USEFUL RESOURCE FOR STUDENTS OF SAN FERNANDO VALLEY HISTORY

CHERISHING OUR VALLEY             2013

Bob Lisenby, Board Member of the Campo de Cahuenga Memorial Historical Association has shared with us a very important information site of the Huntington (Library) in Pasadena. Here are some of the values available through the site for historians:
http://www.huntington.org/information/ecppmain.htm

•	Community historians can study in greater detail the individuals and families who settled California’s first presidios and pueblos
•	Anthropologists and ethno-historians can examine the settlement patterns of Indians in Alta California and their movement to the missions
•	Historical demographers can bring greater detail to their attempts to understand the pace and magnitude of Indian population decline in Alta California
•	Scholars of religion can study the practice and administration of Catholicism in the California missions and the lives of California’s Franciscans
•	Social historians can study the structure and growth of the missions and the secular communities of Spanish and Mexican California
•	Genealogists can more easily trace and identify the people who lived in California from 1769 to 1850
•	Historians of colonial America can more easily incorporate regions and peoples beyond the eastern seaboard into the narrative of our country’s early history, and
•	Scholars can attain an increased awareness of the tremendous diversity that has long characterized the people of the Golden State and the American Southwest

DUMETZ STREET IN WOODLAND HILLS HAS HISTORIC CONNECTION

2010 THE YEAR OF VALLEY ADVENTURES

Main Altar of the Mission San Gabriel the Archangel - Photo by Janne Fecht for the Archives of The Museum of the San Fernando Valley 2010 (click on image to enlarge)

Below this very impressive wood and gold-leafed altar in the Mission San Gabriel lie the tombs of about a dozen early Franciscan missionaries who worked in Southern California. Among these is the body of Father Francisco Dumetz OFM (Order of Friars Minor - The Fransicans). Fra Dumetz was once the pastor of the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana in the San Fernando Valley.

Marker of Father Francisco Dumetz OFM by Gerald Fecht 2010. Dumetz Street in Woodland Hills is named for this Christian priest. He was buried in the Mission San Garbriel in 1811.

MISSION SAN FERNANDO STILL RECOVERING IN 1972

2010 THE YEAR OF VALLEY ADVENTURES

News photo of the exterior of the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana - Feb 24, 1972 - Gift to The Museum of the San Fernando Valley from Beth Perrin 2010.

Still chained to visitors, the Mission San Fernando took years to recover from the great earthquake of February 1971. Article was in the Los Angeles Times. The photo was by Cal Montney.

RARE PHOTOGRAPHS OF EARLY SAN FERNANDO

Newspaper photo of San Fernando Road in 1882. Gift to the Archives of The Museum of the San Fernando Valley from Beth Perrin 2010 (click on image to enlarge)
The Porter House was a hotel and dining establishment. Next to it was a billard parlor and saloon, and the clapboard covered Maclay Moffitt store. Corner of Maclay and San Fernando Road.
The W.B. Shaug Saloon 1904 - Gift to the Archives of The Museum of the San Fernando Valley from Beth Perrin 2010 (click on image to enlarge)
John "Jack" Wilson, in front of the Mission San Fernando c. 1883 - Gift to the Archives of The Museum of the San Fernando Valley from Beth Perrin 2010 (click on image to enlarge)



Special thanks to Beth Perrin for these early newspaper clippings of San Fernando.

