LOST BAGGAGE                                           

 

    Screenshot of Dr. H. H. Clark courtesy of Marla Novo and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History [1]

(All the people, places, and things in this tale are true - especially the one about the doctor's old ghost...)

As always, unapologetically unedited. 

SANTA CRUZ, California, ante 2012

Talk about genealogical baggage.

They didn't want him there. They wanted him out of the house. 

   

He guessed he'd been causing too many problems, like making funny noises and keeping the kids up at night, or, at least that was the scuttlebutt he'd heard coming from the parlor the day that woman had come to claim him. He felt a bit conflicted about it. It was, after all, his house. It was his house there at 104 King Street. He'd built it adjacent to the gore point, where King, Mission, and St Lawrence Streets met and one could see parts of the city from every direction. He'd planned that there should be light in every room and that his house would not square with the points of the compass. It was a handsome house. It was the very same house he'd charged to be designed and built by the architect Mr. LeBaron Olive. No wonder they wanted to take the place away from him. Mr. Olive designed for only the most progressive families. 

He'd spared little expense designing it for Matilda, building it in an appropriate Eastlake Style with its hipped roof, gabled veranda, and prima vera wood alongside elegant Spanish Cedar flooring. Matilda's tastes could be so extravagant from time to time you know. Still, he didn't mind. It was a respectable home for his family. He'd even made sure that there was a choice of lighting - electric or gas. Still, he chaffed a bit, chuckling to himself that if it weren't for him the whole damn town would still be sitting around in the dark waiting for the next earthquake to happen. After all, hadn't he been the one who'd brought electricity to the city when few others wanted to? Hadn't he done enough for that damn city?

He heard them ring her up on what he assumed was some sort of Bell's candlestick. But where were the wires for the telephone? Things were so curious anymore. They referred to her as the woman from the museum. A museum? What in God's name did they need a museum for? And then there was that man of the house, his house, that "Great Pretender" sleeping in his bedroom, you know, the one who'd raised all the fuss. He'd heard him say to the woman from the museum, "But will you take him???" while pointing to his portrait. Honestly, did they think it was taking up all that much space? 

Need he remind them all that he'd been mayor of this city once?

                              

When she arrived there was much of a 'to do.' They spoke softly about his children; they said he'd had a child who'd died there in the house and that was why they thought he was 'restless.' He grimaced a bit as they spoke about his personal affairs. He was a private man in keeping with the times. His small children had died years ago; he and Matilda had buried them in an Illinois cemetery right after Grant had triumphed in the war and long before they'd come west. They were partially correct though. However, it was his son's ghost that they heard about the place at night and not his. Poor Teddy, he'd just never recovered from his business losses or from Cora's leaving him. It was his and Matilda's son Theodore that they'd found in the kitchen of the house that day. His lifeless body sitting all too near the gas stove. No, the children that roamed his house on King Street had already lived their lives.

Oh, he could see what they were up to. He'd learned how "to see" a lot more than most people throughout his lifetime. After all, wasn't it he who had purchased the town's first X-ray machine to help him diagnose and cure what ailed them?  

As they picked up his wooden stethoscope, his "diarrhea pellets," and his "anodyne for infants" out of an old box the "new laird" had brought in, he couldn't help but feel somewhat indignant. Did they not have any respect for a physician's belongings? If they had no respect for him as a doctor then surely they must respect him as a man. Perhaps they'd forgotten that it was he who'd greeted and accompanied the President of The United States to town. However, he was humble and thought it best not to say anything. He didn't wish to remind them of it, but he had done his best to create an industrious and enterprising, and yes, even a scientific life - and a life of substance.

He supposed that he should write to his sisters. Perhaps a cable to Eveline in Wyoming, or to Fannie in Nebraska to let them know what was going on. Did they live at the same address as before? He couldn't seem to remember. Perhaps he was getting old. He thought about dear Charlotte in Iowa, his brother Theodore and family in Chicago, and his sister Ophelia in San Francisco. He was so glad that she hadn't followed their sister Isabelle and chased after that show provocateur Luke Schoolcraft. He recalled the tragic death of his brother Dewitt and the unresolved questions regarding Dewitt's "accidental" death just a few short years before. Poor Dewitt was always chasing the next dream. Perhaps the lady from the museum was right. Maybe he was a bit sad after all.

He watched out behind the curtains of a second-floor window as the polite lady from the museum loaded his things into her automobile. He heard her say to the man and his wife that she'd ensure Dr. Clark's things were well preserved, remembered, and taken care of. Odd, he felt no reason not to believe her, and he trusted that she would be true to her word. He saw the sunlight glance off his portrait photograph as she closed the door to her car and drove off down King Street. The thing of it was that he wasn't truly gone though, and it was still his house despite it all. He was simply moving on, and well, taking his time to do so. He still had Teddy here to look after. There was still much to do before he could meet his dear Matilda in the tomorrow of a new morning's dawn.

