My July 31, 2014 web post
carried a photo of the McIntosh wedding in 1913 where I misidentified some of
the wedding party members, particularly and most importantly where the groom
and the bride were standing.
Cousin Catherine McIntosh
was kind enough to point out to me in a comment that she thought that her
grandfather, Harry McIntosh, was the man on the left in the photo with his
bride, Hess, standing next to him and not Dutch Coronado. She is right.
I did a little more research (with a pronounced red face) and hope to now
correctly identify the people in the wedding photo.
The McIntosh wedding party
posed for this photo on the steps of St. Vincent’s Church in Vallejo. It was just after noon on July 14, 1913. On the steps from left to right is Harry
McIntosh; Jesusita (Hess) Coronado McIntosh; Marion (Dutch) Coronado, the best
man; and Hallie Osborne, maid of honor.
The flower girls in the front are from left to right: Marian (Toots)
Coronado and Cecelia Coronado. The girl
on the fourth step on the right is Alice Anderson.[1]
Hess Coronado was born in
1888 and was the oldest surviving daughter of Mariano and Louisa Coronado. My mother, Cecelia Coronado, born in 1906,
said that Hess helped raised her and her sister, Toots (born 1905), in the
large Coronado family.
Harry McIntosh came with
his mother, and his sister, Isabella, and brother, Walter, from Quincy
Massachusetts around 1910[2]. Harry was a piano tuner[3]
and piano player. He played the piano
for Mariano at the Coronado Inn and spent a lot of time with his good friend,
Dutch Coronado, at the Coronado property on the rural Napa Vallejo Highway.
“Harry always admired our
oldest sister, Hess”, says Cecelia. “She
was tiny. In fact he found her at the
stove most of the time where she was even too small to reach the kettles to
stir. Mama put a little stool there for
her. That’s where Harry discovered his
future bride.”[4]
Since Dutch was a good
friend of Harry, he was a logical choice for best man at the McIntosh
wedding. The maid of honor, Hallie
Osborne, is a mystery to me. She may
have been a good friend of the bride, but I could not find any reference to her
in family records or census records. Any help from family members would be
welcome.
Flower girls and sisters, Cecelia
and Toots, were born about 15 months apart and look like they could be twins in
the wedding photo.
The girl high up on the
steps in the photo on the right side is 13 year-old Alice Anderson. She was the niece of Harry McIntosh. She came with her mother, Isabella, her
grandmother and her Uncle Harry from Massachusetts and settled in Vallejo where
Alice and her mother, “Belle” lived. Her
mother ran a rooming house on Georgia Street.[5]
Cecelia says that “since
Harry had a job with Papa playing the piano, Alice used to stay with us a lot
and I think one time stayed all summer long.
Alice remembers staying with us during the school year too and riding
the buggy to school. Mama used to say to
Toots and me, ‘You two girls are fine.
But let Alice come around and she gets you two in mischief’.”[6]
[1] Coronado
Newsletter, Vol 1, No 3, May 1994, page 8.
[2] I
don’t think that all members of the McIntosh family came to Vallejo at the same
time. Harry was listed as a boarder
living at 332 Georgia Street in Vallejo in April 1910. According the 1910 Federal Census he was a
piano tuner working for a piano manufacturer.
Isabella McIntosh Anderson, her husband, George, and her daughter, Alice,
were in Quincy Massachusetts in April 1910 living at 76 Rover Street according
to the 1910 Federal Census. Isabella and
her daughter, Alice, probably left soon afterwards for Vallejo because Harry
and Alice were closely associated with the Coronado family as Harry was courting
Hess. Isabella remarried in 1916, so
either George Anderson died or they were divorced by then. Ancestry.com database online. 1910 United
States Federal Census, California, Solano, Vallejo Ward 2, District 0190,
page 3. 1910 United State Federal
Census, Massachusetts, Norfolk, Quincy Ward 2, District 1140, page 30.
[3] Ancestry.com
database online. 1910 United States Federal Census, California, Solano,
Vallejo Ward 2, District 0190, page 3. By the time of his wedding Harry worked for the Sperry Mill Company in south Vallejo. Cecelia Coronado Phipps, Coronado Family Memories, Coronado Newsletter, Vol 3, No 3, May – August 1996, page 3.
[4]
Cecelia Coronado Phipps, Coronado Family Memories, Coronado Newsletter,
Vol 3, No 3, May – August 1996, page 3.
[5]
Ibid.
[6]
Ibid.
I asked Dad (who turns 100 in just a weeks) about Hallie. As a child in Stockton, he recalls a good friend of his mother Hess was named Hallie Young. She lived in Sacramento and knew the Governor. My guess is that Young was her married name. This would have been about 15 years after the wedding. The story that Dad recalls is about his brother Robert and Hallie. Robert was a fine artist and drew portraits for the Stockton newspaper when he was in high school. One portrait that he drew was of the Governor. Hallie invited Robert to come to Sacramento to present the drawing to the Governor at a ceremony in Sacramento.
ReplyDeleteThank you Catherine. And thank your Dad for his sharp memory (at almost 100).
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