The mysterious affair at Sweeny Ranch

If you happen to visit the San Mateo County Archives, located in the courthouse in downtown Redwood City, you'll see that they have wonderful old maps of the Peninsula hanging on their walls and ensconced in their archive drawers.  (1:1 Replica copies even for sale in the gift shop.) And if you look closely at the maps of the late 1800s and early 1900s, you'll discover that Friendly Acres, and the surrounding area, is a neighborhood that was carved out of a previous property formerly known as Sweeny Ranch, named after an Irish gentleman by the name of Myles Sweeny.   Sweeny had bought the subdivided land from Timothy Guy Phelps who in turn had acquired the land from the Arguello estate - the Arguello's were the original spanish owners of Rancho de las Pulgas. 

Sweeny Ranch at that time was pastureland.  Myles Sweeny had originally purchased the land and the adjoining marshes for harvesting grains, sheep and cattle farming, some horses, but also for duck hunting and for easy access to the bay for shipping of his import/export interests (read including liquor...).   From the county maps of the period, the few buildings that existed on the Sweeny property were mostly farm buildings or barns.  And the primary farm buildings were right behind where the Starbucks now stands on the corner of Bay Road and Marsh Road, just west of the railroad tracks, and where the houses now stand around Athlone Ct.

Initial investigation of the 'Sweeny'/'Sweeney' name, yielded a variety of records from the Schellens collection at the Redwood City Library History room, and the San Francisco Genealogical society.  But one isolated entry stood out:  It was a 1903 record in the San Mateo County Death Register for a Charles Brown who had apparently died at "Sweeney Ranch near Redwood City", of Strychnine poisoning. 

There were three things that were striking about the Charles Brown record:

1. The location of death was at Sweeney Ranch. Did this mean he died inside the ranch building, or somewhere outside on the ranch or at another building on the ranch? 
2. Cause of death was Strychnine poisoning.  This, admittedly, conjured a gasp of surprise - I hadn't read about strychnine poisoning since Agatha Christie. Was he murdered? (And if you've ever read any Agatha Christie books, viz. "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," first published in 1920, which involved homicidal use of said poison, your mind would have wandered in that direction too.)
   
3. His name was Charles Brown.   Was this the Searsville Charles Brown, or a son of?  It turns out the Searsville Charles Brown, an early Bay Area entrepreneur, and founder of the now dam-engulfed town of Searsville, had died much earlier of natural causes, in 1885, was Swedish, and substantially older than our victim.  Our fellow, from Sweeny Ranch,  was originally from New York, according to the index entry and had died at age 55 in 1903.  So no connection there.   Curiously, though, both men were buried in the same graveyard, the Union Cemetery in Redwood City.   The Coroner's Burial Register for Union Cemetery didn't yield any more information, other than the fact that one had a headstone, and the other didn't.  Our chap ended up in the Paupers' Grave, alongside other John and Jane Does.  And the Union Cemetery archives appeared to have no biography on our man.

Source: Burial Register Union Cemetery Archives, Redwood City, CA

Brown is first documented in the 1873 Voter Registrations books of San Mateo County as a young 25 year old farmer working in Half Moon Bay, originally from New York, who had come out to California after the Civil War. It is interesting to note that he was one of the few that didn't decide to go prospecting or work in some way for the mines.  Instead, he seems to have come out west with a dream to acquire land and maybe build himself a farm. 

In the rush of gold fever, thousands upon thousands of men migrated west in the 1840s, only to realize that it was hard, back-breaking work, highly competitive, dangerous and the odds of striking lucky in gold country with a large nugget payoff were poor.  Many turned instead to other jobs - which were already in scant supply due to competition from the large influx of male immigrants.

Eight years later, age 33,  Brown is listed as a laborer, boarding at Victoriano Guerrero's house near Pillar Point.  This was no mean feat to be lodging at Victoriano Guerrero's house - especially if he was possibly working there too.

Victoriano Guerrero's House, Pillar Point, San Mateo Co.

