Mary Praetzellis

A Connecticut merchant in chinadom: A play in one act

By 1855 four of the five Chinese District Associations in California had offices and boardinghouses in Sacramento on I Street between Fifth and Sixth. Agents of these Chinese Associations nurtured important reciprocal relationships with Sacramento businessmen, including Josiah Gallup, a merchant from Connecticut. Gallup discovered his niche as a translator and middleman for the Chinese merchants of San Francisco and Sacramento. He helped them purchase real estate and supplies, transport miners and prostitutes to the gold fields, and negotiate with City officials. This is the story of Joshua Gallup and how he helped the Chinese get started in Sacramento.

Cultural Resource Management Archaeology and Heritage Values

As it moved into the 21st century, the National Park Service embarked on an ambitious program of public involvement and civic engagement explicitly geared to the use of heritage sites to inform the public on contemporary issues. Meanwhile, although Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act mandates the recovery and dissemination of the information recovered from important archaeological sites in the name of public benefit, the contribution of the cultural resource management sector to the public or to civic engagement and education has not achieved its potential. This article explores some of the reasons behind this failure and provides two case studies showing how such an endeavor might work, along with suggestions for the future.

“Utility and beauty should be one:” The landscape of Jack London’s ranch of good intentions

Jack London—popular author, avid traveler, and vocal socialist—left two legacies to the world: his writings and his Beauty Ranch. This paper examines the common principles influencing London’s self-expression in writing and across the landscape.

Beyond Stories: A Quantitative Approach to the Archaeology of Households, Neighborhoods, and Cities

Although our topic—the development of research design in urban historical archaeology—would seem to be somewhat academic, it turns out to be a rather personal story. Reading up on the history of ideas in archaeology (e.g., Trigger, 1989), one might get the impression that the process of change has been largely an intellectual matter of dueling articles and influential symposia. And no doubt these things have played their role. This chapter, however, begins with the rest: the idiosyncratic, often random forces, as well as the personal preferences, that came together to create an approach to urban historical archaeology in California.

Commentary on the Archaeology of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America: Where Do We Go from Here?

AbstractArchaeologists have spent nearly five decades excavating sites associated with Chinese immigrants to the American West. They have studied hundreds of places and millions of artifacts and compiled enormous amounts of information. It is time for synthesis; it is time for sharing beyond the narrow archaeological community. The material is too rich, too important, to bury in technical reports and obscure jargon. It can connect contemporary American and Chinese communities in a common quest for an understanding of the past in the interests of the future.Chouxiàng考古学家已经对美国西部的中国移民遗址进行了将近五十 年的发掘。他们已经了研究了成百上千的地点与数不胜数 的文物, 并积累了大量信息资料。现在是我们应该进行综 合的时候, 也是我们应该跨出狭窄的考古学领域, 分享成 果的时候。这些材料太丰富、太重要, 不应该被埋没在技 术性的报告与含混的术语之中。它们可以使当代美国和中 国社区通过对理解过去和展望未来的共同追求而更紧密地 连结在一起。

Sisters Across the Bay: Archaeology and the Influence of Two Late Nineteenth-Century Free Kindergartens in Northern California

In 1878, Kate Douglas Smith (later, Wiggin) opened the Silver Street Kindergarten in a San Francisco building that had housed a prestigious institute for young girls in a more prosperous decade. A well-connected New Englander, Kate embraced reform principles and studied Froebelian teaching methods. The kindergarten reached out to the poor families in the “Tar Flat” neighborhood and provided a safe, comfortable place for their children’s introduction to learning and middle-class values. The model provided by the first free kindergarten west of the Rockies inspired others to follow, and soon the Silver Street Kindergarten provided training for teachers as well, until the building was dynamited to stay the fire’s progress following the 1906 earthquake that nevertheless destroyed the surrounding neighborhood (Wheelan 1928: 7).

Further Tales of the Vasco

As the inlet pipe was ceremoniously opened, filling the long awaited reservoir for the very first time, the Vasco Adobe disappeared beneath the waters of the Los Vaqueros Reservoir. Built in the 1850s by a group of rough Basque cattle ranchers, the adobe had been the scene of tragedies, feuds, fights, failures, and betrayals. Its occupants made and lost fortunes for themselves, and for their lawyers. Only when the cascading series of lawsuits was settled was the adobe abandoned and its residents moved into a plain, wooden house. Melted by rain and buried by flood silts, the adobe remarkably survived the ownership of Oscar Starr, inventor of the Caterpillar tractor, who test-drove his bulldozers on the ranch. It also survived the tenure of gun-toting San Francisco socialite and party-girl, Edith Ordway, who buried her toothless pet raccoon next to the old building’s remains. Archaeologists, historians, architects, and folklorists studied the Vasco Adobe so that its stories would not be lost beneath the waters of Los Vaqueros Reservoir.