APPENDIX D: MORE ON THE MARTINS AND SORNBERGERS

** All Text on these chapter pages has been copied verbatim – with permission – from this book: “Shurtleff Family Genealogy & History – Second Edition 2005” by William Roy Shurtleff & his dad, Lawton Lothrop Shurtleff ** Text in pdf convert to word doc – any spelling errors from the book may or may not have been fixed. **

Herbert S. Martin and Harmon Sornberger, are described in some detail in Chapter 3. This additional information has, for sev­eral reasons, been placed here:

First—To ensure that Chapter 3 is not too long relative to other chapters.

Second—The Martins, while of great interest to the Shurtleff family, are related only because they share two important ancestors: Maria Louisa Avann, and her daughter, Charlotte Avery Meek Shurtleff, the matriarchs of this family. Herbert S. Martin is, of course, related to the Shurtleffs only by his marriage to Jessie Meek. The facts regard­ing “Dr.” Herbert S. Martin are extremely tenuous and reports from family sources are so personal it was thought better to include them in an Appendix to be read there only by those willing to dig deeper into this family’s history.

Third—The Sornbergers are related even less directly by marriage into the Martin family, yet played an important and steadying role in the Meek’s and Martin’s lives, and an interesting role in the lives of the younger Shurtleffs.

Brief Chronology of Herbert S. Martin and Jessie Meek

The following details of Martin’s story may provide further insight into the life of a man who has left us with many unanswered questions:

First, however, let’s review the main events in Herbert Martin’s life starting in 1887:

1887-1888—Herbert Martin is a school teacher in Georgetown, California. Probably shortly before or after this, that he earned a diploma from a state teacher training school (a “normal school”).

1892—Herbert Martin, a 23-year-old bachelor living in Georgetown, California, applies to Cooper Medical College in San Francisco, is accepted, and pays $180 of his tuition of $245. On June 27 he travels to San Francisco and enrolls as a first-year medical student. He signs the registration book as he is about to register for classes. He may have attended some classes, but for some unknown reason, he fails to finish the semester or to receive any grades.

1893 May 10—Herbert and Jessie Meek are married in Nevada City California.

1893 July 5—On only two months after his marriage, Herbert enrolls a second time at Cooper. He again travels to San Francisco and signs the registration book. As before, he may have attended some classes but he fails to finish the semester.

1894-95—Herbert and Jessie move to Ione, California, to teach there in the Preston School of Industry. He is assigned as “second-in-command” to the superintendent. Less than a year later, Herbert and several of his associates resign or are dismissed from the school.

1896-1900–Herbert and Jessie move to Marysville. He takes a job as a school teacher. They have two sons Roland and Herbert, Jr. His future looks bright.

1901—The family leaves Marysville and returns briefly to the home of his “parents”, the Sornbergers, in Georgetown.

1902—From Georgetown, with no known source of income to support his wife and two sons, Herbert makes his third application for admission to the Cooper Medical College. He is accepted.

1903-04—He enrolls and for two years attends classes while living as a “medical student” on 19th Street in San Francisco. His grades are excellent.

1904—He leaves Cooper without graduating and without his diploma.

1905-09—Lives in San Francisco on 22nd Street with Jessie and sons, Roland, age 10 and Herbert, Jr., age 8. Martin for the first time (appar­ently without a license) lists his occupation as “physician.”

1909-12—Herbert, Jessie, and their two chil­dren move to Berkeley and reside at 2629 Grant Street. He continues for four years to list his occu­pation as “physician” in the Berkeley city directory.

1913—The family still lives in Berkeley on Grant Street but for some reason Herbert is no longer listed as a “physician” in the city directory.

1914-16—Herbert, and presumably his family, moves 100 miles south to the tiny town of Ray­mond, California. For reasons not clear, he gives up the role of medical doctor and returns to a career of teaching. He is principal of the school and editor of the local newspaper.

1916—He and his family return to Georgetown; he dies at the Sornberger’s home after a “long illness.”

More about the Martins

Attempting to fill in the blanks in this puzzling series of events helps to tell us more about Herbert Martin. But, first back to Ione, California, in 1894:

On 13 June 1894, a little more than a year after they were married, Herbert and Jessie arrived at the Preston School of Industry in Ione, California, before it actually opened to receive its first “wards”, i.e., students. Today the school would be called a “correctional institute.” In those days it was known as a “reform school.” “Major Martin” was engaged as a military instructor, school teacher, and Captain of Company A.

