This was not a wild fire like the ones that have been in the news around here recently, though. Before I tell you about the fire, though, let me set the stage.

The year is 1862. 45-year old William Welles Hollister, a rancher with a huge spread in a valley near Santa Barbara marries the Annie, the 21-year old daughter of one of his business associates in San Francisco. The couple then take up residence in Hollister’s ranch in San Benito County

But there’s catch. The mistress of the house for the past 15 years has been William’s widowed sister — and business partner — Lucy Brown.

There’s a local historian, Michael Redmon, who writes a column for a Santa Barbara weekly paper. I’ll let his column pick it up from here:

…The Hollisters moved to [another] ranch in Tecolote Canyon in 1869. Over the years, Hollister created at the ranch a horticultural and agricultural showplace. He also became one of Santa Barbara’s leading entrepreneurs and philanthropists. …

Tension between Lucy and Annie worsened until Annie delivered an ultimatum: Either Lucy had to go, or she would leave. Caught between two strong-willed women, Hollister hatched an unusual plan. He built a second, larger house for his wife further up the canyon. The “Upper Ranch” became the Hollisters’ social center, while Lucy looked after ranch business at the lower house. …
from “Glen Annie Road” by Michael Redmon, Santa Barbara Independent, 5/14/2014

Annie and William had 6 children, only a few of whom survived to adulthood. William was quite the womanizer, and apparently it was well-known that Annie was pretty unhappy in her marriage. Saddled with a bad marriage and a sister-in-law who hated her, it must have seemed like the last straw when things took a legal turn for the worse. Back to Redmon:

… Additionally, a legal cloud hung over Glen Annie. There was the possibility that Hollister’s purchase of the ranch was illegal by violating the terms of Nicholas Den’s will; Den had been the previous owner. The Den heirs decided to sue.

Hollister determined to fight. The case dragged through the courts for 14 years. It was not settled until 1890, four years after Hollister’s death, when the state Supreme Court found for the Den heirs. …
from “Glen Annie Road” by Michael Redmon, Santa Barbara Independent,5/14/2014

Yes, that’s right. Ultimately the court decided that the Den heirs had a right to the house that Annie lived in. No fault of her own, but she was suddenly being forced from the house her husband had built for her. After the state Supreme Court ruling, all avenues of appeal were exhausted. Annie was therefore served an eviction notice. She resisted for quite a while, but finally packed up and left.

Hours later, the house — which was deserted in all senses — suddenly burst into flames, burning completely to the ground. Arson was suspected, of course, with Annie as the prime suspect. However, nothing was ever proven.  She lived for almost 20 more years in a small house elsewhere in Santa Barbara, never prosecuted for the crime, although the fortunate coincidence of timing is always noted in any description of her and her husband.

What isn’t in any of the writeups I’ve seen, though,  is what happened to William’s sister, Lucy. I mean, where was she when the flames started and the “Upper Ranch” burned down?  In my (fictionalized) solution to the story, Lucy would have burned it down to frame Annie, so that Lucy could get Annie’s share of the business when Annie went to jail. After all,  Annie would have inherited William’s share of the business when he died, 4 years before the fire, so Lucy would have had motive.

I know, I know, I probably have been watching too many Columbo episodes recently.

In any case, while I made up that last part about Lucy being involved with the fire, the rest of the story is true. So we have a real life mystery for our final Monday in Santa Barbara.

—–

And yes, as that last line suggests, Chris and I will be moving on from Santa Barbara soon.  So where’s the next stop on the Plan G Road Trip?  Stay tuned.

Chris and I have been here in Santa Barbara for 2.5 weeks, but I only just started taking scenic photos of town. It’s really a very pretty place, but I had some technical difficulties with my cell phone camera.

OK, well, to be honest I accidentally dropped it.  Then the case cracked, and … fast forward to now, when I have a new cell phone and cell phone camera.  It’s a different kind of phone from what I had before, and I have to learn how to take panoramas with the new camera, because it works differently than with the old one. Of course. Sigh.

It’s going to take some getting used to. Without even trying, though,  I got some impressive iCurves.  That’s what I’m calling the phenomenon I see in the panoramic photos I took yesterday of the  long wooden pier in Santa Barbara.

You see, in person, the pier stretches in a straight line from the beach out into the water. But with my new cell phone — which is an iPhone, for those interested in knowing —  the straight pier becomes an iCurve, i.e. a curved version of a straight line seen in a panoramic photo taken with an iPhone.

Maybe I should make that iCurve™. Although maybe someone already has — I mean,  it’s really a pronounced and not-necessarily-optimal effect that is happening automatically in my panoramas, something that didn’t happen as easily with my old phone.

