loved.

We sat back down at the table and Mrs. Epstein told me her grandparents' short biography. Margaret Netherton was raised in the Byron and Brentwood area, near Martinez, Antioch, and Livermore. Her father was a pioneer doctor. Mrs. Epsein knows nothing else of Margaret Netherton's parents. Mrs. Netherton's mother had a second marriage to Mr. Thornton.known as "Brother Glassford." He had two daughters, named Minnie (Minerva) and Ruth. She was friends with them all her life. Minnie married an Englishman named Otto McNamera. Her son Clifford lived in Salinas.

Ruth never married. She moved to Santa Cruz where she was a secretary. She probably lived at this house for a long time, until she got on her feet. Here she met Eva Whinery who was Will Netherton's secretary. Eva graduated in 1886 from Santa Cruz High school, and worked for the rest of her life. Ruth and Eva were called the " gold dust twins " which is a reference to a cleaning powder with twins on it. Ruth and Eva moved to Oakland. [either before or after Will and Margeret did.] Then William Netherton died and Margaret died. Ruth and Eve the worked till they couldn't work anymore. They worked for Montgomery Ward and did clerical tasks. And they couldn't put money by. When they got so old, they just couldn't work. They were businesswomen. Mrs. Epstein and her siblings looked up to them in wonder. "Impeccable women," and with "what posture." Mrs. Epstein's my parents looked after them. Eventually, Ruth died first and then Eva died, in both Oakland. By the time Mrs. Epstein came along they were quite elderly. [Read more about Ruth and Eva.]

William Netherton grew up in Newman, near Gustine. He and Margaret were married and farmed for a while in Stockton. He must have read the law, but there was no schooling. He was a terrible businessmen. He gave money away. They were often broke. William Netherton was the eternal optimist. He's buried in Oakland. He died in 1931 or 32. He died when I was 12.

Mrs. Epstein's mother was adopted by the Nethertons from the Good Templars' Home in Vallejo. Mrs. Shepard was Hazel's birth mother. When the father died, Mrs. Shepard kept Grace (age 2) with her, but the four older children, Dan (age 4), Russell (age 6), Hazel (age 8), Fredia (age 10)were sent to the orphanage. Laura (age 14) was sent to work on her own. Fredia, Hazel and Russell stayed in the orphanage. Fredia got out in a few years and went to work. Russell stayed in. Hazel and some other children made a tour of Good Templar branches to raise money. She stayed with the Nethertons on that trip and was later adopted by them.

The Nethertons were loving, and hungry for children. Mrs. Netherton was a woman of taste. But they were constantly up and down with their money.