2008-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2008
Fascinating Autograph Letter Signed “Fannie Taylor” 24p. octavo, Riverside, California, April 25, 1909, with cover addressed to Donna Railey in Forkton, Kentucky, and reads in part: “...I am working for the Riverside Heights, which is a big orange firm, I will getabout $40 per month out of it. I am not strong enough to make more...I have a lovely room with a widow lady and her daughter from Boston, Mass., they are artistocrats of the Puritanic style, but that does not worry me the least. I have some of the blue blood of the east in my veins too, and rather good pedigree too, and Aristocrats and airs have long since quit bothering me...I have been tired of this land a long time, and have only stayed with the hopes of getting strong...I had become climated in the San Jouquin Valey, and for the past few months have felt stornger, than I came down to Ventura...Ventura is right on the ocean bank and nothing to protect you from the wind...I have seen all that is worth looking at in Calif. from the center of the state this far South, and I must say its a queer land, take it as a whole, and gives one much food for thought. This little city of 12 thousand is as near all pure American as any town I have seen since I left home. I have seen more negroes and less Japs and Chinese since I came here than any town I have yet been in. There are some here but not like in the central and northern towns. I see a lot of native born Spanish here, some Mexican-Spanish and plenty of Indians. There is quite a large Indian school here...There is quite a number of what is known s the old Spanish Mission buildings through this part of the sate, its the work of the Jesuit fathers of a couple of hundred years ago. I have been through several and afteryou go through once they get common, for they are all after the same style...There is quite a grand Inn here known as the Glenwood Mission Inn, of course it has been improved in but I notice many old style things kept as a curiosity. There is an old well walled up with stone and the bucket and chain, an old ox yoke in the yard, and a small flax wheel and large spinning wheel in the alcove of the dining room. All these are souvenirs of formers days, but none were curiousities to me, for you know we all know what these things are and how to use them. I noticed today an old pioneer ox cart, with solid wooden wheels, of course I never saw one with such wheels...dozens of towns are connected by the trolley cars & are considered suburbs of the larger towns, up in teh valley is more room, and the large ranches are being cut up and sold and gives young men the chance to buy and settle. Its only a matter of a few years until that part will be all settled up, but the one that comes in now and buys will be the fortunate one then...There was a Jew wanted to buy land in one of the counties that is supposed to be well irrigated and he struck a real estate man, and he asked a lot of questions and got a positive ‘yes’ to all of them, everything would grow and they could have this, that and the other but you know a Jew is a born merchant and understands more than is often given them credit for, so he asked the realty man here about the water. That got him, soe he had to acknowledge that they lacked a proper supply of water, the Jew replied ‘Yes and water was what they lacked in hell when the rich man called for a drop.’ California, as I have said, is a peculiar state, but it takes water to make an oasis in the desert...The cream of this land are the eastern & southern people who came here after they have reached mature years, but take those who are one or two generations from the forty niners, or in other words a ‘native’ and you certainly are up against it. Take a native born with eastern parents and they are tolerable only...I came on over the mountains through seventeen tunnels in the top of the Rockies, and down on the Mojave desert. Mojave is a little town on the desert & is surrounded by thousands of acres of cactus of all kinds...My first glimpse of the Pacific was very unlike that of Baboa, he saw it from the mountain top, I saw it from a Pullman coach window, yet it was the same ocean...” Much more. Fine.
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