We don’t know why Herbert Martin gave up the study of medicine and became a teacher at a reform school. He had previous teaching experi­ence and a diploma, but he probably had no cre­dentials to become a military instructor. The boys at Ione were mostly vagrants or orphans. They ranged in age from 8 to 17, but most were of high-school age, 14 to 17. They were generally not “tough” kids or criminals although “there may have been one rapist and one armed robber in the group of 170 boys.”

Despite his youth (he was only 26), in 1895 Martin took a remarkable step when he led a group of the school’s most valued employees in filing serious complaints against E. Carl Banks, the school’s superintendent. The charges were detailed and serious and appear highly princi­pled. Further, they were supported by indepen­dent written statements by others in the adminis­tration.

The San Francisco Examiner of 6 April 1895 published the following:

MARTIN’S STATEMENT

He Says the “Boys Were Ill Treated, Overworked and Insufficiently Fed.” “Georgetown (Cal.); April 5—The statement of Major H. S. Martin regarding the lone School corroborates the statements of Bridges Brown, and Eastman. Major Martin was engaged as military instructor, school teacher and Captain of Company “A.” He says the schoolrooms were over­crowded for months [with] thirty-three to fifty boys. The windows of the dormitory were fastened down, making the air foul. They were short of blankets, beds, pillows, and books for the school. Military work was retarded by the Superintendent. He utterly disregarded the orders of the Board for the military work, his sole object being to get as much work out of the boys as possible.

Two boys who escaped were captured and hand­cuffed together. They were run before a horse by Superintendent Banks. Upon arrival at the building, because he chanced to see a smile on some of the boys in the basement, the Superintendent struck one of the culprits a blow which felled him to the ground, and because he could not rise, Banks took the halter strap and whipped him until his companion helped him to his feet. That evening he took the same boy and whipped him until the blood flowed from his wounds. The bloody sheets were removed from his bed the next morning.

For days the officers and boys were fed with sour bread and there was no effort to remedy this until a subscription was taken up by the officers. “He says the water supply for the school comes from Sutter Creek, which receives the sewerage from the town of Sutter Creek, twelve miles distant from the school. Major Martin, also makes other charges against the manage­ment.”

The aforementioned Mr. Bridges in a separate statement had charged that “in rainy weather, the boys—some 170 in number, now are all huddled together in the dark basement on a concrete floor with no occupation on any sort provided…”

Mr. McLean, the gardener, “had some boys at work for me faint away for want of food” and told the superintendent that he would thereafter refuse to take out boys who were not properly fed.

W. F. Eastman, the school’s electrical engi­neer, stated: “The Superintendent gets $175, his house rent and—his family supplies. Besides he gets all his servants from among the boys. He has a dining room boy, a kitchen boy, and any other boys he wants. He is an autocratic officer – and has won the title of Little Czar On The Hill.”

A preemptory and highly politicized investi­gation lasting only a day or so was undertaken by the “Legislature Committee” from the California State Assembly, and all the charges dismissed The local paper, The lone Echo, reported the inves­tigators had found “the boy’s time is spent in reading and innocent games, with singing exercis­es two or three times a week.” Likewise the citi­zens of Ione held an “indignation meeting to stig­matize the allegation and show support for the superintendent, Mr. E. Carl Banks.”

In 1997, John Lafferty, senior librarian and historian at the school, wrote Preston School of Industry: A Centennial History, 2nd edition. The book was published by the school’s Vocational Print Shop. In our talks with Mr. Lafferty, he noted that the failure to bring charges against the accused superintendent was totally political and basically a whitewash, since the economy of the tiny town of lone was heavily dependent on the school. Hence, it is Lafferty’s opinion that Mr. Martin was “probably on the up-and-up and had some valid charges to make.”

