Pioneer Memories: Helen Haskell Thomas (Part 2)

Continuing on with the memories of Helen. She was the niece of La Crescenta founder Dr. Benjamin Briggs. (Again, my comments are in brackets.)

Last week we related Helen’s memories of being the first teacher for La Cañada Elementary School in 1885. She further wrote that the schoolhouse also served as a social center for the valley.

“We organized a sort of club, or properly speaking, a society without dues for the purpose of social gatherings. There was singing, dancing and recitations, and sometimes skits and talks.” [La Cañada School was located at Foothill and La Cañada boulevards where Memorial Park is today.]

“On Sundays the school was used for church and Sunday school as there was no church building, so the building served as a gathering place for all occasions. We had a preacher, an Englishman, from the city of Leeds, a Mr. Hesmalhash. And listen, this is very naughty, we heard that he had deserted his wife and children and eloped with the wife of Dr. Hillard, who had also left her children.” [Very naughty indeed! Dr. Hillard was a gravely wounded Civil War veteran who tried to regain his health in La Cañada. Hillard Avenue is named for him. I show him having died in 1887, which would have been soon after his wife left him. Sad. It seems there was a lot of “dirty laundry” around the church that met at the La Cañada schoolhouse. Besides this scandal, there were the “dance wars” of La Cañada in which the community was violently split over the morality of public dances, fueled in large part by the alluring dance master, a Miss Sexton. The school was used for dances on Saturday nights, and church on Sunday mornings. Dancing was considered a sin by church-goers, and the disagreement over this dual-use was intensely fought over. This was eventually solved by building a new dance hall and a new church, separating the two factions.]

Helen relates that her uncle, Dr. Briggs, loved trees. “In fact nearly all the old trees planted 50 years ago [1880s] were at Dr. Briggs’ instigation. He got his friends interested in clearing the land and growing trees. It was natural for Dr. Briggs to plant as he was one of the Briggs brothers who planted in the Sacramento Valley the first large fruit orchards that put California on the map as a fruit-raising state.” [That was in the 1850s. The Briggs brothers, including our Dr. Briggs, also planted the orchards of the Santa Clara Valley in 1862. There are roads and schools named for Briggs between Santa Paula and Oxnard.]

Here’s a quote from Helen that has elicited some smirks among local historians. “How well I remember General Shields, straight as an arrow, riding horseback through the valley. He was over 70 and looked only 40. His recipe for eternal youth was no worries, no business cares, sleeping with his head out of a window and a diet of raw graham flour and applesauce. His family lived in Los Angeles and relieved him of all cares.” [Lots to unpack here! Rumor back then was that Shields had been a Confederate general. Not true. And he was not “over 70”. He would have been in his 50s. The sleeping arrangement and diet? Many moved to CV for their health, and health fads followed them. Raw graham flour with fruits and vegetables were eaten by “Grahamites” in the 1800s. This diet, along with lots of fresh air such as “sleeping with his head out the window,” was supposed to suppress sexual desire. His family in LA “relieving him of all cares” was simply due to the fact that he had abandoned his wife and children in LA, and moved to CV by himself.]

It might seem Helen was gullible as a young woman. But she returned to the valley in the early 20^th century as a mature woman. She and her husband became community leaders. Helen’s portrait hangs in the La Crescenta Woman’s Club today in honor of her early presidency of that charitable group and for her community service.