Victoriano Guerrero was important - he was the son of Francisco Guerrero, Yerba Buena's third and sixth alcalde - after whom Guerrero St. in San Francisco is named.  When Francisco was murdered, Victoriano inherited the spanish land grant his father had fought to keep, for the northern portion of Rancho Corral de la Tierra which extended from Devils's Slide, south of San Francisco, all the way down to Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay.

For whatever reason, Charles Brown did not stay on at the Guerrero ranch.  He didn't become a rancher but remained a ranch hand.  He moved to Belmont, and then to Redwood City and appears to have been a dairyman farmer, finally working at James Curran's farm which pastured its stock on the Sweeny Ranch lands.  But his position at the Curran Ranch, where he may have been working as a cook for as long as three years prior to his death, is surprising. 



So what was Brown doing as a cook on Sweeny Ranch?  A profession held by many chinese immigrants, (even Mrs. Leland Stanford's cook was chinese).   And what a horrible, but exotic way to go.  Strychnine?   

Death by poison has been recorded since the earliest times.  Indeed, Cleopatra's regal death was from asp venom; and the venerable Socrates by hemlock.  While today, it is not common to hear about deaths from venom, in the early 1900s deaths by poison were really all the rage!

It wasn't until 1818 when strychnine was extracted as an alkaloid, by two French chemists, Joseph Bienaimé Caventou and Pierre-Joseph Pelletier, that its manufacture, marketing and distribution exploded.  This was a time when the field of chemistry and extractions of poisonous alkaloids for medicinal and industrial purposes flourished; and it was a time when there were more recorded deaths by poison than at any other period in known history.  So its with good reason that historians and chemists call the 1800s thru to the early 1900s the golden age of poisoning. 

As the 1900s rolled out, strychnine became widely available in cathartic pill form.  It was popularly prescribed in small doses, as a digestive aid to reduce stomach acid, and as a palliative for stomach ulcers.  But not surprisingly, the self-medication caused a significant number of fatalities from unintended suicide and  ingestions throughout the country (and most of the western world). 


A small bottle of strychnine powder would have been kept on a kitchen shelf, or under the kitchen sink, or in a medicine cabinet, or even bedside table - and its certainly not difficult to see the attraction that a little bottle presents to the eyes and hands of a curious child.  Strychnine rapidly gained notoriety as a major cause of toxicologic death in children, especially in the early 1900s.  Indeed the attraction of small bottles to small hands remains true today.  But in 1903 the surgeon general's warning of "Keep Out of the Reach of Children" had not as yet been conceived. 
We know that medicine bottles from early 20th century Redwood City druggists were usually embossed glass so it was fairly easy to feel, as well as see, what you were holding.  But why keep such a toxic poison as strychnine so close to the kitchen pantry or bedside table, when its properties were well known? 

Vintage embossed bottles - all from the Pioneer Drug Store in Redwood City

Its highly likely that people kept strychnine as a pesticide against vermin.   On a rural farm, like Sweeny Ranch which was surrounded by hay fields, it would have been a common household and farm item. 

Early European settlers to America already brought knowledge of strychnine with them well before the 19th century French chemists came up with their extract.  In fact, the ground seeds from the Strychnos nux vomica tree, an East Indian tree, were known to be used as a rodenticide as early as the 16th century in Germany. 


Was the strychnine poison that killed Charles Brown from a pesticide bottle? or from a medicinal household/bedside bottle?  Doses would have been different, depending on the use.  It could also have been a general purpose bottle intended both for human self-medication and as pest-control?

Perhaps what is most telling in this story is that Brown's death in March 1903 happened to fall right in the middle of the greatest Rat Hunt in North American history.  

By the end of the 19th century the chinese in Northern California had cornered the service industry, laundry and cooking, sewing and mending - juggling five or six jobs in a day, with very little sleep.  Many of the European immigrants simply could not compete with the low wages and work ethic of the asian community.  Resentment and racism bubbled up, particularly in San Francisco.  And Northern California Labor Reformers were intent on curbing chinese immigration. 

Racist anti-Chinese propaganda was about to succumb to mass hysteria:  On New Year's Day of 1900, the plague quietly sailed into the port of San Francisco, aboard a steamship called the Australia. 