In any event, no action was taken against the accused school administrators. The Examiner reported that “three or four of the most valuable subordinate officers resigned.” Elsewhere it reported: “Quite recently Major H. S. Martin, of Georgetown, El Dorado County who was next in authority to the Superintendent, resigned.” Another article, in the Amador Dispatch, reported that their services “were dispensed with.” So resigned or fired, in early 1895 Herbert Martin and Jessie were gone from Ione. While Martin’s well-documented allegations against the school caused the loss of his and the others’ jobs, his action seemed well intended and courageous—and mark a bright if painful moment in his career as a teacher.

As described earlier in Chapter 3, the Martins went directly from Ione to Marysville where Herbert continued his work as a teacher albeit in a regular school. For several years in addition to teaching he served on the board of education—and was registered to vote. He seemed estab­lished with a wife and two children, headed for a career in education.

Then in still another abrupt change of direc­tion, he left Marysville and returned to his par­ents’ home in Georgetown. He applied again for admission to Cooper Medical College, was accepted, and began his study of medicine for a third time (see Chapter 3). Though he earned very good grades, he stayed for only two years. Then, for some unknown reason, he left without com­pleting the required four years and without his diploma which would qualify him to apply for his license to practice medicine.

The archivist at the Stanford University’s Lane Medical Library (earlier Cooper) has searched the records of those years and is certain he left school early but can find no explanation for his departure. Only many years later infor­mation surfaced that might well explain the mystery.

The first serious indication that there may have been a major problem in Herbert and Jessie’s lives came from their granddaughter, Charlotte Adams. She has recalled to Lawton and Bill Shurtleff that “on the day of my wedding” [to Leo Pavloff in 1943] I was at Jessie’s house, upstairs in her bedroom dressed in my bridal gown. As she was arranging my dress she said, ‘Well, I hope you don’t get pregnant right away. You should not have babies too soon.’ She kind of sighed as she continued to arrange my ruffles, and said, ‘Well I was very fortunate in my day because I had a husband who was a doctor and he knew how to take care of that. So I had only two babies.^— Charlotte wasn’t certain what Jessie was trying to tell her, but a subsequent conversa­tion with Jessie’s sister, Nettie, revealed even more of Martin’s strange medical career.

Charlotte recalls that over the years she and Nettie had become very close. One day Nettie sat me down and said:

I think there is something in the family history you should know. Of course you never knew Jessie’s husband, Herbert (senior)—and this is never spoken of now. The Sornbergers paid his way through medical school. They also took out some life insurance for Herbert and an annuity for Jessie. Just before he was about to graduate from medical school, it was discov­ered that he had performed abortions—who knows how many? He was kicked out of medical school and didn’t graduate or get his degree.

Imagine by the time Nettie finished telling me this, my jaw was on the floor! I could hardly believe it. I was so stunned. Jessie used to talk about him with me and others in very loving terms—telling stories of all the things he had done with the boys—as when she was washing dishes and I was drying them. Nettie said that he never held a decent job after that incident at the medical school.

Roland Martin recalls that he first heard this story about his grandfather from his sister, Charlotte, when he returned from World War II . He says that he felt “no shock or shame for he realized that was why, when he asked about his grandfather, nobody wanted to talk about him. He was a taboo subject. You just knew the subject was not one to be talked about.” Charlotte agrees —and neither she nor Roland ever knew how grandmother Jessie felt about all this.

From what we know, Herbert and Jessie had a loving relationship. She consistently referred to him as “Dr.” Martin and spoke admiringly of him to her sister, Nettie and grandniece, Charlotte Adams. Certainly Jessie stayed loyal to him dur­ing their 23 years of marriage. In his obituary, his mother Jean also referred to him as “Dr.” Martin. The two people in the world closest to Martin, for whatever reason, continued to refer to him as a physician.

Could there be another unreported side to this story? Abortions to save a life of a mother are not uncommon today. Had Herbert been expelled from Cooper medical school for trying to help someone? Did he feel this expulsion was unfair? We’ll probably never know.

For the first 35 years, Herbert Martin appears to have lead a normal life, exceptional only in having had two stepfathers: Mr. Bodfish and Harmon Sornberger, all before his 17th birthday. The next nine years, living in the elegant Sornberger home in Georgetown, could have been a wonderful time in his life. One can only speculate how those first 16 years—suffering the loss of two fathers, living with his widowed mother as guests in the home of his aunt Chloe and her three children—might have influenced his life as compared with the next six years living with a stepfather whom he scarcely knew. In fact we know nothing of young Herbert’s relationship with his stepfather. It may have been a steadying influence in a stable and well organized house­hold—or it could have been a difficult adjustment for a 16-year-old son and a much older, childless stepfather, a successful civic leader, and perhaps a strict disciplinarian.