HALLOWEEN IN THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY - CATS

2009 The Year of Valley History

Halloween Cat Ornament - Collection of Janne and Jerry Fecht 2009

The first domestic cats were brought to the San Fernando Valley by Spanish colonists about the time the English colonies in America began our Revolution. Under supervision of Catholic Franciscan monks, heavy wooden doors connecting the rooms of the Mission San Fernando Rey de España modified with "cat doors". These allowed domestic cats to roam the whole facility, to keep mice and rats at bay.
With the arrival of American pioneers in the 1800s, the numbers of outside felines exploded. While wheat farmers found tame and ferrel cats allies, the native bird population didn't. Ferrel cats, for example, in the fine urban forest surrounding the buildings of Valley College, have wiped out the native bird population there. Well meaning campus cat lovers, who set out cat food, haven't proved to be friends of native California birds.
While the Spanish padres, who followed the example of Saint Francis Assisi, were apparent friends of house cats, western Christianity hasn't generally agreed. Since cats, especially kittens, were sacred to the Egyptian followers of the Goddess Isis, competing Christians in the Roman Empire viewed felines as "familiars" with the African deity.
It is seldom talked about anymore, but the "sin of familiary" was once a big thing.
Since animals did not have immortal souls, communicating with them had to be an evil thing, according to theologians. Demons were believed to take the form of animals or even people (usually women who owned property and were without protective families).
When Dominican monks wanted to prove to the "holy" Inquisition that a woman was a witch, all they needed was a witness that heard her talking to her cat as if it was a human being. Hmm! (Good thing those monks have not been our 3-cat house in Tarzana lately.)
In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull, ordering cats owned by accused witches be also put on trial. Hundreds of thousands of mostly women and cats, were burned at the stake in both Catholic and Protestant nations. (Remember. before our Revolution, accused persons had to prove their innocence.) This Inquisition of Cats gave rise to a massive invasion of rats - and, the rats were home to fleas - and fleas brought the Black Death - and, the Black Death brought an increase in witchcraft trials etc etc.
The association of cats with evil has never left us. Only recently have most of our States enacted laws against the mutilation of cats and other animals.

MYSTERY GRAVEYARD IN THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY

2009 - The Year of Valley History

Your Museum is a very busy Community. Despite our important projects such as the Northridge/Zelzah Centennial history committee, we catalogue dozens of items each week. The High Collection photograph below, in its original form, is very faded and difficult to figure out. When it was scanned and manipulated for color and size, a very interesting detail emerged. Aside from what appears to be an adobe or stone wall in bad shape, there are several picket fences in the foreground. Arranged in squares they seem to me to be family cemetery plots.
The photo may be of the graveyard at the Mission San Fernando Rey de España or the old Pioneer Cemetery.
What is your opinion? Jerry
Clicking on the image will give you a better picture.

Photograph - Gift to The Museum of the San Fernando Valley by David High July 2009
(refer to photo HC-91

KIT CARSON PART OF SAN FERNANDO VALLEY HISTORY

2009 The Year of Valley History
Kit Carson - Image in the Archives of The Museum of the San Fernando Valley - Gift of Gary Fredburg. Scanned image's background modified to increase clarity of Carson's image.

The famous American frontiersman Kit Carson was only 20 years old when he first visited the Mission San Fernando Rey de España. A brilliant untrained linguist and fearless explorer, Carson was of great value to John C. Fremont and others who planned to subjugate the American West.
Carson was an integral part of the expeditions that mapped what is now the western United States. In 1846, Carson found himself involved with the war to wrest California from the Republic of Mexico.
Historic Campo de Cahuenga’s renovation should be complete soon. Among its many treasures is well worn deck of playing cards that belonged to Kit Carson.

The San Fernando Valley, in the heart of the Creative Capital of the World, deserves a great Museum of history and culture.

MYSTERY PHOTO RELATED TO DEATH VALLEY

Mystery Photo - possibly related to Death Valley - Archives of the Museum of the San Fernando Valley (click on image to enlarge)
2009 - The Year of Valley History
This morning while I was documenting items just donated to our Museum's Library, I found this photograph tucked in a facsimile journal by William Lewis Manly of his survival on a his trek to Los Angeles in 1849. Manly's book is particularly interesting because it gives a first hand account of his desperate journey across Death Valley and the Mojave Desert in the mid-19th Century and what it was like to enter the San Fernando Valley through the Palmdale-Lancaster Pass in 1849. His description of the natural water springs in the San Fernando Valley is riveting.

The San Fernando Valley, in the heart of the Creative Capital of the World, deserves a great Museum of history and culture.

HOW THE VALLEY IS VIEWED OUTSIDE OF OUR COMMUNITIES

San Fernando Mission portrayed in the "Picture Bridge" at the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena - Historic postcard donated to The Museum of the San Fernando Valley by Fred Berk 2008 (click on image to enlarge)

How the San Fernando Valley is portrayed by people and institutions outside of our communities, is a major focus of The Museum of the San Fernando Valley. Images of the Valley play a vital role in matters such as tourism, in-tourism, investment, winning a fair-share of cultural support and educational grants, civic pride and much more.

Ask your out-of-state friends to share stories, photos or artifacts depicting the San Fernando Valley.




The San Fernando Valley, in the heart of the Creative Capital of the World, deserves a great Museum of history and culture.