The steamship was carrying a load of passengers, from HongKong and Honolulu where the plague had recently touched down.  It also carried mail and some stowaway rats.  The passengers arriving from the Orient were quarantined but the rats scuttled out true to their landlubber nature.

At the time, people hadn't yet made the correlation of rats and plague.  But they were about to soon enough.  Rodenticides containing Strychnine, Carbolic acid, and Arsenic became a common part of every household's arsenal of WMDs against The Rat.

'Rough on Rats' was an arsenic-based product developed in New Jersey in 1872 by a man named Ephraim Wells who came up with his own home-made concoction to eliminate rats.  His wife jokingly called the recipe "Rough on Rats" and the product became a commercial success by word of mouth.  Wells was also the creator of the advertizing, using his own imaginative drawings as artwork. 


Ephraim Wells was an astute business man, and such was the popularity of his product that before the advent of the radio, gramophone or television, Rough on Rats even had its own marketing jingle and in 1882 they were even selling sheet music of the song composed for piano and 4-part voice. (The Library of Congress has a copy of the sheet music.)

The plague's provenance from China simply threw the hysteria of racist slurs and propaganda over the edge.

Its interesting to note that while east coast advertising showed whimsical ads of frustrated cats and little rats, squirrels and assorted bugs being tutored on how to avoid Rough on Rats, the West coast ads displayed a  racial disparagement of the Chinese, most notably showing a chinese man eating a rat with the slogan "They must go" positioned immediately above the chinese man's head.  Shocking by today's standards. 


The efficacy of pesticide use was such that by 1910 the Federal Government had even bought 3600 boxes of Rough on Rats for use in the Panama Canal zone.

Rough on Rats continues in production today, no longer using the same arsenic base, and is the oldest U.S. rat-controlled-product trademark.

A tangential postscript to the Charles Brown story is a similar tale that befell Jane Stanford, wife of Leland Stanford, of University fame, who died 2 years after Charles Brown, in 1905, in Honolulu, allegedly from strychnine poisoning, in equally mysterious but more controversial circumstances.

In the month prior to her death, while she was still in San Francisco, Mrs. Stanford had consumed a glass of spring water which she noted had a bitter taste.  Being paranoid that somebody might want to murder her because of her wealth, and suspecting foul play, she had the water tested.  Chemical tests revealed a lethal amount of strychnine in the water.   Her personal maid was fired.

Suffering from a cold and fatigued by the paranoia of being a target on someone's hit list, Jane Stanford decided to travel to Hawaii and then go on to Japan.  Three or four weeks later, while on vacation in Oahu, Jane took a dose of bicarbonate of soda, popular remedy which she used frequently.  Bertha Berner, her personal secretary of over 20 years, reported that, before dying, Mrs Stanford declared that she had been poisoned.

Trace amounts of strychnine were found in her body and in her bottle of bicarbonate. Her murderer was never conclusively determined. Although Ms. Berner, who was also a suspect, conveniently pointed blame at the chinese cook, Ah Wing, there were many who wanted Jane Stanford out of the way, including administrators of the University - who conveniently hushed up her murder.

Both Charles Brown and Mrs Stanford suffered the same excruciating death.  Mrs Stanford's case was deliberate.  But Brown's death is more if a mystery.  His obit indicated that he committed suicide - "no reason can be found for his act excepting that Brown was at times a hard drinker and frequently indulged in sprees". Maybe he was drunk and consumed the bottle of strychnine thinking it was alcohol or bicarb?  Or maybe there was foul play - possibly someone couldn't stand his cooking?  Or wanted his job?  Or maybe somebody wanted his house, land and assets?  And wanted him out of the way, since he had no relatives, spouse or children?  Foul play or accidental death?  We will never know.

Redwood City Democrat, March 26 1903

Charles Brown was buried in the Potter's Grave section of Union Cemetery in Redwood City, resting there until the 21st century as an unknown body with no headstone.  But we now have his name and an extra biography to add to the stories of those at Union Cemetery.  We can even paint a picture of what he looked like: 5'5 and 3/4" in height, brown hair, of dark complexion, with gray eyes.  A Laborer.  Ranch hand.  Dairyman.  Farmer.  Cook.