Recall that one of Herbert’s last moves was in 1914 when he left Berkeley for the tiny town of Raymond where he returned to teaching and also edited the local newspaper. There seems to have been a constant conflict in Martin between teach­ing and medicine and also another impulse to return to his parent’s home in Georgetown. Sadly we will never know what devils (or angels) he may have entertained.

Herbert Martin’s name was rarely mentioned by those in his extended family. Lawton, Gene and Nancy Shurtleff cannot recall ever hearing their parents, Roy and Hazle Shurtleff, ever speak of Herbert, even though they were very close to his sister Jessie. His two sons have claimed never to have known him even, though they lived with him at the very least until 1910 when Roland was 15 and Herbert was 12—and they went to his funeral in 1916 when Roland was 21 and Herbert was 18. Moreover, they never mentioned his name to their own children. And lastly there is the fact that even though he is buried in Georgetown, where he was raised and died, no one bothered to erect a fitting stone to mark his grave. What a sad ending for this often decent man.

Harmon Sornberger (1830-1908)

Harmon joined the Martin family in 1884 at age 54 when, as a widower, he married Jean Martin, twice a widow, at age 38. In this marriage he seems to have done everything in his power to be a good husband and a real father to Jean’s son, Herbert, who was by then a 16-year-old teenager. Recall that Harmon’s mother was Betsy Van Buren, niece to President Martin Van Buren, that by 1884 he was a leading citizen and civic leader of Georgetown, and that in 1888 he was elected one of Georgetown’s three trustees. In business he had made his fortune.

One cannot help wondering what this gener­ous and successful Georgetown civic leader and Herbert’s stepfather knew, thought about, and perhaps did about Herbert’s activities. After all, it is believed by his own descendants that Harmon had financed Herbert’s medical school costs.

Martin’s problem, as recounted by Nettie Meek, must have become serious in 1903-04 when he left medical school. Harmon died in 1908 “after a long illness” so, in faraway Georgetown, he may never have known of Herbert’s failure to finish medical school. If so, what a blessing in his ill­ness.

Harmon Sornberger, was a positive influ­ence on this otherwise unsettled family. He spent a year at Spanish Dry Diggings, then moved to the Georgetown area. His business endeavors were apparently many. In addition to mining, he had an interest in a sawmill, then with a partner, William H. Lane, entered the general merchan­dising business. In their store, Wells Fargo estab­lished an express office with Sornberger acting as its agent to the resurgent mining industry. In the 1870s at 9:00 a.m. long lines of Chinese often waited outside the Sornberger store, to sell their gold. In 1897 when the fifth major fire in Georgetown’s young history destroyed the Sornberger store Wells Fargo discontinued its operations. But Sornberger persevered and built a new-style double-front brick building that is still standing and is known today as The Miners’ Club. Records and photographs in the posses­sion of relatives show that he also owned or had an interest in a stagecoach line that, among other routes, ran east to Lake Tahoe through some of the most rugged terrain in the Sierra Nevada. Today Georgetown hosts the Jeep Destruction Derby that covers the same exact route through Desolation Valley and Hell’s Hole before arriv­ing some sixteen battering hours later at the west side of Lake Tahoe.

The stagecoach road once traveled by Somberger’s horses in the mid-1800’s was in the 1920s an impossible and mostly abandoned road ending near the Shurtleffs’ home at Homewood Lake Tahoe. From Tahoe the Shurtleffs would head west down rocky slopes into mighty Desolation Valley to the tiny Rubicon River where Lawton, and Gene Shurtleff, and their young friends used to fish and camp out for the night. Old timers would tell of it being a stage­coach route to far distant Georgetown. Not for a minute did they believe the story, for it seemed impossible that any wagon could have made the trip. At least one very old automobile carcass lay abandoned among the boulders as stark evi­dence of their disbelief. On one occasion a Shurtleff automobile that tried to duplicate the stagecoach effort was impaled on the granite rocks, its fan belt broken and its oil pan pierced and leaking. It was ultimately professionally extracted by a tow company that father Roy had chartered all the way from Truckee some fifty miles away. It wasn’t a trip the boys would attempt again—at least not in their father’s auto­mobile. Nancy (Shurtleff) Miller recalls that her boyfriend and later husband, G. Willard Miller, also left a car abandoned on that same road. For the young Shurtleffs this was about as wild as the west could get.