For example, consider the following photo, which looks normal. You can see that the beach is straight across, and the pier is perpendicular to it:

Looking back from the pier toward the beach

But here’s a look taken in the other direction and taken using the panorama mode. The photo shows the other side of the pier, and  a different beach and the hills beyond the water:

An iCurve view from the pier at the beach and hills

And, of course, it shows the pier as curved, but it’s not a real curve — it’s an iCurve™.

Here’s another look at the same beach and hills, taken while standing in a different section of the pier:

iCurve pier and iCurve wire – note the two curves are different

I am intrigued in this one how the two different curves (the pier and the wire) are curved in different ways.

But  if I can figure out how to do an iCurve™ when I want to — and crucially not get one when I don’t want do — I’ll be on to something big…

———-

P.S. Thanks for everybody’s concern about how we’re doing since by now most of you have heard that there’s a big wild-fire near Santa Barbara.  Not to worry, though – it’s not actually in Santa Barbara where we are. It’s many, many miles from where we are in fact,  so we haven’t had any effects of it here in town, fortunately.

OK, perhaps there was a little bit of fine ash dusted on the car the other day. But … that could just as easily just be dust.  I mean, get the idea in your head of the possibility of there being fine ash dust in the air, and suddenly you start thinking that the fine layer of normal dust on our white car could be from white ash, right?

Anyway, the lack of blog posts this past week have had nothing to do with any problems created for us by the fire. I’m just having problems managing my time to get everything done.

Other than that, we’re doing fine.

A great unforseen side-benefit of that is that we have the ability to get a library card in many places. All the towns we’ve temporarily lived-in have had methods for getting library cards that involve getting mail at a local address.  Santa Barbara has a great service to facilitate this: they provide you with a postage-paid postcard that you fill out and give back to them. They mail you the card, which you then you bring back to the library to get your card. Very easy – no waiting or messing around with getting official mail from other sources. Nice.

In Seattle they took any kind of mail that was sent in your name to your address, so there we brought a large shipping box that had my name and address on it. Definitely not as convenient as the Santa Barbara postcard.

In Vancouver, you didn’t to show any mail – you just had to pay $30 for 3 months. Not as convenient. But at least we were able to do it.

BTW, after having been away from the U.S. for so long, it’s been fun to realize that the libraries now have ways to request books via their websites. I did that a lot in Seattle, getting books that were housed in community branches all over the city, and having them delivered to my local branch which was just two blocks away. A very nice feature of modern libraries, IMHO, and something that changed over the 11 years Chris and lived outside the U.S.

Anyway, to end this brief homage to libraries and library cards, I’ll offer a few appropriate Broadway show tunes.  But of course – I mean, some things never change.

1. A Trip to the Library, from the musical She Loves Me. I’ve posted this song before, but today’s clip is performed by Jane Krakowski, who is up for a Tony Award on Sunday for her performance in this year’s revival of She Loves Me.  (Tony Awards are on Sunday, June 12th). BTW, the clip in that link is just a small snippet of her performing the song.  Here’s a link to the whole song performed by Sally Mayes, a woman who was nominated for a Tony award for the same role years ago in an earlier revival.
2. Marian, The Librarian: a classic song and scene from the musical The Music Man.  I think that Marian might have appreciated the idea that people nowadays can access the library books online, instead of causing so much ruckus dancing around her library.
3. Belle, from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. In the song, Belle doesn’t have a library in her little middle ages European town, but she always has her “nose stuck in a book.” I bring this up in part to forestall any questions about whether or not we visited the libraries when we lived in Italy and Germany.  Here’s the scoop: in Italy, the library was intimidating: no open stacks, plus I didn’t read Italian very well.  In Germany, it worked more like the North American libraries I was used to, with open stacks and a library card you could get with an ID – and proof of a mailing address. So while we lived in Tübingen, Chris and I both had library cards. As proof, I offer this old post I wrote about it all back then. Enjoy reading that,  as you’re listing to all the musical trips to the library…

And yes, I do realize today isn’t Monday, but I didn’t get the photos taken until yesterday, and you’ll see at the end why it’s nice to have photos in this post.

Anyway, you might assume that I’m posing this question because it is one that people are asking right now about  Chris and me. After all, it’s reasonable to wonder what the heck Chris and I are doing here in Santa Barbara.

So, why [did we decide to take our Plan G tour to] Santa Barbara? Well, the short answer is … there was no particular reason. Last December, when we spent just a single night here on our way to Northern California, it looked like a place we thought it would be fun to spend some time in.  Plus, there’s a good University library around here for Chris to use while he prepares some materials that are due in the fall (for an invited keynote speech and also an invited book chapter). Plus, there’s the ocean. Plus we found a great deal on a little 2 bedroom (!) cottage where we can stay until July 15th. Plus we know a few people that we will try to meet with in this area.  Plus, we get a chance to try life in the “American Riviera”, as Santa Barbara is sometimes called.

For all those rather random reasons, we’re here in Santa Barbara until July 15th.