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References
 
[1]  The number of strychnine exposures in the United States has fallen significantly since its elimination from nonprescription preparations in 1962.  http://www.uptodate.com/contents/strychnine-poisoning#H1, Kavita M. Babu M.D.

[2]  Jane Stanford biography:  See Stanford website - http://janestanford.stanford.edu/biography.html

[3]  Barbary Plague:  The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco, Marilyn Chase.   http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/169911-1

[4] The Cat Made Me Buy It!, Alice Muncaster, 1984, Three Rivers Press - 116 full-color photographs of cats appearing in scores of different ads and promotions created over the last century.

[5] Redwood City Union Cemetery Archives http://www.historicunioncemetery.com/Archives.php

[6] Library of Congress http://www.historicunioncemetery.com/Archives.php

[7] Newspaper article on arrests made in Jane Stanford murder: San Francisco Call, Vol 97, No. 94, 3 March 1905.  http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19050303.2.2#

[8] Charles Brown Obituary - Redwood City Democrat Newspaper, 26 March 1903.  Newspaper Archive held in the Karl A. Vollmayer Local History Room, Redwood City Library, Redwood City. City: http://redwoodcityhistoryroom.com/

[9[ Photo and history of Victoriano Guerrero house, at "Remembering the [Rancho] Corral de Tierra": http://www.halfmoonbaymemories.com/?p=8793

[10] San Mateo County Voter Registrations

Sweeny Ranch Airport

The residential development of Friendly Acres in the early 1930s carved up the last of the ranches in the southeastern end of San Mateo County - the notable Sweeny Ranch.  This was in fact the last of the Arguello marsh lands from the old Pulgas rancho.

From about the 1880s the lands just south of Redwood and east of Menlo Park were known as Sweeny Ranch lands, after Myles D. Sweeny who bought the property from the Arguello estate when the Pulgas Rancho went up for sale and was subdivided.  Today, the Sweeny name survives - but just barely. 

You can find it in the land titles of the unincorporated properties in the Sweeny Ranch subdivision in Menlo Park, south of Marsh Road and east of Bay St.  Only about a dozen houses remain today that can still lay claim to being on the historic Sweeney Ranch and they're in unincorporated Redwood City and Menlo Park.

And it continues on in the name of the train stop at Marsh Manor, which still exists today, as a flag stop station - listed in the Southern Pacific railroad schedules, as Sweeny Ranch station.  Yes, that train barrier across Marsh Road is in fact a flag stop station.  But more on that in another post.

And the name continues to exist in the name of Sweeney Ave,  a road just off of Bay Road, opposite the Ampex campus, named after Miles D. Sweeney.  [Editor's note: the variation on the spelling of Myles Sweeny's name in the historical records is common.  The given spelling, based on the 19th Century census records, is without an "e" before the "y".] 

Today's post, however, is not about the landowners of the rancho lands that Friendly Acres grew out of, but of the airport that we once almost became. 

At the turn of the 20th century, aviation and cars were the huge technological advances which revolutionized transportation and catapulted the world into the modern era.  And from 1911 thru the decade of the roaring 20's, Redwood City was THE place to be on the San Francisco Peninsula if you wanted to watch an airshow or learn to be an aviator.

In the winter of 1926 the San Francisco Airport committee had a shortlist of eight sites to visit - on both sides of the bay, with three of them being in San Mateo County: Coyote Point, Brewer's Island and Sweeny Ranch.

Mr. E. W. Holt, spokesman for the Redwood City Chamber of Commerce encouraged the San Francisco Supervisors to inspect the Sweeny Ranch site describing it as follows:  "The climatic conditions are perfect, insuring perfect flying weather at all times."

Doesn't that sound familiar?  It should.  He was paraphrasing the "Climate Best by government Test" slogan that the City had only recently adopted in the previous year, in 1925, and had placed over their gateway arches into town.

The strategic importance of "climate" as a resource was a big deal to the Peninsula Cities who were interested in attracting San Francisco workers and residents to its green commuter belt and weekend suburban country homes.  Redwood City already had the Redwoods as a business and marketing commodity in its name.  Not being plagued by fog, all it needed was a branding slogan for its perfect weather.  And it intended to capitalize on its micro climate as a strategic resource.