Another story indicates the lasting impres­sion left by the Sombergers on this sometimes rudderless family. It is evidenced by an offering made in 1982 by Jessie’s son, Herbert , Jr., to sell a grand piano that Harmon Sornberger had brought into his home in the late 1880s and that remained in the family for over 100 years.

HISTORY OF A STEINWAY PIANO

Description: Steinway piano #39253: Square grand solid rosewood case; seven octave key board with ivory and ebony keys; the dimensions are: width, 6’8″; depth, 40″; height, 37″; weight approx. 400 pounds made in 1877 by Steinway & sons, Steinway Hall, 109 West 57th St., New York, N.Y.

This Steinway Piano was made in 1877, shipped to Mathias Grey in San Francisco for my grandparents Mr. & Mrs. H. Sornberger and delivered to them in Georgetown, El Dorado County, California.

The piano rested for many years in the Georgetown home where my grandfather was in the lumber, gold mining and general merchandise busi­ness. His home was quite a gathering place for many fine musicians, who enjoyed the pleasure this beautiful instrument gave.

Ultimately, the piano became the prized posses­sion of my parents who took it along with them when they moved to San Francisco. While there, it managed to survive the 1906 earthquake and to remain unscratched. At that time, Capt. “Jack” Pershing was in charge of policing the earthquake devastated area. For the protection of the piano, Capt. Pershing had it moved to Golden Gate Park. While it was under pro­tective custody in the park, the piano offered wonderful entertainment for the refuges, as well as the soldiers, including Capt. Pershing.

After the quake, we relocated in Berkeley. The piano rested there for the next fifty-one years.

The piano’s last move was in August 1982, when we brought it with us to South Lake Tahoe, California. Here, it has been completely gone over by a tuner, of the Piano Tuners Guild, who also happens to be Liberace’s piano tuner. To quote Mr. Dulcette, “It is in perfect condition, inside and out.” It is indeed a rare and beautiful expression of exquisite workmanship.

Note: It is interesting that this old letter helped confirm Roy Shurtleff’s recollection of Jessie and her children in San Francisco at the time of the earthquake and fire in 1906.

This piano is now in the possession of a Mrs. Cheryl Foster in Ukiah, California who feels so affectionately for its beauty and its history she is offering to give it to a member of the Sornberger family—or, if no one is really interested, to gift it to the Georgetown Historical Society which would very much like to have it.

It is interesting that Harmon Sornberger’s obituary notes the following: “In the absence of a minister, Professor J. R. Stevens read the funeral service and a quartet—rendered the hymns.” Recall young Herbert Jr. writing that “His home was quite a gathering place of many fine musi­cians, who enjoyed the pleasure this beautiful instrument gave.”

One more story of interest to the Roy Shurtleff family concerning the Sombergers and Martins involved some very unusual, ancient and unforgettable horsehair furniture in the Shurtleffs’ Lake Tahoe cabin also back in the late 1920’s

In the high-ceilinged living room was a sofa, several arm chairs, and an ingenious platform rocker all covered with shiny jet-black horsehair. It was harsh and almost indestructible—but it left a lasting impression on anyone sitting on it, par­ticularly those in hiking shorts, whose bare legs were savagely pricked by the sharp ends of the horsehairs.

Roy was very sentimental about it and often made reference to its having come from George­town. Now that we know more about the family history, we can assume it came from the Som-berger home, which by the late 1920s must have been left to Jessie, the widowed daughter-in-law of Harmon and Jean Somberger. Roy’s sister, Jessie, undoubtedly had given the furniture to Roy and Hazle for their new Tahoe cabin. These treasured antiques are still in the possession of Roy’s children and grandchildren.

So, many thanks to the elegant Sombergers who unwittingly played such a generous and interesting role in their step-family’s lives. Our lives are richer for the memories they have left with us. Would it were possible to know even more about them.