Cheryl Anne StappApr 193 minServing California by SeaIn the Age of Sail, not everyone who entered California’s harbors came to settle. In the early 1820s, the ships of many nations began...
Cheryl Anne StappApr 133 minPony Brings News of Ft. SumterBy April 1861, California had been a state of the Union for only ten and a half years. As yet, no telegraph lines connected it with the...
Cheryl Anne StappMar 304 minA Remarkable LifeShe was a woman of remarkable qualities; a woman who rose from being an uneducated young bride going west in a covered wagon in 1844, to...
Cheryl Anne StappMar 162 minHer Fight for EducationElizabeth Thorn Scott Flood was the capable, determined 19th century woman who paved the way for desegregated education for children of...
Cheryl Anne StappFeb 233 minRev. Thomas Starr KingSan Francisco’s First Unitarian Church congregation gaped at its new pastor with a mix of curiosity and consternation. Could this small,...
Cheryl Anne StappFeb 93 minThe Kindergarten MovementBy 1884 California was leading the nation in educational innovations with its system of pre-grammar-school schools, based on ideas...
Cheryl Anne StappNov 10, 20213 minLand Laws: Land Grants vs. HomesteadsDuring the centuries it belonged to Spain, and the few decades it was a province of Mexico, California had no homestead laws that gave...
Cheryl Anne StappNov 3, 20213 minEarly & Ongoing Partition TroublesCalifornia’s north-south cultural split began as early as 1821, the year Mexico won its independence from Spain and acquired the province...
Cheryl Anne StappSep 8, 20213 minCreating California's CountiesIn the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, California existed in a state of political limbo. The peace treaty, signed in February 1848...
Cheryl Anne StappAug 4, 20212 minInvasion at Monterey!In 1818, California was still an outlying province of Imperial Spain, even as New Spain (later, the Republic of Mexico) and other...
Cheryl Anne StappJul 14, 20211 minProtecting the West in the Civil WarAs Civil War hostilities rapidly escalated in July 1861—and United States Army personnel stationed in California left for eastern...
Cheryl Anne StappApr 21, 20214 minThe 1906 San Francisco EarthquakeOne hundred fifteen years ago last Sunday, on April 18, 1906—a Wednesday—a devastating earthquake struck the northern coast of California...
Cheryl Anne StappApr 7, 20212 minMapping the WestWhen explorer John Charles Frémont and his exhausted company of U. S. Topographical Corpsmen reached the Sacramento Valley trading post...
Cheryl Anne StappMar 10, 20213 minRachel Larkin, Diplomat's WifeTwenty-four–year-old Rachel Hobson Holmes boarded the trading vessel Newcastle out of Boston in September 1831. She was sailing for...
Cheryl Anne StappMar 3, 20213 minReformer Eliza FarnhamIn her own lifetime Eliza Farnham was nationally known as an author, and as an exceptional woman on the leading edge of several social...
Cheryl Anne StappJan 20, 20212 minLand of Geographic ExtremesCalifornia’s odd shape permits its northern port city of Eureka to be the most westward city in the continental United States—yet its...
Cheryl Anne StappJan 13, 20213 minA Man of ViolenceIf political discord is bad today, it was even worse in the mid-19th century. In that era, heated disputes often led to stabbings,...
Cheryl Anne StappJan 6, 20213 minFirst Newspaper in San FranciscoAlthough it was the second newspaper published in California, the California Star was the first newspaper published in San Francisco. Its...
Cheryl Anne StappDec 9, 20201 minThe Dragon Rocks LighthouseIn 1865, the overloaded passenger steamer Brother Jonathan suddenly encountered severe winds and rough seas after leaving San Francisco...
Cheryl Anne StappDec 2, 20201 minCalifornia's Odd Shape California’s southern border was resolved in 1848 by international treaty after the Mexican-American War, but until 1849 its northern...