The so-called government test of 1912 was conducted in tandem with the German government, and its likely that the chamber of commerce rallied to have Redwood City submitted as a test site.  And its highly conceivable that Daniel Stafford, one of the city's most influential merchants and business men, was a strong advocate for having the city used as a test site at that time.  The push to market the weather with empirical findings was something that smelled of Daniel Stafford - as the city's largest merchant and a significant real estate and insurance investor he was also one of its biggest promoters.  The climate slogan wasn't just about immortalizing a government report, it was about bringing in big business, big money and big residents.

The Sweeny Ranch site was a late entry to the airport selection game and consisted of 487 acres of marsh land (7000 feet long and 3000 feet wide), which Stafford had recently purchased, located along the Dumbarton cutoff of the Southern Pacific railroad.  (This was the area later to be known as Friendly Acres.)

Image showing Redwood City Airport / Sanders field and Sweeny Ranch lands / Friendly Acres still intact.  An undated aerial view looking east from The Airport Directory Company's 1938 Airport Directory (courtesy of Jonathan Westerling).  The Dumbarton rail line crosses diagonally at the top right of the photo.  Image source from a fantastic site at: Abandoned and Little known Airfields: CA-San Jose area curated by Paul Freeman.

 
Stafford's Sweeny Ranch airport would include the eastern end of Lynch Field, (today the Ampex lands) extending the Sanders Field air strip, which was the existing Redwood City Airport that stretched from Chestnut to Woodside Road.  That eastern end went from Woodside Road to 2nd Avenue, making use of grassland that was being used for grazing cows.

Lynch field was named after Michael Lynch who had purchased a subdivision of the Sweeny Ranch from Regina Pescia (nee Regina Anastasia Sweeny, daughter of Myles D. Sweeny)  in 1898, and used it as a secondary nursery location to grow flowers and cultivate seedlings for the flower trade.

Michael Lynch died in 1905, and his family sold it in June of 1916 to Silas Christofferson, the famous aviator and plane engineer who, aided and abetted by the Redwood City Chamber of Commerce, established his flying school in 1916.

Christofferson had planned to expand and develop the Redwood City airport to the southern end of Lynch field (where Broadway today continues from Woodside Rd to 5th Ave), with a view to manufacturing military airplanes. (In Europe, WWI was at its peak - and Christofferson had ideas for specialized engines and aircraft based on his experience flying for Pancho Villa's army in 1915 during the Mexican Revolution).  But on Halloween of 1916, while test flying a new military plane which he had designed, over the Bay around Redwood City,  the plane's engine died.  Unable to coast it, the plane nose dived and he dropped 100 feet down on to Lynch field, crashing to his death just 4 months after purchasing the fields and airstrip. The young daredevil and brilliant aeronautical mechanic, was only 26.  The airfield was subsequently referred to as "Christofferson field".

Following the tragedy which made international headlines, Frank Bryant who had worked for Christofferson as chief trainer of the flying school, bought out the airport property, and renamed it the Redwood City School of Aviation.

But only three years, later, in 1919, Bryant sold out to the ambitious Walter Varney who had other fields in San Mateo and had ambitions to run a postal air distribution service from San Mateo, as well as aerial taxi services.

Varney also shipped flowers by air from the greenhouses of Redwood City and was subsequently to become  the founder of United Airlines and co-founder of Continental.  During Varney's time until the early 30s when the land was again sold off, the air fields were also referred to as Varney's field

San Mateo Times, November 13 1926

The Redwood City Chamber of Commerce, together with Stafford who had become a Member of the Redwood City Board of Trustees only 3 months previously, offered up the land at $1,000 an acre and promised that it could be made fit for flying conditions in a short space of time - and that the only impediment, they could find was a telephone pole line that crossed the ranch, which could be moved quite easily.

Despite the weather, it all came down to location, location, location.  Aviators of the time seemed to favor a San Francisco-Oakland airfield.   And the distance from San Francisco, regardless of the fog, was the primary reason why Mills Field in San Bruno ultimately won out.  Today, with the delays in takeoff due to the fog, some may question the wisdom of that decision.