                                                                *****

Above image: President Benjamin Harrison's speech in Santa Cruz

   

What my Great-great-great Uncle Hulbert's things were still doing in his home on King Street nearly one hundred years after his death (and well after the deaths of his adult children) does baffle me a bit. (See the link at note one below.) Say what? While I can find no other direct descendants of his (all his children may have died childless) couldn't someone have cleaned out the basement, say by 1968? I suppose I should be glad they did call the museum, and I am truly sorry that the restless ghosts of my aspiring Gilded Age kin might have been trying to give them a fright. (Ummm....maybe not...) It's just that Uncle Hulbert looks to have been quite a guy. 

Let me get this straight:  Hulbert Henry Clark, a Civil War Dentist/Surgeon under General Grant moved from Illinois to Santa Cruz in the early 1880s to practice medicine. [2] He then helps to purchase a "start-up" company to provide something small like "ELECTRICTY" to the city - a company that later becomes collectively known as "PG&E." Then he is elected Mayor, and then plays host to the 23rd President of the United States? Oh, and did I mention that he bought one of the first X-ray machines, you know, "just because?"

Who was this guy? Are you sure he's really related to me? Well, go figure...

As I've made my way through the family of my ancestors Aaron Merritt Clark and Margaret (Fox) Clark I am continually dumbfounded by the lives I am encountering. It's hard not to keep asking oneself, Did anyone know this sh*t???

Dr. Clark's sister, my great-great-great Grandmother Eveline (Clark) Wilcox (Mrs. Hiram Wilcox) led a pretty quiet life out in the middle of the Wyoming sagebrush - and some of her family did prosper well enough at a place called The Flying Diamond Ranch. But still, there seems to have been so much that we just didn't know. As I read these stories, stories about her sister Fannie (Clark) Baker's son Johnny Baker going off to be Buffalo Bill's foster son and a part of the Wild West Show, about her sister Isabelle (Clark) Schoolcraft (not to mention her father Aaron) residing with and traveling with "the showman" Luke Schoolcraft whose funeral was attended by the great fighter John L. Sullivan - I am utterly amazed. 

 

Heck, I think maybe she did.

And now this guy - her brother Uncle Hulbert?

(Really, who names their kid "Hulbert?")

                                       

However, "Uncle Hulbert" seems like he was one class act for the 1890s. Looks like he did it all. 

It sort of makes me wonder about what the letters that surely they wrote back and forth might have said...

"Dear Eveline, We had the joy of watching sister Fannie's son Johnny B. riding with Buffalo Bill yesterday at the Wild West Show... Signed, your devoted brother, Hulbert Clark."

Was a letter like that even possible? Apparently, it was.

            

                                   

                             Lower image: Evening Sentinel, Santa Cruz California, May 6, 1902, p. 3

Again, go figure. Do you think Uncle Hulbert knew his nephew was riding with Buffalo Bill through the streets of his town of Santa Cruz? Do you think Johnny Baker knew that his uncle had been mayor of that city and had entertained the president? (Likely, Johnny would not have been impressed since in his lifetime he'd entertain at the court of King Edward VIII...) 

Yikes. Who are these people?

And right below "all that" in the newspaper clipping above there's old Uncle Hulbert busy helping to sell off his shares of the electric company he had a hand in starting...

It is frickin' amazing.

I have wondered how close the lives of these disparate Clark family siblings were. I've wondered if Fannie wrote to Charlotte or if Theodore wrote to tell DeWitt that their brother Hulbert had been elected Mayor and was recently entertaining President Harrison. Did my great-great-great-grandmother Eveline (Clark) Wilcox write to Hulbert often? Did she tell her "doctor brother" about all her aches and pains of old age and did he advise her to come out west so that he might diagnose her under the mayor's electric lights with his new X-ray machine? 

While I will never be able to tell how close the eight surviving adult children of Aaron Clark and Margaret (Fox) were, there might actually have been there are a few signs...

   

I found it in the Coroner's Report for their sister Margaret Ophelia (Clark) Smith (no. nine in the above list of Aaron and Margaret's children). The last of her generation of siblings, "Ophelia" died in San Francisco in 1927. As she died childless, it was curious to see the two names that signed for her on the Coroner's Form. 

                 

It was the sons of Dr. Hulbert Henry Clark and his wife Matilda. Uncle Hulbert, long dead by 1927, his sons Teddy and Bert came to sign for the disposition of their aunt's body. Listed as a widow on her death certificate, "Ophelia" proved difficult to track after dropping her married name of "Smith." They certainly weren't the most welcoming signatures to see, but still a true sign that even a decade after their father's death (and indeed the death of all their father's other siblings) the family was still taking responsibility for one of their own.

It was good to see that.

It just tells you that you have always got to check your baggage, right? 

In the end, some baggage just looks alike.

Does this mean we get into the Santa Cruz Boardwalk for free? Just sayin'...

Notes:

1. As per: https://www.santacruzmah.org/blog/dr-clark

2. See FindAGrave.com memorial no: 40544830 for Hulbert Henry Clark, M.D.