Daniel Jeans was born a slave in 1835 Missouri. After the Civil War he made his way to California and to the Anderson Valley, probably in the wake of families he’d known in Missouri when he was a slave. Mendocino County was a kind of a catchment area for Confederate Missourians before and after the […]
A stern visage, the picture of 19th century rectitude, looks down on passersby from a banner at the corner of McAllister and Larkin, fin de siècle San Francisco. The banner celebrates the adjacent law school, which is named after Serranus Clinton Hastings, born in New York, law degree in Indiana, on west to Iowa where […]
He may have been Clyde, but she was no Bonnie. She didn’t want to be Bonnie, didn’t really want to be with Clyde either, but he scared her into staying with him, and after awhile she thought it was love. Monica Winnie, 18, knew Neal Beckman, 35, was an outlaw, but she didn’t know he […]
As the world turns it turned to an odd coincidence for me last week
On April 2nd of 2012, the Women’s Voices talk program on KZYX devoted an hour to the 1990 unsolved car bombing of Earth First! leader, Judi Bari. Naomi Wagner and a woman called Mary Liz Thompson were the on-air guests of moderator, Val Muchowski. Wagner said her occupation was “activist” as anointed, Wagner said, by […]
(Ed note: After 22 years in a variety of federal prisons, John Dalton is at home in Laytonville picking up the pieces of his shattered life. His case was the worst example of egregious/outrageous government misconduct we know of. So far as we know, Dalton was held longer on marijuana-related charges than any other Mendocino […]
Known informally throughout the County as ‘Tom,’ the popular lawman announced Thursday he would retire
Cutler Crowell, 71, has lived in Fort Bragg for many years where he’s raised a family and enjoys an unblemished reputation. Age has taken its inevitable toll, especially on Crowell’s back. Swimming is the only vigorous exercise left to him. He gets that necessary daily workout at the C.V. Starr Community Center, a large swimming […]
Feliz Creek today, where it passes beneath Highway 101 at Hopland is, in the summer, a parched expanse of dry streambed that is barely discernible as a watercourse. Only when it comes alive in the winter as it runs off from its headwaters in the west hill and on into the Russian River can you […]
If there’s an old, old timer in the house who remembers Hannah Piggott nee Hori, we would like to know more about this most intriguing Fort Bragg woman. In broad and often confusing outline, she was Japanese married to a well known and much sought after American jockey named Harry Piggott, who raced at least […]
By the time you read this our resident deputy, Craig Walker, is already policing the sedate streets of Moraga. Deputy Walker’s departure is a big loss for the Anderson Valley where he’d become a crucial member of our wildly diverse community. A ten-year resident of Philo, the popular deputy sheriff had successfully filled the huge […]