And before you ask … no, we don’t know what’s coming after July 15th. As usual, we have no plan.

But I’ve actually just digressed away from the real topic of this post, since my question “Why Santa Barbara” was not about Chris and me;  it was originally something  I asked Chris about one of his ancestors who lived in Santa Barbara.

You see, Chris’ paternal grandmother’s relatives trace back to a guy named Peter Brinkerhoff. He was born and raised on the East Coast and started a family there.  But then at one point, he left the east and moved west to Santa Barbara, CA. Chris has been doing some research into the Brinkerhoffs, and so one of my questions for him has been “Why Santa Barbara? – i.e., Why did Peter Brinkerhoff decide to move to Santa Barbara in the 1800s? Gold fever? Or something else (since his move is in the late 1850s, which seems a bit late for gold fever).

Now to understand the following information, you’ll need to know that Chris has uncovered the fact that Peter Brinkerhoff (Chris’ direct ancestor) had a cousin named Samuel Brinkerhoff.

I’ll let Chris take over the story from here, from a write-up he did recently:

Why do we care about Samuel?

Well Samuel moved to Santa Barbara in 1852. There are a couple stories about how he came to be in Santa Barbara. In one, Samuel headed out to California from New York sometime after the discovery of gold in 1849. According to this account, he had “Gold Fever” and spent some time in Marysville (I think I remember visiting some other relative there when I was little). Samuel then headed south to Santa Barbara in 1852.

Another more exciting story has Dr. Brinkerhoff (Samuel was an M.D.) heading towards San Francisco for his health in 1852 when the steamship he was on made a stop in Santa Barbara. Not great timing, since there was a big gunfight going on at the time. Because he was a doctor, he tended to the wounded, but that caused him to miss the departure of the steamship. However, he liked the town and decided to stay.

Who knows, maybe both stories are true. In any case, Dr. Samuel B. Brinkerhoff became the first resident doctor in Santa Barbara, and soon became a Very Important Person. He, with others, funded a crucial road, built the first wharf, and founded a gas (light) company. Given his quick rise, and the fact that he was a doctor, I’m guessing that Samuel already had some money to start with, probably from his family.

So, when his cousin Peter has a rough patch (his first wife dies in 1855), maybe he decides to pull up stakes in Ohio (where there were also a lot of relatives) to get a new start by moving to join his better-off cousin, Samuel, in Santa Barbara. By 1858 Peter’s been in Santa Barbara long enough to fall in love with Elizabeth Jane Nidever, who he marries in 1858.

As I said, Samuel was a mover and a shaker, and there is a small street named after him, on land that he once owned. I saw that street today, and it’s pretty, with tall palm trees (not from Samuel’s time) and Victorian houses. All that was done after he died, though. His house is still standing, though, at the end of Brinkerhoff Ave.

— from Chris Culy’s email summary explaining the connection between Samuel and Peter Brinkerhoff

So, that’s Chris’ answer to the mystery about Peter and “Why Santa Barbara?”

BTW, as Chris mentions, Samuel’s house is still standing at one end of Brinkerhoff Avenue, or at least there is a nice house standing at the address given as Samuel’s in the records books that Chris used (it’s a private house and there’s no way to tell for sure without knocking on the door if the house was built in Samuel’s time):

Location of Samuel Brinkerhoff house, Santa Barbara

Sam’s place? (photo showing just the house)

The redwood tree in front definitely isn’t from Samuel’s time, though, as a plaque at the base of the tree says that it was planted in 1929.

Nowadays, that house isn’t actually on Brinkerhoff Avenue.  Rather Brinkerhoff avenue leads up to the house.  Hopefully the following photos will help orient you:

1. A panorama that shows the house and the street running in front of the old Brinkerhoff homestead; this street is NOT Brinkerhoff avenue.

Sam’s Place in context on street

In this photo, Brinkerhoff Avenue is out of camera range off to the right, as it comes in perpendicular to the house.

2. In the following photo, the street going off into the distance is the same street as in the first photo; the Brinkerhoff house is out of camera range off to the left. You can see the start of Brinkerhoff Avenue (marked by the street sign) in the middle of the photo.  Brinkerhoff Avenue itself runs off to the right, following the direction of the one way sign.

The start of Brinkerhoff Avenue

3. In the next image, you can see the palm trees that currently line Brinkerhoff Avenue. Again, to orient you, the house is behind me from where I’m standing as I’m looking down Brinkerhoff Avenue.

Brinkerhoff Avenue, Santa Barbara, CA

There you have it – in less than a week Chris has tracked down several ancestors, traced a bit of their stories, located an old ancestral homestead along with  a whole street named for one of them.

So when anyone asks, “Why is Santa Barbara a stop on your Plan G Tour?,” I guess I’ll just reply, “Well, why not?