Aerial view of Mills Field Municipal Airport, ca. 1927, Creator: Russell Aero Foto (Firm) | Online Archive of California (OAC) - Contributing Institution: San Bruno Public Library

Well, we all know that ultimately the San Francisco Airport Committee chose to go north in their location decision.  Daniel Stafford and the City commissioners must have been presumably disappointed.

[But what a good thing that was for all us who live in the neighborhood today.]
Despondent with losing the airport bid, Stafford sold out to outside developers who purchased the adjoining eastern side of Lynch field and adjoining lands to Marsh Road, intending to build a project which they called the" Sweeny Ranch subdivision" which would include Friendly Acres, Belle Haven and Dumbarton Acres.
Notes:

Probably the best description we have for the Sweeny Ranch or Sanders Field airport, in terms of its size and location from Redwood City's business center, is in the Airway Bulletin of 1934.  Sanders Field is described as:  "Sanders Field, commercial, rating auxiliary airport. Six city blocks E. of business center. Altitude, 10 feet. Rectangular, 5,200 feet by 1,200 feet, sod, level, natural drainage; one runway, 4,700 by 350 feet; entire field also available." Airport Advertisement in the San Mateo Times, Dec 13 1930 Even the U.S. Marine Corps back in 1916 in their survey scouting for possible naval aviation fields around the Peninsula had determined that there were really only 2 suitable locations in the Bay area for flying fields:  Mare Island which the navy already owned, and the location today known as Seaport Boulevard in Redwood City.  Mare Island was preferred as it was already owned by the Navy.  But Redwood City's Seaport area was considered to be far superior than even any other possible site further south in the State that the navy might be interested in and could be used as a naval aviation training base.   First Lieutenant Alfred A. Cunningham who scouted the Peninsula in 1916 for possible naval aviation base locations, concluded in his report however that the marshlands around Redwood City were cut up entirely by sloughs and did not possess enough advantages for aviation purposes unless they were filled in.  He had scoped out 3 sites in Redwood City - the Seaport Blvd marsh land, the Salt Beds south of Seaport (the area today owed by Cargill) and the adjoining Marshes and marsh lands south of there.  The Sweeny Ranch lands were likely included in the marshlands assessment. At the close of war in 1945, David Bohannon attempted to resurrect the idea of an airport at Friendly Acres but the idea was firmly shut down by residents both from Friendly Acres and Atherton.  (Read more here on Bohannon's Friendly Acres airport.)  While Redwood City Airport no longer exists, there is one building that still remains from those early halcyon days, originally known as the Aviation Cafe, today the Apatzingan restaurant. (Read more here on Vestiges of Redwood City Airport.)

Sources and References:

• San Mateo Times and Daily News Leader, December 7 1926
• San Mateo Times and Daily News Leader, November 13, 1926
• Redwood City - Local History exhibit on "Climate Best" slogan 
• Cunningham Report.  pp. 47- 51.  Fourth Report of the Navy Yard Commission. May 28 1917, Congressional Serial Se, Issue 7158, pub. Washinton Government Printing Office.
• Airway Bulletin, Issue 2, Descriptions of Airports and Landing Fields in the United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934
• Abandoned and little known Airfields, by Paul Freeman.    Link to his info on Sanders Field Airport here. 
• Short biography on Walter Varney 
• Biographical reference links and information on Silas Christofferson
• OAC Online Archive of California - Mills Field Airport, San Bruno, 

Friendly Acres in Dots

Probably one of the most interesting maps to come out in recent months is one created by Brandon Martin-Anderson who designed an interactive dot map plotting the 2010 census data for the United States.

His map consists of dots - each dot representing one person.  And they are mapped, based on the location address given for place of residence at the time of the census.  The dots are plotted at the lowest granular level of detail available publicly, which is at the block level, according to the census reports.

Scroll down to see what the S.F. Mid-Peninsula, Redwood City and Friendly Acres all look like.  Despite the tag labeling on Brandon's map, the black and white images can be difficult to work with and navigate, so for the Friendly Acres Map I juxtaposed the most detailed level of the map on top of a colored google map to make it easier to distinguish streets.

Friendly Acres Dot Map of Population Density based on U.S. 2010 Census data