104 years ago today -- The San Francisco Earthquake

We Gilberts grew up hearing many stories from the old ones about the great SF quake of '06.  Scott & Gilbert Manufacturing Chemists, the family business, had to relocate temporarily to Alameda, where our patriarch John Baptiste Gilbert I and family lived.  Granwilla (then Willa Sale who later would married JBG I's son Louis) headed for the Alameda ferry, as usual, to go to class at Cal but was told at the dock that all classes were canceled and the male students enlisted to fight the fires in the city.

But for this year's 104th anniversary of that fateful day I'm going to tell of my Uncle "Owl" Kohn (Al, but he wore great square glasses and looked like and was called Uncle Owl).  He was married to Kate Gilbert, our dad's aunt, and they threw the glorious Christmas Eve party all the years of the my childhood.

Uncle Owl was almost five years old the night the quake struck, and usually he slept on a cot in the attic near where the chimney rose through the roof, but that night he had gone to bed and a mouse had scurried across the floor of his room and scared him.  So he crept down to his sister's room and begged her to let him sleep there.

The quake hit at 5:13 a.m. and leveled their chimney. If Albert had been sleeping in his bed, he would have been killed.  All his life he said, "I was saved by a mouse."

The Kohn family lived for awhile in a makeshift tent city at the Marina that survivors set up while they watched the fires burn then rebuilt their homes.

Al's father, Bernard Kohn, was Secretary of the Luxembourg Benevolent Society, and received an official offer of help for Luxembourgians from the Netherlands Embassy.
 

Dear Sir,
    His Ex. Mr. Eyschew, Minister of State of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, requests me to see you in regard to extending in the name of his Government, some financial aid to such of your countrymen who are momentarily in distress as a result of the terrible calamity of April 18th last.
    Would it be convenient for you to call on me in Oakland so that we could talk the matter over any day or hour (including evenings) provided you let me know before hand so that I can act accordingly, will suit me!
    Awaiting your answer
I am, Dear Sir,
        your’s very truly,
            [Wolf Marsils]
        Consul for the Netherlands

Easter 1952 at Hacienda Circle

left to right:  Joan, Jack, Cres, Vinnie

l to r: Joan, Jack, Cres, Vinnie

Easter was new clothes, white gloves, an egg hunt at dawn, church, leg of lamb with Granwilla, and an egg war with confetti-filled eggshells. We saved the shells for weeks -- ate many scrambled-egg meals so we could put a pin prick on one end of a raw egg, and chip out tiny hole on the other, then blow the raw white and yolk out to keep the shell.  We dyed the eggs pink, yellow, lavender, and blue then stuffed confetti inside. What a war we had. After the egg hunt, we snuck up on one another and smashed eggs down on each others' heads. We lobbed confetti-filled eggs across the yard.  Mom brought this tradition from her Spanish imbued Philippine childhood.  How she laughed with joy as we cavorted.

Happy Easter family.

Tombstone Tuesday -- Mausoleum -- another way to go

Our John Baptiste Gilbert I, his 2nd wife, Kate Ruth Kelly, three of his children (JBG II aka Buv, Seabury Mastick, and Kathryn Ruth aka Auntie Kate) plus Buv's wife, Elsie Jorgenson, are here at Chapel of The Chimes in Oakland, California -- a beautiful Julia Morgan designed building.

Last year four of us made a visit.  Mastick's daughter, Marcia, brought flowers -- he died of a burst appendix when she was only six.  Her son-in-law got the ladder and vases while her younger daughter and I looked on. We all paid our respects. Although both Mastick and Auntie Kate were married, they are buried together -- brother and sister -- and their spouses buried elsewhere.  

The above flowers are for Mastick and Kate.

JBG II "Buv" and Elsie.

Here rests our patriarch, JBG I, and his beloved 2nd wife, Kate Kelly. The spot above them is empty because my dad (JBG III) moved his father, JBG I's eldest son, Louis Jules Gilbert,to rest beside his wife, Willa Truman Sale, at St. Stephen's in Orinda.  Louis died in 1941 and Granwilla in 1986. She wanted her Louis with her, and my dad (their son) complied.

Requiescant in pace

John Baptiste Gilbert III "Jack" and Lavinia Cresap "Vin" wed 21 June 1942 in her parents' living room, Berkeley CA