Berkeley’s school board was in turmoil a century ago. After accusations of money mismanagement and the possible theft of more than $12,000 by a former staff member, calls came for the superintendent’s resignation, according to the Berkeley Daily Gazette.
The implication was that he had not taken warnings seriously about financial irregularities. On Feb. 3, 1925, though, the school board gave the superintendent a vote of confidence that prompted board member Carl Bartlett to resign.
How the ongoing controversy and the board’s response could affect the prospect of passing construction school bonds later in the year caused considerable consternation.
Development: The Feb. 7, 1925, Gazette carried an illustration of a large home “in the Mediterranean style”, planned for construction in Roble Court in the southeast Berkeley hills. The court was “the last subdivision of Claremont Court” planned by the Mason McDuffie Company.
Campus origins: In the early 1920s, historian William Warren Ferrier wrote a series of articles in the Gazette about the history of Berkeley and its institutions. In his Feb. 3, 1925, article, he described some of the land dealings that led to the private College of California acquiring the site where the UC Berkeley campus is now located.
The university’s Berkeley location traces back to a proposal by “Captain” Orrin Simmons, who owned land along Strawberry Creek that he had purchased in 1857 after his hardware business burned in San Francisco. A native of Woodstock, Vermont, Simmons as a young man had sailed to Australia, then moved to Chile, where he built and operated a flour mill, then moved to San Salvador where he managed a ranch.
His payment at that ranch was in timber, which he ultimately shipped to San Francisco, where he sold it for $30,000 and started a hardware business at Front and Clay streets that, as noted, burned in 1857, prompting his relocation across the bay to the future Berkeley.
When the private College of California was searching for a permanent site, Simmons suggested the use of his land — a tract of 160 acres — to Professor Henry Durant. After a complex series of negotiations, Simmons sold his “ranch” to the college for $35,000 in 1864, four years before the University of California was chartered. This would become the core of the future campus, combined with smaller land purchases from others further west.
“The Simmons home was on the bank of Strawberry Creek at the end of Piedmont Way” (where the university built a parking garage several years ago), the Gazette reported.
Ferrier took pains to note that while a few land donations were made to the college (and later the university), most of the property was purchased and not gifted.
False alarm: A splinter group of “Reformed Seventh Day Adventists” in the East Bay were, a century ago this week, awaiting the end of the world which they expected on Friday, Feb. 6, 1925.
They believed a prediction by a Los Angeles woman and “leading prophetess,” Mrs. Margaret W. Rowen, that a small dark cloud would approach the Earth at midnight, then turn into a white cloud “upon which Christ and the angels will be seen.”
Trumpets would blow, the dead would be raised, and the righteous transported to heaven. It was believed about 130 people in California, including around 30 in the Bay Area, were awaiting the end.
Friday night came and went without the world ending. There were clouds, but they brought rain, not heavenly choirs. Some said the clouds possibly obscured the view of the sign from heaven and the Gazette reported that the Rev. P.W. Province, “still held there is a possibility of the end coming soon.”
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.